Letter includes MN Health Department refutation, resources on ethical vaccination development
Priests should not use homilies to “present medical or scientific speculation,” Archbishop Bernard Hebda wrote in a Sept. 22 letter to Catholics in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, responding to a homily Father Robert Altier gave at St. Raphael in Crystal Sept. 6.
“The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis is blessed with many fine priests. We have reason to expect them to teach the truth of the Gospel, faithfully passing on the teachings of our Church,” Archbishop Hebda said. “None of our priests or bishops, however, is an expert in public health, infectious disease, epidemiology or immunology. It would be a mistake to attribute any expertise in these areas to us simply on the basis of our ordination.”
The parochial vicar of St. Raphael, Father Altier preached a 20-minute homily questioning the severity of the novel coronavirus pandemic and calling COVID-19 a man-made virus used by world leaders to instill fear. In the homily, he said he rejected the three major vaccines in development on moral grounds, and that he had advised his elderly parents not to receive a COVID-19 vaccination. The homily was posted on the parish’s website.
In his letter, Archbishop Hebda said that he has spoken with Father Altier, and, while he “remains firm in his opinions on the pandemic situation,” the priest “has acknowledged that his remarks were inappropriate in the context of a homily during Mass.”
“The General Instruction on the Roman Missal (n. 65) directs that the homily ‘should be an explanation of some aspect of the readings from Sacred Scripture or of another text from the Ordinary or the Proper of the Mass of the day and should take into account both the mystery being celebrated and the particular needs of the listeners.’ Pope Francis has said that it is to be ‘a consoling encounter with God’s word, a constant source of renewal and growth,’” Archbishop Hebda said, quoting the pope’s 2013 apostolic exhortation “The Joy of the Gospel.”
Using a homily for “medical or scientific speculation could be seen as an abuse of the cleric’s position of authority to address an issue unrelated to the liturgical celebration,” he said. “In the context of the liturgy, no member of the assembly, even if the world’s greatest expert in this area, would have been in a position to contradict (Father) Altier or to offer alternative points of reference.”
Attached to the letter was a response from the Minnesota Department of Health to some of Father Altier’s points. Archbishop Hebda noted that he consulted with both the MDH and the local chapter of the Catholic Medical Association, and that the CMA “essentially shared the critique by the Minnesota Department of Health (other than the section on vaccinations).”
The letter included a link to COVID-19 resources on the national CMA chapter’s website, as well as links to additional resources from the CMA, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia on the ethical development of vaccines.
For Catholics, much of the vaccination controversy revolves around the ethics of developing — and later receiving — vaccinations using stem-cell lines derived “some time ago” from fetal tissue from aborted babies, according to the NCBC.
“Allow me to note that the Catholic Church has long recognized that there are at times ethical questions involved in the production of vaccines,” Archbishop Hebda said. “Back in April, bishops serving as committee chairmen at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops voiced to the Food and Drug Administration that ‘It is critically important that Americans have access to a vaccine that is produced ethically: No American should be forced to choose between being vaccinated against this potentially deadly virus and violating his or her conscience.’ The bishops stressed that there was no need to use ethically problematic cell lines to produce a COVID vaccine, or any vaccine, as other cell lines or processes that do not involve cells from abortions are available and are regularly being used to produce other vaccines.”
He pointed to a joint statement released Sept. 21 from the CMA and NCBC on COVID-19 immunization practices, in which the organizations stated that they have publicly asserted “the need for ethics to be maintained in the development of a COVID-19 vaccine” ahead of a Sept. 22 meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The CMA and NCBC said they detailed ethical concerns around development using non abortion-derived cell lines; informed consent, safety and efficacy; government mandates; exemptions for immunization requirements; and allocation of immunizations with initial limited availability.
“From a Catholic understanding of the common good, vaccines should be developed following ethical standards that never compromise the dignity of life, are distributed in a just manner, and are not coercively disseminated. Under such standards, the vast majority of the population can participate in an immunization program to protect public health and exemplify the inviolable connection between sound science and universal morality,” Dr. Greg Burke, co-chair of CMA’s ethics committee, said in the Sept. 21 CMA and NCBC statement.
Archbishop Hebda said that Catholics can look for more teaching on the ethics of COVID-19 from the Holy See, the USCCB and the archdiocese in the months to come.
“In the meantime, please join me in praying for all those who are sick with COVID-19, those who care for them, those who are working on vaccines, and all those individuals and families affected in any way by the pandemic,” he said. “Our Lady, Health of the Sick, pray for us.”
Father Michael Tix, the archdiocese’s vicar for clergy and parish services, previously responded Sept. 10 to note that the controversial homily was “under review.”
“Stemming from our belief in the dignity of all human life, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis is committed to the safety and well-being of all people and has consistently collaborated with public health officials and government officials in the development of safety protocols for our parishes and schools,” Father Tix said in the statement.
HEALTH DEPARTMENT WEIGHS IN
The letter from Archbishop Bernard Hebda regarding Father Robert Altier’s Sept. 6 homily included an unedited response from the Minnesota Department of Health to six of the priest’s claims. It labels as “false” four of Father Altier’s claims: SARS-CoV-2 was man-made in a lab in North Carolina, people are getting bacterial infections from wearing masks, doctors and coroners are inflating the number of deaths due to COVID-19, and that a vaccine developed by Moderna Therapeutics is designed to change the RNA in a person’s body so the very cells in that body change. The MDH supplied links to documents supporting their refutation.
The MDH also provided information about a global pandemic exercise that took place Oct. 18, 2019, which Father Altier characterized as an indication that world leaders planned to weaponize a coronavirus in order to manipulate people. There is “nothing concerning about the date of this exercise in that it took place shortly before the recognition of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 virus) circulating in Wuhan, China,” the MDH states. “Exercises using disease scenarios have been taking place for decades and occur at the local, state, national and international levels. Minnesota and every state in the U.S. was required to develop and participate in exercises following the 9/11 and anthrax attacks of 2001. The fictional coronavirus that was used to cause a pandemic in this exercise was used because it is a virus that could be in the same family as other new coronaviruses, SARS and MERS. Both SARS and MERS are caused by viruses in the same family, the coronavirus family, as COVID-19.”
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story included that the parish initially posted the homily as “The Coronavirus: The Truth Revealed.” Another organization reposted the homily under that title. The Catholic Spirit regrets the error.
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