Refusal to receive Covid vaccination is a sin, leading Russian Orthodox official says
July 15, 2021
» Continue to this story on Reuters
CWN Editor's Note: Metropolitan Hilarion, the chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, said that declining to receive a Covid vaccine is “a sin for which [people] will have to atone throughout their lives,” “the sin is thinking of oneself but not of another person,” the Reuters news agency reported.
In its document on the morality of anti-Covid vaccines, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in contrast, said that “practical reason makes evident that vaccination is not, as a rule, a moral obligation and that, therefore, it must be voluntary.”
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Posted by: Randal Mandock -
Jul. 16, 2021 4:15 PM ET USA
I will NEVER consciously accept a vaccine that is produced or tested with material derived from aborted children. I hope prelates like Metropolitan Hilarion and Pope Francis constantly call to mind Pope Francis' own words of wisdom: "Who am I to judge?" The CDF's guidance for those who refuse the vaccine and who do not have the natural immunity produced by having had the disease should be followed by responsible Catholics. Of course, it is now demonstrated that the vaccinated must follow it too.
