Citing the need for the Catholic Church to "lead by example" and act responsibly to protect others during the coronavirus pandemic, Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso has said that all Church employees and ministry volunteers must be vaccinated.

"For the sake our brothers and sisters, I am requiring all those who are employed by the Church and all those who perform Church ministries including, but not limited to, catechists and Eucharistic ministers to be vaccinated," the bishop wrote.

Those who cannot be vaccinated due to "particular health issues" may seek an exemption, he said.

Board members at the National Catholic Bioethics Center have told CNA that Cardinal Blase Cupich has urged that the center retract its guidance against mandated immunization.

The board members who spoke with CNA said that they would oppose the change they say the cardinal is seeking.

One of the board members told CNA, "I think everyone should be vaccinated. Catholics should be the first to give a good example. There are legal precedents in which the state has mandated vaccines in extreme circumstances, but the conscience of religious people should be respected."

Mary Haddad, RSM, the CEO and president of the Catholic Health Association, agrees that more must be done now to halt the advance of the Delta variant.

"I believe that there is a moral responsibility for all in health care professions to be vaccinated, period," she said.

"I feel very strongly about that because you are potentially putting others at risk because of your inability to protect yourself and to do what you can in order to mitigate this increasing surge."

Catholic seminaries in the northeast of the USA are requiring COVID-19 vaccinations for their seminarians before the coming semester begins.

Mt Saint Mary's University in Emmitsburg, Maryland is one of the colleges requiring students and seminarians to be vaccinated before coming to campus in August 2021.

At St John's Seminary in Boston, vice rector Fr. Thomas Macdonald said seminarians are "expected" to be vaccinated.

The job of a priest requires being close to the people, Macdonald noted. He told CNA that a priest needs access to places that house vulnerable people such as nursing homes.

St. John's is allowing seminarians to opt out of vaccination, but the seminarian must explain his reasoning for doing so.

The Holy Father was unambiguous in a January interview, "I believe that morally everyone must take the vaccine. It is the moral choice because it is about your life but also the lives of others."

Sources

Catholic News Agency

America Magazine

Catholic News Agency

On March 17, scientists reported that they had taken fertilized eggs of mice and grew mouse embryos in an artificial uterus for 11 to 12 days.

This was longer than had ever been previously recorded.

The experiment's lead researcher suggested that human embryos should eventually be studied in an artificial womb. Suggesting this be as late as 40 days post-fertilization.

Dr Jacob Hanna led the embryo experiments for the Weizmann Institute of Science research team in Israel. He wrote that his experiments could help fellow scientists study the development of mammals.

The experiments could possibly help understand how miscarriages and gene mutations can occur, the New York Times reported.

Hanna also hoped the research could extend to human embryos in the future.

"I hope it will allow scientists to grow human embryos until week five," as reported in the MIT Technology Review.

Hanna added that he is pushing for research labs to study human embryos, growing them in an artificial womb for 40 days before disposing of them.

"I do understand the difficulties. I understand. You are entering the domain of abortions," Hanna said, the MIT Technology Review reported. "So I would advocate growing it [the human embryo] until day 40 and then disposing of it."

The hypothetical practice could replace the fetal tissue research market, he said.

"Instead of getting tissue from abortions, let's take a blastocyst and grow it," he said.

In response, a Catholic ethicist told EWTN Pro-Life Weekly that the Church opposes experimentation on human embryos except for direct, therapeutic, non-harmful treatments for the embryos themselves.

"The Church has already spoken to this issue," said Dr Joseph Meaney, president of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, on EWTN Pro-Life Weekly. He cited the Vatican's 1987 document Donum Vitae, "Instruction on respect for human life."

In the document, the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) taught that only direct therapeutic experiments are licit on human embryos.

Meaney added, "nothing that would put their lives in danger could be acceptable."

"The Church is very pro-science," he emphasized.

"We always put the human person at the center of science, not to be experimented upon. But to be actually helped."

In Donum Vitae, the Vatican CDF stated "[t]he human being must be respected - as a person - from the very first instant of his existence."

"No objective, even though noble in itself, such as a foreseeable advantage to science, to other human beings or to society, can in any way justify experimentation on living human embryos or foetuses, whether viable or not, either inside or outside the mother's womb."

Sources

• Catholic News Agency
• EWTN Pro-Life Weekly