CNA Staff, Jan 12, 2021 / 06:01 pm (CNA).- A Dominican priest and biology professor has on social media encouraged people to receive a coronavirus vaccine, emphasizing his trust in modern medicine and expertise in biology.
Father Nicanor Austriaco, a Catholic author and professor of biology for Providence College in Rhode Island, issued a post on Facebook Jan. 10 stressing his belief in the COVID-19 vaccine and its benefit to society.
“To be clear, as soon as a COVID-19 vaccine becomes available for which I am eligible, whether in the USA or here in the Philippines, I intend to be vaccinated with it. Also, as soon as a vaccine becomes available for my mother here in the Philippines, I will encourage her to be vaccinated with it,” he said.
He said a COVID-19 vaccine will help save lives as well as slow social disruptions and lockdowns, which will help society return to a level of normalcy.
In regard to concerns about the vaccination and its quick development, he said the vaccines were developed in record time because scientists had unlimited funding by “desperate governments” who are seeking to resolve a global pandemic and its negative effect on every country’s economy.
Austriaco said tens of thousands of people have already gone through clinical trials and pointed to a brief history of coronavirus and vaccine research. He said mRNA vaccines, which are being used to treat this virus, were founded over 50 years ago, and RNA viruses, including the coronavirus subclass, have been studied for decades.
“I trust the scientific process that has gone into the development and testing of these vaccines,” he said.
“These vaccines rely on decades of research. It is not like scientists just woke up one morning at the beginning of the pandemic and started from scratch.”
The priest also addressed several possible concerns, such as minor side effects, major allergic reactions, medical rumors, and spiritual apprehensions.
He said the vaccine has minor side effects like a slight fever and a feeling of exhaustion, but noted that these are all signs that the process is working and the vaccine is jumpstarting the immune system.
“As a Christian, I am taught that a broken world can only be redeemed by sacrifice. This is the meaning of the Cross. In my view, the few days of discomfort and downright crappiness that I expect to experience after each dose of the COVID-19 vaccine will be my contribution to the sacrifice that heals the world (cf. Col 1:24).”
He conceded that major allergic reactions are possible and likely for a small group of individuals. He said, out of 1,893,360 vaccinations, 21 cases of severe allergic responses were recorded during the first two weeks of the U.S. vaccine campaign. He said all of the individuals with severe side effects already suffered from a history of bad allergic reactions. He further added that an EpiPen may be used to resolve these issues.
He addressed numerous rumors about the vaccine, such as false connections to infertility, death, and alterations in an individual’s DNA. While people have died after receiving the vaccine, he said, there is no evidence that the vaccination is the cause of the death. He said claims that the vaccine causes infertility or changes DNA is also unreasonable and unsupported by science.
The priest also commented on the moral concerns behind the vaccine. He said some COVID-19 vaccines were manufactured by fetal cell lines derived from a decades-old abortion. He pointed to the Church’s response and his own personal choice.
“As a priest, I know that different people have different thresholds of sensitivity to evil. Some feel evil exquisitely. Others not so much. We should therefore expect different people to reach different moral conclusions that could even be opposed to each other while both remaining virtuous responses,” he said.
“Personally, I will choose to avoid the vaccines made with these cell lines. However, as the Vatican itself has noted, it is not immoral to avail oneself of these morally controversial vaccines, especially if no other options are available.”
Austriaco expressed gratitude for the success the vaccine has so far seen, noting that it has been a surprising gift from God.
“In the end, I believe that the unprecedented, and really, unexpected, successes we have witnessed in the production of these vaccines are a blessing from the Lord. If you had told me back during the first lockdown that we would have a handful of safe and efficacious vaccines ready to go within the first year of the pandemic, I would have shaken my head in disbelief,” he said.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
For excellent commentary and counterpoint to the steady stream of contradictory, confusing and low-information opinions on this subject I highly recommend cogforlife.org and Dr Stacy Trasancos. You will get much more actual information and not the usual “I think it’s fine and I’m a biologist” or “I think it’s fine and I’m a priest”. Great, that’s great. It’s fine to hear opinions. But people need the actual information to understand why this is a controversy, what is actually going on, what the facts are related to aborted fetal cell lines in use, their history, development etc., and what is involved in the moral evaluations.
Father Nicanor Austriaco’s explanation about the ethical issues connected with the vaccine will go a long way in encouraging people to see the positive side of the issue. The lockdown propelled ‘new normal’ is certainly not perfect. The ‘old normal’ too was imperfect. It is time to look forward to a ‘newer normal’ in which we take responsibility to work together for the well-being of one another on Planet Earth our common home.
Any judgment about these vaccines ought to be held in abeyance until a reading of RFK, Jr’s book on Fauci is completed. It will shatter your trust in government, Big Pharma, university medical research programs, and big media.
What foolish and irresponsible commentary! The “vaccines” are dangerous and ineffective. How can such reckless opinions be tolerated by your prestigious journal?
Vaccines are one of our greatest gifts from God–He created the science behind various types of vaccines, and in His great mercy, led scientists to unlock the secrets of vaccination. My husband died of COVID-19 a month before the vaccine became available to the public–although I accept that this was part of God’s plan for his life, as a loving wife who misses him, I can’t help but wish that the vaccines had been available BEFORE he caught COVID from his mother and father, whom he was helping care for, and who also died of complications in which COVID definitely played a part. I worked in the Microbiology Lab for 41 years, and I can attest that we are NOT part of any conspiracy and we do NOT “do bad science”.
Mrs. Whitlock, fact is, after all, many of the vaccines can’t stand the scrutiny of God, or morality, or science, or even just mere effectiveness. Some of them do not rank as vaccine or medicine, since what they add up to is experimental gene-altering catalytics.
Also, the distribution method was (and remains) to rely on your efficiency and trust, in the field, to administer the injections without questioning while the oversight is taken care of remotely. Not right. Wrong.
That automaticity is highly irregular and was not called for in the circumstances that attained at the time. Yet the authorities invested heavily in alarmism, strong-arming of the system and public bullying.
I say put more thought into it and read up on it again. LIFESITE NEWS did extensive coverage, it’s a trmendous resource for looking back on what took place and what is now verifiable.
According to developments, the vast majority of patients either did not need treatment for COVID 19 or could have battled it with ordinary medicine and therapies. These were suppressed when they should have been promoted with full force to speedily bring through information synergy.
So many red flags and the theologians missed all !!!!!
The JPII Medical Research Institute is researching ethical vaccines that exclude, among other bad things, embryonic/fetal stem cells. Perhaps they deserve some better attention for their work?
https://www.jp2mri.org/institute-goals