Biden Administration Attempts Sweeping Vaccine Mandates
Readers may recall last week, when President Biden, outraged that the state of Texas had limited abortion access, decried the law as depriving people of their constitutional rights and preventing them from making their own medical choices.
That principle did not carry over into his address this evening, as his administration now seeks to institute sweeping vaccination mandates across both the public and private sectors. As CNN reports:
“At the center of Biden’s new plan is directing the Labor Department to require all businesses with 100 or more employees ensure their workers are either vaccinated or tested once a week, an expansive step the President took after consultation with administration health officials and lawyers. Companies could face thousands of dollars in fines per employee if they don’t comply.
Biden also signed an executive order requiring all government employees be vaccinated against Covid-19, with no option of being regularly tested to opt out. The President signed an accompanying order directing the same standard be applied to employees of contractors who do business with the federal government. He also said 300,000 educators in federal Head Start programs must be vaccinated and called on governors to require vaccinations for schoolteachers and staff. And Biden announced he would require the 17 million health care workers at facilities receiving funds from Medicare and Medicaid to be fully vaccinated, expanding the mandate to hospitals, home care facilities and dialysis centers around the country.
Listen carefully to the language the President employed today:
“If these governors won’t help us beat the pandemic, I’ll use my power as president to get them out of the way.”
“We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us…”
In the first place, a citizen of this country ought never to hear that the “patience” of his elected leader, like that of an enraged emperor, is “growing thin.” This barely-veiled threat is hardly in keeping with the spirit of representative government, or generally of just government at all. (Ironically, or perhaps providentially, the USCCB just launched an initiative for greater civility in politics … Somebody better tell Joe.)
Secondly, they ought not be required to participate in medical procedures against their will nor to be denied basic liberties such as the right to provide for themselves if they do not comply.
Thirdly, Biden’s scapegoating language is incorrect if not deliberately dishonest, given that vaccinated & unvaccinated individuals are both spreading the Delta variant with similar viral loads (though possibly for different lengths of time). The vaccine is not a magic bullet. Communicable variants continue to emerge even in the most vaccinated nations, and this is how some nations have ended up with an endlessly rolling program of jabs, a “Vaccine Passport” that becomes instantly invalid if citizens do not take the next booster shot created to address the next evolving variant, and the next, and the next… So that in the end, it is not just to one little injection that a person is committed, but to a whole indefinite course of treatment and philosophy of medicine that leaves no room for declining if you have worries about side effects and reactions like infertility or myocarditis, ethical concerns, or just plain want to stop being injected with drugs.
It may be the best plan that science can come up with at the moment, but that does not make it right.
Finally, the story of this pandemic, its origins, and who bears responsibility for its chaotic emergence into the world has remained shrouded in darkness and likely will for some time. We all saw how corporations and organizations (and sometimes political entities) teamed up to smother questioning or dissenting voices, stealth-editing the Wikipedia pages of the doctors or scientists who offered other opinions, or slapping “fact check” labels on them (and not just on the crackpots, but also on the Nobel Prize-winning virologists who strayed from the sanctioned path), ensuring they were removed from most communication platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. That was not a good look. If they wonder how people have become skeptical, they should look to their behavior, which has led some to conclude that sketchy is as sketchy does.
Corporations and scientists employed by the political world seem to be the ones calling all the shots (if I may be permitted one wretched pun). You would have to be freshly-sprung from God’s dear earth not to suspect that this has led to shortcuts, deals, quid pro quos, and conflicts of interest. This isn’t really the stuff of conspiracy theory; it is simply fallen human nature. The virus has not made pure the hearts of men.
Those same corporations making large amounts of money off the vaccines are at the same time completely unwilling to take responsibility in those cases where a vaccine causes injury or death. No one can be held liable, and now, if our President has his way, almost no one can say no whilst retaining his civil liberties like the freedom to work.
We know to our grief that some people will die as a result of contracting Covid. But it is also true that statistically some people will die as a result of forced vaccination. And right now we cannot really calculate what the the human toll will be if this crisis leads us to rationalize increasingly totalitarian approaches to societal problems. Being alive but with your human dignity taken away can be a cure worse than the disease.
There are clearly many, many ethical points needing attention in all this. They aren’t going to be dealt with if we stop asking questions, shut up, and simply comply as we are being directed to do, by people hissing and shaking their fists in our faces:
Oligarchy is really the worst.
The Church, meanwhile, which has spoken of the COVID-19 vaccines as morally permissible, has nonetheless also stated in a December 2020 clarification by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, that:
“At the same time, practical reason makes evident that vaccination is not, as a rule, a moral obligation and that, therefore, it must be voluntary.”
(Emphasis added)
It. Must. Be. Voluntary.
One canon lawyer noted that the Nuremburg Code–which vaccine proponents have been swift to dismiss as either not applicable or not legally binding in the present crisis–nonetheless at least offers a principle which no one who believes in the dignity of the human person would care to violate:
That the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, over-reaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision. This latter element requires that before the acceptance of an affirmative decision by the experimental subject there should be made known to him the nature, duration, and purpose of the experiment; the method and means by which it is to be conducted; all inconveniences and hazards reasonably to be expected; and the effects upon his health or person which may possibly come from his participation in the experiment.
–Nuremberg Code, #1 (emphasis added); also see #9 for the medical subject’s right to cease participating when he so wishes.
Is a person really free to give consent, when his ‘no’ means firing, societal ostracization (led even by the President), likely penury for his family, unjust blame and other forms of constraint? Just think that over.
It feels as though our religious leaders have already in large part turned a blind eye to the troubling nature of abortion-derived vaccines.
It now remains to be seen whether they will take any stance on further violations: a government overreaching its own interior legal structure, employing elements of force, duress, shaming, penalizing, and at root, disrespecting the dignity and conscience rights of its citizens.
It may be that some civil and religious leaders will sense the weight of the present historical moment and realize that COVID-19, as bad as it is, is not the only, or even the worst, evil hanging in the air at the moment.
And so let’s pray for God’s mercy, for the sick and those who tend them, for ethical solutions to this difficulty, for the preservation of good conscience and just freedoms, for the restraint of tyrannical impulses, and for wisdom and fortitude in this hour for ourselves and our leaders.
Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thine intercession was left unaided.
Inspired by this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins, my mother; to thee do I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy hear and answer me. Amen.

10 Replies to “Biden Administration Attempts Sweeping Vaccine Mandates”
I and many of my friends are facing termination because we will not comply with this evil mandate. I won’t ask for prayers that we keep our jobs, but I would appreciate prayers that if we are to suffer, we may suffer well for God’s glory.
Consider it done, AF, and I ask all readers to join in.
Now that it’s been confirmed that many media companies were paid to promote the injections, it would seem logical to question if the bishops/dioceses were paid as well? Was our bishop/diocese paid to promote the injections despite their clear ties to recent/fresh aborted material, and clear safety issues?
We are at war. We have been at war. It will only get worse. The people behind this are eugenists. Will bishops and governors, hospital administrators, business leaders, please wake up and protect our freedoms? Don’t be wimps. I’m still waiting for Bishop Doherty to speak out about the immorality of forcing this shot on everyone.
Question: “Will bishops and governors, hospital administrators, business leaders, please wake up and protect our freedoms?”
Answer: The words “bishops” and “protect” cannot be used in the same sentence anymore unless you’re including other words like “money” or “themselves”…
The last time we had Father Ted Rothrock over for dinner was President’s Day (coincidental and even ironic considering Biden is the subject of this excellent post, a day to celebrate presidential wisdom!) 2020. He ended our evening with a very foreboding “There is a sickness in the world.” That was before any of us really knew anything much about this particular virus …
Thank you and I pray that our priests will speak about this latest mandate at the pulpits this weekend. Their people need to know that real Catholics believe that vaccines should be voluntary.
Very suspicious is the fact that one possibility of certainty in this whole vaccine situation is hardly ever mentioned in information available to the public. And that is that CVS Pharmacy has available a very simple and totally painless test for Covid antibodies, for $38. This test confirms whether a person has had Covid or not. Simple as that. The natural immunity resulting from a case of Covid, whether severe or mild or not even noticeable, is better than the immunity resulting from vaccines. It last longer and does not need booster shots. I had this test done this past May, and it was positive. This confirmed my suspicions that I had a case of Covid in August of 2020, when, after a day of fever and chills, I was totally listless and weak for three weeks. I am 83 years old, just for the record. Probably other pharmacies offer this test also.
That is a really good point. The number of Americans who have had covid is huge… it was something like 1 in 3 last year, maybe more now? If they already have decent immunity or at least as decent as they would get from a shot, then this rule would force them to expose themselves to side effects of the vaccine without getting any benefit. How would the Church view that, making somebody take a treatment that isn’t necessary for them and that they don’t want and that could have complications. I know our bishop does bio-ethics, I hope he takes this on.
Apparently totally disregarded is the fact that if one has already had COVID his natural immunity is better than any drug. Biden, nevertheless, has mandated that everyone get the jab.
All this is not surprising coming from Biden, a man who flaunts Church teachings on the sanctity of human life.
What is surprising is the silence and lack of support from the Roman Catholic prelates by not defending God’s Creatures, made in His image, to follow their consciences in resisting freedom-sucking mandates of the government.