Employers, courts examine religious exemptions to COVID-19 vaccine mandates
Religion usually stays out of the workplace, but now with expanding COVID-19 vaccine requirements, employees’ personal faith is front and center as many of them across the country say they have religious reasons not to get vaccinated.
Court rejects vaccine religious exemption for Maine health care workers
The Supreme Court is allowing a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers in Maine to remain in effect, rejecting an emergency appeal from a group of the state’s health care workers seeking a religious exemption.
Broglio: Military members should be allowed religious exemption on vaccine
Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio of the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services said Oct. 12 that “no one should be forced to receive a COVID-19 vaccine if it would violate the sanctity of his or her conscience.”
In Africa, parishes work to overcome hesitancy about COVID-19 vaccines
Churches need to make it their mission to get people in developing countries vaccinated against COVID-19, said a representative of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar.
Three Swiss Guards quit over vaccine mandate
Three members of the Pontifical Swiss Guard have hung up their halberds rather than be vaccinated against COVID-19, and three others were temporarily suspended in early October as they were completing the vaccination cycle, the spokesman for the guards told a Swiss newspaper.
Dialogue needed in addressing vaccine hesitancy, Vatican official says
While men and women have a responsibility to be vaccinated against COVID-19, they also have a responsibility to engage in dialogue with those who are hesitant, rather than trying to force them, said Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia.
SSPX leader says vaccination can be morally ‘prudent’
While denouncing as an “abuse of power” coercive measures to promote vaccination against COVID-19, a leader of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X said getting vaccinated “may sometimes be an eminently prudent act in the moral sense of the term.”
Public health law experts: Federal vaccine mandate has strong legal footing
President Joe Biden’s coronavirus vaccine mandate for workplaces with more than 100 people on the payroll is rooted in existing law governing worker protections, said a trio of public health law experts.
Archbishop Naumann, Arizona bishops urge vaccination, conscience safeguards
Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Pro-Life Activities, encouraged Catholics to receive one of the coronavirus vaccines if they discern that it is appropriate to do so.
Not me: The moral dilemma of seeking vaccine exemptions
Getting vaccinated is “an act of love,” Pope Francis said in his latest urgent appeal, after more than a year of insisting COVID-19 vaccines be equitably available worldwide for everyone to get inoculated.
