The Catholic Weekly 5 September 2021

catholicweekly.com.au 11 5, September, 2021 That was Wednesday. Friday gave us a similar hit piece from another US site, LifeSite News . This one nastily even suggested that the Bish- ops were being paid by the Government to encourage the vaccine, or at least being threatened with a withdraw- al of funding from Catholic schools. [That allegation, and all others by the unnamed priests have since been re- moved.] Utter rubbish. Utter defam- atory rubbish, actually. The problemwith the take on vaccines being presented by commentators like these (and many other members of the Twitter Magisterium) is that they are making the is- sue of accepting any vaccine that uses foetal cell lines in its development or testing tanta- mount to accepting abortion. They are treating it as the new ‘litmus test’ for Catho- lic orthodoxy. They equate being vaccinated or encour- aging others to do so as par- ticipating in abortion, even though the Church has made it clear that this is not the case. They do so because they like to think of them- selves as being more Catho- lic than this (or any) Pope. They build on people’s frustration over vaccine coercion, lockdowns and church closures and turn them against their bish- ops. They entice people with the idea that because the Bishops did not defy public health orders that required places of worship to remain closed while people were free to go to the supermarket, Twits multiply on Twitter H onestly, I’ve had just about enough. On Monday of last week, just as I sat down to start the day, I received a message from a friend of mine, asking if Arch- bishop Fisher was planning to restrict the reception of Holy Communion to the dou- ble-vaccinated only. “He’d die before he did something like that,” was my reply. She responded again, telling me that it had been posted on a US-based Facebook page with close to 20,000 followers. The post read: “Pray for the Archbishop Anthony Fischer (sic) in the diocese (sic) of Sydney Aus- tralia. He is holding meet- ings with priests to talk about restricting Communion to only those who are vaccinat- ed, WHILE refusing Commu- nion to the unvaccinated… Pray for the Australian Priests that they can stand up to this evil…” What a load of rubbish. Not only was it gossip dressed up as a pious prayer request (a pet peeve of mine), it was complete calumny. I re- sponded to the post – sever- al times – commenting that I work for Archbishop Fisher and that the post was untrue and should be removed. In a style all too common for these types of social media pages, the site owner blocked me from commenting any- more (and even from being able to see the page.) He mes- saged me privately to say that he had two Sydney priests telling him it was true, and so he was sticking by the claim. Utter rubbish. As the day went on, the question kept arising, as more people saw the post and wanted to know if it was true. Good and faithful people, not only in the Archdiocese of Sydney but in other parts of Australia, bought in to the ru- mour as well. I must have sounded like a broken record by the end of the day. “Does it sound true?” I kept asking. “Arch- bishop Anthony Fisher, of Sydney, with his courage and leadership and orthodoxy is going to limit the Sacraments only to the vaccinated. Does it sound even a little bit true?” Common sense seemed to be in shorter supply than toi- let paper. The week didn’t get much better. On Wednesday, there was an article fromDetroit-based media outlet Church Militant , reporting on a pastoral letter the Archbishop had written to Sydney clergy, urging them to be vaccinated so that their ministry – particularly in hos- pitals and aged care facilities – could continue uninter- rupted. Church Militant de- scribed this as a backflip from the Archbishop, who last year petitioned the Federal Gov- ernment to provide ethical al- ternatives to the AstraZeneca vaccine so as to not create an ethical dilemma for people. Accepting of the use of vaccines using the HEK-293 cell line and simultaneous- ly pushing for alternatives is not only logically consis- tent, it is consistent with 2003 guidance from the Pontif- ical Academy for Life that remains unaffected by the COVID pandemic. But hey, what more would a Catholic Archbishop with a Doctorate in Bioethics who has been on the Pontifical Academy of Life for close to two decades and is referenced in its guidance know than a website citing two Sydney priests so ‘coura- geous’ that they go anony- mously snivelling to Michael Voris and his friends? or didn’t make a bigger pub- lic fuss over the labelling of religious worship as ‘non-es- sential,’ that they have aban- doned the faithful, and the vaccine is just the next step. [For the record, just because the Bishops aren’t running a public campaign doesn’t mean they have acquiesced to the governmental require- ments without making rep- resentations on behalf of the faithful. Nothing could be further from the truth.] This deliberate turning of the faithful against the bish- ops has to stop. The division is causing so much harm, not only to the Church but to the Twisting the truth sows doubts, confusion anddivision in the Church. And it hurts people T o the point with Monica Doumit Ph: 4620 8822 or 9708 6972 www.KenneallysFunerals.com.au ‘ Servicing greater Sydney and the Macarthur area’ Why choose Kenneally’s  Servicing the Catholic Community  Family owned and operated  After funeral bereavement support available  Tailored options for your personal finances  Affordable pre-paid and pre-arranged funerals Prompt and Personalised Care The division is causing so much harm, not only to the Church but to the mental health of so many individuals of faith ...” mental health of so many in- dividuals of faith who are just trying to do the right thing. I hear every day from peo- ple who are turning them- selves inside out over the vaccine decision, losing their sleep and their minds, be- cause they have been drawn into the idea that taking it is a great moral evil, or not taking it is a great moral evil (depending on which site they are reading at the time.) COVID has made them so crazy that they are literally believing anything. I’m not saying that the way the bishops have responded to the pandemic is beyond criticism; you can disagree with the bishops all you like. And I honestly don’t care where you stand on vaccina- tion. I know good and faith- ful pro-life Catholics who have been vaccinated, and I know good and faithful pro- life Catholics who have not been vaccinated. But we need to stop let- ting it be a cause of disunity amongst the faithful, and a weapon with which to attack the bishops or each other. This latest lockdown has left our community far too di- vided already. Can we please not let it divide the Church as well? Some in the twittersphere are attackingArchbishop Fisher by inventing or repeating false claims about his position on Covid vaccination. Nor do they appear to be constrained by troublesome little things like the truth. GRAPHIC: THE CATHOLICWEEKLY