Responding to “the increasingly heated rhetoric and even violence associated with the vaccine mandate debates,” the National Catholic Bioethics Center said on August 17 that “the Church encourages people to receive vaccination for COVID-19, even though the currently available vaccines in the US have a remote connection to abortion through the use of certain cell lines.”

At the same time, “it is extremely important to embrace both respect for the common good and conscience as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) did in December 2020,” in its note on the morality of Covid vaccines. “Over the past several weeks, many distressed people have sought guidance from the NCBC because of the pressures they face from looming vaccine mandates,” the Center continued, as it called on to institutions to respect “the conscientious judgments and religious beliefs of employees.”