By Casey Chalk, Crisis Magazine, September 14, 2020
“These are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others,” said Groucho Marx. In the land down under, many are wishing the Catholic Church would be so flexible, especially as it relates to a recent ecumenical ethical development. Australian Catholic, Anglican, and Greek Orthodox archbishops authored a joint letter on August 20 petitioning the Australian government to carefully consider a coronavirus vaccine deal. Catholic Archbishop of Sydney Anthony Fisher, Anglican Archbishop of Sydney Glenn Davies, and Greek Orthodox Archbishop of Australia Makarios Griniezakis urged the ruling center-right Liberal Party to reconsider an agreement with British-based AstraZeneca that would make Australia one of the first nations to receive an Oxford University Covid-19 vaccine, albeit one that relies on “ethically tainted” research.
The controversy stems from the fact that the cell line for the research was originally derived from cells grown in tissue culture taken from an electively aborted female fetus in the 1970s. ….
