Archbishop urges vaccine leeway for Catholic troops
Religious exemptions already are allowed, Pentagon says
The archbishop of the U.S. military is arguing that Catholic troops should not be forced to receive the coronavirus vaccine if it “would violate the sanctity” of their conscience, as thousands of active-duty service members remain unvaccinated ahead of a December deadline.
Archbishop Timothy Broglio said in a statement Tuesday that although the Catholic Church’s highest doctrinal authority has determined that being vaccinated is not sinful, U.S. troops still can refuse vaccination on religious grounds. He cited Pope Paul VI, who wrote that a man “is not to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his conscience.”
“Notwithstanding the moral permissibility of these vaccines, the Church treasures her teaching on the sanctity of conscience,” wrote Broglio, who has supported the Pentagon’s vaccine mandate for U.S. troops. “Accordingly, no one should be forced to receive a COVID-19 vaccine if it would violate the sanctity of his or her conscience.”
Broglio’s statement comes as hundreds of thousands of U.S. service members remain unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated despite the mandate, according to the Pentagon. Although the military’s vaccination rate has climbed since August after Defense Department leaders, acting on a directive from President Joe Biden, established deadlines for the nation’s 2.1 million troops to get vaccinated, the troops’ response has been scattershot, according to data assessed by The Washington Post.
As of last week, active-duty members of the Navy had the highest rate, with about 90% fully vaccinated, while the Marine Corps had the lowest rate among activeduty service members, at 76.5%. Eighty-one percent of active troops each in the Army and the Air Force were fully vaccinated.
While the Air Force has the most aggressive timeline to get all its active and reservist airmen vaccinated by Dec. 2, the deadline for Army National Guard and Army Reserve units stretches into next summer. Those components make up roughly a quarter of the entire U.S. military, and they account for nearly 40% of the 62 servicemember deaths due to COVID-19, according to the data assessed by The Post.
More military personnel died of coronavirus infections last month than in all of 2020 — and none of those who died was fully vaccinated, Pentagon spokesman Maj. Charlie Dietz said. Defense officials expect deaths to decrease in coming months.
About a quarter-million service members have been infected with the virus since the start of the pandemic, according to Pentagon data. The rise in military infections, hospitalizations and deaths mirrored the summer surge fueled by the highly transmissible delta variant and the millions in the United States who remain unvaccinated.
Broglio’s suggestion that Catholic troops can reject coronavirus vaccination comes at the same time that questions over religious exemptions for the vaccine have emerged as more mandates are implemented nationwide. On Tuesday, a federal judge in New York ruled that the state could not impose vaccine mandates on health care workers unless employers were allowed to consider religious exemption requests.
The military’s vaccine mandate does allow for religious exemptions, though how to obtain one is determined by each branch’s regulations, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said Tuesday.