The Creed

 

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son Our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.

He descended into Hell; the third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into Heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God, the Father almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.

 

This is the Apostolic Creed. Many in the West prefer it to the Nicaean considering the latter to be “too technical” (consubstantial is being complained most about somehow). The Nicaean Creed is not only more theological, it is also more psychological or better to say it highlights the psychological reality and the possibility of another reality which became apparent to me only in the context of the current world vaccination campaign. Namely, the Nicaean Creed states very clearly that Christ was not killed against His will:

 

I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,

the only-begotten Son of God,

born of the Father before all ages,

God from God, Light from Light,

true God from true God,

begotten, not made,

consubstantial with the Father.

Through him all things were made.

For us and for our salvation

he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit

was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,

and became man.

For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;

he suffered death and was buried,

and rose again on the third day

in accordance with the Scriptures.

 

Meaning, it was clearly Christ’s own will, not just His Father’s will “to come down from heaven and to become man” and to sacrifice Himself “for our sake”. One can also read “and became man” as “he was incarnate and grew up”; the clarification “he was crucified under Pontius Pilate” also indicates him being a grown man and not a baby because babies were not crucified – but this is a side thought and quite an absurd one, a thought that could never come to my mind before, outside of the context of the current story with the coronavirus. Only in that context did it occur to me that, unlike the Nicaean Creed, nothing in the Apostolic Creed indicates that Christ’s sacrifice was done by his free will:

 

“and in Jesus Christ, His only Son Our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. and rose again on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.”

 

Considering that Christian faith in its bare essence rests on three major facts: Incarnation, Death and Resurrection of Christ, true God and true Man (i.e. fully human as well as fully divine) then just as well He could die as a baby to tick those facts so to speak. Christ was conceived, born, murdered and then resurrected/became immortal. Or we can make it even shorter: why should He wait to die – He could just be born and killed on the spot. Or even better – He could be aborted (there would be a big bonus, He would not suffer even a glimpse of an earthly life), dissected, prepared and later on distributed to all believers in Him as a communion. We would not lose anything at all.

 

The Church teaches that via the Incarnation, Death and Resurrection of Christ, true God and true Man, the humanity as such and each human (via an individual choice to accepts this fact in an act of faith) got grafted into God and was healed; Christ, via being born of a woman, dying and being resurrected had pulled our human nature through death making the resurrection and immortality possible for each of us. Again, it appears that our salvation could be achieved if Christ was murdered as a baby or even was aborted. He would still have the same human and divine nature (the same substances or qualities) which should enable Him to perform His task and us – to receive Him in communion, “the source of immortality”, and be saved.

 

Note that I did not violate the nucleus of the dogma i.e., that Christ was incarnate, killed, buried and resurrected. The diabolical picture described above fits it well. I am not sure how to call it, perhaps a dogma devoid of normal human psychology, a dogma of a distilled knowledge (not in a Biblical sense of knowledge but more scientific, just knowing the elements without feeling anything about them, a kind of a list of data). Of course, there can be no such a thing as “theology without psychology or without normal humanity”, simply because Christ is the Son of God and Son of Man hence, He is the embodiment of theology and psychology both, God incarnate Who expresses Himself via and with a perfect human psyche. Or perhaps even simpler – Christ is the Person in whom human and divine essences dwell “without mixture or division”. From here it follows that Salvation, its design and methods could not have anything in it that denies or violates a healthy human nature and personhood. It was necessary for Christ to will to save us, it was necessary for the Virgin Mary to say “yes” to God and for St Joseph to accept the revelation about the Son of God and to become a stepfather of Jesus. It was necessary for Christ to will His own Sacrifice because if He did not the salvation could never happen [and the communion would never happen as well.]

 

The difference between the story of Christ in the Gospels and the story of the hypothetical aborted Christ lies in His will and His (perceived and acknowledged) Personhood, and also the normal human psyche of the Virgin Mary and St Joseph. Noteworthy, if our salvation was accomplished by the abortion of the Baby Jesus it would also mean that God the Father who willed that to happen was not Love but someone more like Satan. That “salvation” effectively would render all people involved – the Virgin Mary, St Joseph and all who would benefit from it later into inhumane monsters. From our, Christian point of view, the “communion”, a fruit of such “salvation” would condemn all those who partake it.

 

 

Abortion material

 

The discourse above could never appear without the story of the coronavirus vaccine. Several weeks ago, when the world announced the long-awaited coming of the saving vaccines against COVID-19, I discovered by pure chance that the “race winners” utilized the cell lines derived from the aborted human embryos. Until recently I did not know that some long-existent vaccines have used, in some ways, human embryo stem cells including the vaccine against rubella which I unsuspectedly received about a decade ago. I do not remember how exactly I learnt about that; I recall that somehow I found myself lending on the website of Charlotte Lozier Institute and looking at the graphs under the title ‘Update: COVID-19 Vaccine Candidates and Abortion-Derived Cell Lines’. I think if the graphs used some euphemism like “stem cells” I would not get it. “Abortion-derived” was clear enough. My initial reaction was nausea. (The technical details which I learnt later, that “there are no cells in the vaccines because those cells were used only as a factory to grow viruses” and also because “the cells were not the cells from the aborted foetus but their descendants (clones)” did not make any difference to me because what has been done with the original tissue later by no means could obliterate the initial step, of extraction of the tissue from the murdered human being; the definition of human flesh as “a factory” – the word used to settle the ethical issue – was particularly sick.) As I understand my instinctive reaction was something like “how can they?” because the association of “eating humans” immediately came to a mind. “Cannibalism” was the first reaction so, after I researched more, I singled out for myself those vaccines which are “more ethical” i.e., those which were only tested on the embryo cells and not made with them, imprecisely but truthfully speaking. Somehow it felt less problematic, as “nothing awful will enter my body”.

 

I no longer think this way. I am quite convinced that all vaccines which utilized the “abortion material”, in whatever way, are worthy of horror and instinctive rejection. The change of perception occurred in the process of my research of the matter when, for the first time in my life, I saw very good quality photos of a human being (foetus) on the different stages of prenatal development and also the video, a part of a journalist’s investigation that showed “a product” of a deliberate (induced) abortion.

 

Although I knew (believed, felt) that a human embryo is a human being and a human person from the moment of conception because the tie of “a body – a soul” is being formed in that very moment the pictures and the video which I saw as a part of my research shocked me into the realization, “It is a human being and a person!”, of an entirely different quality. It was very physical. If one can destroy a human being like that on a routine basis let us all then throw newborn blind kittens in the streets to trample on them, cut down all freshly blossomed flowers and throw them in the gutter, step on newly born or wounded animals treating them as a kind of dirt. Somehow it is not permitted and most people do not do that. The sight of a prematurely born (aborted) baby lying on the “medical surface” [I have no idea why those words came to my mind but I will retain them because they convey the essence of the shock, when a person is so shocked that she cannot look, desperately trying not to see clearly] destined to be killed via either waiting for “nature to take its cause” as they put it or to be euthanized (the documentary was about abortion) filled me not just with a horror but also with a sense of extreme abandonment, the pinnacle of it. Before I thought of people exterminated in the Nazi concentrated camps being such a symbol but now I see that I was wrong. Although it was hell, it was not the complete hell of abandonment yet.

 

I feel rather sick when I think that I have to explain why “the electively aborted human being lying on the medical surface” is the pinnacle of hellish abandonment, a vector of abandonment reaching hell. It is probably because the sight of a helpless and quite well-formed baby induces an instinctive response of pity and desire to save. There is medical stuff somewhere so it could be possible (the prematurely born are routinely being saved if wanted) – yet the medical stuff is there to ensure that the baby will die. There is also a mother somewhere whose will has initiated all that. This is an extreme abandonment in its most naked form because everyone, just everyone around rejects that helpless human person and this is the end – the accepted, legal end. It does not matter as some argue that the baby is unable to experience the abandonment consciously. We do not need someone, let’s say, an ill unconscious person to know that we are abandoning him if we chose to do so, to know what we are doing. If we walk away from someone unconscious entrusted to our care and he dies because we deliberately abandoned him, we committed a murder even if that person would never become conscious.

 

 

Abandonment by participation

 

The extreme abandonment symbolized by the aborted baby lying on the medical surface, hellish as it is, still can be enhanced by further dehumanisation/depersonalisation, via refusing him a normal burial with dignity (in those setting these words sound totally out of a place, extravagant even) and treating him as something soulless, a commodity, a mere source of stem cells under an impersonal abbreviation.

 

“HEK293” does not sound like anything human. It is difficult somehow, even after I saw what the aborted human being looks like, to keep in mind the connection: the COVID-19 vaccine in a vial and the aborted human being, a human person – probably because one can see in a vial nothing but a clear liquid. Yet there was a human person created in the image of God and it suffered an extreme form of abandonment. Apart from the reasons given in the previous chapter the murder of a baby initiated by their mother, abortion, is the ultimate abandonment also because the very notion the word “mother” brings to mind, “a source of unconditional love, a life-preserver”, something very benign and thus the opposite to a murder. The womb itself is supposed to be a very safe place; some even propose that the idea of Eden or some natural paradise-like bounty of existence where no effort is needed to obtain food, drink and shelter comes from an experience of being in a womb. A child inside a mother, connected with her can via an umbilical cord can also be seen as a symbol of a secure attachment. An elective abortion then, being the total opposite of safety, a violent disruption of a safe state, represents a world turned upside down, a madness.

 

Yet an extreme abandonment resulted in a murder of a baby is natural. It belongs to our rotten world so to speak, as a manifestation of a fallen human nature, its capacity for the utmost evil. It is not an inferno yet, unlike extracting an organ from the freshly aborted body of the baby and using it as a material for creating something useful because those latter actions cross the boundary between the implicit acknowledgment of the existence of a human being (who has a personhood) and the denial of such. Although a mother tries to prevent the emergence of a sense of a horror (or at least of something disturbing) of her choice to abort her own baby, via convincing herself “there is nothing there really yet, not a person yet, it is just a lump of cells” she aborts “a lump of cells” only because she knows that the lump will grow into a full-size baby, a full-grown person who will demand her attention. She aborts not the current “lump of cells” but the future which is already present/grows inside her, the future she does not want. It means that a mother, whether she wishes to acknowledge it or not, kills a person. In an implicit way, the personhood of a child is being acknowledged via his murder – if it is the end of the story.

 

The next step on the path of abandonment, dissecting the body of the child and extracting the organ necessary for creating the cell lines makes a decisive break with the realm of the personal, of a murder of a human person, via treating her as a soulless impersonal commodity, a mere source of cells. Utilizing what was left after a murder “for the good of science” definitely destroys the personhood, via ignoring the dignity of a human being, their personhood. (After I saw the detailed images of embryos/foetuses on various stages of development, I cannot imagine the possibility of a non-recognition of a fellow human being present there whether one believes in God or not.) I am not sure how to prove that it is a decisive step into the inferno, stepping over a point zero on a metaphysical ruler, from the area of + into the area of -, into an anti-existence. Perhaps the analogy with a concentration camp will help: I feel that the mere extermination of human persons there was not as infernal as the use of human skin for the production of lampshades – preferably skin with artistically made tattoos. Unfortunately, I no longer can logically prove why it is bad to make and then to possess such a lampshade, decades after it was made; it all boils down to a normal human psyche I think, to its capacity for empathy and also to the moral law within. Anyway, I argue that the making of the “immortalized” stem cells (and calling them such) is a step far deeper into the inferno than the simple destruction of the body of an aborted baby without utilizing what is “useful”.

 

The situation would be entirely different if the cells were taken from an adult who wanted to donate them or from an umbilical cord. There is nothing evil there; the vector of abandonment/murder is entirely absent. Instead of it there is a vector of giving. There is no denial of a personhood because a person gives a part of oneself on his own accord, something that an aborted child could not do. That’s right: a foetus could not consent his own abortion or donate himself to the science for the good of others hence the vector of abandonment which was enhanced via disregard of a will of another human being about his very life and body. It is legitimate to speak about the will of a foetus although he cannot express it yet with words yet because the most primal will, an instinctive will to live and to grow is present in all living beings including embryos, foetuses and babies, human and animal otherwise our world simply would not exist. (I note here in passing that it is possible to create necessary cell lines using ethical sources. They are not as “pristine” as of human embryos and therefore they are more complicated to work with. This existent possibility of making fully ethical vaccines (some of them are in a process of being made now) increases the vector of dehumanisation of “HEK293” even more.)

 

The next, final stage of abandonment and also of the justification of the utilization of a human being is the actual vaccination with the vaccines which used, one way or another, the cells of the aborted human person. The acceptance of the abortion-tainted vaccines is something that was defended recently by the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church via the notion of a remote material cooperation with the evil, one argument among many. I hope that this discourse makes it more perceptible why “the remote material cooperation argument” does not work here at all, providing that the actions of all involved in the process of bringing such a vaccine into existence (that is, from a mother and medical stuff in an abortion clinic to those who extracted the tissue and prepared it, those who utilized a preparation for a vaccine and, finally, those who accepted the vaccine itself) are being considered not on a collage-like level of individual reasoning and circumstances but on a substantial level of some common notion or a force that underlies their actions – and also on the level of what was conveyed by their actions as a result.

 

To clarify my point: an abortion can be done for a variety of reasons but in essence, to be executed, it requires abandonment (rejection) of a baby by a mother. Abandonment is an action so it is legitimate to speak of a vector of abandonment that opposes the vector of trust/love, ultimately the vector towards God. The actions of all persons involved share and create a common vector of abandonment. It is those major vectors of abandonment and of trust/love, away from God and towards God which underlie the actions/are created by the actions of human persons making a fabric of the world, that render the augment of remote cooperation void.

 

As it was said above, the stages from abortion to the production of a vaccine include abandonment and de-humanization/de-personalization. The initial abandonment, an abortion, created a possibility of treating the aborted human person as a non-person and that opportunity has been used. Each stage of using the body of the aborted one represents the further de-humanization/atomisation of a human person. Paradoxically, the further away from the initial abandonment, the bigger the denial of a person is. Thus, while it is true that the “historical abortion” was not done for the sake of the extraction of an organ and later for a production of the vaccine hence one can argue about “a remote cooperation” there is an ongoing increasing destruction of a human person/her personhood going on, via a progressive and widening de-humanization/de-personalisation that involves wider and wider circles.

 

This point can be illustrated by a hypothetical situation when the vials labelled with an acknowledgment: “COVID-19 vaccine manufactured with the cells from the kidney extracted from the body of a female baby electively aborted in 1973, in such and such country” are being used. Horrible as it sounds, precisely because of that it would reduce the depersonalisation/dehumanisation of the aborted human person and consequentially her abandonment as well because people (at least some) would be forced to think of that baby as a human being. A human being just like their sons or daughters, like themselves[1].

 

 

The objections

 

One of the most compelling arguments pro- usage of the abortion-tainted COVID-19 vaccines is that such vaccines have been made in the past, still exist and, in a case of a few of them, there are no ethical alternatives. If we use them, the argument goes, then we may as well can use the unethical COVID-19 vaccines. This argument does not stand for variety of reasons. One of them is that rabies and rubella (the vaccines which have no ethical alternatives) posit incomparably more serious danger; in a case with rabies death is 99,9% certain. In a case with rubella contracted by a pregnant woman the infection of a foetus is almost guaranteed and serious birth defects are extremely likely so as a miscarriage. COVID-19 fatality rate (%1-1.4 variable) does not approach those numbers even very remotely hence the crude justification “my life or an already dead person” cannot work here.

 

Another argument is that the vaccines made with the stem cells derived from an embryo aborted decades ago do not contribute to the current abortions; the abortion was done in the past and we are simply using the cells derived from they say. This argument may appear rational but it turns false in the view of the discovery of the facts of trafficking the foetal organs in various abortion clinics and selling them to the scientific labs. That means if the fresh “abortion material” was needed for the creation of vaccines it could be easily obtained; if it was not obtained for the creation of COVID-19 vaccines it only means that “the immortalized cells” are handy and usable. Far from not contributing to the abortions and the utilisation of embryonic tissue, the usage of the “immortalized cells” in COVID-19 vaccines encourage it via making it acceptable.

 

Yet the most compelling reason, for me, for not accepting unethical COVID-19 vaccines is the fact that the substantial number of ethical COVID-19 vaccines are currently being worked on (some are in a final stage, a few approved) in different parts of the world. That means the ethical vaccines are possible. The arrival of the new abortion-tainted vaccines means only that those who are being involved in their development and production did not feel a weighty reason to invest in ethical option (despite its possible technical inconveniences). Here we can see something revealing: if there is a choice between creating ethical and unethical vaccine and the choice was made for an unethical one then it says something about the current state of humanity.

 

 

What is this?

 

The fact of abortions as such could not be enough to come up with the idea of the aborted for our salvation Baby Jesus. I find it very hard to explain, logically and clearly, the process of forming such anti-theology or anti-ideas, anti-matter. It is easier to map it with images. Imagine the old-fashioned development (from a film) of black and white photographs. The photographic paper, being put in a special liquid, slowly begins showing some pieces of the picture, disconnected and quite incoherent. This is not the best comparison because, as I recall my own work with photographs, the disconnected areas would make a recognizable picture quite quickly. Another, a more obvious comparison, with a puzzle, does not work at all because one who is putting the pieces together already knows the final result, when all the pieces will take their places. Or perhaps an analogy could work, with someone who is seeing something familiar appearing before him, something that looks like a dim mirrored reflection of the phenomena that occurs in his own coherent world ordered by God, the world of faith or even of mere human normality – yet somehow the mirror image looks strange and troublesome despite having its origins in a familiar realm of good.

 

For example, the icon below has always looked to me, before the COVID-19, like this: St John the Baptist (depicted here with the wings according to his “the Angel of the Desert” iconography) is holding the Cup with Holy Communion, symbolically represented by the tiny figure of the Baby Jesus lying in the Cup. This is a very rare depiction (usually the Eucharist is painted plainly, without additional symbols); most likely, the iconographer painted the Baby Jesus there to highlight the sense of “the wonderful and terrifying Mystery” as it is sung in the Eastern Orthodox Eucharistic hymn and also the price that was paid for our salvation. The depiction of the tiny Baby stirs emotions and prompts acute repentance, just like another icon, ‘Our Lady of the Passion’, that shows the Baby Jesus suddenly seeing the tools of His future Passion, does. The juxtaposition of the Passion and the Baby (and the Mother, on the second icon) breaks into the most hardened humanity. The sight of the Baby Jesus in the Eucharistic Cup also reminds us about the reality of the presence of Christ in Holy Communion.

 

​

 

The necessity to explain the iconography obliterated for a moment the discussion in the previous chapters, of an abortion as extreme abandonment, utilisation of the “abortion material” being a progressive enhancement of the initial abandonment. With that subject in a sight, I hope the reader may begin seeing how I could suddenly see, for a mere moment, instead of the Baby Christ in the Eucharistic Cup a nameless aborted baby lying in a medical dish. I repeat however that it was not the knowledge about the abortions that created that perception – I have known about them for decades, just as I have been familiar with that particular iconography for decades. It was neither the sight of the aborted baby that created such an analogy nor this icon because it is not enough to recognize something of one image in another one if the two depict entirely different, mutually exclusive, realities – although they may look visually similar in places. Their content and meaning makes it impossible; to see one in another means that the realities conveyed by them begins crumbling or converging.

 

The depiction of the aborted child lying in the tray and the depiction of the Baby Jesus in the Eucharistic Cup can look faintly alike but their essence is different. One is an image of a murder, of a destruction of a human being/person, death, doom etc and another – an image of the source of the eternal Life, Holy Communion with living Christ being present in it. The Baby Jesus on the icon is not dead, in fact He blesses the Cup with His raised right hand. Christians partake the Body and Blood of the Resurrected Christ, the living Person and their own Creator. It is precisely this knowledge of what Holy Communion is, the intimate union a believer with the Resurrected Lord makes it impossible to see on the icon above anything but the symbolic depiction of the Holy Communion.

 

From here follows that the only way to forge the association of the icon of Holy Communion (Life itself) with the image of the aborted child (death) is to give “an intrinsic notion of Holy Communion” to the latter, via animating it or acting it out. And it has been done.

 

 

Building bridges

 

By no means am I saying that there is someone or some group of people who sat and plotted “let us create a diabolical imitation of Christian communion”. It is not necessary because there is such a thing already, the Black Mass with its “communion” of desecrated hosts, with the usage of blood, sperm and other substances. A ritual sacrifice of animals and sometimes humans is being utilized as well. The Black Mass is a very deliberate, very conscious and somewhat crude effort of the evil to mock and pervert the things of God, Liturgy and the Eucharist in particular – and this is probably why, to my mind, it is not nearly as potent as “the accidental and anonymous perversions” – or innocent ticking the boxes “find similarities on two images” which seem to happen by themselves.

 

Because there is no apparent plot but seeming accidents, I will simply list them as I perceived them. The abortion-tainted vaccines by themselves did not bring to my mind the association with Holy Communion, just like the bloody sacrifice of the Black Mass does not make me think of Christian Holy Communion. It was various exulted descriptions of the vaccines in mass-media and especially the process of vaccination in action that began hinting the direction, striking the recognizable chords. The first one was a popular notion of “the saving vaccine” with “eagerly awaited by all”; saving vaccine – saving Cup; eagerly awaited by all – eagerly awaited by all Christ. Next, “all must be vaccinated” – “drink from it (the Cup) all of you”. “Immortalized cells” sounded like a mockery of the fate of the aborted baby but also as a diabolical imitation of the true immortality given to us by Christ, the immortality of a body and a soul together [a person in her totality], given via communion of “the immortal Source”, the Body and Blood of Christ [the Person].

 

Finally, how the vaccination began in the first country to do it, the United Kingdom: Salisbury Cathedral was converted into “a vaccination hub”, the services being suspended and “transferred into virtual format during the pandemic”. The mystery was staged with great solemnity: the old frail people would receive “the saving vaccine” tested on the cell lines derived from an aborted human embryo, being “comforted” by the organ music, like Bach preludes (which were composed for the Divine Service) and other “soothing” (sacred) music. Despite the familiar liturgical music and gothic interior, the Cathedral did not look like a church to me though; it somehow reminded me of a crematorium, a huge room where the relatives and friends can say good bye.

 

I forgot something crucial. I do not think I would have those perceptions and associations if the Cup and churches were not made vacant and ready for a new communion, for some time now. If we have always had our saving Cup available, I would think nothing about “the saving vaccine”. “All must be vaccinated” could not tick “drink from it (the Cup) all of you” without the shattering experience of all of us deprived of Holy Communion, and so on. It is not about making a parallel reality that has some similarity with Christian Mass and Sacraments (like the Black Mass); it is about erasing the former and introducing the latter – without intending to do so or even being conscious of it.

 

But how did it all begin? I believe it began with the shutdown of the churches [as a part of the coronavirus lockdown] and a meek agreement of the Christian Churches with their “non-essential status” imposed on them by the state governments. I wrote about that phenomenon in depth in my paper ‘Streaming Christ’. I argued there that the acceptance of the Church of Christ that it is non-essential so not just the buildings can be closed but also the believers can be left without “a non-essential” sacrament, Holy Communion and also without the last rites for the dying, is not only a betrayal of people but a betrayal of Christ as well. If communion with Christ is non-essential then Christ is also non-essential; if He was essential people would not be left without Him. Hence in the midst of the lockdown something unprecedented took a place: Christ = God was made non-essential and not by the world (there would be nothing new about that) but by His own Church.

 

The notion of the non-essential Church and Christ and Sacraments was highlighted by the fact that various shops – bottle shops, supermarkets, retails and takeaways – remained open. Hence a new paradigm: the Body of Christ is less essential than cakes in takeaways and His Blood is less essential than wine in bottle shops. As for the virtual = streaming Mass, its equivalent would be streaming the actions of a few privileged buying vine and consuming it, with the rest eagerly watching.

 

I will mention here in passing the flavour of the absurd present in the whole affair: not only the Church “failed” to see the absurdity, of its normal activity being stopped while secular activity went on in places often more crowded than church buildings – the Church also cracked quite an absurd statement, that it closed the doors of its churches for the faithful, stopped giving communion and the last rights to the dying out of love for our neighbour. There is no need to expand on that here; I will only say that I perceive the absurd coming from other sources as somehow matching the absurd created by the Church, like a fresh headline ‘England's iconic Salisbury Cathedral has finally reopened - as a coronavirus vaccine hub’ followed by “When you break it down to the nuts and bolts of it – the large spaces, high ceilings, good ventilation – it’s perfect for social distancing”[2] .

 

Returning to the vaccines and communion: if a vaccine is being treated as a kind of manna or “saving agent”, “expected by all”, “all eyes are on the new vaccine” etc, to the point of giving to it some of the attributes of communion, its first public reception even being staged in the acting Cathedral made vacant, accompanied by solemn music written for the Divine Service then it is not a particular exaggeration to perceive it as a kind of communion – symbolic of course, a new communion of death wrapped in the good of the promise of physical health. Why death – because, although the Pfizer/Biotech vaccine used was only tested on the stem cells derived from the aborted embryo, it was tainted enough make a sign[3].

 

I wrote the above and decided to check, just in a case, what music was played during the vaccination. The first report online gave me ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring’ by Bach. I looked it up and read the text:

 

Jesu, joy of man's desiring,

Holy wisdom, love most bright;

Drawn by Thee, our souls aspiring

Soar to uncreated light.

 

Word of God, our flesh that fashioned,

With the fire of life impassioned,

Striving still to truth unknown,

Soaring, dying round Thy throne.

 

Through the way where hope is guiding,

Hark, what peaceful music rings;

Where the flock, in Thee confiding,

Drink of joy from deathless springs.

 

Theirs is beauty's fairest pleasure;

Theirs is wisdom's holiest treasure.

Thou dost ever lead Thine own

In the love of joys unknown.

 

Well, imagine then the old people receiving the “saving vaccine” tainted by abortion i.e., tainted by a murder of a baby, her “immortalized cells” being used for a vaccine on some stage. Regardless of how one may argue about the actual presence (I almost said “the real presence”) of “something” of the murdered human being in the final product, metaphysically/symbolically/however “remotely” the dead human being is being present there, being (symbolically) singled out as the only person in the whole Cathedral who was killed, utilized for the good of others and now became a focus of all gathered, via receiving that good. The (inverted) analogy is clear here:

the murder of a baby – the murder (self-sacrifice) of Christ;

the transubstantiation (conversion) of the body and blood of an aborted baby into a “saving vaccine” in a vial – the transubstantiation (conversion) of bread and wine into Body and Blood of Christ in the Cup;

a person (baby) becomes impersonal

impersonal (bread and wine) become the Person

and so on.

 

Whatever way you look at that, there is still something quite inappropriate, for a Christian, about the presence of the tainted by murder vaccine in the church. But the vaccine is not just being present and sitting somewhere – it is given and being received, accompanied by the music and words “drink of joy from deathless springs”.

 

I wrote this and realized that it was probably not accompanied by the words because most likely they did not have a choir there so ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring’ was played as music only. I did not think of it when I saw the title though; the words came to me as its organic continuation. It is hard to separate the music from the well-known verses sung by generations for several centuries, probably even in that very Cathedral. Let us say then that the words were “invisible” or “unheard”, just like the aborted baby was invisible in the vial or unheard of – but both were still there, as intrinsic (albeit unaccepted) part of both. And still, even if we remove those two invisible realities there is still something despicable about playing Jesu, joy of man's desiring while the people receive the abortion-tainted vaccines, in the church.

 

The Church clearing the space, physical and metaphysical, for the saving vaccines would not be enough. The communion must be authorised by the Church and it was also done.

 

 

The glass bead game

 

It is quite blurry, just like almost everything in the picture. The current finalists in the race towards the universal vaccination, all tainted by abortion one way of another were proclaimed, by the various big figures of the Roman Catholic Church to be “ethically acceptable”. This is the final result, before there was some divergence of opinions. There were also and still are some opinions expressed by a few notorious “whistle blowers”, that such vaccines are either not acceptable at all or acceptable only in extremely grave circumstances, as a result of a careful consideration of the real danger and weighing it against one’s conscience. Eventually it was established by the Vatican that

 

“In this sense, when ethically irreproachable Covid-19 vaccines are not available (e.g. in countries where vaccines without ethical problems are not made available to physicians and patients, or where their distribution is more difficult due to special storage and transport conditions, or when various types of vaccines are distributed in the same country but health authorities do not allow citizens to choose the vaccine with which to be inoculated) it is morally acceptable to receive Covid-19 vaccines that have used cell lines from aborted foetuses in their research and production process.[4]

 

This paragraph is worthy of examination because it covertly destroys something very important, the necessity to make a choice (an individual choice), in three steps. Via doing that it goes away from ‘Instruction Dignitas Personae on Certain Bioethical Questions’[5], the older Vatican document it refers to, which also allows a possibility of accepting an unethical vaccine “if no ethical alternative is existent” while speaking of vaccination of children. Noteworthy, ‘Dignitas Personae’ referred to old vaccines made decades ago which still do not have ethical alternatives while the recent Vatican document re: COVID-19 vaccines is dealing with the new situation, of vaccines being produced now in the globalized = interconnected world, when humans can exercise at least some control over how the vaccines are being developed, ethically or unethically. Ethical vaccines could be made available sooner and widely and even become a priority if the Universal Church from the very beginning adamantly said “no” to unethical ones. It is precisely because it failed to do so Christians now have no access to the ethical vaccines.

 

The next step: “distribution is more difficult due to special storage and transport conditions” – clearly here is another reason not to demand the ethical vaccine even if they existed in the country. But it is not enough so we have a step further: “or when various types of vaccines are distributed in the same country but health authorities do not allow citizens to choose the vaccine with which to be inoculated”. This is the most important part; it covered all. It gave to “the health authorities” a carte blanche to reap Christians of a choice and to make a difference. “Do not squeak” it says, it is not your business, you have my indulgence. In essence it is the removal, by the head of the Roman Catholic Church, not just of the choice but even the hypothetical necessity of making such a choice. What is being achieved: it is an implicit approval of the usage of the “abortion material” in the eyes (and in the hearts) of the whole world including the Catholics no matter how many times it is being said “us accepting the vaccine with abortion material does not mean we approve it”. Again, those words could work in the past, in the case of a non-existent ethical vaccines but not now when the Church had a chance to stand up and to reject the unethical option from the beginning, before its full materialization. After all, we are living in very civilized times so the state governments would definitely bend to our barbaric demand, for tolerance sake. What really stunned me here is the conviction of the Roman Catholic clergy that it is possible to receive such a vaccine in a way of non-resistance and still to convey ones’ own pro-life stance. Judging by the headlines of the various articles like ‘Vatican: OK to get virus vaccines using abortion cell lines’ and angry online discussions calling Catholics “hypocrites” the world understood it quite differently – and correctly.

 

Because so far there are very few truly ethical vaccines being approved (two in China and one in India) the document most likely also refers as “ethical” to the wider available vaccines already in use which were tested on the “abortion material”. I hope that this paper has conveyed clearly enough why it is not so, once you touch something “unclean” or diabolical you cannot really wash yourself clean – if you do that pretending that it is clean and good.

 

The document curiously devoid of any reference to the dignity of person apart from to ‘Dignitas Personae’ is being sealed by the customary “the morality of vaccination depends not only on the duty to protect one's own health, but also on the duty to pursue the common good.” This is the reasoning analogical to the one for closing the churches and abolishing communion as non-essential, out of love for our neighbour. And, just like in case with abolition of the sacraments, the reality of the situation provides with a touch of irony: around the time the Vatican document was issued the scientists reported that the vaccines will most likely not prevent the infection from spreading[6]  – we do not know much about their actions anyway yet – hence, logically speaking, those who refuse the vaccines endanger only themselves.

 

Thus, the whole theology of a vaccination out of love for our neighbour is being based on nothing – just like the argument “stop going to the church/stop receiving communion for the sake of others”. But somehow the reason “for the good of others” endures, uninfluenced by the rude reality.

 

Those swift cursory actions, like the “blessing” of the vaccines, for reasons that have nothing to do with them or proved to be non-existent immediately after the blessing was issued make my mind disintegrate. The picture formed by those actions lacks a coherence and substance. A priest who denies to Christian communion or the last rites “out of love for others” is an anti-priest. The Cathedral that holds “the virtual Masses” while providing its space for the rite of a solemn vaccination with abortion material is anti-cathedral – perhaps even more anti-cathedral than anti-icon, my perception of an aborted baby on the icon of Christ.

 

 

The collage

 

I do not know how to express it. I feel as if the normal solid reality is changing into liquid or an insane collage in which various phenomena are being separated, cut off from their meaning, value, goodness or badness. Apart from the absurd juxtapositions and reasoning described above it is also being achieved via chronically not naming the phenomena as they are. Compare two statements, a priest saying: “Here is the vaccine that utilized the cells extracted from the body of an aborted baby. If you are afraid that you may die accept it with full knowledge of how it was made and pray for the one who was killed and ask for her forgiveness” with the same priest saying “Receive the ethically reproachable vaccine for the common good”. The first statement is the whole truth. It does not make a choice easier or more permissible; it makes the choice conscious. Somehow, despite the horrible origin of the vaccine being brought to light, the whole picture feels far more humane. The second statement takes the whole picture, cuts it into pieces, throws the “inconvenient” away, distils the rest and then reassembles it joining “do this for the common good” (a “noble” inversion of the fear of one’s own death) with some “ethically reproachable vaccine” or whatever, similarly being cut to pieces, distilled and dispersed. Agree with it, partake it and you will also become torn and even atomized as well, becoming a part of an artificial meaningless universe.

 

 

The sculpture

 

About a decade ago I had an idea of making two sculptures representing the action of God and the action of the evil in the world, made with papier-mâché. The action of God was signified, quite predictably, by the Crucifix, the vectors of God going outwards from its base like a compass rose, ordering the world around it, transforming it. Christ’s counter-figure, the figure of the evil in a human form was emerging from the “lake” or “pool”; both the figure and the lake-like shape were to be created with pieces of newspapers – fragments of news, photos of the events and so on. They represented human persons. Although they were forming the emerging, slowly incarnating evil and they were persons, they made no sense in themselves; putting those pieces together somehow reaped each one of meaning although they were becoming part of “a bigger picture”, a coherent evil represented by the emerging sculpture. Via its progressive incarnation the evil was swallowing them or better to say emptying them of their substance. I do not recall how exactly I thought those ideas through, I only drew a sketch – but the ideas definitely were there. Looking at the sketch ten years after I realised another nuance, the fact that the events there, being represented by the pieces of news and photos of human activity – which in turn represented human beings behind them – those human beings have no idea about the bigger picture which is being made with them, with their very persons. A bigger and totally soulless picture is emerging, made with the separate actions of people, their thoughts, people as incoherent pieces.

 

 

6 February 2021