Leading Catholic colleges and universities are joining their secular counterparts in requiring students to receive Covid-19 vaccinations before returning to campus for the autumn semester, including Boston College, the University of Notre Dame and Loyola University Chicago. As of press time, 237 colleges nationwide have issued such a mandate according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.
The requirements include exemptions for religious and medical reasons. Certain religious groups do not allow their members to receive vaccines. Some people have medical conditions that make the vaccine dangerous.
The Catholic University of America, however, has declined to issue a requirement. President John Garvey resisted an effort by faculty to put a requirement in place, citing a survey of students in which more than a third indicated they “would not insist that each member of the university community get vaccinated.” In addition, one of the school’s most prominent professors, Dr Catherine Pakaluk, has led an effort to resist getting the vaccines because a stem cell line originally derived from an aborted fetus was used in the research that produced them.
Cardinal Blase Cupich published a column last week citing the Vatican’s instructions about the vaccine. “This virus has left the human family vulnerable and wounded,” Cupich wrote. “This shared suffering teaches us that we must work together to bring this pandemic to an end. That means getting vaccinated as soon as possible – not only to protect ourselves, but also so that we do not pass on this virus to those who are more likely to die from it.”
“The requirement – it sort of draws a line in the sand and says we think this is important. We think it’s the best path to return to normal, safe operations,” said Dr Mark Fox, a public health official who worked with Notre Dame to craft its policy. “There’s always a concern about what's the spill-over from the campus to the broader community. The benefit of the vaccine is it reduces the risk of any of those potential exposures for students interacting in the community.”
Religious leaders also welcomed the Biden administration’s decision to support waiving of intellectual property rights pertaining to the vaccines to get them to poor countries faster.