Orthodox Reflections

By Nicholas – member of the Western Rite Vicariate, a part of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese in America

Dr. Tony Fauci is back in the news over the mRNA shots. Internal text messages have revealed that Fauci was privately concerned about the potential for mRNA to cause miscarriages. Writing to CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, Fauci texted on 25 Jan 2021, “I asked around a bit more and another issue came up that you need to be aware of…Since many people have significant cytokines storm and fever after the 2nd dose, this theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester.”

Despite those private “theoretical” misgivings, just days later, Fauci publicly asserted that the mRNA jabs were safe during pregnancy.  “[I]f you look at the literally — literally — tens and tens and tens of thousands of women who have been followed by the CDC who were vaccinated when they were pregnant, there’s no indication whatsoever that there’s any increase of any adverse issues in a pregnant woman who was vaccinated compared to a pregnant woman who wasn’t vaccinated…It’s really one of those things that’s kind of not a close call. It really is pretty clear that pregnant women should get vaccinated.”

Safe and effective, even during early stage pregnancy. That was the mantra repeated to pregnant women by everyone from the public health officials to doctors to politicians to Christian leaders. As a result, millions of pregnant moms received an experimental gene therapy at the most vulnerable time in their babies’ lives.

It turns out, as Fauci suspected, the mRNA jabs were dangerous for babies. Many of them died. Many more were severely injured.

The raw numbers from a June 2021 study from The New England Journal of Medicine, that tracked 3,958 women who received the vaccine before and during pregnancy (the group was a mix of Pfizer–BioNTech and Moderna recipients), revealed that 82% of pregnant women getting an mRNA shot in early pregnancy had suffered a miscarriage. This number could actually be inaccurately low. Sasha Latypova, former pharma and medical device R&D executive, argues that the miscarriage rate among pregnant women vaccinated prior to 14 weeks gestation was an astounding 430% higher than normal:

Observed true rates of miscarriage with miscarriage in mRNA vaccinated women increased ~4X (by 430%) in women vaccinated before 14 weeks of gestation. Normal miscarriage risk varies by week of gestation, rapidly plummeting after ~11 weeks. Normal miscarriage risk ins >10% prior to 6 weeks and ~5% for weeks 7-11. After week 11, the risk is only 0.6%. Therefore, the weighted average for pregnancy loss for the entire 39 weeks is ~1.6%. In vSafe data, the women enrolled in the first trimester (1224 total) should have experienced only ~20 pregnancy losses total, at any time during pregnancy. Instead, the CDC has recorded 104 miscarriages from that group, just in the first 6 weeks, exceeding the total expected by at least 4X!

 

Note: Ignore the 82% number that is being strawmaned and “debunked” on the internet by cyber op shitheads like JikkyLeaks Trolls.

 

I have provided the information in this article to Senator Ron Johnson as an input to his open investigation into Tom Shimabukuro and other CDC/NIH officials hiding and destroying safety signals of the covid shots, and he has acknowledged the receipt.

The mRNA damage was not limited to just babies dying in utero. Pfizer’s own trial in 324 vaccinated pregnant women revealed 100% increase in lower Apgar scores, 80% more neonatal jaundice, 70% more malformations, and 310% more anomalies with developmental delays. Further studies confirmed mRNA transfer across the placenta, causing spike expression in fetal tissues, mRNA in breast milk; and even reverse transcription in human cells (posing genomic integration risks).

In this interview, Dr. James Thorp, an OB/GYN and maternal fetal medicine specialist with a specialty for high-risk obstetric patients, details the horrors he has witnessed among newborns injected during pregnancy with the mRNA jabs:

Dr. Thorp says one “well-known” hospital had EIGHT babies in the neonatal ICU suffering from the same rare, life-threatening birth defect at the same time. He ran the numbers on this happening by chance, and the odds were 1 in 10 trillion.

 

THORP: “I saw a significant increase in fetal malformations of virtually every organ system.” “There literally were cystic hygromas (a fluid-filled sac in the head or neck), cardiac malformations, diaphragmatic hernias.” “Diaphragmatic hernias are very rare malformations. And I won’t mention which hospital, but there was a hospital that’s well known to me and to you. At one point in time, the neonatal intensive care unit had eight infants with congenital diaphragmatic hernia.” “Now, you can run the numbers on that… but it’s one in several trillion—10 trillion.” “I saw severe placental abnormalities that I’ve documented and published.” “Severe growth restriction, blood clots in the mother and in the fetus. Seizure-like activity in the fetus, in mothers as well. There were multiple thrombotic events, both in the fetus and in the mother.” “Premature labor and delivery, premature death in the babies that were born. Increased risk of death.” “Substantial increase in babies that went… to the neonatal intensive care nursery.”

The government-medical-pharma establishment knew there were significant risks. Yet, the approved and platformed “experts” told pregnant women the jabs were “safe and effective” for them and their babies.

Before we move on, let’s make one thing abundantly clear. mRNA aside, the entire concept of vaccination is inherently flawed. All pharmaceutical products carry potentially severe risks. However, if used to treat actual illnesses, the potential rewards of using them can outweigh those potential risks. That is a decision each patient must make in an informed, rational manner. By contrast, vaccines are pharmaceutical products injected into healthy people in the hope that some future benefit might ensue.  Vaccines risk current harm to healthy people to prevent a disease they may never come in contact with, or might easily recover from if they do. It is extremely difficult to justify vaccination for most individuals on a cost/benefit basis. This is why the risks associated with vaccines are always downplayed and covered up. Unless the vaccines are “risk free,” the cost/benefit equation rarely tilts in favor of vaccination. The public is, therefore, intentionally misled to believe vaccines are magic cocktails that are completely different from all other pharmaceutical products.

One MD blogger gave a concise explanation of why the medical-government-pharma complex must cover up the risks of vaccines (emphasis mine):

For example, because vaccines are “risky but necessary,” the medical profession and government, again and again, concluded that they needed to tell the public all vaccines were “safe and effective” as the potential injuries a mass vaccination campaign would cause were outweighed by “necessary” benefit the vaccines could offer. As such, examples can be found again and again of severe injuries being systematically covered up for the “greater good” (e.g., the earliest documented example I know of this happened in 1874 with the smallpox vaccine) and health authorities concocting the same set of excuses we’ve seen since smallpox as to why those vaccines failed to prevent the diseases they were supposed to.

 

Since the risks of most vaccines (detailed here) far outweigh their benefits, a mass-vaccination paradigm can only be sustained by censoring the evidence of harm — and then citing that manufactured silence as proof of safety. Over the decades, more and more has been done to conceal those harms. For almost a century, severe neurological injuries after vaccination were routinely reported in the medical literature. Now vaccine injuries are censored, and it is nearly impossible to publish anything critical of vaccines in a “reputable” journal.

Fauci suspected early on that the mRNA injections were a threat to women and their babies. The data confirmed it. The “public health” establishment further knew that vaccines, in general, make little sense, especially for healthy females of child bearing age and their unborn children. Yet, all of officialdom, throwing caution to the winds, encouraged everyone to get the shots.

If they had admitted the truth about the threat to babies, it might have undermined confidence in the “public health” establishment and resulted in much dreaded “vaccine hesitancy.” Better to sacrifice a few babies, than to face that horrible outcome. Right?

I am going to let society deal with Fauci and all the other “public health” villains. In this article, I want to remind everyone of some our own Orthodox Christian Vaccine Villains. Many Orthodox bishops, priests, researchers, doctors, and podcasters pushed Orthodox Christians to conform to Covid “protocols,” and to take the Covid shots. Multiple Orthodox bishops were even photographed rolling up their cassock sleeves to get injected with mRNA. This was obviously done in an effort to encourage others to do likewise. The message from most official “Orthodox” sources was crystal clear – real Orthodox Christians get the jab.

Orthodox Christian Bishops posing for pictures getting the mRNA vaccines to encourage everyone, including pregnant women, to do likewise. 

Truly an almost overwhelmingly sad state of affairs.

However, even in the hall of shame that is Western Orthodox leadership, there are still five individuals that we wish to call special attention to. Four of these Orthodox Christians used their medical credentials to encourage vaccine compliance. One used his bishop’s miter. My goal in singling these villains out is not revenge, but prevention. As the newly approved mRNA flu vaccine makes clear, Big Pharma is still very much in the experimental gene therapy business. More shots, and possibly more mandates, will be forthcoming. Further, there is no indication that any of these influential Orthodox Christians have moderated their pro-vax stances in the slightest. My goal is to expose how wrong they were before, in the hopes that no one listens to them, or anyone like them, next time. Because there will always be a next time. Which is why the term “villain” is not used lightly. How else to describe someone who used professional credentials, and the title “Orthodox Christian,” to convince people to willingly take a pharmaceutical product that did so much tragic harm to innocent people of all ages?

First, let us discuss the joint efforts of three Orthodox women from the medical establishment. In March of 2021, Public Orthodoxy ran a piece called Which Vaccine Should I Receive? The primary goal of the article was to call attention to a document published by the Orthodox Theological Society in America (OTSA) written by Drs. Hermina Nedelescu, Catherine Creticos, and Gayle Woloschak. Their document purported to provide answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs) about Covid-19 vaccines.

Who are these women? Their short bios from the article are provided below:

Dr. Catherine Creticos
Medical Director of Clinical Research at Howard Brown Health Center in Chicago and Chief of Infectious Diseases at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center in Chicago

Dr. Hermina Nedelescu
Scripps Research / Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (Graduate Theological Union)

Dr. Gayle Woloschak
Professor of Radiation Oncology at Northwestern University

Those are some heavy-duty credentials, don’t you think? As a writer, I became aware of their FAQ because information from it was being quoted by Orthodox clergy. I wrote a response to it in March 2021. I don’t want to rehash my response, but I do want to focus on FAQ Number 20 concerning pregnancy:

20. I am pregnant, can I get the vaccine?
Answer: We have no reason to suspect any risk from the vaccine to patient or fetus/child. There is known risk of COVID, which is higher in pregnant patients than in non-pregnant patients. There were women in the vaccine trials who became pregnant (23 in the Pfizer study, 13 in the Moderna study) with no complications or adverse effects reported. Moderna did study pregnant rats and postpartum rats and found no negative effects on fetal/embryonic development. ACOG (the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology) recommends the mRNA vaccines be made available to pregnant women but stops short of a blanket recommendation.

In summary, there is no strong safety evidence but no evidence of harm either. There are plans to include pregnant women in upcoming trials.

Pregnant women should discuss vaccination with their physician.

Three Orthodox “experts” in 2021 told pregnant women that while there was “no strong safety evidence” there was also no proof of any harm either. So the recommendation, in a document dedicated to getting everyone to take the shot, is for pregnant women to talk to their personal physicians. Personal physicians, who at the time, were operating under strict CDC guidance that the shots were “safe and effective” for every human being on the planet. The message really boils down to – just get the shot. How many innocent lives were lost as a result of this “Orthodox Christian” recommendation? How many innocent people were irreparably harmed? God alone knows. However, given the scale of the carnage caused by the shots, it is quite likely that the number of victims of this advice is substantial. Especially since (as mentioned earlier) this document influenced clergy who were acting as spiritual fathers to pregnant women.

These three women will bear the weight of their “professional advice” before God. When dealing with an experimental treatment with no long-term record, especially when innocent babies are at stake, the first rule of medicine should always be “do no harm.” Not, “We’ll consider it safe for vulnerable babies in early stages of gestation until someone proves otherwise.” That “advice” is a complete inversion of medical ethics. Tragically, one that was promoted by far too many Orthodox clergy.

The FAQs document is still up. The article on Public Orthodoxy promoting the FAQs document is still up. There is no indication that any of these women have learned anything from the mounting evidence of harm over the past 5 years. This is lamentable, but understandable, as all of these ladies are part of the medical-government-pharma complex. As Upton Sinclair famously observed, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”

Credentials do not ensure that someone is actually giving you the best advice. Especially when others, with equally impressive credentials, are saying the exact opposite. Belonging to the Orthodox Church does not ensure an “expert” actually cares enough about people to tell the truth.

Bitter lessons, but ones that also apply to our next villain.

Ancient Faith Radio put Dr. Ryan Sampson Nash on Fr. John Parker’s program not just once, but three times, to convince everyone to “get the vaccine.” Fr. John Parker opened the first podcast by encouraging the listener to “trust” a scientist like Dr. Nash. An Orthodox RN, writing for Orthodox Reflections, wrote this about Dr. Nash’s self-proclaimed expertise and his professional advice:

So what constitutes being an expert? Dr. Nash was interviewed in this podcast because he is considered an “expert” in vaccine knowledge, but by what standards? His background is bioethics and palliative care, with a focus on oncology. Dr. Nash mentions knowing about ventilators, but that was not discussed any further.  The aim of palliative care is to provide patients “relief from pain and other symptoms of a serious illness” and “to improve the quality of life” (Mayo Foundation, 2017) for patients. This is one of the most bewildering moments for me personally, knowing him as a palliative care doctor, as to why he would encourage someone to take a medicine that has so many unknowns and can cause significant harm and premature death.

 

Also, Dr. Nash refers to consulting with leading experts (without specifying whom he is referring to). He did not define what he considers a leading expert, but also accused other physicians (whom he did not specify) of saying “questionable things.” How do we know someone who is being interviewed to answer questions about COVID-19 vaccines, who is not an epidemiologist, not a microbiologist, not a virologist, not even an infectious disease doctor, is not just another physician saying “questionable things?”

In his appearances on the podcast, Dr. Nash downplayed the connection of the vaccines to aborted fetal cells. He, thereby, actively worked against the willingness and ability of Orthodox Christians to use religious exemptions to avoid taking the vaccines. Dr. Nash also downplayed the efficacy of God-given natural immunity, in favor of promoting vaccine-acquired immunity.

Dr. Nash encouraged Orthodox Christians, including pregnant women, to take an experimental pharmaceutical product about which we understood very little. Ancient Faith Radio and Fr. John Parker gave him the platform to do it. It was a particularly low point for Orthodox media, clergy, and doctors. His opinions did not go unchallenged. Here and here are responses from Orthodox medical professionals to Dr. Nash’s appearances.

Dear reader, you might want to remember this incident next time Ancient Faith asks you for a donation. We should be aware enough of “Orthodox” wolves in sheep’s clothing to think twice before funding them.

As noted, plenty of Orthodox Bishops pushed the jabs. However, one Orthodox bishop stands above all the rest in Vaccine Villainy. That would be Archbishop Elpidophoros of the Greek Archdiocese. Because the jabs were “safe and effective” against a “pandemic,” few employers and governments accepted exemption requests on the basis of medical conditions (such as pregnancy). However, most institutions did accept religious exemptions. The mRNA jabs were inextricably linked to aborted fetal cells. A fact that should have made any Orthodox Christian think heavily before taking one, even if he or she truly believed the jabs were actually “safe and effective.” Orthodox Reflections was one of the leading resources helping Orthodox Christians avoid the moral taint and physical harms of these injections.

However, while untold thousands of Orthodox Christians (including pregnant ones) were struggling to get religious exemptions, Archbishop Elpidophoros was busy trying to cut their legs out from under them. Elpidophoros took to multiple channels to declare that the Orthodox Faith could not be used as the basis for a religious exemption. A position we, among many others, roundly rebuked him for.

Nominally Orthodox Archbishop Elpidophoros posting on X in an attempt to prevent Orthodox Christians from legally obtaining religious exemptions to the mRNA jabs. 

Archbishop Elpidophoros was involved in the decision to mandate the vaccines at Holy Cross, the Greek Archdiocese Seminary, even though there was no legal requirement to do so. Just one example how, throughout the “pandemic,” Archbishop Elpidophoros enthusiastically went above and beyond what any government or agency was even demanding. Patriarch Bartholomew and Archbishop Elpidophoros even gave the developers of the mRNA jabs, including Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, the Athenagoras Human Rights Award in 2021. By the time the award was bestowed, undeniable evidence had already begun demonstrating the manifold dangers of the injections.

Nevertheless, Elpidophoros beamed with pride as he presented a human rights award to mass murders.

Dr. Albert Bourla, DVM, Ph.D., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Pfizer; Dr. Ugur Sahin, M.D., Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of BioNTech; and Dr. George D. Yancopoulos, MD, Ph.D., Founding Scientist, President and Chief Scientific Officer of Regeneron, being honored for their organizations’ efforts in developing Covid-19 vaccines by Archbishop Elpidophoros and Patriarch Bartholomew.

In a 2022 interview, Elpidophoros reaffirmed his supported for the jabs:

Q: You have been clear from the outset on the matter of the COVID vaccination: Yes to vaccination and no to exemption on religious grounds. So do you believe that there is no contradiction between science and faith? Can the two coexist?

Trust TheScience™! Either Elpidophoros has the intellectual gifts of a gnat, or he is one of the most corrupt “Orthodox” bishops alive today. The prohibition on Orthodox Christians getting religious exemptions to vaccines is still up on the Greek Archdiocese Website:

Although some may be exempt from the vaccination for clear medical reasons, there is no exemption in the Orthodox Church for Her faithful from any vaccination for religious reasons, including the coronavirus vaccine. For this reason, letters of exemption for the vaccination against the coronavirus for religious purposes issued by priests of the Archdiocese of America have no validity, and furthermore, no clergy are to issue such religious exemption letters for any reason.

It is a very good thing that under American Constitutional Law, you do not need the support of any religious official when filing for a religious exemption for any vaccine. Your conscience and your faith are what matter, not what Elpi and his ilk have to say.

So there you have some of the top Orthodox Vaccine Villains. None of them has apologized or asked for forgiveness. Regardless, this article was not done in a spirit of anger or retribution, but of watchful remembrance. In a recent article on Orthodox Reflections, Fr. Zechariah Lynch reminded us that, concerning all things Covid, forgiving and forgetting are the not the same thing:

The world looks for people to crucify and blame, but in Christ Jesus we are healed through forgiveness and truth. Remembrance is not for retribution but for reconciliation and healing. If the world is going to be healed to any degree, it seems to me that Christians have the opportunity of leading the way. Let the forgiveness and healing start in the house of the Church, the house of the Lord.

We can forgive the Orthodox Vaccine Villains for our sakes, not theirs, but there is no requirement to either forget their misdeeds or to ever trust them again.