Open Letter to Holy Cross Hellenic College on COVID Vaccine Requirement

COVID Vaccines: Moral, Ethical, and Spiritual Concerns

Dear Holy Cross Hellenic College,

The attached email states that Holy Cross is “requiring that all students, faculty, and staff receive their vaccinations [for COVID] prior to August 17, 2021.” Although I am not a member of any of those categories, I pray that your email was sent in ignorance of the inherent evils associated with most of the COVID vaccines. In the spirit of Jesus Christ’s commandment to “be wise as serpents and innocent as doves,” please allow me to share information about the vaccines.

In the United States, all of the major available vaccines – both mRNA and viral vector – use aborted fetal cell lines in their research, development, design, production, and/or on-going testing. For example:

  • Pfizer-BioNTech uses the aborted fetal cell line HEK-293 in the research, development, and on-going testing of its vaccine.
  • Moderna uses the aborted fetal cell line HEK-293 in the design, development, protein production, and on-going testing of its vaccine.
  • Johnson & Johnson uses the aborted fetal cell line PER C6 in the research, development, and on-going manufacture of its vaccine.

Abortion is a grave evil and is akin to child sacrifice. Women sacrifice their children for earthly reasons, flesh merchants sell children’s dismembered bodies for money, and medical scientists promise temporal health for those who consume aborted fetal cells and their products. In modern America, children are sacrificed at the altar of Moloch in exchange for pleasure, money, and physical health.

Those Christians who recognize the great evils of abortion, who understand that the COVID vaccines are products of the abortion industry, who know the teachings of the Church and Her Saints, who follow “the Law written in their hearts,” and who struggle to live the faith and “enter through the narrow gate” will avoid vaccines that utilize aborted fetal cell lines. However, the only COVID vaccines that are available are ones that have utilized aborted fetal cell lines.

Will Holy Cross demand its seminarians be co-participants in child sacrifice before they can become priests who are co-participants in the Bloodless Sacrifice?

I pray that Holy Cross will have a change of heart and not force her seminarians to either give up their education or abandon their conscience. I pray that Holy Cross will respond to our culture’s fear of death with the joyous proclamation “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and on those in the tombs bestowing life!” I also pray for all of you.

CHRIST IS RISEN!

TRULY HE IS RISEN!

–Arsenios

May 8, 2021

HCHC Letter below:


Please note: In addition to the ethical concerns about the use of aborted fetal cells, this move by HCHC violates the principle of voluntary, informed consent for medical procedures. The Russian Orthodox Church, among other Orthodox jurisdictions, has stated that vaccine coercion is morally unacceptable. To prepare for ministry in the Church, young men, at almost no risk for COVID, will be forced to take an experimental treatment with uncertain short-term and long-term side effects. This situation is all the more troubling as many Orthodox Christians have already relied on religious exemptions to avoid taking vaccines which are not FDA approved. These treatments are available only under an “emergency use” authorization. Secular institutions have honored the freedom of conscience of Orthodox Christians, but an Orthodoxy seminary apparently will not. The situation borders on the surreal.

For more information, please view our Vaccine Informed Consent articles. HCHC relies on donations as well as tuition. Please contact the HCHC staff at this link to let them know your concerns about this policy. 

—Orthodox Reflections Staff

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