Orthodox Reflections

Below the line is a personal reflection about the dark days of COVID and the impact on the Orthodox Church. We need to keep these memories alive for a variety of reasons. Many of the culprits behind COVID are still in power, and are trying to rewrite various aspects of COVID history to exculpate themselves. The Global Elite continues to push disease narratives, such as the current Avian flu (H5N1). First they culled millions of chickens (causing skyrocketing prices and shortages), now the USDA is discussing plans to introduce mRNA vaccines into our food supply to protect against the ‘deadly virus’.

Of course, there will be a human version(s) as well.

As was the case with the COVID jabs, the new mRNA shots will be far more harmful than the underlying disease. Sadly, don’t rely on RFK Jr or Donald Trump to make much of a difference any time soon in the vaccine craziness. On 3/13/2025 (as this is being written) the White House pulled the nomination of Dave Weldon to be the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The former Florida congressman has questioned certain vaccines in the past, and the White House decided it would be better if he didn’t face Congressional questioning about it.

Meet the new boss, same as old boss. 

Fortunately, states such as Florida and Missouri are pushing back with legislation to protect their citizens. A Florida bill would mandate the prominent labeling of mRNA injected beef and other food products. It is wonderful to see states standing up to Big Pharma and the USDA. With memories of the COVID disaster still fresh in their minds, Americans are not in the mood to be terrorized again. A majority of Americans have learned their lesson and will not forgive or forget.

But you know who hasn’t learned any lessons? Far too many Orthodox priests and bishops. Just one example is Fr Ernesto M. Obregón, an OCA priest, who runs a blog called orthocuban.com. In commentary on a Supreme Court ruling on vaccine exemptions in 2024, Fr Ernesto demonstrated just how clueless many Orthodox clergy remain. Below are some excerpts:

There is no purported religious right that allows someone to put someone else’s child in danger of death or a sequela of morbidity by a preventable disease. Note that the same argument may not be used for other subjects.⁸ Each subject requires its own moral analysis. However, when it comes to vaccines, then your child need not be admitted to a school should you refuse to vaccinate them. All of our rights have limitations. No one has a right to infect someone else’s children.

Obviously, Fr Ernesto has boundless confidence in the effectiveness of vaccines to safely and effectively prevent illness. He also believes that forcing vaccines on the unwilling in various ways (such as through denial of access to schooling) is a justified use of government power. Fr Ernesto, echoing Archbishop Elpidophoros, believes that Orthodox Christians have no right to a religious exemption for any vaccine. (At Orthodox Reflections, we beg to differ, particularly in the case of vaccines linked to the use of aborted fetal cells.) Somewhat contradictorily, Fr. Ernesto argues that you have a legal and moral duty to vaccinate yourself, and your children, to protect others. Even though, if vaccines truly were effective, wouldn’t the vaccinated be safe from the unvaccinated? The MMR vaccine and/or the H5N1 vaccine can’t protect you unless the government forces everyone to get them?

In a comment on Fr Ernesto’s blog, Nicholas posted one of our Orthodox Reflections articles on the dangers of vaccines. It was a well-researched piece written by a Greek lawyer titled The Dangers of Vaccines and Some Pieces of Practical Advice.Fr Ernesto completely dismissed the information in the article. Below is part of his response:

However, I realized that the article is not an accurate portrayal and that it confirmed even more that our bishops followed the right path. I recommend that you re-evaluate your claims of blindness. There are various challenges to Holy Orthodoxy and the faith once received. Vaccination is not one of them.

Despite all the accumulated evidence of the great harms wrought by closing churches, mandating masks, changing liturgical practices out of panic, supporting vaccine mandates, and pushing the mRNA jabs on the laity – Fr Ernesto can still say, with a straight face, “our bishops followed the right path.” There are way too many Fr Ernesto’s in the Orthodox Church. They have learned nothing, will learn nothing, and will back to the hilt whatever insanity comes out of the bloated, Big-Pharma controlled ‘public health’ bureaucracy.

By the way, mRNA gene therapies have been under development for a long time. The mRNA technology for gene therapies is exactly the same as used for the mRNA ‘vaccines’. The FDA, and anyone else who cared to pay attention, knew at least as long ago as 2015 that this technology causes disability, sterility, cancer, indefinite spike protein production in some people, and other serious adverse side effects. All real world results since 2021 have done is confirm how damaging mRNA-based products really are.

Same technology Pharma wants to inject into your food supply and into your body to combat a flu.

Maddeningly, Fr Ernesto and other Orthodox clergy like him are going to tell you “take the shot” and “eat the injected food” for the good of your soul and to save others.

May God help us. Which is why we must remember what these bishops, priests, and Orthodox academics led us into last time. If you resisted them during COVID, good for you! So many of us did, that Orthodoxy is actually growing faster than any other church. Many of our parishes, often in opposition to the instructions of their own bishops and localities, stayed open during the ‘Pandemic’. If you did not resist last time, don’t worry. You will have another chance sooner than you think. Be ready to apply the lessons from COVID for whatever the government throws at us next.

With all that said, here is a personal reflection from that awful time.

By John Lee – an Orthodox Christian

Hindsight 20/20?

When the COVID melee hit, I was determined to just go along with it, thinking it all will just blow over and things would become normal again. I opted for cloth masks over the store-bought variety. I liked being able to wash and reuse them. I was ready to make it work. After all, I would need a mask just to get into Walmart. I kept a collection in the car so I could use them when needed. Originally, I had no complaint regarding how any of it was handled. In each Orthodox service, all but one or two donned the wretched mask. So what? No big deal.

In my mind, it was a bit absurd, but I was unwilling to take any real offence by it. Why disturb the peace of the parish over something so trifling? It was obvious to me that a mask stopping something as minute as a virus, was as probable as a chain link fence stopping a bullet. Again, no big deal, let them be ignorant of physics. Let’s just run the program as prescribed…or so I thought.

We Orthodox Christians need to join society at large in learning to protest before the harm is done to our bodies and souls

“What the Church Thinks”?

During those years, I was the most active parishioner in managing the church campus grounds. I mowed the grass; planted trees, changed out furnace filters, replaced door hinges, and even fixed some bad wiring. Having keys to all the building, I worked on whatever I could fix. I even did some painting of walls, even though I loathe painting. This was my labor of love, and I would do it again. I kept my head down at the start of COVID, and just kept doing what I had been.

Everything changed for me when the priest-in-charge announced in a service, “If you want to know what the Church thinks about the vaccine…go to…”(some website—he would send the link to everyone). Obtaining the link, it led to a document produced by some “scholars” (not doctors) in the Greek-American camp. [OR Note: This was the Orthodox Theological Society in America whose advice we debunked here.]

Going through the points one by one, I happened upon a question regarding pregnant women receiving the shot/s. The essence of the message was – it’s OK for a pregnant woman to get the jab.

Needless to say I went “off the rails”. I was angry! How could this be? Nobody in their right mind gives a pregnant woman anything not fully tested and fully proven to be safe. Even simple things can cause a miscarriage. No sane physician would risk the lives of mother and child by saying an experimental injection was safe.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for the Orthodox Theological Society to retract their pro-mRNA jab advice, just because they were wrong.

“We must not mind insulting men, if by respecting them we offend God.” (St John Chrysostom)[1]

Immediately, I sent emails to the priest-in-charge noting it was a serious problem to endorse—tantamount to prescribing— any medicine for anybody, let alone a pregnant woman. Obviously, I knew the bishop would get copies, but, so what? This was life or death for somebody innocent. Were we really going to risk unborn babies because of ignorance? Or…. was it merely ignorance? At that point, it did not matter to me whether they were ignorant or harbored malfeasance.

After nearly 20 years in the insurance industry, I knew the ins-and-outs of liability. For ecclesiastical voices—people in a “position of trust”— to be giving medical advice was to elevate themselves to the same level as medical doctors. While we may not remember it now, back then some doctors were saying one thing (jabs for everyone), while others said something quite different (jabs only for the most at-risk, if for anyone at all). It was incredibly unwise for clergy to position themselves as arbiters of truth in the middle of a scientific debate. The legal liability of giving medical advice is not a joke. If you play doctor, best have the insurance to pay for when things don’t go well. I argued that point several times in emails to those who should know better. The bishops and priest risked a financial encumbrance on the Church, in addition to incredibly bad optics.

Upon further rumination on the statement, “what the Church thinks”, it dawned on me how absurd the comment was. It was pure popery and pontification to claim authority to speak on these issues so publicly in this manner. Now, if a confessor sees fit—though ill advised it may be—to privately endorse the shots, at least it’s his personal counsel, not the ‘voice’ of the Church as if medical opinions were dogma.

NOBODY has the authority to speak for The Church, unless speaking of what has been previously agreed upon and proven over centuries of Church life. It was a flat out lie for Orthodox clergy to portray taking an experimental medical product as if it were a crucial matter of one’s Orthodox Faith. Such a thing cannot be done by anyone, anywhere.

In view of the moral and legal liability, they would have been far better off staying in their own lane of profession and just saying, “See your doctor”. It’s the blanket disclaimer that works everywhere, every time. So, why didn’t they just take the safe way out?

I was, not surprisingly, asked to leave and resettle in a parish more inline with my views. I gladly complied. Thank God there was one.

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Pfizer Infomercials

Soon after that, I caught wind that the leader of St Tihkon’s Seminary had given a video dissertation on the safety of the jabs. I dug it out for viewing. I was shocked! How could this be? Why is it so? (Did they ever get paid by big pharma for such a commercial? If not, what was the motivation behind doing so—not just once, but, twice?)

Why this collective Orthodox support of what, in the end, proved to be such a colossal medical mistake?

Somebody was “Off the Rails”, but it was not me. It was the Orthodox establishment who had jumped off the tracks so distinctly laid down by our predecessors. So, what went wrong here? I still don’t know, but something misfired for sure. Was it orchestrated? It sure seems that way.

Since when do Orthodox bishops publish photographs of their medical procedures? Only when that procedure is an mRNA jab. The question we still can’t answer is – why?

Then, news went around of parishes in other jurisdictions requiring the shots, of babies forced to be masked, multiple spoons, hierarchs performing liturgy masked up. At the moment, it all seems like water under the bridge. But, have we forgotten? Can it happen again? We may find out.

Corruption in Hierarchy

The road to hell is paved with the bones of priests and monks, and the lampposts are the skulls of bishops who light the path. (St John Chrysostom)[2]

Corruption among the hierarchy is not an anomaly. In any generation, it’s a given. St John already bitterly lamented it in the 4th Century.  If only the great saint could see us now. Does this mean all are corrupted? Of course not. It would be a betrayal of the good ones to imply that. But still, all men are mere men, and until stepping over into repose, nobody is immune from falling off the Ladder of Ascent. Even on the highest rung, some become deceived and fall.

This lesson applies for each and every one of us. Thinking anybody still alive has ‘finished the race’ is a denial of Orthodoxy. Whether a man is a Patriarch, an Athonite monk, or  president of a seminary, he can still fall. Our Orthodox forefathers, knowing this all too well, made sure no infallible ‘Orthodox’ pope could ever exist. We all must work out our salvation with fear and trembling until the very end. The safeguarding of the Orthodox Faith is too important to leave in one man’s hands. Or even in the hands of a few hierarchs.

Were the hierarchs, during COVID, influenced by money, fear, spiritual delusion, or some other factors? God alone knows. In the end, the reasons don’t really matter. It is incumbent upon every Orthodox Christian to take responsibility for his own spiritual development. If your jurisdiction leans away from the tried and true, all the more so. It is up to you to keep your faith alive, your relationship with God current, and your piety strong – regardless of what others do. If your priest is one of the many honorable ones, make his job all the easier; lend a hand wherever you can. Let your priest know you love, appreciate, and honor the sacrifices he makes to keep the community cohesive, and in communion with the ancient Church.

In summary: corruption has always manifested here and there, from time to time among the hierarchy. But, the strength of the Church is in its roots. What goes on week after week in parishes around the world. Maybe even more so in what goes on in homes, around the dinner tables, at the icon corners, with the prayer books, within the hearts and minds of God’s people.

What’s Next?

I have no clue.

Don’t worry folks, if this doesn’t stick Pharma and ‘public health’ will be back with something else.

However, I would say our country, along with much of Europe and the rest of the world, is headed for some very troubled waters. Many things about our present geopolitical structures are just not right. But, the world system was never right anyway, and never can be God’s Kingdom expressed on Earth as it is in heaven. Yet, we do not live in fear—for fear hath torment. Fear is living in doubt, not faith. God rewards those who diligently seek Him in faith. Nobody has been afforded more places to seek and find God than the Orthodox. He is in the liturgy. He is in the Fathers. He is in creation. He is in each other, and, yes, in honorable clergymen.

Orthodoxy is a Church birthed in persecution. Will there be another generation of martyrs? There may be. With the “New Martyrs” still fresh in memory, perhaps some will be called to fill that role once again. Aware of that, the willingness to die for Christ sets us free to be free indeed, a living martyrdom over a lifetime.

To live is Christ, to die is gain.

[1] Six Books of the Priesthood: https://www.azquotes.com/quote/1336710

[2] Ibid