(LifeSiteNews) — We at LifeSite have reported on the effects of the COVID jab since they came on the scene a couple of years ago. We’ve touched upon sudden deaths, the rise of myocarditis among young men, among other things. For most people, such events are remote occurrences, appearing only in newspapers and on social media. But others have seen the effects of the jab up close and personal.
My guest on this episode of The John-Henry Westen Show, Matthew Reid, is a former police officer for the New York Police Department (NYPD). He was forced into retirement for refusing to take the jab, and has established a Catholic organization for police officers that offers them help fighting unjust COVID mandates.
Reid and others refused to get the jab because of their “sincerely held moral” and religious beliefs, objections which he tells me were “not respected at all.” While priests were told not to write religious exemption letters to the jab, Reid explains that a “black market” of sorts developed around finding one. His own religious exemption request was “summarily denied” in August 2020. He was given three options: go on suspension without pay pending termination, get the jab, or retire. He chose the last option.
Reid has since heard a good deal of stories from former NYPD officers and others in similar circumstances about what happened to them. Telling me one story, Reid recalls how a Catholic police officer who lived paycheck to paycheck to support his two daughters got a card that said he took the jab after his religious exemption request was denied.
When the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raided an office and found a list of civil servants’ and police officers’ names who had such a card under the same circumstance, all were told to get the jab or face termination and 10 years in prison for fraud. While being told this, another police officer got a phone call from his wife telling him that the FBI was at their house, and an attorney present told the men in the room that they shouldn’t open the door to the agency.
When the officer decided to get the jab, he felt ashamed, asking Christ for forgiveness when the needle touched his arm. When out shopping the following day, he passed out and was taken to the hospital, where doctors diagnosed him with myocarditis and high blood pressure. The officer had never faced those problems in his life.
“I see my role as speaking for them more than myself because many others suffered way, way worse than I ever did,” Reid explains. “But had it not been for this mandate, I most certainly would probably still be there.”
The advice Reid offers people in the face of similar mandates, which he believes will return, is simple – “stand firm in your faith to understand that we have to obey God rather than men.”
Later in the interview, we also talk about an organization Reid organized to help police officers in similar situations.
The Patrolman’s Fraternity of St. Michael, Reid tells me, is designed to be “a Catholic apostolate meant to form cops” internationally.
“We understand that we need virtuous men of… faith that are passionate about Our Lord and His Holy Catholic Church that are going to be in the front lines in this war… and for men to understand that… that is… exactly what we’re dealing with here,” Reid explains.
“If we don’t have ourselves, we don’t have anyone, because there’s no one else at this point… on a human level that is going to… really protect our interests at this point and allow us to live our lives of faith, to protect ourselves, to protect our families, protect our souls,” he continues.
Closing the interview, Reid and I discuss why he thinks police officers tend to enforce laws against pro-lifers and in favor of LGBT ideology and those who want to defund police departments.
Reid believes policemen enforce “unjust laws and dictates” because of a loss of faith and the fact that people want to follow the “easy road” and shun suffering. Compounding the matter, Reid adds, most police officers were raised in a “weak” and “effeminate” Catholicism that has not raised them to be soldiers for Christ, a problem that he contends is “pervasive throughout American policing.”
But it’s one he seeks to remedy through the Patrolman’s Fraternity of St. Michael.
The John-Henry Westen Show is available by video on the show’s YouTube channel and right here on my LifeSite blog.
It is also available in audio format on platforms such as Spotify, Soundcloud, and Acast. We are awaiting approval for iTunes and Google Play as well. To subscribe to the audio version on various channels, visit the Acast webpage here.
We’ve created a special email list for the show so that we can notify you every week when we post a new episode. Please sign up now by clicking here. You can also subscribe to the YouTube channel, and you’ll be notified by YouTube when there is new content.
You can send me feedback, or ideas for show topics by emailing [email protected].
