Br. Seraphim Beshoner, TOR posts about a recent interview with y the Vice President of PETA Dan Mathews, and Sir Paul McCartney.
D[an]: There is some exciting news: The last Pope was the first to say that animals have souls, and now Pope Benedict has come out against factory farming, saying it makes a mockery of God’s creatures. As someone who was raised a Catholic, do you have a message for him?
P[aul]: God bless him! I think it would be fantastic if someone in his position who’s able to reach so many people took a strong stance on that, because one of PETA’s strongest points, and one of mine, is compassion. That certainly is a basic tenet of the Catholic religion. I think it would be terrific if he took a strong stance and urged people to come out against that kind of thing.
and then points out the obvious correction.
First, a correction – the Catholic Church has always believed that animals have souls, just not human/rational souls. They have animal souls.
Now of course not only does the Church teach that animals have animal souls, but also that plants have plant souls. So if they want to use Church teaching in this regard and to say that killing animals for food is immoral, then it also follows that vegetarians are are also guilty of vegi-genoside. Where is the People for the Ethical Treatment of Vegetables when you need them. We should not turnip our noses at this problem since no justice no peas.
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“the Church for imposing diktats on people”
Diktats? Like Coach Diktats? DAAAAA BEARS!
We need to be careful, for some Deep Environmentalists think that vegetables have more rights than we do!
At its best, of course, the Christian view of the use and exploitation of the brute creation (sorry, Quaker terminology there) is one of stewardship — God gave us the earth for our benefit, but we’re accountable for responsible and compassionate use of its resources. And there’s the old-fashioned idea that the man who would kick a dog would beat his wife… but that no longer seems to hold water. Today he might beat his wife and coddle his dog.
G.K.Chesterton’s dealt with this very problem in 1904 when he wrote “The Napoleon of Notting Hill”:
‘There was Mr Edward Carpenter, who thought we should in a very short time return to Nature, and live simply and slowly as the animals do. And Edward Carpenter was followed by James Pickie, D.D. (of Pocahontas College), who said that men were immensely improved by grazing, or taking their food slowly and continuously, after the manner of cows. And he said that he had, with the most encouraging results, turned city men out on all fours in a field covered with veal cutlets. Then Tolstoy and the Humanitarians said that the world was growing more merciful, and therefore no one would ever desire to kill. And Mr Mick not only became a vegetarian, but at length declared vegetarianism doomed (“shedding,” he called it finely, “the green blood of the silent animals”), and predicted that men in a better age would live on nothing but salt. And then came the pamphlet from Oregon (where the thing was tried), the pamphlet called “Why should Salt suffer?”, and there was more trouble.’
Certainly there is no reason to treat animals cruelly or abuse them for mere reasons of profit and convenience, but that does not mean you *must* become a vegetarian.
Anyway, it’s always amusing to me to see organisations condemn the Church for imposing diktats on people and then turn around and demand the Church impose that same organisation’s favoured position on people in their turn.
Frankly, I don’t carrot all for these types of discussions. I find them…cucumbersome.
(snicker)
Lettuce find another topic.
(snort)
The trouble is people are even ignorant of the definitions of the most basic theological concepts, like the definition of a soul.
I remember when I was a child in (Catholic) grade school someone asked the teacher what exactly a “soul” was. I remember her answering that it wasn’t the same thing as “sole” and then asking the student who had asked the original question, “what do *you* think a soul is?”.
A couple of students offered up their best guess and then that’s it. No conclusion. No “answer”.
mmmm…PETA=People Eating Tasty Animals 🙂
Fr George Rutler said something to this effect a year or two ago “brother bean and sister carrot” wailing as we stuck our fork in, or words to that effect.
Good post, but minor correction.
It’s Br. Seraphim, TOR. He’s a Third Order Regular.