Fr. Rutler’s wit, red herrings, proof-texting, etc. to publicly support the status quo of animal cruelty
Thursday, June 21st, 2007(This is a long post. You can click ‘Print-friendly version’ at the top right to make it more readable on your screen.)
Click below to read
‘Fr. Rutler responds to Bill Cork’s vegetarian objections’ and read the comments. There are also links to other related postings — Fr. Rutler’s letter, Bill Cork’s response, and Daniel Paden’s Letter to the Editor that started it all.
Christine is the only post-er that I felt aligned with, and am happy that her comments were posted to provide a little diversity to the prevailing group dynamic.
I posted two separate comments. But either people have moved on to a new topic, or I was censored. Or maybe I need to be a registered member. Maybe I should re-try.
My first post was in response to the predictable “plant abuse” question, and also to those who proof-text the “Kill and Eat” passage as if it was a literal command from their God, who apparently desires sacrifice and not mercy, and authorizes violence against the unprotected and undefended innocents of God’s own Creation. I could proof-text, too, but think I’ll just add a few quotes at the end. Someone mentioned “Kill and Eat”, and Fr. Rutler provided the passage, as if that is the last word to the argument. (If you want to count how many times God says something, see “God’s Covenant With All Creatures”.)
Acts 11:1 - 18 ©
[I don't know if the Bible is copyright.]
The apostles and the brothers in Judaea heard that the pagans too had accepted the word of God, and when Peter came up to Jerusalem the Jews criticised him and said, ëSo you have been visiting the uncircumcised and eating with them, have you?í Peter in reply gave them the details point by point: ëOne day, when I was in the town of Jaffa,í he began ëI fell into a trance as I was praying and had a vision of something like a big sheet being let down from heaven by its four corners. This sheet reached the ground quite close to me. I watched it intently and saw all sorts of animals and wild beasts ñ everything possible that could walk, crawl or fly. Then I heard a voice that said to me, ìNow, Peter; kill and eat!î But I answered: Certainly not, Lord; nothing profane or unclean has ever crossed my lips. And a second time the voice spoke from heaven, ìWhat God has made clean, you have no right to call profaneî. This was repeated three times, before the whole of it was drawn up to heaven again.I’d be happy to try to address the red herring of the “vegetable abuse”.
Since I’ve read that it takes only 1/10 of the land to raise food for a vegan as it takes to feed a meat eater, less plants have to suffer for a vegan diet.
Since 70 % of the world’s grain goes to feed livestock (instead of feeding people in the poorest countries where they’re stripping the rain forests for grazing land, and for growing feed to export to us), it isn’t the vegans who are causing so many plants to suffer — it’s the livestock and those who drive the market demand. Our Western privilege, and excessive consumerism contributes to world hunger (among other social and environmental problems). And I’m really sorry that church people don’t take a more serious attitude toward this.
I’m always amazed when flesh-eaters show more “heartfelt concern” for the abuse of plants, than for the suffering of sentient non-human animals — as if flesh-eaters don’t also eat plants — or mow their grass, kill their weeds, etc.
Here is a different take on the “Kill and Eat Theology”, from
http://jintoku.blogspot.com/2005_07_01_archive.html.“When Jesus set aside the dietary laws this was not simply meant as an end in itself. The dietary laws symbolized for him a whole approach to discerning morality that was based on ‘the outside.’ (It should be noted that although Mark understood Jesus as ‘declaring all foods clean,’ the question that was presented to him actually had to do with hand-washing, not food.) In any case, Jesus used this incident as an opportunity to reflect upon the locus of morality. Morality, he says, is not about what goes into one from the outside, but about what comes out of one, from the heart. In this, Jesus is advocating an ethic of disposition or intent, as opposed to an ethic based primarily upon a list of externally exercised do’s and don’ts, which finds its most primitive form in moralities based on taboo and purity. As I also noted in an earlier comment on God’s Shellfish Argument, this contrast was addressed in Peter’s miraculous vision of the sheet let down from heaven; and he rightly understood that this was not about a change in the dietary laws, but about how people are to be treated - not as unclean because of practice or nation, but as capable of receiving the love of God. It is abundantly clear that Jesus had little patience with the focus on external purity as a means to please God; and Saint Paul continued this teaching - see Col 2:21-23 and 1Tim4:3-5 - although, given his Pharisee training even he occasionally slipped from grace into law!”
And my second post was in response to the “reluctant penitent” who said,
“The CCC passages about animal mistreatment are irrelevant, as are any arguments relating to animal brain structure and the ability of animals to feel pain, because animals can be killed painlessly. From the Catholic perspective thereís no moral difference between eating a painlessly killed pig and a carrot. Buddhists would disagree, which is why theyíre Buddhists rather than Catholics”
To reluctant penitent:
It is unrealistic to think that pigs or any other livestock are killed painlessly, or without fear.
It is also unrealistic to think the majority are raised humanely, since most are raised in factory farm conditions where they are so confined they can’t even turn around, and don’t get any exercise except on their way to the truck, if they aren’t lame by then and have to be beaten or dragged.
Even if they’re stunned with a bolt gun to their sculls at the slaughter house, it doesn’t necessarily make them unconscious. It just immobilizes them so they won’t kick the slaugherhouse workers. And some go into the scalding tank while conscious.
And that’s only a small part of how they’re treated.
This isn’t the 1950’s where (real) farmers treated their animals reasonably well before killing them. This is mass production.
(From PETA’s website):Pope Benedict XVI has spoken movingly about the exploitation of all beings, particularly of farmed animals, and PETA has created an ad featuring this message. When he was asked about the rights of animals in a 2002 interview, he said,
ìThat is a very serious question. At any rate, we can see that they are given into our care, that we cannot just do whatever we want with them. Animals, too, are God’s creatures . . . Certainly, a sort of industrial use of creatures, so that geese are fed in such a way as to produce as large a liver as possible, or hens live so packed together that they become just caricatures of birds, this degrading of living creatures to a commodity seems to me in fact to contradict the relationship of mutuality that comes across in the Bible.î
“…[I]t is a terrible thing that religious people today can be so indifferent to the cruelty of the farms, shrugging it off as so much secular, animal rights foolishness. They above all should hear the call to mercy. They above all should have some kindness to spare. They above all should be mindful of the little things, seeing, in the suffering of these creatures, the same hand that has chosen all the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak things to confound the things which are strong. ‘Who so poor,’ asked Anna Kingsford more than a century ago, ’so oppressed, so helpless, so mute and uncared for, as the dumb creatures who serve us — they who, but for us, must starve, and who have no friend on earth if man be their enemy?’”
– Matthew Scully
from Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy
ì[T]here is something so very dreadful, so satanic in tormenting those who never have harmed us,
and who cannot defend themselves, who are utterly in our power,
who have weapons neither of offense nor defense,
that none but very hardened persons can endure the thought of itÖ.
Think then, my brethren, of your feelings at cruelty practised upon brute animals,
and you will gain one sort of feeling which the history of
Christís Cross and Passion ought to excite within you.î
ñ Cardinal Newman
from his Good Friday sermon, ‘The Crucifixion’
“There is no religion without love,
and people may talk as much as they like about their religion,
but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to
other animals as well as humans, it is all a sham.”
– Anna Sewell, writer (1820-1878)
“We may pretend to what religion we please, but cruelty is atheism.
We may boast of Christianity; but cruelty is infidelity.
We may trust our orthodoxy; but cruelty is the worst of heresies.”
— Humphrey Primatt (priest) from
A Dissertation on the Duty of Mercy and the Sin of Cruelty to Brute Animals (1776)
“When the voice of God is invoked
on behalf of those
who have no voice,
it is time to listen.
But when the name of God is used
to benefit the interests
of those who are speaking,
it is time to be very careful.”
– Jim Wallis, from Who Speaks for God?
“O God, enlarge within us the sense of fellowship with all living things, even our brothers, the animals,
to whom Thou gavest the earth as their home in common with us.
We remember with shame that in the past we have exercised the high dominion of man with ruthless cruelty
so that the voice of the earth, which should have gone up to Thee in song, has been a groan of pain.
May we realize that they live, not for us alone, but for themselves and for Thee,
and that they love the sweetness of life.”
– St. Basil
Disclaimer of sorts (also posted at Bettnet on 6/23, but don’t expect it to show up):I realize that Fr. Rutler was writing about a certain attitude that some Christian vegetarians have, when presenting their values to others. Nevertheless, there are ways to speak to the attitude without dismissing or denigrating the people and what they stand against in a letter to the editor and elsewhere. (That is something priests tend to do well from the pulpit.) These are fellow Catholics he’s talking about, and labelling as heretics. By doing that, his attitude is as questionable as those he disagrees with, and he (and those who agree with him) come off sounding insensitive, uncaring and unpastoral. The ultimate red herring is writing them off, and calling attention away from massive animal suffering. And the problem with that is that it gives a certain “official” stamp of approval for other Catholics to share his view. The comment by the “reluctant penitent” highlights without any hint of remorse that the Catholic church (and Christianity in general) is the least humane of all religions. It is as if being a Catholic (or a Christian) gives one license to support animal cruelty. I hardly consider that a selling point.
Since posting this, I decided it would only be fair to email Fr. Rutler and the “reluctant penitent” directly. So I’m not saying this behind their backs. They have to option to comment here, or email me directly.
One might ask what the Bible has to say about human slavery, and why it’s acceptable for Christians to consider slavery to be morally wrong, when the Bible doesn’t. Is that heresy?
Today’s post bumped
‘When religious leaders and lawyers challenge your ethical and emotional instincts, your thinking changes’ (how ironic), and ‘You are what you grow’, by Michael Pollan (about the Farm Bill’s flaws) from the home page.
