 Use of Animals – But “not divorced
from respect for moral imperatives.”
“You should not love animals”
The Catholic Catechism continues on page 640: Use of the mineral, vegetable, and animal resources of the universe cannot be divorced from respect for moral imperatives.
What might the Church mean by “moral imperatives?” Perhaps the slaughterhouses of today, which are charnel houses of the tortured and killed animals, serving the “highly moral” society, as carcasses.
Perhaps with “moral imperatives” is meant that the animals are not killed right before the eyes of the consumer, thus avoiding his having to listen to the death cries, instead hiding these murderous procedures behind the thick walls of slaughterhouses?
Imagine that a hotel guest who orders “beef Stroganoff” would first have to look into the eyes of a young bull, wide with fear, and witness how the animal is slaughtered, butchered, cut open while still twitching, skinned, sawed and hacked apart, while the penetrating odor of blood wafts about the fine guest, until finally the appropriate pieces of carcass, well-aged, are handed to the chef for the preparation of a tasty meal.
Perhaps then the hotel guest would prefer not to have the meal, after all? This is truly respect for a justified “moral imperative!” Perhaps the guest’s aesthetic sensibility would be troubled, or he could consider such exposure contrary to all rules of decency? Perhaps not only the guest’s stomach would turn over, but “moral sensibility” might also be stirred? For this reason the “respect for moral imperatives” should rightly not be disregarded in the “use of animals” or their carcass parts.
A moral imperative might also be that the use of animals for laboratory experiments, for mass husbandry or to supply fur, or other common forms of use, exploitation and consumption should take place with as little intrusion on the weak nerves and sentimental inclinations of people as possible?
Perhaps respect for moral imperatives would also be that the vocal chords of animals, such as dogs, monkeys or pigs, be cut when they are used in laboratories and scientific experimentation rooms? Their cries, weeping, lamentations, sighs and other sounds might offend the passers-by in the street. Or the cries of the “used” animals might even irritate the keepers, laboratory assistants, doctors and other employees working for scientific progress – who surely have strong nerves and iron guts, little touched by any stirrings of conscience – if they just happen to be having a nerve-wracking day. That might happen to anybody from time to time, right?
It continues: Animals are God’s creatures. He surrounds them with his providential care. By their mere existence they bless him and give him glory. And: God entrusted animals to the stewardship of those whom he created in his own image. If this paranoid sanctimoniousness had not come from the church institution, one would have had to ask whether God did not lose sight of mankind and the animals. Who but the institutional churches would place the animals under the stewardship of humans, in the face of a senseless and uptight society that murders, kills, bestially tortures animals and cruelly butchers them.
God created man in His image, so that he would become His image again. As Jesus said: You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Mt. 5:48)
Let us continue to read in the Catholic Catechism. There it says that it is legitimate to use animals for food and clothing.
Have you ever heard a thrush sing? Its singing is beautiful. Some find that the thrush might be equal to the far more famous nightingale.
In Southern Europe traps are set and nets spread for songbirds that are considered a delicacy for gourmets. These animals are used “for food.” Therefore “it is legitimate” to catch them, kill them and eat them in good conscience. With the permission of the Church, the thrush that we see in the picture, “legitimately” died after long agony, throttled by a horsehair snare.
“What you would not have done to you, do unto no other.” Will the law of cause and effect make a big difference, depending on whether it was a person or an animal that had to suffer because of us? Our second neighbor, the animal, is also our neighbor, a fellow creature. The law of cause and effect does not look to the person; it is impersonal. Suffering is suffering, pain is pain, murder is murder, cruelty is cruelty.
And the gourmet, who savors dead little bird, does he know what it is that he has on his plate? A lethargic heart and coldness of feelings do not come out of nowhere. The person has consciously and purposefully disregarded many warning impulses before his conscience became silent.
Whoever does not aspire to fulfilling the law of God, which is love, should not make reference to the words of the Lord: Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it. (Gen. 1:28) The paranoid person often deliberately violates the law of God, going against the love for God and for neighbor.
In Genesis, the first Book of Moses, it says: And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good ... (Gen. 1:31) How can we human beings presume to step on, to torture, to kill, or to wantonly alter what God affirmed as His creation and considered good?
People are fond of quoting the words, Subdue the earth, to justify their inhumanness. Have not also the scientists and researchers long discovered that in the great cycle of giving and receiving everything is joined as one? But man doesn’t even think about giving the Earth love; instead they presume time and again to exploit the Earth for the comfort of their bodies, causing suffering to the life in and on the Earth, in the air, and in and on the waters.
The Church, of course, thinks it proper to not only use animals for food and clothing, but they may be domesticated to help man in his work and leisure. Note well: This is the Church speaking, not God.
The church institutions call themselves “Christian.” To their believers, they offer many exceptions, much that is pagan and little that is Christian. The word “Christian” is lost in the intense turning of the propeller of the state ship of pagan rituals. The crew of this ship recruits all those who are weak thinkers. The “help at man’s leisure time” includes extreme “entertainment” like dogfights, cockfights, bullfights and so forth – reaching an end with the slaughter of these creatures.
The crew of the state ship of pagan rituals, and all those who stroll the decks and enjoy themselves, has the butchered carcasses prepared in order to eat them at beautifully laid tables, using knife and fork or the hands, fingers decorated with gold and silver rings, to tear apart chickens or geese or the like, for their gourmet palates and to fill their stomach, so that the fullness of the body, the “image of God,” will be ever more expansive. If the old valuable fur coat should grow a little tight, a new one is to be had, for the benefit of the society person. The minks who will have to give up their pelts and their lives, in the meantime are still suffering in the cramped cages of the “fur farm.”
The Churches surely meant by “domestication,” the beating and hitting of animals, breaking their will in order to place them at the service of man in his leisure time, so that they may be kept like spineless animal-slaves and be put to work. This is church instruction, but not divine will. Jesus did not speak of this!
We continue to read: Medical and scientific experimentation on animals, if it remains within reasonable limits, is a morally acceptable practice since it contributes to caring for or saving human lives.
We must ask, what does that mean, “within reasonable limits?” and what is “morally acceptable?”
Is it “morally acceptable” to torment animals, to kill them in order to heal and save human life? God gave us human beings healing plants and minerals that help and heal. For food he gave us the fruits of the fields and of the forest. The true God gave us no commandment that says: Kill your fellow creatures and eat their carcasses. Or: Torture them in bestial ways by using them for your experiments in order to help and heal each other. – Whoever orients himself by the words of the church officials is against God.
Further we read: It is contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly. This is in crass contradiction to what was said before, that medical and scientific animal experiments are “morally acceptable” if they are held “within reasonable limits since it contributes to caring for or saving human lives.” Every animal experiment has animals suffer and be killed. To “use animals for food and clothing” is to have animals suffer and be killed.
Aside from this, so it continues in the Catholic Catechism: It is likewise unworthy to spend money on them (the animals) that should as a priority go to the relief of human misery. The concern with “human misery” is apparent from these words. Whether with regard to this, the representatives of the Churches would start using their immeasurable wealth for the benefit of the poorest of the poor? And where was the concern for human misery when the Church more or less condoned the war in Bosnia? Consider also the cost of the medical machines that are necessary to conduct animal experiments, and not least, the high salaries of those who also count on church opinion that animal experiments are permissible within reasonable limits in order to heal and to save human life. Is this worthy? Since God, the Eternal, did not speak of such things, those who support justice and love, also toward animals, and who thus turn to God, should make a clear decision concerning their relationship to the Church, for one cannot serve two masters.
There is another blasphemy in the Catechism. In it, we read about the respect for the integrity of creation: One can love animals, one should not direct to them the affection due only to persons. (No. 2418) Did God command this? Dear reader, do you have the sense that you are committing a sin if you feel love in your heart for your pet – when you do not just like them superficially, but love them? When you care that the animal is well; when you are glad that the animal is happy to see you; when you like doing something for your animal brother or sister; when you understand the animal, and when the animal knows how you feel and acts accordingly – why should this be wrong? Dear brother, dear sister, you can see and know well only with the heart. God gave us no command that says: You may like animals, but you should not love them; love is reserved for human beings.
The Protestant Lutheran Church of Germany states in its pronouncement “Zur Verantwortung des Menschen für das Tier als Mitgeschöpf, 1991” [On the Responsibility of Human Beings for the Animal as a Fellow Creature]: Love for animals and love for people may come into conflict with each other. (p. 6) And in a “Pastoral Letter of the German Bishops” (Zukunft der Schöpfung – Zukunft der Menschheit, 1980 [The Future of Creation – the Future of Mankind]) – and these are Catholic bishops – it says: In contrast to man as a person, plants and animals have no inviolable individual right to life …We human beings have the right to make use of the work and life of animals. Now there follows a limitation: But responsibility cannot be accepted if animals, who are beings that feel, are tortured and killed without serious reasons, for example, merely for entertainment or the production of luxury goods. – But where is this followed up in the deed?
People have many excuses and they marshal “serious reasons” slyly and eloquently, if their own advantage is at stake. And who answers for the injustice that is done to animals? All those, who commit the injustice, but also all those who know about it and remain silent, as well as those who admonish against it, but do not themselves keep to what they say. And all those who have been the major cause for the loss of a living conscience in so many people.
How far things may go, if ethics and morals are kept at a traditionally low level and the conscience of many is deadened is shown by the following information taken from the Schwäbische Zeitung, Mar. 12, 1991 [Swabian Newspaper]). These are examples of Spanish cruelty to animals that are maintained as part of “tradition” and which are often witnessed with indifference by local Catholic clergy or police.
Here we find an example of death by stoning, although committed on an animal: Donkey Riding in V.: On the last day of Carnival, the oldest and weakest donkey is taken from the stable. The heaviest inhabitant of the village will ride the donkey, until the animal collapses from exhaustion. Then it will be stoned and beaten to death.
In C. bulls are driven through the alleys. Hundreds of people, lining the sides of the alleys, beat and kick the animal, and use long iron hooks to tear open deep wounds. The bull may be driven through the alleys for up to eight hours, after which it is finally released from suffering by death.
In G. the custom is similar: Festival guests aim a blow gun at a bull that is being driven onto the village square. Colorfully decorated steel arrows are driven into the bull’s body, the head, the eyes. When the animal is weakened by the loss of blood, men with pocket knives “dare” to approach the animal.
T.: Young bulls are chased by men with long lances who try to pierce the animal sideways.
C. in the province of G.: Oil-filled containers are tied to the neck and horns of bulls and lit with a torch. The burning animals, out of their minds with the pain, are driven to the market square where men are waiting to finally kill the animals with daggers and scissors.
What about the question of who will have to answer for all this? Certainly not only those who take part in the macabre and downright perverse form of entertainment. Here, man is “more bestial than any beast.”
I repeat: God, the Eternal, has no law among His eternal laws that says: “Like animals, but do not love them.” God is love. From His law of love He created the animals, which He loves because He is love. This term to “like” corresponds to church morals which cannot be particularly high, because if the church leaders and their followers would at least only like the animals, animal-cannibalism would be ended.
The Church says: One should not direct to animals the affection due only to persons. If we compare the colossal riches of the Churches to the poverty in Third World countries, we get a sense of how great the church clergy’s affection due to people is. What did Jesus say to this? It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. (Mt. 19:24) According to this statement, neither the church leaders nor their power apparatus, the Church, will enter the Kingdom of God. The church officials and their state church must first become thin, very thin to fit through the eye of a needle.
The Catholic Catechism continues on page 650, No. 2456: The domination granted by the Creator over the mineral, vegetable, and animal resources of the universe … This is an outrageous presumption on the part of church officials, considering how Earth and the nature kingdoms must suffer under the bestial exploitation of society.
The words just quoted are supplemented by the following, ethically challenging statement: The domination granted by the Creator over the mineral, vegetable, and animal resources of the universe cannot be separated from respect for moral obligations, including those toward generations to come.
What are these “moral obligations”? Obligations toward generations to come are named. Does this mean that mankind may exploit and ruin nature – but not so radically that future generations have no food to eat, no water to drink, no air to breathe?
But thanks to the inventiveness of scientists now people no longer need to restrain themselves in this respect, for everything will be new anyway, so we read and hear. The dilemma – every dilemma, that is – can be solved by virtue of the marvelous accomplishments of genetic engineering! And so, mankind may continue unperturbed, exploiting and draining Mother Earth, letting her dry up, poisoning nature, torturing, infecting, murdering. Genetic engineering will allow life to continue on Earth, even better than before, or so they say. But perhaps it will be precisely through genetic engineering that mankind will reap what it has sown.
No. 2457 continues: Animals are entrusted to man’s stewardship; he must show them kindness. They may be used to serve the just satisfaction of man’s needs. How can an animal even serve man, if man respects neither animal, plant, nor mineral? Human beings in their arrogant egoism have cut down everything that they have laid hands on.
At some point – according to the immutable law of cause and effect – mankind will feel the whip it has braided for itself, its fate. This will continue to hit human beings so long, until they have again found their way back to the cosmic laws of love for God and for our neighbor and have thus again become the image of God.
to the next chapter
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