Contra Catholic vegetarians

Rod,

I've spent a lot of time pondering vegetarianism over the past months. My wife switched to a vegan diet last summer; specifically, a raw foods diet. She's not necessarily fanatical, but 95% or more of the food she's eaten since has been raw. She's lost 50 pounds in a very healthy way, and has never had more energy or strength. She's also, though, experienced what can only be called a serious detox, as the accumulated residue of a reasonably healthy but also typically American, meat and dairy heavy diet over 40 years cleaned out of her system.

I decided to switch to a vegetarian, cooked and raw, diet myself a few weeks before Lent. I had some meat on Pascha, and the occasional dairy product, but I haven't really missed meat and feel no desire to eat it now. Particularly since I wouldn't be sharing it with my wife.

What I wonder is if, because of the vast amount of known and unknown toxic elements in our environment - toxins that our meat and dairy eating predecessors did not have to reckon with, it is not an appropriate and healthy choice to eat vegetarian. On an ethical level, it has lighter impact on the natural world and on livestock. It is also a concrete sacrifice we can make in our individual lives as a kind of compensation for all the areas in which we can't help but support the modern commercial culture despite our reservations. And on a health level, it is one way in which we can in one fell swoop remove a range of vectors that can potentially be feeding toxins in to our system.

Anyway, that's the direction my own thoughts have gone. I'm certainly not planning on deriding eating meat as evil. At the same time, I had the uncomfortable experience of seeing some of my own ugly predispositions when my wife made her switch to vegetarianism. I sometimes mistook the strength of her own convictions as an attack on mine, which wasn't appropriate.

IOW, sometimes it seems that discussions of vegetarianism in general could benefit from less heat and more light.

Christ is Risen!
Doug

Wow -- you've made my day! "the quiet sigh of the cauliflower". You're killing me!

I'll say this: I was a vegetarian for a year, purely as an experiment. Made me see vegetarian arguments in a whole new light, because I had no personal involvement in the issue at that point.

You've never heard the cries of the carrots.

"Were we to confine our diet to creatures that lacked sense and do not even respond to light, we could only eat liturgists and liberal Democrats." The Rev. George W. Rutler

I have a new hero.

This particular brand of vegetarianism, taken not as an ethic of care but as an absolute, is not original--just utilitarian, like most of the other thoughts emanating from our culture lately.

Frankly--are we absolutely certain that that plant life possesses no sensory response *whatsoever* to feeling pain. Even so, there are plenty of carnivores in the animal kingdom.

Rod,

I don't think he has no use for vegetarians, rather those who try to throw the weight of Christian theology behind their veggie convictions, after all, his Tradition includes abstaining from meats from time to time as well as vegetarian monastic orders.

Aaron is right, here.

The person who abstains from meat for religious, cultural, or health reasons obviously isn't particularly bothered by the carnivorous appetites of others, after all. It's the neo-Prohibitionism of the kind of vegetarianism that sees the eating of animal flesh as sinful that Fr. Rutler decries so absolutely deliciously here; like the first Prohibitionists who thought alcohol was sin and ought to be outlawed, the new version isn't content with following their own chosen menu but ultimately wants to alter everyone else's dinner plans, too.

And Fr. Rutler is writing to Catholics, who ought to know better. We've never been herbivores or teetotalers, and any argument that we should have been either all along is going to be met with the same kind of dismissive correction--though never, I suspect, so well-worded as this letter.

Genesis 1:26-31 supports vegetarianism: specifically, in verse 29 God gives man for food "every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it." He does not give man the animals for food. Thus, as the rabbis recognized, "in the beginning" God's plan was for man to eat a plant-based diet. True, after the flood, God does permit man to eat animals. (See Genesis 9.) However, under the Old Testament, the eating of animals is only permitted subject to the restrictions of the kosher laws. By contrast, a vegetarian diet has always been a kosher diet.

How does the New Testament change things? Perhaps the eating of animals is like divorce: permitted under the Old Testament due to the hardness of men's hearts (and perhaps physical circumstances as well), but subject to restrictions, whereas under the New Testament man has the grace (and increasingly the right physical circumstances) to live what was God's plan from "the beginning."

If Jesus came not to abolish but to fulfill the Old Testament (Matthew 5:17), and if, as He said, not one jot or tittle of the law will pass away before it is fulfilled (Matthew 5:18), then how does the unrestricted eating of meat, which was prohibited by the kosher laws and is against God's plan for man "in the beginning" in Genesis (Gen 1:29) fulfill the law?

As for the citations by Father Rutler to Mark and Acts, they are inapt for several reasons. The issue Mark is treating in Chapter 7 of his gospel is not meat-eating but ritual handwashing. Jesus certainly did not mean to promote unrestricted meat-eating; how could He, since as an observant Jew he himself observed the meat-restricting kosher laws and taught his followers to follow the law (cf. Matthew 23:3)? As for Acts 10, the most relevant interpretation is the one given by St. Peter himself, who dreamed the dream. Upon reflection, he saw that, in context, it meant that he should not "call any man impure or unclean" despite the fact that "it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him." See Acts 10-27-28.

Jesus and his disciples ate meat from animals, as have most of the saints (with notable exceptions, such as St. Clement of Alexandria, St. Basil the Great, and St. John Chrysostom if various Internet sources are to be believed). Moreover, the Church has never condemned the eating of meat from animals, although it is interesting to note that even as the recent Catechism of the Catholic Church states that it is permissible to use animals for food it also states that "it is contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly." CCC 2418. Therefore, an argument that it is wrong at all times and places to eat meat from animals cannot be supported by the Christian tradition.

Nevertheless, perhaps there is an evolution taking place in moral consciousness, even as physical circumstances make it easier to eat well without resorting to the killing of animals. The Catechism of the Catholic Church now recognizes that it is wrong to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly, and this begs the question whether, nowadays, it is truly necessary. Many studies show many health benefits and environmental benefits to a vegetarian diet, and exposes of modern factory farming methods have revealed treatment of animals that has shocked the consciences of many. Once a necessary evil is no longer necessary, what is it? Is that instinct we have in us not to kill, to recoil from death and slaughter, and to show mercy even upon the most vulnerable animals -- is that a good and noble instinct in us, to be cultivated by an opening of the heart, or a base one, to be overcome by a hardening of it?

"The Catechism of the Catholic Church now recognizes that it is wrong to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly, and this begs the question whether, nowadays, it is truly necessary."

Oh, it is still truly necessary. Yes it is.

"The Catechism of the Catholic Church now recognizes that it is wrong to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly, and this begs the question whether, nowadays, it is truly necessary."

meh: "Oh, it is still truly necessary. Yes it is."

Is it?

Aaron-

I will try to contact the farmer who made that claim in a talk he gave to my co-op members a few years back.

elizabeth

Of course environmental toxins (not to mention disease organisms) can get into or onto plant food. (I'm thinking tainted strawberries or some such not so long ago.) You can breathe in toxins and diseases too. So, we're to stop breathing?

Because of our biochemistry, being a vegan, the latest rage among my youngest daughter's (23) friends, is not a healthy choice unless you take supplements. Human beings MUST HAVE vitamin B12, which cannot be found in plant food. Vegans get around this by either taking supplements or letting yeast manufacture the stuff for them and then eating it that way. Vegetarians who are willing to "compromise" on milk and eggs are not at risk here.

An analysis of our digestive system and tooth structure reveals that we are meant to be omnivores, including meat. However, there are as many ways to eat an unhealthy diet as there are people doing it, and "feasting" daily on Philly cheese steak (a heart attack on a plate) is as unhealthy as not getting enough protein.

For me, anything Jesus was willing to do is OK, so if he ate lamb, I don't see the imperative not to do so. (Also, wine, as in a previous thread.) Apparently the Jews in Jesus' day also kept chickens, and presumably didn't build old-chicken homes for them. :)

Hassles like the one on this thread seem to bring out the "everything not forbidden is mandatory" thread in some people. It's OK to eat meat, not required. Suit yourself. And let other people suit themselves.

Jesus did make it clear that loving our neighbor, caring for the helpless, and being willing to die for our friends, are not optional. Perhaps that would be a better focus for our energies.

Meat eating after the flood would have been pretty much neccessary because all the vetgetation would have been covered in mud.

I should have quoted more from kiernesq to make the meaning of that sentence clear. I don't think animals should suffer and die needlessly, I just think they should die so we can eat meat. Kiernesq questions if we still need to eat meat, thus do animals have to die for that reason. I say we still have to eat meat.

Of course with the advances in genetic engineering, the idea of vat-grown meat w/o a central nervous system would result in "cruelty-free" meat protein... This discussion may be moot then

And of course, by attacking vegetarians, he's also attacking monastic orders such as the Trappists.

Not to mention monastics in the Eastern Orthodox fold.

God is a gory meat-eating and blood stained entity.

Drenched in blood is he. Smiting this one and that. Through his bloody armies, raping, pillaging and conquering the unborn as well as their mothers and humanity.

Crunchy Con likes it that way.

You prefer vegetables? No blood on the plate or in the pan or skillet?

There must be proof of blood somewhere to be one of the popular political legion. Just don't think that it's holy.

Many of them are fortified with B-12 (I get 30% of my daily requirement just from the orange juice I drink).

My point exactly. You have to get it from artificial supplements, because this essential nutrient (are vitamins nutrients? essential anyway) is not found in your diet.

I don't want to bore people with Biblical Hebrew, but ketonet or(ayin-vav-resh) could mean garments of skin or garments like skin. It does not simply mean leather. Or means skin. By the way, it is probably a by-form of the verb ara (ayin-resh-he) which means to expose or uncover oneself. It is a form of word-play common in Biblical Hebrew. Cain's minha is simply peri hadama, while Abel's is mibehorot tzono and mehelvehem. In other words, Cain's offering was not from the best that he had, while Abel's was. Obviously God can do what he wants with animals. That doesn't mean mankind can. Finally, Genesis 9:2 mentions the words mora and hit. Maybe something like fear and terror. Much depends on the meaning and context that one gives these words. Different traditions, of course, read these texts differently. As for the fruit which Adam and Eve eat, they could only eat vegetation and so could hardly have been tempted with meat. Since the nahash tempts Eve in Genesis 9:1 with a form of wordplay using the BH negation lo and min ( prep.) which lead to ambiguity when used together in BH, she could only be tempted from what God had made possible. If all this bores people, I apologize. I simply spend a lot of my free time reading sacred texts in the original languages and seldom have occasion to use it. I'm not a scholar and would always find disagreement and elucidation an aid in my study.

I certainly am. Take care.

Dish of the Day
http://tinyurl.com/3rn2tk

Rod, you do a book review in the April 21, 2008 issue of The American Conservative?!

The Conscience of a Carnivore
By Rod Dreher:
Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds About Animals and Food by Gene Baur

I am surprised that Father George W. Rutler (and apparently this website) would find it amusing to compare the suffering of slaughtered animals to that of mashed vegetables. Plants do not have nervous systems like we do - and we are animals.

I am seriously interested in converting to Catholicism from Protestantism (Presbyterian), but this guy makes The International Society for Krishna Consciousness look like a better choice. (really)

I will give Catholicism another chance, but as a person searching for a religion with more compassion for other animal species, I am deeply disappointed.

"What is it about only eating vegetables that makes people think they are morally superior? Just wondering."

Wow, the milk of human kindness really runs through some of you people, certainly the author. God did not condone eating meat until after the flood, when all the vegetation was destroyed. Ooops! Here I go being "morally superior" again. Oh, forget the animals, they can just sit in their own excrement, get dragged to slaughter with broken legs due to malnutrition and overmilking and watch their calves be dragged away in front of their eyes and shot. Behind every poultry farm their are dumpsters filled with live male chicks, 280 million a year are thrown away or suffocated in garbage bags. 90 percent of all pigs have pneumonia due to inhaling fumes and dust. Millions of breeding sows cannot even turn around in their iron maidens and often break their legs trying to escape. They are sometimes even strapped to the floor to nurse thier young.

Why don't you educate yourself on the issues instead of making knee-jerk statements. This was one of the most childish, smug and mean spirited little diatribes I think I have ever read. It is sickening enough when coming from some corporate shill for he meat industry, but to see it on a religious site with half the sheeple nodding in agreement, well that's really disturbing. What is your idea of "morality"? Evidently it doesn't include being kind to the weak, the helpless, the suffering, the friendless and the voiceless. How about "With all thy getting, get thee understanding." I used to be Catholic myself until the hypocrisy finally got to me. Nice to see nothing has changed. Still congratulating yourselves on 2,000 years of tradition unhampered by progress.

"According to a recent article in US News & World Report, some 40 billion pounds a year of slaughterhouse wastes (blood, bone and viscera) plus the remains of millions of euthanized cats and dogs from veterinarians and shelters, are rendered annually into livestock feed. Feed manufacturers and farmers also have begun using or trying out dehydrated food garbage, fats from restaurant fryers and grease traps, cement-kiln dust, newspapers, cardboard and sawdust. Researchers have also experimented with cattle, hog
and human sewage. When they are fed grain, it is often corn which they cannot digest and which ulcerates their stomachs, adding even more antibiotics to the drugs, hormones and pesticides they already ingest. Animals being transported from farms to stock yards
and slaughter houses may freeze to the walls or the floor or die of heat and suffocation in unventilated trucks. They may legally be deprived of water for up to 36 hours while being transported. Animals too weak to walk on or off a live stock transport are fork lifted or dragged by chains to slaughter. Even the minimal
standards that exist are routinely broken while whistle blowers are
reprimanded or fired. Slaughter house atrocities documented by undercover workers include: shoving and slamming animals against walls and floors who have been stunned and paralyzed from the neck down before slaughter; poking out eyes; sending still conscious animals through the meat processing to be dismembered alive and lowering still conscious animals into boiling in vats to process their hides. In 1930 the average dairy cow produced about 12 pounds (1 1/2 gal) of milk per day. By 1988, the average was 39 pounds per day. This was accomplished by aggressive practices such as drugs, forced feeding and selective breeding to obtain dairy cows that produced a lot of pituitary hormones. Today, synthetic Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH, produced by Monsanto) is used to bring the average up to 50 pounds (over 6 gal) of milk per day. Factory farmed cattle live out their bleak lives in stalls or mud feed lots in unnaturally large herds constantly being impregnated by artificial insemination. This abuse of already stressed, drugged, improperly fed, nutrient deprived, over-milked cows naturally encourages illness and
infection; particularly of the udders. No wonder so many collapse even before they are slaughtered (at about 42 months, as opposed to the normal life expectency of 12 years for grass fed cattle). Naturally, all of these substances as well as pus from infection are passed on to the consumer of dairy products.

Other than veal (whose popularity has declined due to successful ad
campaigns) the dairy industry has no use for male calves who are dragged away from their distraught mothers shortly after birth. Domentation of the many abuses on dairy farms include: male calves barely old enough to stand being dragged in chains to slaughter and male calves being thrown into pits and shot. Around 25% of male calves are chained inside a wooden crate for sixteen weeks to produce veal. These calves are purposely deprived of iron and kept in the dark. They suffer from constant diarrhea and lie in their own
excrement, unable to walk or stand.

Approximately one third of the earth's land surface is used to graze or grow feed for livestock including 70% of former Amazon rain forests burned or cut down for pasture. A report released on November 19, 2006 by the United Nations (FAO) called Live Stock's Long
Shadow determined that raising animals for food generates about 40% more greenhouse gas emissions than all the cars, trucks, ships and planes in the world combined. 67% of U.S. grain in this country is used to feed livestock and 70% of Africa's grain is shipped to Europe to feed livestock. Farm animals consume one half of the earth's water supply."

I have provided all kinds of grain and all kinds of fruit for you to eat, for the wild animals I have provided grass and leafy plants.
Genesis 1:29

Not only will the world be at peace when Christ rules on earth Isaiah 2:1-5, but wild animals and deadly poisonous snakes will be transformed harmless. Isaiah 11:6-9

If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who deal likewise with their fellow men. St. Francis of Assisi

Not to hurt our humble brethren is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough. We have a higher mission to be of service to them whenever they require it. St. Francis of Assisi

True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when it's recipient has no power. Humanity's true moral test, it's fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view) consists of it's attitude towards those who are at it's mercy: animals. In this respect human kind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it. Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, 1984

He who experiences the unity of life sees his own Self in all beings, and all beings in his own Self, and looks on everything with an impartial eye. Buddha

The eating of meat extinguishes the great seed of compassion. Buddha

We've begun a group over on Catholic Answers for Catholic vegetarians and vegans and anyone who has questions about why this would resonate with faith... all are welcome!