Animals Are People Too

 

I remember as a young boy crying while watching Bambi. When the protagonist fawn, after whom the Disney movie is named, lost his mother when she got shot by a hunter, the tears came rolling down my cheeks. We, in (what used to be) the Christian West, have a high enough standard of living that we love animals to excess. Cars drive around with Save The Baby Seals bumper stickers, almost every home (mine included) has one or more pets (usually dogs and cats), and they are treated as family. Some married couples forego having children to become "mommy" and "daddy" to house pets which are given saints names (I know a doctor who named his cat "Richard"). There have been pets that have received large sums of money when their owner died, and they continue to live in the house; there is a special administrator set up to disburse the money for the upkeep of both the house and animal until the pet dies, and then the house may be sold. There are pets who get lavish toys and gifts in the hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

Let me state right from the outset that I am an animal lover who owns pets. I love and care for them, as any decent person should do. Loving and caring for animals is a great testament to human empathy and kindness, and people can be rightly proud of having such traits. However, there are people who sin by excess or deficiency in regard to the status of animals. They claim that animals and humans are moral equals. This absurd proposition is maintained in one of two ways. First, there are those who exalt animals to the status of human beings.  They claim animals have souls even as we do. There are even two movies, All Dogs Go To Heaven (1989), and All Dogs Go To Heaven 2 (1996), that give popular appeal to the idea for children. This idea is also featured in the adult movie, What Dreams May Come (1998) starring the late Robin Williams (d. 2014). 

Second, there are those who lower human beings to the status of being "just another animal." Human beings are no more than another primate, more highly evolved perhaps, but not exceptional or entitled to more consideration than dogs, cats, pigs and fish. Humans, like all other animals, have no rational soul that survives death (so they claim) and have no right to dominate other animals. This view is that of the lunatic fringe PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) and ALF (Animal Liberation Front) who have no problem with using violent terrorist tactics to "liberate" animals from medical experimentation, etc. 

Both views of animals are contrary to the teaching of the One True Church, and the consequences for humanity are staggering. If humans are just another animal, not created in the image and likeness of God, or if animals also possess a rational soul in the image and likeness of God, it will impact the morality of:

• eating meat
• hunting
• zoos
• medical research
• abortion and euthanasia

In this post the wrong views regarding animals will be explored, and the teaching of the Church explained.

All Animals Are Equal

In June of 2007, University of California research ophthalmologist, Dr. Arthur Rosenbaum discovered a firebomb that had been planted under his car. Luckily, it failed to work and the doctor was fine. His colleague, neuropharmacologist Dr. Edythe London, was less fortunate. A garden hose was shoved into a broken window of her Beverly Hills home, flooding it, and causing thousands of dollars in damage. Four months later, a Molotov cocktail (i.e., explosive device) detonated on her doorstep, scorching her entryway but failing to burn down the house. Why would two academics be targeted as if they were guilty of war crimes? What did thy do? Drs. Rosenbaum and London were researching a cure for blindness and drug addiction, respectively. What made these laudatory endeavors "evil," and the doctors "worthy of  death" was that they were experimenting on monkeys.

They were targeted by three groups: Animal Liberation Front (ALF), the Animal Liberation Brigade (ALB), and the UCLA Primate Freedom Project (UCLA-PFP). (See newsweek.com/animal-activists-vs-ucla-94047).  These terrorists use violence (and the threat thereof) to try and scare the best and brightest researchers away from their profession in order to "liberate" the animals on which they experiment. Dr. Rosenbaum's wife actually received a package containing animal fur and razor blades and promising "what he does to the animals we will do to you." It was sent by ALF. These groups are mostly atheists and agnostics who deny that humans occupy a special position in creation. As George Orwell wrote in his famous book Animal Farm, "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others." So-called animal liberators deny the second part of that; to them "all animals are equal," and humans are just another animal. 

Animal Welfare v. Animal Liberation

How did we get to the point of thinking that people are not only equal to primates but even to fish and birds? The answer lies in Vatican II and the evil sect it created. They do nothing to counteract Neo-Darwinian evolution, and Bergoglio states, "Atheists can go to Heaven." When people are seen as "just another animal," thugs like ALF can justify killing a medical researcher to "liberate" some monkeys. The noble goal of animal welfare degenerated into animal rights. Animal welfare is the term given to those people who run animal shelters so animals can be treated humanely and given homes with caring owners. They also have free neutering services and do all then can to prevent (and raise awareness of) animal cruelty. All of this is good and serves to benefit society.

Animal rights activists think animals are entitled to the same rights as humans, and deny that people have the right to use animals to further any human purpose, no matter how beneficial. There is even an invented word to add to the list of discriminatory actions: besides sexism, racism, and ageism, we now have "speciesism," which is a form of alleged discrimination, wherein people treat animals as having less worth and is just as morally odious as racism. The term was coined in 1970 by a British psychologist, Dr. Richard Ryder. He recalls how he came up with the term 35 years after the event:

The word speciesism came to me while I was lying in a bath in Oxford some 35 years ago. It was like racism or sexism - a prejudice based upon morally irrelevant physical differences. Since Darwin we have known we are human animals related to all the other animals through evolution; how, then, can we justify our almost total oppression of all the other species? All animal species can suffer pain and distress. Animals scream and writhe like us; their nervous systems are similar and contain the same biochemicals that we know are associated with the experience of pain in ourselves.

Our concern for the pain and distress of others should be extended to any "painient" - pain-feeling - being regardless of his or her sex, class, race, religion, nationality or species. Indeed, if aliens from outer space turn out to be painient, or if we ever manufacture machines who are painient, then we must widen the moral circle to include them. Painience is the only convincing basis for attributing rights or, indeed, interests to others...Pain is the one and only true evil. What, then, about the masochist? The answer is that pain gives him pleasure that is greater than his pain! (See https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/aug/06/animalwelfare). 

Meet the Maniacal "Father of Animal Rights"

Peter Singer (b.1946), is a philosopher and currently a Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. In 1975, his book Animal Liberation, was groundbreaking. The "animal rights movement" was virtually non-existent. Within 25 years of his book's publication, animal rights/liberation had taken off and reached tremendous size, visibility, and influence. They now "rescue" farm animals, hamper medical research, declare vegetarianism as a moral imperative, sue to have animals granted legal standing as litigants in lawsuits, and have engaged in illegal acts of criminal terrorism "for the animals." 

Singer's short bio runs thus:

Peter Singer was born in 1946, Melbourne, Australia, to an Austrian Jewish family that emigrated from Austria to escape persecution by the Nazis. He studied law, history and philosophy at the University of Melbourne, and majored in philosophy. He later did a B.Phil at Oxford University, where he associated with a vegetarian student group and became a vegetarian himself. Around this time he wrote Animal Liberation (1975), which has been called the “bible” of the animal liberation movement. ..Singer is best known for his views on animal ethics. In his book Animal Liberation he popularized the term speciesism, which he defines as “a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of other species."  He argues for the equal consideration of human and non-human animal interests because animals have the capacity for suffering and enjoyment. (See utilitarianism.net/utilitarian-thinker/peter-singer). 

His philosophy is anti-Christian and perverse. Singer writes, "Once we admit that Darwin was right when he argued that human ethics evolved from the social instincts that we inherited from our non-human ancestors, we can put aside the hypothesis of a divine origin for ethics." (See Ethics, [1994], pg. 6; Emphasis mine). His principle reason for rejecting the Christian God is the existence of suffering in the world. In particular, he dismisses the idea that mankind is distinct from other animals by being made in the image and likeness of God. This leads him to the utilitarian principle of  "The greatest happiness for the greatest number," which undergirds so much modern political thought. Pleasure becomes the greatest good; suffering and pain the only evils. 

Singer distinguishes human beings in the biological sense from persons, who are rational and self conscious beings. He has no basis for seeing human beings in a different category from other animals. In general, humans have more intelligence and greater self-awareness, but some humans lack these faculties. In the newborn they are undeveloped; in the severely brain damaged they are lost; and in the dementia patients they are fading day by day. They are humans, but not persons. Some adult animals, however, are remarkably intelligent. They are persons, though not human.(See Singer, How are We to Live?, [1993], pg. 191). 

Speciesism asserts that humans are superior to other animals. Such discrimination, in Singer's view, is indefensible. His philosophy not only rules out all cruelty to self-conscious, sentient beings, which includes adult mammals, but also rules out their killing. Fur coats and leather shoes cannot then be justified, and neither, in general, can eating meat. If animal experimentation can ever be justified, then it must be equally justifiable to perform such experiments on severely mentally-retarded human adults, or normal infants who are not aware of what is being done to them. (See Singer, Practical Ethics,[1993] pgs. 59ff). 

Singer also teaches the following:

•  Infanticide within the first month of  a child's life can be morally justified. Here Singer introduces his ethic of replaceability. A child may not be wanted for various reasons, such as timing, gender or congenital disease. The decision-making process can be profoundly influenced if the death of an unwanted child subsequently allows the parents the freedom to have a wanted child who would replace it.

• Without consciousness, life has no value. In cases of brain damage making it impossible for the patient to express a preference, involuntary euthanasia should be practiced

• An individual's desire to die should be respected. Hence, it is ethical for a doctor to assist a suicide in fulfilling the patient's considered preference.

• Sex between animals and people (beastiality) should be regarded as healthy and normal. 

(See Singer, Rethinking Life and Death, [1994], pgs. 190-198; See also Singer, Heavy Petting, prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/heavypetting; WARNING! THIS ARTICLE BY SINGER IS SO VILE, SICK, AND FULL OF VULGARITY, I CAUTION AGAINST READING IT; HIGHLY DISTURBING). 

Animal Rights Activists in Their Own Words

"Owning animals is the equivalent of slavery." Hope Bohanec, In Defense of Animals.

"I'm not only uninterested in having children. I am opposed to having children. Having a purebred human baby is like having a purebred dog; it is nothing but vanity, human vanity." Ingrid Newkirk, PETA's founder and president, New Yorker magazine, April 23, 2003.

"Our goal is to make [the public think of] breeding [dogs and cats] like drunk driving and smoking." Kim Sturla, former director of the Peninsula Humane Society and Western Director of Fund for Animals, stated during Kill the Crisis, not the Animals campaign and workshops, 1991. 

"Six million people died in concentration camps, but six billion broiler chickens will die this year in slaughterhouses." Ingrid Newkirk, founder, president and former national director, PETA, as quoted in Chip Brown, "She's A Portrait of Zealotry in Plastic Shoes," Washington Post, November 13, 1983, p. B10.

"Sometimes I think the only effective method of destroying speciesism would be for each uncaring human to be forced to live the life of a cow on a feedlot, or a monkey in a laboratory, or an elephant in the circus, or a bull in a rodeo, or a mink on a fur farm. Then people would be awakened from their soporific states and finally understand the horror that is inflicted on the animal kingdom by the vilest species to ever roam this planet: the human animal! Deep down, I truly hope that oppression, torture and murder return to each uncaring human tenfold! I hope that fathers accidentally shoot their sons on hunting excursions, while carnivores suffer heart attacks that kill them slowly.

"Every woman ensconced in fur should endure a rape so vicious that it scars them forever. While every man entrenched in fur should suffer an anal raping so horrific that they become disemboweled. Every rodeo cowboy and matador should be gored to death, while circus abusers are trampled by elephants and mauled by tigers. And, lastly, may irony shine its esoteric head in the form of animal researchers catching debilitating diseases and painfully withering away because research dollars that could have been used to treat them was wasted on the barbaric, unscientific practice vivisection." Gary Yourofsky, PETA Humane (sic) Education Lecturer, quoted in the University of Southern Indiana Student Newspaper, The Shield, January 24, 2008; Emphasis mine. 

Interestingly, Yourofsky and his ilk, while condemning the "human animal" for eating meat and being "murderers," do not apply the same standard to lions who kill and eat antelopes. Why aren't lions executed for the "murder" of the antelope? Perhaps Orwell was right--in a way he never conceived---"All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others." For those so concerned with "all life," you'll never see one of these buffoons protesting at an abortion clinic either. 

The Opposite Error: Animals Have Rational Souls

There are those who also reach false conclusions by ascribing to brute beasts (animals) a rational soul. It is true that animals have souls; but not rational souls that are immortal. It is Catholic dogma (defined at the Council of Vienne) that human beings have a rational soul:

Furthermore, with the approval of the above mentioned sacred council we reprove as erroneous and inimical to the Catholic faith every doctrine or position rashly asserting or turning to doubt that the substance of the rational or intellective soul truly and in itself is not a form of the human body, defining, so that the truth of sincere faith may be known to all, and the approach to all errors may be cut off, lest they steal in upon us, that whoever shall obstinately presume in turn to assert, define, or hold that the rational or intellective soul is not the form of the human body in itself and essentially must be regarded as a heretic.

The Universal and Ordinary Magisterium has always denied rational souls to plants and animals. The three "types" of souls were given their classic formulation by the Angelic Doctor:

St. Thomas Aquinas’s anthropology of the soul accounts for three divisions of the soul: the Vegetative, the Sensitive (or sentient), and the Rational. Plants have only a vegetative soul---the power that allows for vital basics such as nourishment, growth, and reproduction. The sentient soul is inherent in all animals, it encompasses sensation, perception, and movement. The rational soul is specific to human beings only, and is the soul which is responsible for reason and thinking. Human beings possess all three kinds of souls, animals possess both the sentient and vegetative souls, and plants only have the vegetative. 

The lowest of the operations of the soul is that which is performed by a corporeal organ, and by virtue of a corporeal quality. Yet this transcends the operation of the corporeal nature; because the movements of bodies are caused by an extrinsic principle, while these operations are from an intrinsic principle; for this is common to all the operations of the soul, since very animate thing, in some way, moves itself. Such is the operation of the ‘vegetative soul.'” (Summa Theologica, Q. 78, Art. 1).

There is another operation of the soul, which is indeed performed through a corporeal organ, but not through a corporeal quality, and this is the operation of the "sentient soul." (Ibid, Q. 78, Art. 1).

There exists, therefore, an operation of the soul which so far exceeds the corporeal nature that it is not even performed by any corporeal organ; and such is the operation of the "rational soul." (Ibid, Q. 78, Art. 1). 

Ironically, the same false pope, whose sect gives rise to animal rights, simultaneously gives rise to the heresy of animals with rational souls. While doing nothing to combat Neo-Darwinian evolution, the sect also idolizes nature--including animals--giving them undue importance. Bergoglio, is a naturalist with some occasional Catholic terminology thrown in. It's not surprising in his so-called encyclical, he teaches animals can go to Heaven (he wouldn't want anything, let alone anybody left out):

Eternal life will be a shared experience of awe, in which each creature, resplendently transfigured, will take its rightful place and have something to give those poor men and women who will have been liberated once and for all...(Laudato Si--2015). 

Montini (Paul VI) had this to say to a boy who had lost his pet dog:  “One day we will again see our animals in the eternity of Christ." (See https://www.cnn.com/2014/12/12/world/pope-francis-animals-heaven/index.html). Both false popes give the impression of "animals sharing in the Beatific Vision." If animals received the Beatific Vision, they would be moral equivalents of humans, and all the things that animal rights activists want prohibited would be correct. Yet animals do not possess a rational soul and they are not moral creatures capable of sin; they have sentient souls and are amoral. Hence, such a position is both absurd and heretical.

The Teaching of the Church

The correct teaching on the position of animals and their relationship to humans is well-stated by theologian Cronin, The Science of Ethics, [1939], 2:86-92):

• Animals are not possessed of rights, and, therefore in killing them no injustice is done to them

• Animals are incapable, by their very nature, of claiming anything of their own. Reason is the faculty that allows one to claim something as their own. Animals do not possess the faculty of reason to claim anything, therefore they do not come within the scope of having rights 

• Animals exist for humanity. They never would have been brought into existence had humans not been created. They may be used for the betterment of people

• Even though humans have no duties towards animals, they are part of God's creation, and as such cruelty to animals is sinful. To make animals suffer needlessly, or to take pleasure in animal suffering, is seriously sinful 

Nevertheless, don't think there's no hope of ever seeing your beloved pet again; the Church actually leaves this possibility open! According to theologian Sagues, "The world will not be annihilated, but it will be renewed...What will the renewed world be like? In general, such as is suitable for the status of the blessed. Hence, since the blessed, being now incorruptible, do not need vegetables and animals, many [theologians] have thought that all of these things will be lacking in that future world. But what others [theologians] hold seems to be more probable, namely, that the organic kingdom of plants and animals agrees with that world, as its complement and for the greater delight of the blessed." (See Sacrae Theologiae Summa IVB, [1956], pgs. 494-495; Emphasis mine).  Is it therefore possible that Almighty God could bring back those pets whom the blessed enjoyed while on Earth, working out their salvation? I see no theological reason against it! 

Conclusion

Animals are part of God's creation and here for us to use, but not to abuse. Having a pet is a blessing. By bringing humans down to the level of animals, or exalting animals to the status of humans, both errors result in a world unintended by God where humans--who alone have a supernatural destiny--will be harmed. George Orwell was correct in a way he couldn't understand in 1948 when he penned the closing line of Animal Farm:

The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.