Sunday, February 25, 2007

Holy Eggs Batman!

Does anyone take PETA seriously? Now they're criticizing the monks at Mepkin for the way they treat their chickens, after an "undercover investigation" (a PETA activist disguised as a retreatant).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

chickens were not created for man to lock in three-to-a-cage.

"The relationship of human beings to the animal world, as it is documented, is immensely complex, but attitudes have tended to crystallise around two opposite poles. On one hand there is the refusal to make use of animals except for domestic purposes, hence vegetarianism. Against this we have the ritual of hunting tribes, aimed at 'reconciling' the animal soul to its fate, and the Muslim and Jewish sacrifice of the animal that is to lend its flesh to the fostering of human strength (strength to participate in a work of redemption which includes the animal creation). But never at either pole or anything along the line thaty joins them do we find the suggestion that man has absolute rights over the animals, to do with them as he pleases.

"A stern insistence upon courtesy to the living creatures that share our world with us is common to the most diverse religious traditions. To treat such counsels as whimsical is to miss the point completely and to fall into the common contemporary error of dismissing half the truth that comes our way as belonging to the realm of fairy tals and ignoring the rest as 'metaphysical'. Man by virtue of his central, viceregal position enjoys certain special privileges but does not enjoy the right to abuse these privileges.

"...Formerly the world was thought to be made up of men and beasts; today it is a 'human' world in which coal and oil and edible animals are counted among exploitable riches which exist only for our use. On this point the traditional doctrines are unanimous. This is a misuse of the living creatures which share our world, an offence against creation and therefore against God.

"...By a most curious irony, it is only since men came to see themselves as no more than clever animals, without any 'central' role or any supernatural privileges, that they have started to treat the animal creation as totally alien and totally without rights. ... Viceregal responsibility encompasses our environment as a whole and the distinction between animate and inanimate is not final; the wood and stone and the very soil itself are within the circle of man's power to redeem or to abuse. 'For the earth is the Lord's,' say the Christians, and it is not as owners that we make use of it.

le gai eaton