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A Further Perspective
Kennedy Catholicism and Palin
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend isn’t much of a theologian.
Sarah Palin loves the limelight. Despite that and the limitations that she shares with other people who rely more on instinct than on study to answer political questions, Palin also has an impressive talent for living rent-free in progressive heads. That talent has little to do with her appearance or her willingness to coin words like “refudiate,” but lots to do with the way she embraces life and faith publicly. No one else with comparable name recognition demolishes progressive dogma just by getting up in the morning.
Without ever leaving her comfort zone, Palin introduced a corollary to Ramesh Ponnuru’s assertion that “abortion corrupts everything it touches.” Ponnuru wrote that more than ten years ago, in a career-making 1998 essay called “Dead Reckoning” that rocked both National Review and First Things. Whether Sarah Palin ever read the piece matters not at all.
Palin can be every bit as prickly or superficial as her enemies claim, but together with son Trig and daughter Bristol, the winsome Wasillan and her underrated husband bookend Ponnuru’s point by reminding anyone paying attention that pro-life witness refreshes some people and infuriates others. You might even say that there are echoes in the deceptively pedestrian Palin lives of what C.S. Lewis once called “the weight of glory.” (I’ll pay no attention to criticisms of overreach or “dysfunctional karmic antennae” from people who said nothing when a San Francisco newspaper columnist described our current president as a “lightworker” before his ham-fisted attempts to treat 300 million people as a community in need of organizing went kablooey ).
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend can’t claim the Palin cachet, but the former lieutenant governor of Maryland is not above calling for close air support in her country-club battle with Palin-style conservatism. Townsend took to the pages of the Washington Post earlier this month to defend her uncle John against charges of malpractice that Sarah Palin had leveled against him in her book, America by Heart. Ironically, although her essay suggests that Townsend found the Palin book title saccharine, and its content fey, twee, or manipulative, she read the book anyway. They all do.
Long before shooting a moose on camera to send at least one leftist into “late night fist-pumping delirium,” Caribou Barbie wrote, in effect, that John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association subverted American principle rather than expressing it. As even younger readers may have heard, that speech was Kennedy’s “Don’t hate me for being Catholic, because I won’t take orders from the pope” sop to evangelical Protestant leaders whose support he needed at the time.
Washington Post editors gave Townsend 1,500 words to defend her uncle’s attempt to compartmentalize his faith, but the “coulda been a contender” lament that they got for their trouble only exposed Townsend as another palooka in a family full of them.
Townsend asserts that she gave America by Heart a careful reading, from which she came away sure that Palin supports an unconstitutional religious test for public office. Inconveniently, we have to take Townsend’s word for that, because Palin actually says no such thing: the closest she gets is to express disappointment at John F. Kennedy’s failure to reconcile his “private faith and public role,” and his unwillingness to tell fellow countrymen “how his faith had enriched him.” Palin did not use Hilaire Belloc as a counter-example, but he would have been a better choice than Mitt Romney, whom she did mention. In 1906, when Belloc ran for a seat in the British Parliament as a representative of the Liberal party, his stem-winding stump speech included a ringing affirmation of faith: “Gentlemen, I am a Roman Catholic. As far as possible, I go to Mass every day. This [taking a rosary out of his pocket] is a rosary. As far as possible, I kneel down and tell these beads every day. If you reject me on account of my religion, I shall thank God that he has spared me the indignity of being made your representative.”
John F. Kennedy would have done well to follow that precedent, only he didn’t, and so one of his nieces was left to burnish a flawed legacy.
Deeply suspicious of the dog whistle for conservatives that she seems to think Palin keeps in a drawer near her Naughty Monkey shoes, Townsend reasons that any such testimony by JFK would have opened the door to American theocracy, and praises her uncle for having had wisdom enough to realize that his religious beliefs were nobody else’s business. By then, the opposing camps are plainly visible: Palin says “Cards on the table, please,” while Townsend parries with “To demand that citizens display their religious beliefs attacks the very foundation of our nation.”
Who makes more sense? Enter Rev. Charles J. Chaput, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Denver, Colorado. Archbishop Chaput is not a man who can be credibly accused of operating from a theology of “Christian Dominionism,” as some of Palin’s more excitable detractors say she does. But in phrasing that Sarah Palin would approve, Chaput called JFK’s 1960 speech “sincere, compelling, articulate — and wrong.”
Speaking this past spring at Houston Baptist University, Archbishop Chaput noted that “Real Christian faith is always personal, but it’s never private.” That was one of the things about which John F. Kennedy was mistaken. Moreover, said Chaput, Kennedy’s remarks in Houston “profoundly undermined the place not just of Catholics, but of all religious believers, in America’s public life and political conversation.” And “Today, half a century later, we’re paying for the damage.”
In other words, Sarah Palin’s criticism of the Kennedy approach to faith accords substantially with criticisms offered by another Christian of unquestioned acumen. Not only that, but Chaput came loaded for bear, quoting another scholar to buttress the point that John F. Kennedy “secularized the American presidency in order to win it.”
This is not a debate that Townsend can win. She thinks Sarah Palin is making a subtle bid for a new Inquisition, but if Townsend had familiarized herself with Archbishop Chaput’s similar argument, she would have known better. Instead, she writes about the “deep current of faith” in the Kennedy family, praises Uncle John for courage of the kind that Henry V tried to kindle in his men before the Battle of Agincourt, and dances around Senator Ted Kennedy’s support for abortion (correctly described by Sarah Palin as “directly at odds with his Catholic faith”) by disingenuously suggesting that Catholic moral teaching is of no more import than whether the Third Sunday of Advent is marked by rose-colored candles, because “the hierarchy’s positions can change,” and “in our church, we have an obligation to help bring about those changes.”
Ha! We may as well cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war, because Townsend leaves no room for concepts like fidelity to “the deposit of faith” or (as Christians in the Reformed tradition sometimes put it) “standing firm in the faith once delivered to the saints.”
When Palin contends that “morality cannot be sustained without the support of religious beliefs,” Townsend misreads this acknowledgement of our collective debt to Judeo-Christian intellectual and religious capital as “a wholesale attack on countless Americans.” Has she never heard John Adams’ famous quip that “Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people; it is wholly inadequate to the government of any other”?
About the Author
Patrick O’Hannigan is a writer in North Carolina.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (239) | Leave a comment
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Kenny| 12.15.10 @ 6:58AM
So many words wasted on the ravings of a certified dingbat like Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. I don't get it.
wodiej| 12.15.10 @ 7:11AM
Me either.
oldfart| 12.15.10 @ 8:26AM
This is why we threw Ms. Townsend out of Maryland. She is a classic example of situation ethics. "I stand for what will get me elected". She is also very much the intellectual light weight. Money cannot buy brains.
RJ| 12.15.10 @ 9:15AM
Boy, is this person in love with his own writing and special, not so secret meanings! Boring, really really boring. Another narcissist working his stupid tricks.
Anthony| 12.15.10 @ 9:58AM
Don't forget elitist. O'Hannigan starts his piece with the customary swipe at Palin, with the skanky remark that she loves the limelight and that she's limited in that she relies on instinct rather than "on study to answer political questions". Wow what a neat turn of phrase, Mr. O'Hannigan. Another Irish bard who fancies himself as Dillon Thomas.
Funny how instinctual people of the pedestrian stripe, like Palin, manage to get to the very heart of matters, without the circuitous blovations.
No wonder she lives rent free in the minds of lefty elitists, she's a natural, and boy does that irritate, big time, right Mr. O'Hannigan?
Pall Leosson| 12.15.10 @ 11:18AM
Or is it Welsh bard who fancies himself as Dylan Thomas?
Anthony| 12.15.10 @ 12:03PM
I stand corrected. My gut told me Welsh, but my fingers said Irish.
Jim Thiem| 12.15.10 @ 2:07PM
Relied on instinct over study did ya? Was it your gut or your fingers to blame for the misspelling, Auntony?
Anthony| 12.15.10 @ 3:47PM
If I had relied on my instinct, I would have been correct. Just as my instinct tells me that you're a troll. Did I spell troll right?
Jim Thiem| 12.15.10 @ 11:45PM
I asked two questions. A troll wouldn't have. Are you a bit touchy?
See O'Hannigan's reply to JP's reply to Sandra's point at 9:17 to learn how far off base you were in your original critique ("swipe", "skanky" "irritate") of O'Hannigan. You missed his point by a fairly wide margin, as several of us have now observed.
Christopher| 12.15.10 @ 11:29AM
I agree with your comment. He assumes Palin is not smart because she speaks and writes in a direct simple manner. Simple is not the same as stupid.
In writing legal briefs we are told to write in a simple direct style so the judge understands what you are saying. O'Hannigan believes you must use your Thesarus to sound smart. I agee with his description of the Kennedys but he needs an editor.
simon templar| 12.15.10 @ 6:19PM
Anthony..excellent observation and points about this writer and article! You summed it up and left nothing for me to say!
Marksman| 12.15.10 @ 11:15AM
Backhanded swipes and begrudging praise for Palin couched in a torturous writing style aside, little of value could be gleaned from this article. Christianity is defined by its fruit, not its theological arguments, or the person presenting those arguments. Thus, Christianity cannot be separated from politics, rather, it defines politics. Christianity provides a solid foundation for action. This is why American's became known as a moral and just people. Christians know what morality is. Morality is not a living document subject to change and whim. Kennedy and her ilk dance around the fruit of the Spirit to justify themselves and their cohorts (like that incestuous professor). Palin's life demonstrates the fruit of the Spirit that the left rails against. Just ask Trig.
Greg RN| 12.17.10 @ 2:49AM
Marksman, you hit the target most accurately, I have yet to see any fruit bearing from the vast majority of the politicians or the so called elite, I am not sure they even understand the whole concept of having a spiritual awakening or relationship with our maker, well said my friend.
Alan Brooks| 12.15.10 @ 9:18AM
People read Palin's and Bush's books because they are simple. A child can understand them.
It takes two hours to breeze through 'Decision Points'; you don't learn anything, but it is an easy read.
W| 12.15.10 @ 11:23AM
Alan, how many books have your written? Maybe you didn't learn anything because your mind is closed. Tell us the most recent intellectual heavyweight book you read and what your learned, I am curious.
Again, you are here to distract from the liberals'
hypocrisy.
Anthony| 12.15.10 @ 12:21PM
As opposed to Obozo's fictional works of deep thought, authored by the Pentagon bomber turned academic, Bill Ayers?
Alan, speaking of simple tales whose meaning has been lost on elite lefties, try this oldy but goody child's tale, "The emperor has no clothes". I bet Sarah Palin sees how this applies to elites who blindingly adore Obozo.
It's ok if you move your lips when you re-read it.
Seek| 12.15.10 @ 1:35PM
Just because top people on the Left often write crappy books that doesn't mean that top people on the Right have to do the same thing.
Doctor Right| 12.15.10 @ 12:56PM
So what's your excuse?
publius| 12.15.10 @ 10:31AM
I get it. It's important that when those who soil the cloak of Christian protection they claim that their hypocrisy be exposed. Townsend barely raises to the level of a historical footnote but JFK is certainly notable, as Mr. O'Hannigan describes.
Why do we not laugh in the faces of those who claim to be practicing Catholics yet are pro-abortion or glorify the homosexual lifestyle? If they'll misrepresent something as profound as their faith, to what depth will they not sink?
Edward White| 12.15.10 @ 10:33AM
Google Palin's church-- Wasilla Assembly of God, and watch Pastor Ed Kalnins' sermon.
Dressed in blue jeans and a plaid, flannel shirt, he prances about on a stage like a laid-back rock 'n' roll airhead spouting the most inane and juvenile rubbish. The stage is littered with electric guitars and amplifiers. In the background is a huge projection screen. You get the picture, I'm sure.
And this is where the divine Sarah Palin worships.
Worships? Worships what? Her cheap, dumbed-down religion is not worth 2 cents.
If you can stomach Pastor Ed Kalnins' sermon, I guess you could stomach joining Sarah and her family in a meal of raw caribou.
Bon appetit, bumpkins, and you have my permission to wolf it down.
W| 12.15.10 @ 11:32AM
Well, Ed, are you now the religion czar? I suppose you had no probleme with Rev Wright, or Rev Sharpton?
Edward White| 12.15.10 @ 12:00PM
No, W,
Rev Wright's and Rev Sharpton's religious services are just as dumbed-down and even more vulgar.
ds80| 12.15.10 @ 12:12PM
Casting stones, are we? So it's the *form* of worship that's important to you, Ed?
Tony| 12.15.10 @ 12:35PM
The Palin's do not attend the Wasilla Assembly of God and have not for years. She attends the Wasilla Bible church.
Jim Thiem| 12.15.10 @ 2:17PM
Delicious, Tony: deflating Edward White's bloated balloon of instinct with your fine needle of study.
Edward White| 12.15.10 @ 4:52PM
Sarah's fundamentalist religious beliefs were shaped at Wasilla Assembly of God.
As for her current church, here's what I learned from its web site:
From the Wasilla Bible Church website:
"By God’s grace everything in the life of this church will revolve around the reality of Jesus Christ – who He is, what He has done, what He is doing, and what He will do. In the words of the early Church “He is Lord” and will be recognized as such in this church with an absolute allegiance that lifts Him above all others in our hearts, in our homes, and in our congregation. It is His commands that we will obey, His warnings that we will heed, and His promises that we will hold. In every endeavor we will rely upon His power, cherish His presence, and honor His name. We will, in sum, love Him. (John 14:6)."
So Jews, Buddhists, Catholics, Unitarians, Hindus, Muslims and people who do not incorporate Jeus Christ into their lives - all these people - are (according to the Wasilla Bible Church) blind as bats. Do we really want a president who thinks everyone who doesn't worship Jesus is wrong, sinful and blind?
I don't think so.
Nick| 12.15.10 @ 5:42PM
Umm.....Ed.....Catholics do worship Jesus Christ.
Where do you guys get this stuff?
W| 12.15.10 @ 5:48PM
We will take you seriously when and if you complain that Obama's religious beliefs were influenced by (1) anti-semitic, anti-american, anti-white, racist, ignorant sermons of Rev Wright for twenty years, including the baptism of Obama's children, and (2) when you admit you were wrong in voting for Obama
simon templar| 12.15.10 @ 6:24PM
W, that was precious! LOL! Short and sweet and to the point!
Jim Thiem| 12.15.10 @ 11:52PM
Bingo W, and there goes another Edward White balloon!!
Mr. White's editorial about Wasilla Bible Church and Sarah Palin dissing non-Christians is NOWHERE in the quote he parades immediately above.
I'm with Nick, "Where do you guys get this stuff?"
Peter| 12.16.10 @ 3:04PM
Wasilla Bible Church's statement pretty well sums up the primary tenet of the Christian faith. So, indeed, if you a Buddist or Hindu, etc., you believe otherwise, which doesn't make you a Christian, but a Buddist, Hindu, etc. It ain't complicated, so it's unfortunate this may come as complicated to some.
IzeHavitt| 12.17.10 @ 1:49AM
Well, Ed, I have to tell you that the Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, et. al. do have a problem. There are many among them who may well be very ethical in their respective lifestyles- and that is praiseworthy- but ethics won't get them salvation. No one obtains salvation by their works. (see Ephesians 2:10 ) For Jesus Himself stated:" No one comes to the Father, but by Me. " Also, the Book of Acts states, concerning Jesus Christ, that "there is no other name under heaven, whereby we must be saved." That's why we have to confess Him as Lord, and believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead. Think about it: in terms of salvation, all God asks is that someone will meet those two conditions. That's it. It does, however, require humility.
mzk1| 12.18.10 @ 5:58PM
I have no problem with you believing I will go to hell, as long as you don't try to stop me or help me get there.
mzk1| 12.18.10 @ 5:55PM
As a Jew, I have zero problems with what you quoted above, although of course I disagree with it.
I have serious problems with people like you, who try to censor people's theology. Every single book (except the Bible) that we Jews have was censored by the Christians, or for fear of them. It is Christians like you (or whatever you call yourself) who scare me, not Christians like Sarah Palin. You have the spirit of the Middle Ages, she has the sprirt of America.
GBinPA| 12.16.10 @ 3:52AM
Ed, you must be from the high church.
Le Cracquere| 12.16.10 @ 10:01AM
I must admit it: Mrs. Palin's old church--and frequently Mrs. Palin herself--aren't quite my style. However, that does not make either one contemptible, nor should one be embarrassed to be led by either one when/where they're right.
On thumbing through my Bible, I can't find that "blessed are the tasteful" beatitude. Perhaps because, by any contemporary standard, Jesus and His Galilean disciples were subliterate rustics. There was much about their manner, language, and style to make rarefied gorges rise.
"Bon appetit, bumpkins": had Mr. White been a Greek habitue of the 1st-century Areopagus, one suspects he'd have said the same to the gauche crowd milling about the even gaucher provincial demagogue from Tarsus.
Jack| 12.15.10 @ 12:39PM
Kenny, what you don't get is that Patrick is using Townsend's vapid argument to expose one of the major strategies of the left. That is, as they might put it, people have the right to keep their core opinions to themselves and not suffer any political or personal consequences. Or as I like to say they can hide who they really are in order to better fool those who would otherwise be against their true positions.
Alan Brooks| 12.15.10 @ 1:21PM
What Palin is notable for is being very pretty.
She wouldn't have risen so high if she were ugly- an obvious fact.
Doctor Right| 12.15.10 @ 1:24PM
Then how do you account for Barbara Mikulski?
Alan Brooks| 12.15.10 @ 2:00PM
You are drawing a parallel between Sarah Palin and Barbara Mikulski??
Apples and oranges.
Doctor Right| 12.15.10 @ 3:45PM
Tell me about it!
Palin is pretty, smart, engaged, self-made, and motivated.
Mikulski is a hideous, useless hack taking-up space in the Senate. I can't think of ONE thing she's done in her 4 terms that's noteworthy of any praise.
In addition, Sarah Palin is the most famopus person in America, and might be the next President of the United States! Mikulski...Not so much...
Apples and oranges! So glad we agree for once!
mzk1| 12.18.10 @ 6:00PM
Mikulski got in by claiming ot be pro-military. Palin did not fake her beliefs.
Nunya| 12.15.10 @ 3:44PM
The Left has been the "I'll say whatever I need to be elected (or re-elected)" bunch forever. "I'm a Catholic but I support abortion on demand."--WHAT?? One cannot believe both. Trying to rationalize something like that is impossible, they are mutually exclusive. Townsend simply is trying to further JFK's assault on religion by (essentially) denying his faith so he could be elected.
Any argument of a theocracy in this country is simply hyperbole, since our country was founded by Christians--who founded most of the institutions of higher learnings, by the way.
Jacobite| 12.16.10 @ 6:11PM
Forget 'cap-in-hand Irishmen or 'two-boat' Irishmen, the Kennedys are beneath bog-trotters. Not only did they give bad example by flouting their rejection of various teachings of the Church, but they led others to sin by proposing laws that made sin much easier and less subject to penalty. Ted alone made Dorian Gray look like Francis of Assisi -- what a pathetic slob of a man. And proposing to his last wife by hiding a ring on the sea-bed while SCUBA diving? Man, that's nothing but sensitivity from Fat Boy. 'Course, I've gotta admit, the broad didn't mind. He and Chris Dodd doing waitress sandwiches at la Brasserie -- whatta couple of scamps! Other assorted Kennedy litter-mates pop up frequently on police blotters, at rehab facilities, and on left-wing barricades, always fighting hard for the anti-Christian position on every issue. If an entire State ever deserved the fires of Hell, it's certainly Massachussetts.
WestTexan| 12.17.10 @ 12:15PM
Definately not a Palin fan either. I haven't listened to a Kennedy since Robert... and I was just 9 or 10 then. The "fat puffy one" disgusted me just as much as the Pretender in Chief does.
old white guy| 12.17.10 @ 3:47PM
wow i was about to say the same thing. alot of words saying nothing. i guess that is what we have come to.
Appleby| 12.15.10 @ 7:12AM
As a fairly new Catholic (3 years and counting), I am at a loss as to why someone would remain in a church with clearly defined and immutable positions which she does not share, and spend so much time trying to convince others that Catholicism is a buffet and they can take the desserts and leave the entree alone. I found myself in my younger years in the midst of a Mormon church with whose tenets I could emphatically not embrace, and my response, after discovering that the others around me actually intended to stick to these tenets, was to exit stage right, pursued by bears. (Its Shakespeare. Look it up.)
What is so difficult about picking up the Catechism and realizing that this is what you have to believe AND PROFESS, in school and out of it, and if you do not like it, as my Daddy would have said, there are no hooks in your backside keeping you in your pew. Find a church (I suggest either the Methodists, who are mainly interested in fund-raising, or the Presbyterians, who are apparently stuck on stupid) that agrees with you and leave us Catholics to act on our beliefs.
Isnt that what Tolerance and Independence used to be about?
Ryan| 12.15.10 @ 8:16AM
That's Presbyterians (PC-USA), by the way, that are abandoning the faith at times.
Though I'm a reformed Baptist (more or less, it's probably the best "label"), I agree with you at least about the matter that, particularly within Catholicism, there isn't much room to differ on beliefs - particularly about core matters. Abortion is one. If someone believes that abortion is alright, they shouldn't be Catholic.
JP| 12.15.10 @ 9:42AM
Appleby,
You must remember that the hetrodox Catholics view The Church as thier church. The old flame that shone so brightly has dimmed in recent years; but Progressive Catholics still believe they are on a mission to save thier Church from, well..., the Catholics. They would feel more comfortable with certain Protestant sects; yet, things like Eternal Life pale in comparision to remaking not only the Church, but also God in thier own image.
YeloStalyn| 12.15.10 @ 10:23AM
It's selfishness. Liberals are driven to always go where they are not wante and force the people already there to change and accept them rather than simply find a group of like-minded people. They think it wrong to be content with one's self to the point that you associate with others like you. Instead, they must crusade for the imagined down-trodden and wreck havoc on instablished institutions so they can feel like they have done some good "for the least of these" (if they think they're religeous) or at least for the "poor" (if they're just "socially aware").
Al Adab| 12.15.10 @ 10:46AM
Morning Yelo,
Too often the term used is "spiritual" or "religious" to describe a condition of non-belief. The Christian life is one of challenge and of practice and discipline toward a life of meaning. The easy path which Paul called "baby food" not meat does not accomplish growth and remains, in the end, unfulfilling.
BTW thanks for the conversation the other day, I enjoyed it.
michigander_sandusky| 12.15.10 @ 10:34AM
"Find a church...that agrees with you..."
That is exactly what is wrong with today's so-called "Christianity." Denominations arise because people follow this credo instead of finding a church that "agrees with God."
ds80| 12.15.10 @ 12:16PM
Appleby ... you are *exactly* the leaven our Catholic Church needs. And of course it's the Holy Spirit holding the recipe ...
Sam Vaughn| 12.15.10 @ 2:51PM
Well said Appleby. I once sat a table with two Berkely professors (not by choice). When they found out I was Catholic they asked me when the Catholic Church would become more inclusive, I think they meant Unitarian. My reply was simple, if you can not embrace faith and morality it's not for you. But there is no way I would ever expect the Catholic Church to jettison core values.
To all those Palin haters, Winston Churchill had a rule, when any of his subordinates presented a plan for a campaign in WWII he forced them to boil it down to one page. If they could not net it out to one page,,, they weren't ready. Intellectuals love to hate Palin because she net's it out quickly without any inclination to muddy the water with the quotes of dead people one hundred years or more gone. Worse yet, she's not impressed with those who do.
Tim*| 12.15.10 @ 7:42AM
"When you are getting kicked from the rear it means you are in front."
Fulton Sheen
A.M. Mallett | 12.15.10 @ 9:21AM
"... or you jumped the line and don't belong thre."
Shalomnic Yahoo
Spike| 12.15.10 @ 10:57AM
"..... or it means the kicker is about to become the kickee & get their own rump kicked "
Crusader Spike
wbheff| 12.15.10 @ 7:44AM
It is evident from the actions of the Kennedys, and the Kennedy men in particular, that the term "Kennedy Catholicism," is an oxymoron.
bob sykes| 12.15.10 @ 8:07AM
Like Pelosi and other "Catholic" Democrats, all Kennedys (with the possible exception of Robert Sr and Ethel) are atheists who lie about their religious beliefs in order to curry favor with their constituents.
Doctor Right| 12.15.10 @ 8:09AM
For the first time in over 50 years, starting in January 2011, there will not be a Kennedy polluting the halls of Congress.
This calls for a drink! (Ooops! Sorry, Ted! Umm...Do they serve beer in hell?)
Publius| 12.15.10 @ 10:33AM
Yes but it's non-alcoholic.
Petronius| 12.15.10 @ 10:38AM
Teddy cannot get near the bar down Here. Bella Abzug is still sitting on his face.
Tim the Enchanter| 12.15.10 @ 11:27AM
That image is, well, just plain nasty.
Doctor Right| 12.15.10 @ 11:37AM
I just puked in my mouth...
jb| 12.15.10 @ 8:15AM
Obviously the Kennedy's grew up in a very different Catholic Church than I did. Our priests actually told us that adultery and murder were bad things.
Like all professional politicians, you need to watch what they do, not what they say.
Anthony| 12.15.10 @ 9:37AM
True, but the Kennedys were able to buy all the bishops and cardinals they needed to cover for their deviant behavior.
Ole Teddy had a bevy of them at his side upon his death, in hopes God would not notice that he had arrived for his Judgment Day, however upon his arrival, alas, he was alone.
.....and all the lawyers, aides, press spokesmen, lobbyists and sycophants could not protect Teddy from his ultimate justice.
jb| 12.15.10 @ 11:03AM
Buying a bishop or a cardinal might improve one's image here on earth, but it isn't much help in the after life. The Catholic Church, (as far as I know), no longer sells indulgences. I think that went out of style in the 1960's with the Second Vatican Council, although I've since read that some churches in the northeast, NYC and Boston, are getting on that bandwagon again.
They 'prolly need the money and it's an easy scam.
Considering Joe Kennedy's source of vast wealth during prohibition, it's easy to see the acorns don't fall too far from the tree.
Tim the Enchanter| 12.15.10 @ 11:29AM
Quit with the "selling" indulgences crap, and learn some history. Can you even define the term "indulgence?" I thought not.
ds80| 12.15.10 @ 12:19PM
jb: you are too clever by half and apparently ignorant in whole.
jb| 12.15.10 @ 2:01PM
Whoa!!! Being Catholic all my life and educated in Catholic schools from the time I was knee high to a Madonna statue, (some 60 years ago),I think I have a good understanding of the rituals. Indulgences were sold to rich sinners as a path to redemption and heaven.
Get the real definition of indulgences here:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07783a.htm
Now,,, it's off to hell we go.
Jim Thiem| 12.15.10 @ 2:36PM
Too much instinct, not enough study, jb.
First, indulgences are in no way rituals, like apples are not oranges.
Secondly, the Catholic Church never sold indulgences, corrupt individuals did, and the abuse has consistently been condemned.
Thirdly, indulgences may be GRANTED as a path to redemption and heaven, but they are SOLD for a different reason: money.
Have a good visit down there.
Ted| 12.15.10 @ 2:44PM
Oh, they grew up in a time when the Church said adultery, theft, and all sorts of other things were crimes. Just like you did. And just like many other people over the last 2000 years or so, they chose to ignore those teachings.
And boy did you hit the nail on the head. Forget what they say; tell me what they do. That will show you everything you need to know about a person. Especially a politician.
Ryan| 12.15.10 @ 8:18AM
On separating faith and politics, I don't know that I would trust a politician who says something like that.
Religion purports to answer the most important questions about life. If you don't allow those answers to affect your life completely, then what is that religion worth?
Dad of Six| 12.15.10 @ 8:27AM
Has there ever been an intelligent Kennedy? I know that Rose was the last 'Catholic' Kennedy.
Pelligrino| 12.15.10 @ 8:37AM
Years ago (yes, years) we were settling in our seats to listen as our US Army Major began the weekly ROTC class. His opening remarks involved an encounter he'd had for several hours earlier that day.
A prospective student from a nearby campus had come to apply to enter the cadet corps. Our major greeted him and spent several hours learning his background and inquiring as to his interests.
His remarks to us were something like this: "Men, I was extremely disappointed in a young man your age earlier today. Despite much time given to him, I never heard the key criteria one must have to serve and lead."
"What's that?" came the question.
"I sent him away, and I have no regrets. Sure, we need more cadets in this program but not like him."
We all leaned in, curious as to why the major had so thoroughly rejected this student.
"You see, he doesn't believe. He's an outright atheist. He's militantly so. Sorry, that just won't do. There's just no way you can lead men when you don't personally know God Almighty."
"If your faith is strong, then there's potential that you can be a strong leader. No faith means this just is not possible. In fact, such a person just does more harm."
I've never forgotten that message.
And I believe it wholly true.
YeloStalyn| 12.15.10 @ 10:27AM
While not the pennicle of religous teaching, the scene in Full Metal Jacket where Gunny gets peeved at Joker for being an atheist is one of my favorite scenes. That and (it may be all tied together, these scenes) when they sing Happy Birthday to Baby Jesus.
Not having been in the military (but a great big THANK YOU to those who have!!), I can't say it's like this... and I would imagine not. But it would be nice if it where, in a way.
Nick| 12.15.10 @ 6:06PM
When I joined the Army in '88, I expected Full Metal Jacket.
Instead, it was a blend of MASH, Stripes, and Kelly's Heroes.
Maybe I should have joined the Marines.
winterhawk| 12.15.10 @ 8:40AM
NONE of the kennedys were theologians. Most of them were and are criminals.
Clint| 12.15.10 @ 8:40AM
Which Democrat Politicians are good at their Religion ?
Harry Reid ? Chuckie Schumer ? The Anointed One ?
Stuart Koehl| 12.15.10 @ 9:13AM
Once you realize their religion is Power, you have to say they're all pretty devoted to it.
Al Adab| 12.15.10 @ 10:41AM
Actually they are adherents of a modern Idolotry whch worships the gods Choice, Tolerance, Diversity, sometimes Gaia (environmentalism) and probably a couple others I left out. They have no worldview even remotely connected to 2500 years of Western Civilization.
hardcard| 12.15.10 @ 8:52AM
Without the late Cardinal Cushing granting the kennedys dispensation at will from all things Christian, they are lost. teddy wrote a letter to the Pope explaining why the Pope should let him through the Pearly Gates, it went into the circular file.
Nunya| 12.15.10 @ 4:21PM
Ummm... Yeah. I don't think the Pope has that authority anyway.... I think that's left to the Big Guy.
Frisbee| 12.16.10 @ 1:47PM
The "Big Guy" gave the Keys to Peter. The Pope is Peter's successor.
Also, any priest or bishop has the authority to forgive or retain your sins.
Amanda| 12.15.10 @ 9:04AM
The author, while trying desperately to paint himself as an intellectual, tries to belittle Gov. Sarah Palin by referring to her wanting the limelight, her naughty monkey shoes, etc.
This work, regardless of its religious content, is a piece of trash.
Alan Brooks| 12.15.10 @ 9:14AM
Former governor Palin. Today you wouldn't write "president" Carter, would you?
Stammon| 12.15.10 @ 10:40AM
The honorific is the full title. That's easy enough for a child to understand.
Doctor Right| 12.15.10 @ 11:24AM
You really are a dumbass, Alan.
Carter is ALWAYS publicly addresses as "President" Carter, just like Clinton is ALWAYS addressed as "President" Clinton.
Why?? Simple. We may disagree with them...even dislike them (and I do), but they've earned it.
Publicly, Sarah Pailn is "Governor Palin".
Don't like it? Too bad. It's not your decision, dummy.
Jeremiah| 12.15.10 @ 9:51PM
Actually, you certainly could, Alan. Both public officials and military personnel may be properly addressed by the highest title they held throughout their lives. You can check with Emily Post.
Vincent| 12.16.10 @ 6:29PM
Actually, according to a much higher authority than Emily Post, Miss Manners, the living former presidents and vice-presidents should be addressed thusly: Gov. Carter, Sen. Mondale, Amb. Bush, Sen. Quayle, Gov. Clinton, Sen. Gore, Gov. Bush, Sec'y. Cheney. You can deduce the operative principle.
Too Many Tims| 12.15.10 @ 9:17AM
(rolls eyes)
Frisbee| 12.16.10 @ 1:49PM
If you read the article closely, you'll see that the author is belittling the Kennedys, not Palin.
chris haynes| 12.15.10 @ 9:07AM
Holocaust. The greatest in history.
55,000,000 abortions, nothing else even close. Endorsed by all the democrats, many republicans. Most others say lets change the subject. Talk about taxes, moslems, korea, health insurance, whatever.
Frisbee| 12.16.10 @ 1:53PM
I agree Chris. And this could not be happening without the approval of the Kennedys, especially Ted. Also the Fr's R McBrien and R McCormack and C Curran.
"And thus the last condition of that man is worse than the first".
Vasu Murti | 12.16.10 @ 6:03PM
chris haynes wrote:
"Holocaust. The greatest in history. 55,000,000 abortions, nothing else even close. Endorsed by all the democrats, many republicans. Most others say lets change the subject. Talk about taxes, moslems, korea, health insurance, whatever."
I agree with you that abortion is a tragedy, but the loss of life caused by holocaust of the animal kingdom is far greater. Animal advocates are calling for change in this regard.
(Anti-abortion and anti-euthanasia activists don't see themselves as ideological or political opponents, but rather, as working on related life issues. This is how pro-life and pro-animal activists should see each other.)
Usually, it's pro-lifers (not pro-choicers), who fail to see animal issues as sanctity-of-life issues.
Dr. Bernard Nathanson (co-founder of NARAL; a physician who presided over some 60,000 abortions before changing sides on the issue), writes in his 1979 book, Aborting America:
"...the Right-to-Lifers are not in favor of all 'life' under all circumstances. They are not in the forefront of the save-the-seals crusade. They are not devotees of Albert Schweitzer's 'reverence for life,' or its equivalent in Eastern religions, in which the extinction of cows or flies somehow violates the sanctity of the cosmos...
"They are not 'pro-life'; they are simply anti-abortion."
“The reasons for legal intervention in favor of children apply not less strongly to the case of those unfortunate slaves—the animals.”
---John Stuart Mill
While it is known that the feminist movement initially opposed abortion as “child-murder” (Susan B. Anthony’s words), it is generally not known that many of the early American feminists—including Lucy Stone, Amelia Bloomer, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton—were connected with the 19th century animal welfare movement.
Together, they would meet with anti-slavery editor Horace Greeley to toast “Women’s Rights and Vegetarianism.”
Many of the early American feminists thus saw animal rights as social progress like women’s rights and civil rights.
“Although I may disagree with some of its underlying principles,” writes pro-life activist Karen Swallow Prior, “there is much for me, an anti-abortion activist, to respect in the animal rights movement.
"Animal rights activists, like me, have risked personal safety and reputation for the sake of other living beings. Animal rights activists, like me, are viewed by many in the mainstream as fanatical wackos, ironically exhorted by irritated passerby to ‘Get a Life!’
“Animal rights activists, like me, place a higher value on life than on personal comfort and convenience, and in balancing the sometimes competing interests of rights and responsibilities, choose to err on the side of compassion and nonviolence.”
Like abortion opponents drawing a parallel between the Dred Scott decision and Roe v. Wade, Dr. Tom Regan also draws a parallel between human and animal slavery in his landmark in moral philosophy, The Case for Animal Rights (1983):
“The very notion that farm animals should continue to be viewed as legal property must be challenged. To view them in this way implies that we cannot make sense of viewing them as legal persons. But the history of the law shows only too well, and too painfully, how arbitrary the law can be on this crucial matter. Those humans who were slaves were not recognized as legal persons in pre-Civil War America.
“There is no reason to assume that because animals are not presently accorded this status that they cannot intelligibly be viewed in this way or that they should not be. If our predecessors had made this same assumption in the case of human slaves, the legal status of these human beings would have remained unchanged.”
Both movements see themselves extending rights to an excluded class of beings. Both movements claim to be speaking on behalf of an oppressed class of beings, unable to defend themselves from oppression. Both movements compare the mass destruction of, in one case the human unborn, and in the other case, the mass killing of animals, to the Nazi Holocaust.
Both movements have components that engage in nonviolent civil disobedience and both have their militant factions: Operation Rescue and the Animal Liberation Front. Both have picketed the homes of physicians who either experiment upon animals or perform abortions.
The controversial use of human fetal tissue and embryonic stem cells for medical research brings these two causes even closer together.
Both movements are usually depicted in the popular news media as extremists, fanatics, terrorists, etc. who violate the law. But both movements also have their intelligentsia: moral philosophers, physicians, clergymen, legal counsel, etc.
Feminist writer Carol J. Adams notes the parallels:
“A woman attempts to enter a building. Others, massed outside, try to thwart her attempt. They shout at her, physically block her way, frantically call her names, pleading with her to respect life. Is she buying a fur coat or getting an abortion?”
The Fur Information Council of America asks: “If fashion isn’t about freedom of choice, what is? Personal choice is not just a fur industry issue. It’s everybody’s issue.”
Animal rights activists point out the health hazards associated with meat and dairy products, while anti-abortion activists try to educate the public about the link between abortion and breast cancer.
The threat of “overpopulation” is cited to justify abortion as birth control. On a vegan diet, however, the world could easily support a population several times its present size. The world’s cattle alone consume enough to feed 8.7 billion humans.
Both movements make use of similar political tactics, such as economic boycotting. Both movements make use of graphic photos or videos of abortion victims or tortured animals. Both movements speak of respecting life and of compassion.
At a speech before the National Right to Life Convention in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, on July 15, 1982, Reverend Richard John Neuhaus of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, a pro-life liberal and pro-life Democrat, concluded:
“...The mark of a humane and progressive society is an ever more expansive definition of the community for which we accept responsibility...
"The pro-life movement is one with the movement for the emancipation of slaves. This is the continuation of the civil rights movement, for you are the champions of the most elementary civil, indeed human right—simply the right to be.”
Actually, the pro-life movement has a lot in common with the animal protection movement—which pro-lifers should readily acknowledge.
The animal rights movement should be supported by all caring Americans.
"Who loves this terrible thing called war?" asked Isadora Duncan. "Probably the meat-eaters, having killed, feel the need to kill...The butcher with his bloody apron incites bloodshed, murder. Why not? From cutting the throat of a young calf to cutting the throats of our brothers and sisters is but a step. While we ourselves are living graves of murdered animals, how can we expect any ideal conditions on the earth?"
"I personally believe," wrote Isaac Bashevis Singer, "that as long as human beings will go on shedding the blood of animals, there will never be any peace. There is only one little step from killing animals to creating gas chambers a' la Hitler and concentration camps a' la Stalin--all such deeds are done in the name of 'social justice.' There will be no justice as long as man will stand with a knife or with a gun and destroy those who are weaker than he is."
In a 1979 essay entitled "Abortion and the Language of the Unconscious," Ravindra-svarupa dasa (Dr. William Deadwyler) wrote:
"A conscious person will not kill even animals (much less very young humans) for his pleasure or convenience. Certainly the unconsciousness and brutality that allows us to erect factories of death for animals lay the groundwork for our treating humans in the same way."
Author John Robbins writes in his Pulitzer Prize nominated Diet for a New America (1987):
"The way we treat animals is indicative of the way we treat our fellow humans. One Soviet study, published in Ogonyok, found that over 87% of a group of violent criminals has, as children, burned, hanged, or stabbed domestic animals. In our own country, a major study by Dr. Stephen Kellert of Yale University found that children who abuse animals have a much higher likelihood of becoming violent criminals."
A 1997 study by the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (MSPCA) reported that children convicted of animal abuse are five times more likely to commit violence against other humans than are their peers, and four times more likely to be involved in acts against property.
Russell Weston Jr., tortured and killed 12 cats: burned and cut off their tails, paws, ears; poured toxic chemicals in their eyes to blind them; forced them to ingest poison, hung them from trees (the noose loose enough to create a slow and painful death.) Later killed 2 officers at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC.
Jeffery Dahmer staked cats to trees and decapitated dogs. Later he dissected boys, and kept their body parts in the refrigerator. Murdered 17 men.
Kip Kinkle shot 25 classmates and killed several in Springfield, Oregon. He killed his father and mother. Said he blew up a cow once. Set a live cat on fire and dragged the innocent creature through the main street of town. Classmates rated him as "Most Likely to Start World War Three."
As a boy, Albert De Salvo, the "Boston Strangler," placed a dog and cat in a crate with a partition between them. After starving the animals for days, he removed the partition to watch them kill each other. He raped and killed 13 women by strangulation. He often posed bodies in a shocking manner after their murders.
Richard Allen Davis set numerous cats on fire. He killed all of Polly Klaas' animals before abducting and murdering Polly Klaas, aged 12, from her bedroom.
After 16-year-old Luke Woodham mortally stabbed his mother, killed 2 classmates and shot 7 others, he confessed to bludgeoning his dog Sparkle with baseball bats and pouring liquid fuel down her throat and to set fire to her neck. "I made my first kill today," he wrote in his court-subpoenaed journal. "It was a loved one...I'll never forget the howl she made. It sounded almost human." In June 1998, Woodham was found guilty of 3 murders and 7 counts of aggravated assault. He was sentenced to 3 life sentences and an additional 20 years for each assault.
Theodore Robert Bundy, executed in 1989 for at least 50 murders, was forced to witness a grandfather who tortured animals. Bundy later heaped graves with animal bones.
David Berkowitz, "Son of Sam," poisoned his mother's parakeet out of jealousy. He later shot 13 young men and women. 6 people died and at least 2 suffered permanent disabilities.
Keith Hunter Jesperson, "Happy Face Killer," bashed gopher heads and beat, strangled and shot stray cats and dogs. He is known to have strangled 8 women. He said: "You're actually squeezing the life out of these animals...Choking a human being or a cat--it's the same feeling...I'm the very end result of what happens when somebody kills an animal at an early age."
Carroll Edward Cole, executed in 1985 for an alleged 35 murders and reputed to be one of the most prolific serial killers in U.S. history, confessed that his first act of violence was to strangle a puppy under the porch of his house.
Robert Alton Harris murdered two 16-year-old boys, doused a neighbor with lighter fluid and tossed matches at him. His initial run-in with police was for killing neighborhood cats.
Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring, which launched the modern day environmental movement, wrote:
"Until we have the courage to recognize cruelty for what it is whether its victim is human or animal we cannot expect things to be much better in this world. We cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight in killing any living creature. By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic delight in killing we set back the progress of humanity."
In a December 1990 letter to Eric Mills of Action For Animals, vegan labor leader Cesar Chavez similarly observed:
"Kindness and compassion towards all living things is a mark of a civilized society. Conversely, cruelty, whether it is directed against human beings or against animals, is not the exclusive province of any one culture or community of people. Racism, economic deprival, dog fighting and cockfighting, bullfighting and rodeos are cut from the same fabric: violence. Only when we have become nonviolent towards all life will we have learned to live well ourselves."
Mother Teresa, honored for her work amongst the poor with the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize, wrote in 1992 to Marlene Ryan, a former member of the National Alliance for Animals. Her letter reads:
"I am praying for you that God’s blessing may be with you in all that you are doing to create concern for the animals which are often subjected to much cruelty. They, too, are created by the same loving Hand of God which created us. As we humans are gifted with intelligence which the animals lack, it is our duty to protect them and to promote their well being.
"We also owe it to them as they serve us with such wonderful docility and loyalty. A person who shows cruelty to these creatures cannot be kind to other humans also. Let us do all we can to become instruments of peace—where we are—the true peace that comes from loving and caring and respecting each person as a child of God—my brother—my sister."
"In his thoughts, Herman spoke a eulogy for the mouse who had shared a portion of her life with him, and who, because of him, had left this earth. 'What do they know -- all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world -- about such as you? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other
creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka."
---Isaac Bashevis Singer, "The Letter Writer"
"In Eternal Treblinka not only are we shown the common roots of Nazi genocide and modern society's enslavement and slaughter
of nonhuman animals in unprecedented detail, but for the first time we are presented with extensive evidence of the profoundly
troubling connection between animal exploitation in the United States and Hitler's Final Solution...
"This examination is long overdue, for without it, American culture is unlikely ever to reconsider the values that still make it the most animal-exploiting civilization in history."
---Lucy Rosen Kaplan, Esq., from the foreword to Eternal Treblinka by Charles Patterson (Lantern Books, New York, 2002)
"One of the greatest admirers of the destruction of the native peoples of America was Adolf Hitler. He found the white Anglo-Saxon conquest of the North American continent inspiring, and it convinced him of the practicality of genocidal measures against racially inferior peoples. His biographer John Toland writes that Hitler 'often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America's extermination -- by starvation and uneven combat -- of red savages who could not be tamed by captivity.'...
"In Germany this kind of vilification began long before the Nazis came to power. At first, the leader of the Protestant Reformation,
Martin Luther (1483-1546) praised Jews for rejecting the corrupt teachings of the papal "antichrist." But when it soon became clear
the Jews weren't all that eager to convert to his brand of Christianity, he denounced them as 'pigs' and 'mad dogs.' He said that if he were ever called on to baptize a Jew, he would drown him like a poisonous serpent. 'I cannot convert the Jews... but I can close their mouths so that there will be nothing for them to do but lie upon the ground.' According to John Weiss, Luther made it clear that 'death was his final solution to the 'Jewish problem.'...
"In the Nazi propaganda film Der Ewige Jude ("The Eternal Jew"), which opens with a mass of swarming rats, the narrator explains, 'Just as the rat is the lowest of animals, the Jew is the lowest of human beings.'...Josef Mengele treated Jews 'like laboratory animals'...
In Hitler's Willing Executioners Daniel Jonah Goldhagen states that the Germans often used Jews as playthings, 'compelling them like circus animals, to perform antics -- antics that debased the Jews and amused their tormentors...
"The philosopher Theodor Adorno (1903-69), a German Jew who was forced into exile by the Nazis but returned to Germany after the war to a professorship at Frankfurt University, wrote:
'Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they're only animals.'...the road to Auschwitz begins at the slaughterhouse...
"...it was but one step from the industrialized killing of American slaughterhouses to Nazi Germany's assembly-line mass murder...
Most people are unaware of the central role of the slaughterhouse in the history of American industry...Henry Ford, who was so impressed by the efficient way meat packers killed animals in Chicago, made his own special contribution to the slaughter of people in Europe. Not only did he develop the assembly-line method the Germans used to kill Jews, but he launched a vicious anti-semitic campaign that helped the Holocaust happen...
"At the time nativism and prejudice were very much part of the national climate, with the intense racism and anti-semitism on the
rise and the nation preparing to adopt a national origins quota system to stem the admissions of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe. The anti-semitism evident in 1915 with the lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish businessman in Atlanta, was increasing with the rapid spread of the anti-black, anti-Catholicm anti-semitic message of the Ku Klux Klan, which by 1924
had a national membership of more than four million...
"...(Ford's anti-semitic productions) influenced many readers, writes David Lewis, 'all the more because they carried the imprint, not of a crackpot publisher in an alleyway, but of one of the most famous and successful men in the world.'...After Ford's books came to the attention of Hitler and his followers in Munich, the Nazis used (these) in their propaganda war against the Jews of Germany...Hitler regarded Ford as a comrade-in-arms and kept a life-sized portrait of him on the wall next to his desk in his office at the Nazi Party headquarters in Munich. Hitler spoke of Ford in glowing terms to his followers and frequently bragged to them about Ford's financial support...Hitler praised Ford, the only American to be singled out in Mein Kampf."
The issue of whether or not the unborn are persons being denied rights, executed, and even treated as tools for medical research, the way we once treated minorities, slaves, indigenous people, etc. and the way we currently treat other animals, is distinct from discussing the social factors (poverty, discrimination, etc.) which cause women to seek abortion in the first place.
For a discussion of the latter, which I've addressed before on AlterNet and Salon.com, I would refer you to pro-life feminist literature.
Personhood must be resolved before we can discuss whether abortion should be legal or illegal.
The abortion debate centers on the personhood or moral status of the unborn, and the extent of individual and/or marital privacy.
Therefore...
This is an appropriate forum for discussion of animal issues!
In the cases of animal rights and abortion, we're discussing extending our circle of compassion to embrace an excluded class of beings: beings on the fringes of our moral community which are accorded only marginal personhood, often inconsistent at best.
The unborn, for example, are considered persons if they are "wanted," and are otherwise regarded as "tissue" to be discarded. Animals like pets, are considered part of the family, whereas other animals are considered "food" or tools for medical research.
If a pregnant teen goes to a crisis pregnancy center, the Christians there will not judge her for the sin of fornication, nor equate the sin of fornication with the sin of killing an unborn child.
Similarly: removing superficial, external religious trappings from the debate (fornication, food restrictions or preferences, "dietary laws", right-or-left-handed, etc.), at the heart of the matter in each case is the moral question of unnecessarily harming or taking someone else's life!
Ingrid Newkirk, Executive Director of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), said at the Festival for the Animals in San Francisco, CA on June 14, 1992, that in previous centuries, Native Americans were killed for "sport." (Vegan labor leader Cesar Chavez spoke at that festival as well.)
Christian writer C.S. Lewis compared vivisection (animal experimentation) with Nazi physicians experimenting upon concentration camp prisoners. Isaac Bashevis Singer has compared the killing of 50 billion animals every year to the Nazi Holocaust, saying for the animals, "it is an eternal Treblinka."
This became the title of Charles Patterson's book comparing the holocaust of the animal kingdom with the Nazi's "final solution."
In The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery, author Marjorie Spiegel quotes former Alameda County supervisor John George pointing out that black Americans were the first laboratory animals in America.
In a 1979 interview with vegetarian historian Rynn Berry, civil rights leader Dick Gregory said he believes the plight of the poor will improve as humans cease to kill animals for food; saying the Europeans and others have treated their slaves and those they colonized as animals.
PETA employee Dan Matthews compares seeing a fish caught on a hook writhing in terror with his own cowering in fear at the hands of gay bashers in his autobiography, Committed.
Feminist writer Carol J. Adams compares the way humans oppress other animals with the way the patriarchy oppresses women (including domestic violence) in her 1991 book, The Sexual Politics of Meat.
Comparisons between humanity's treatment of other animals and the treatment of oppressed classes of humans are familiar, and I drew a comparsion between the killing of animals and the killing of unborn children in my 2006 book, The Liberal Case Against Abortion. (Carol Crossed of Democrats For Life was kind enough to write the foreword.)
The issue isn't just vegetarianism out of kindness to animals or even ending global hunger or concern for the environment -- it goes deeper than that. We're talking about the systematic oppression and subjugation of other animals.
John Stuart Mill wrote:
"The reasons for legal intervention in favor of children apply not less strongly to the case of those unfortunate slaves -- the animals."
Henry Bergh, founder of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), successfully prosecuted a woman for child abuse in 1873, at a time when children had no legal protection, under the then currently existing animal protection statutes. This case started the child-saving crusade around the world.
Cardinal John Heenan wrote in 1970:
"Animals...have very positive rights because they are God's creatures...Only the perverted are guilty of deliberate cruelty to animals or, indeed, to children."
UC Berkeley law professor John T. Noonan, Jr., a Catholic, compares the suffering of animals with the suffering of (born and unborn) children, and the humane response in each case:
"...if you will do this for an animal, why not for a child?...There are no laws which regulate the suffering of the aborted like those sparing pain to dying animals... Can human beings who understand what must be done for animals and what cannot be done for unborn humans want this inequality of treatment to continue?
"...we are bound to animals as fellow creatures, and as God loves them out of charity, so must we who are called to imitate God. It is a sign not of error or weakness but of Christlike compassion to love animals. Can those who feel for the harpooned whale not be touched by the situation of the salt-soaked baby?"
And the converse is equally true: Can those calling themselves "pro-life," claiming the "respect life" and believe in the "sanctity-of-life" respect the lives and rights of animals?
I heard Democrats For Life of America held a vote several years ago on whether or not to include animal rights on the agenda, but there weren't enough pro-animal votes at the time for animal rights to be included.
At least animal rights are being given serious discussion in DFLA, and perhaps animals will be included on the agenda when brought up for discussion again.
Democrats For Life of America, 601 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, South Building, Suite 900, Washington, DC 20004 (202)220-3066
Nick| 12.16.10 @ 6:25PM
VM,
You are an anomaly, a very big exception to the rule.
Almost all animal rights kooks have no problem with the killing of un-born babies.
It is the natural progression from deluding yourself that animals are on an equal plane with, or superior to, Mankind.
Nick| 12.16.10 @ 6:29PM
p.s. Would you kill a mosquito? How about a bacteria? A virus?
What about plants? Aren't they alive? What do you eat? Dirt?
Where does your respect for "life" end, VM?
Rufus Choate| 12.17.10 @ 12:02PM
Animal cruelty has nothing to do with the moral depravity of Human Abortion and more to do with generalized evil when it is wantonly inflicted. Humans are superior in both value and rights. Animals don't have rights in any way but Humans do have a moral obligation to treat them humanely and nothing more. Your long tedious listing of supposed corrollaries between animal cruelty and Abortion is an obsecenity and you are clearly depraved for even thinking to equate them.
Vasu Murti | 12.17.10 @ 3:24PM
Nick and Rufus,
You each raise some valid questions.
If vegetarians object to killing living creatures (it is argued), then logically they should object to killing plants as well as animals? But this is absurd. Therefore, it can’t be wrong to kill animals.
Fruitarians take the argument concerning plants quite seriously; they do not eat any food which causes injury or death to either animals or plants. This means, in their view, a diet of those fruits, nuts and seeds which can be eaten without the destruction of the plant that produces the food.
Finding an ethically significant line between plants and animals, though, isn't hard. Plants are incapable of feeling pain. Nature does not create pain gratuitously, but only when it enables the organism to survive. Animals, being mobile, would benefit from having a sense of pain; plants would not.
Animals are highly complex creatures, possessing a brain, a central nervous system and a sophisticated mental life. Animals actually suffer at the hands of their human tormentors and exhibit such "human" behaviors and feelings as fear and physical pain, defense of their children, pair bonding, group/tribal loyalty, grief at the loss of loved ones, joy, jealousy, competition, territoriality, and cooperation.
Dr. Tom Regan, the foremost intellectual leader of the animal rights movement and author of The Case for Animal Rights, notes that animals "have beliefs and desires; perception, memory, and a sense of the future, including their own future; and emotional life together with feelings of pleasure and pain; preference and welfare interests; the ability to initiate action in pursuit of their desires and goals; a psychophysical identity over time; and an individual welfare in the sense that their experiential life fares well or ill for them, logically independent of their being the object of anyone else’s interests."
In determining a boundary between sentient and insentient life, Peter Singer in Animal Liberation suggests that "somewhere between a shrimp and an oyster seems as good a place to draw the line as any, and better than most.
Even if one does not want to become a fruitarian and believes that plants have feelings (against all evidence to the contrary), it does not follow that vegetarianism is absurd. We ought to destroy as few plants as possible. And by raising and eating an animal for food, many more plants are destroyed indirectly by the animals we eat than if we merely ate the plants directly. It still makes sense to eat lower on the food chain.
(Meat-eaters indirectly kill ten times more plants than do vegetarians!)
Humans resemble the frugivorous primates. The healthiest populations with the longest lifespans — the Vilacambans of Ecuador, the Abhikasians of the former USSR, and the Hunzas of Pakistan — live almost entirely on plant foods.
Whereas a gulf of difference can be found between plants and animals, none of the differences between humans and animals seem to be ethically significant. Animals are just as intelligent and communicative as small children or even some mentally defective adult humans. If we do not eat small children and mentally defective humans, then what basis do we have for eating animals?
C.S. Lewis and other Christians have even acknowledged that denying rights to animals merely because they do not exhibit the same level of rational thought most humans exhibit upon reaching full development justifies denying rights to the mentally handicapped, the senile, and many other classes of humans as well.
John Stuart Mill observed, "The reason for legal intervention in favor of children apply not less strongly to the case of those unfortunate slaves— the animals."
In his book, Christianity and the Rights of Animals, Reverend Andrew Linzey, an Anglican priest, notes:
"In some ways, Christian thinking is already oriented in this direction. What is it that so appalls us about cruelty to children or oppression of the vulnerable, but that these things are betrayals of relationships of special care and special trust? Likewise, and even more so, in the case of animals who are mostly defenseless before us."
The way we treat animals IS indicative of the way we treat our fellow humans. One Soviet study, published in Ogonyok, found that over 87 percent of a group of violent criminals had, as children, burned, hanged, or stabbed domestic animals. In our own country, a major study by Dr. Stephen Kellert of Yale University found that children who abuse animals have a much higher likelihood of becoming violent criminals.
Some of the greatest figures in human history have been in favor of animal rights. These include: Albert Einstein, Leonardo Da Vinci, Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas Gandhi, Alice Walker, George Bernard Shaw, Robert Browning, Percy Shelley, Voltaire, Thomas Hardy, Rachel Carson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Wesley, Victor Hugo, St. Francis of Assisi, Jean-Jacques Rosseau, Pythagoras, Susan B. Anthony, Albert Schweitzer, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Gertrude Stein, Frederick Douglass, Francis Bacon, William Wordsworth, the Buddha, Mark Twain, and Henry David Thoreau.
Patrick Corbett, professor of philosophy at Sussex University, captured the spirit of the animal rights movement with these words:
"We require now to extend the great principles of liberty, equality and fraternity over the lives of the animals. Let animal slavery join human slavery in the graveyard of the past."
In his 1975 book Animal Liberation, Australian philosopher Peter Singer writes:
"The principle of the equality of human beings is not a description of an alleged actual equality among humans; it is a prescription of how we should treat humans. Thomas Jefferson saw this point. He wrote in a letter to the author of a book the notable intellectual achievements of Negroes in order to refute the then common view that they had limited intellectual capacities:
" '...whatever be their degree of talent it is no measure of their rights. Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the property or person of others.'...
"If possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one human to use another for his own ends, how can it entitle humans to exploit nonhumans for the same purpose?
"In a forward-looking passage written at a time when black slaves had been freed by the French but in the British dominions were still being treated in the way we now treat animals, Jeremy Bentham wrote:
" 'The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been witholden from them but by the hand of tyranny...a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason?, nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?'
"The capacity for suffering and enjoyment is a prerequisite for having interests at all, a condition that must be satisfied before we can speak of interests in a meaningful way," insists Singer.
"It would be nonsense to say that it was not in the interests of a stone to be kicked along the road by a schoolboy. A stone does not have interests because it cannot suffer. A mouse, on the other hand, does have an interest in not being kicked along the road, because it will suffer if it is."
"Although I may disagree with some of its underlying principles," writes pro-life activist Karen Swallow Prior, "there is much for me, an anti-abortion activist, to respect in the animal rights movement.
"Animal rights activists, like me, have risked personal safety and reputation for the sake of other living beings. Animal rights activists, like me, are viewed by many in the mainstream as fanatical wackos, ironically exhorted by irritated passerby to 'Get a Life!'
"Animal rights activists, like me, place a higher value on life than on personal comfort and convenience, and in balancing the sometimes competing interests of rights and responsibilities, choose to err on the side of compassion and nonviolence."
During 1986 - 1988, when I had access to USENET, a nationwide computer network linking corporations, military bases, think tanks, universities, etc., I paid close attention to the abortion debate. The subject of animal rights always came up, albeit indirectly.
The mentality of the pro-choicers was that the fetus wasn't human, but rather some kind of lower life form--and that lower life forms couldn't possibly have rights.
When a pro-lifer discussed the potential humanity of the unborn, a pro-choicer replied, "MY CAT has more potential than that!"
One pro-choicer said sarcastically, "Maybe the kid (the fetus) should be raised as a vegetarian. After all, don't cows have the right to life?"
Another pro-choicer, Oleg Kiselev, upon hearing the pro-life argument that brain waves can be detected in the unborn as early as six weeks, pointed out that animals also have brain waves. He then added, "Excuse me, while I eat my veal stew."
In the spring of 1988, Stephen Carrier, a grad student in Mathematics at UC Berkeley, pointed out that chimpanzees share 99 percent of their DNA with humans, and so, to argue that species membership alone makes life worth protecting "is to fetishize DNA."
A pro-lifer responded: "If it'll please you, I will agree to protect anything that is 99 percent human."
To this, Stephen responded: "Okay. How about 50 percent? That would probably bring quite a few species into the net."
Stephen Carrier admitted, "I don't know what makes it acceptable to kill animals for meat. Some people think it's wrong, and I have no logical answer for them. But it's not murder, and I believe abortions are analogous. Yes, it's killing--but it's not murder."
Stephen admitted his argument was "not a mathematical proof, but there is no mathematical proof that will resolve the abortion debate."
In the fall of 1986, pro-life student John Morrow of Rutgers University compared abortion to slavery: Roe v. Wade denied rights to an entire class of humans merely on account of their age and developmental status, just as the Dred Scott decision of 1857 denied rights to an entire class of humans based on the color of their skin.
Dave Butler of Tektronix in Oregon responded: "Abortion and slavery? Not even close. A fetus isn't human. If you believe it's wrong to eat meat, should your morality be imposed upon everyone else?"
"Not even close" has become a popular slogan with pro-choicers. It even appeared on the headlines of most San Francisco Bay Area newspapers in November 1992, when Bill Clinton was elected.
"Not even close" is not a new slogan. Peter Singer writes in Animal Liberation that when Mary Wollstonecraft, a forerunner of today’s feminists, published A Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1792, "her views were widely regarded as absurd."
Thomas Taylor, a distinguished Cambridge philosopher, tried to refute Mary Wollstonecraft by demonstrating that if women could be given liberation, then animals could be given liberation, too. And since this is "absurd" it must be equally "absurd" to give women liberation.
Taylor called his parody, "A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes."
"Not even close" is the "A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes" of the late 20th and early 21st century, because it takes for granted the insurmountable prejudice that other animals couldn't possibly have rights. It is this prejudice which we in the animal rights movement are struggling to overcome.
The pro-choice mentality hasn't changed since then. On AlterNet (a liberal headlines e-newsletter), on February 20, 2009, in an article entitled "why get freaked out?", pereztx writes on the subject of abortion:
"the thought of killing an innocent little life form and tossing them in an incenerator or trash might be the hang up other than that I cant think of why they might freaked out. This article writer probably then sheds tears during a PETA meeting about a chicken being killed"
Again, the mentality of the pro-choicers was that the fetus wasn't human, but some kind of lower life form--and that lower life forms couldn't possibly have rights. This led me to conclude that if there's any group out there which ought to be sympathetic to animal rights, IT'S PRO-LIFERS!
In her 1993 book Animal Scam: the Beastly Abuse of Human Rights, Kathleen Marquardt, founder of Putting People First (an anti-animal rights group) writes:
"The real agenda of this movement is not to give rights to animals, but to take rights from people—to dictate our food, clothing, work, recreation, and whether we will discover new medications or die."
Identical assertions could have been made about the abolition of human slavery, the crusade to end child labor, the liberation of concentration camp prisoners from Nazi physicians or an end to the experimentation upon black humans by white humans.
Marquardt writes that the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) "now encourages vegetarianism, the banning of fur, and the eventual end to all animal research, not just ‘cruel’ animal research." Marquardt writes that the Humane Society now supports vegetarianism.
According to Marquardt, "The typical animal rights activist is a white woman making about $30,000 a year. She is most likely a schoolteacher, 'nurse', or government worker. She usually has a college degree or even an advanced degree, is in her thirties or forties, and lives in a city."
Marquardt cites studies indicating that animal rights activists tend to identify with liberal causes such as feminism and environmentalism.
"Every year," writes the Reverend Andrew Linzey, "I receive hundreds of anguished letters from Christians who are so distressed by the insensitivity to animals shown by mainstream churches that they have left them or are on the verge of doing so."
It is not surprising, therefore, that Marquardt reports that "Most activists share a bias against Western civilization and its Judeo-Christian foundations."
According to Marquardt, the "political clout" of the animal rights movement "is surprisingly bipartisan. But most of the leading politicians working with the animal rights movement are liberal Democrats."
Marquardt makes mention of Senator Barbara Boxer of California, Nevada Congressman Jim Bilbray, Charlie Rose of North Carolina, Tom Lantos and Gerry Studds.
Marquardt admits, however, that "some Republicans are animal rightists, too. Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas often supports animal rights causes—except, of course, those pertaining to cattle, a major business in Kansas. Senator Robert Smith of New Hampshire was a founder of the Congressional Friends of Animals. Bob Dornan of California, one of the most conservative House members, is an animal rights advocate—he cosponsored legislation banning the use of animals in testing cosmetics and received a PETA award. And Manhattan Congressman Bill Green promoted legislation that would have shut down over 90 million acres of federal land to hunting, fishing, and trapping."
Marquardt states further that "Although he’s not an elected official, a conservative political figure who, surprisingly, is on the other side is G. Gordon Liddy, author Will and a key figure in the 1972 Watergate uproar. When I went on Liddy’s radio show, he and PETA’s Ingrid Newkirk greeted each other with hugs and kisses and lots of warm words.
"With allies in both political parties and across the ideological spectrum," concludes Marquardt, "the animal rights movement has been able to score some great successes, regardless of which party controls the White House or Capitol Hill."
There ARE pro-life vegetarians and vegans, which we should expect, since animal activists make up a cross-section of mainstream American society.
The animal rights movement is divided on the abortion issue. This was made clear by Ingrid Newkirk, Executive Director of PETA, in a 1992 interview with conservative talk show host Dennis Prager in Los Angeles. In the late 1990s, the Animals' Agenda ran a cover story about the debate within the animal rights movement over abortion.
And in either 2003 or 2004, on this Democrats-For-Life e-mail list, Maria Krasinski mentioned a poll that found animal activists evenly divided over the abortion issue.
This is significant. It means that animal rights really are a bipartisan cause--which conservatives as well as liberals can support, OR it means that many liberals are uncomfortable with abortion.
Regarding animal rights and prenatal rights: John Stuart Mill wrote: "The reasons for legal intervention in favor of children apply not less strongly to the case of those unfortunate slaves -- the animals."
Henry Bergh, founder of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), successfully prosecuted a woman for child abuse in 1873, at a time when children had no legal protection, under the then currently existing animal protection statutes. This case started the child-saving crusade around the world.
Cardinal John Heenan wrote in 1970: "Animals...have very positive rights because they are God's creatures...Only the perverted are guilty of deliberate cruelty to animals or, indeed, to children."
In each case, we're discussing extending rights to an excluded class of beings; beings on the fringes of our moral community, which are sometimes accorded only marginal personhood, which is inconsistent at best.
For example, the unborn are considered children only if they are "wanted", and animals like pets are considered part of the family, while other animals are considered "food," clothing, subjects of medical research, etc.
Bioethicist Art Caplan immediately saw the similarities between the two movements in an aticle on animal rights entitled "Just Like Us?" appearing in the August 1988 issue of Harper's magazine.
He was worried: if we give rights to animals, will we have to give rights to the unborn?
I think it was law professor Gary Francione who tried to placate Art with, "I'm sure there's some way we can keep abortion legal."
Pro-lifers deliberately try to mislead the American public into thinking the entire animal rights movement is oficially pro-choice by referring ad nauseum to this single quote from one individual who wasn't speaking for the entire movement from over twenty years ago. They cite it as an excuse not to support animal rights as well.
However, there is a ring of truth to it.
Jeremy Bentham wrote: "The question is not Can they talk? nor Can they reason? but Can they SUFFER?"
If *sentience*, or the ability to feel pain, rather than membership in the human species, is the criterion for personhood, then "there's some way we can keep abortion legal."
I mentioned this to Rachel MacNair, past president of Feminists For Life, a Quaker pacifist, vegan, and psychology professor, in 2004.
It didn't faze her.
"Only in the very early stages of pregnancy," would abortion be legal, she replied.
A 1981 article by UC Berkeley law professor John T. Noonan, Jr. entitled "The Experience of Pain by the Unborn," similarly observes:
"...we may conclude that as soon as a pain mechanism is present in the fetus--possibly as early as day 56--the (abortion) methods used will cause pain. The pain is more substantial and lasts longer the later the abortion is."
Carol Crossed, who is now with Democrats For Life, and who wrote the foreword to my 2006 book, The Liberal Case Against Abortion, noted approvingly back in 1995, that even with sentience, rather than membership in the human race, as the criterion for personhood, day 56 as the threshold for pain means most abortions would have to be outlawed.
In the late '90s, there was a made-for-television movie called "Swing Vote" depicting a not-too-distant future in which abortion has been outlawed, and the Supreme Court is faced with an abortion case.
Pro-lifers were pleased with the outcome of this movie, because even though in the movie abortion was again legalized, it was made legal with far greater restrictions than we have now!
Similarly, the animal rights movement recognizes sentience or the ability to feel pain or suffer, rather than species membership, as the criterion for personhood. Since day 56 as the threshold for pain means most abortions would have to be outlawed, that would be a dramatic improvement over the status quo!
Pro-lifers thus have no excuse for not supporting animal rights!
Day 56 means most abortions would have to be banned. The GOP can't even promise you that! Instead, they've moved in the other direction, since 1989, calling themselves a "big tent" on the abortion issue, appealing to "yuppies" and "soccer moms" with a pro-choice message of limited government staying out of people's bedrooms and private lives.
Pro-lifers are quick to demonize the animal rights movement for not being officially pro-life. But if the animal rights movement *were* officially pro-life, would you join? Or are you just looking for an excuse not to go veg and support animal rights?
People weren't flocking to join vegetarian and animal welfare societies when abortion was illegal!
The number of animals killed for food in the United States is 70 times larger than the number of animals killed in laboratories, 30 times larger than the number killed by hunters and trappers, and 500 times larger than the number of animals killed in animal pounds.
peta2 is now the largest youth movement of any social change organization in the world.
peta2 has 267,000 friends on MySpace and 91,000 Facebook fans.
A few years ago, PETA was the top-ranked charity when a poll asked teenagers what nonprofit group they would most want to work for. PETA won by more than a 2 to 1 margin over the second place finisher, The American Red Cross, with more votes than the Red Cross and Habitat for Humanity combined.
“If anyone wants to save the planet,” says Paul McCartney in a PETA interview, “all they have to do is stop eating meat. That’s the single most important thing you could do. It’s staggering when you think about it. Vegetarianism takes care of so many things in one shot: ecology, famine, cruelty. Let’s do it! Linda was right. Going veggie is the single best idea for the new century.”
Again: the animal rights movement is not officially pro-choice, either. The animal rights movement is divided on abortion.
With the GOP calling itself a "big tent" on abortion, shouldn't you be more afraid of the GOP than the animal rights movement?
Democrats For Life of America, 601 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, South Building, Suite 900, Washington, DC 20004 (202) - 220 - 3066
Nick| 12.17.10 @ 7:01PM
VM,
You, also, make a good point. I honestly never considered the "fruit argument." But, I see, your line in the sand, concerning the respect for life, is still subjective. As is mine. Although, your's is more, in my opinion.
I think it stems from your lack of understanding of the Natural Law, as expounded on by Saint Thomas Aquinas.
Man is the pinnacle of Creation. We are made in the image and likeness of Almighty God. Mankind is above the earth and stars. We are above the plants and animals. We are even above the angels.
Man was given dominion over the earth by God. We are stewards of it, and should be responsible. God has no problem with killing animals and using them. Abel was a shepherd who offered his firstlings to God, and it was pleasing to Him. God commanded the slaying of animals, to stop the Hebrews from worshiping the Egyptian animal gods.
So, you see, God put man above all Creation, and He has no problem with all of us using animals for food, and other things.
I doubt your assertion about C.S. Lewis, could you provide a quote? Also, Saint Francis did not believe animals should have similar rights as men.
I'm surprised at your appeal to Peter Singer, a vile and disgusting person. He believes mothers should be able to kill their children up to 2 years after they are born. His extreme thoughts exemplify the logical end of the belief that animals are equal, or superior, to humans, as I stated previously.
Man is entitled to the right to life because we are made in the image and likeness of God. It has nothing to do with when we feel pain, when our brains show activity, how close we are genectically to other species, or if we are sentient.
Scientifically, we all became human beings at the moment of conception. We all got 23 chromosomes from our mother, and 23 from our father. From that one cell, we began to divide, grow, eat, and develope. We didn't stop developing until we were in our late teens. We were never a "lower life form." We were human from the beginning.
To claim that there is some "divide" among animal rights activists, is like peeling some bark of a redwood, and saying that the tree has been divided.
As I am Roman Catholic, and today is Friday, I had tuna for dinner tonight, in your honor, VM. You know what they do to tuna, don't you,VM? I also washed it down with a glass of processed milk from a chain grocery store. Yummy!
Merry Christmas!
Vasu Murti| 12.20.10 @ 3:21AM
Nick,
Thank you for taking the time to go through everything I've posted. I appreciate it.
Like opposing abortion, capital punishment or war, vegetarianism, or nonviolence toward animals, in itself is merely an *ethic*; not a religion, although it has served as the basis for entire religions and philosophical traditions. (Buddhism, Jainism, the Pythagoreans and possibly early Christianity all come to mind).
As an ethic, vegetarianism has attracted some of the greatest minds in history. The Table of Contents to Rynn Berry's 1993 book, Famous Vegetarians and Their Favorite Recipes: Lives & Lore from Buddha to the Beatles lists Pythagoras, Gautama the Buddha, Mahavira, Plato, Socrates, Plutarch, Leonardo da Vinci, Percy Shelley, Leo Tolstoy, Annie Besant, Mohandas Gandhi, George Bernard Shaw, Bronson Alcott, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, Henry Salt, Frances Moore Lappe, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Malcolm Muggeridge, and Brigid Brophy, among others.
You chide me for quoting Peter Singer. However, the crux of Singer's argument in his 1975 book Animal Liberation:
"The principle of the equality of human beings is not a description of an alleged actual equality among humans; it is a prescription of how we should treat humans. Thomas Jefferson saw this point. He wrote in a letter to the author of a book the notable intellectual achievements of Negroes in order to refute the then common view that they had limited intellectual capacities:
" '...whatever be their degree of talent it is no measure of their rights. Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the property or person of others.
"If possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one human to use another for his own ends, how can it entitle humans to exploit nonhumans for the same purpose?"
...is just recycling the moral arguments of Thomas Jefferson; the architect of American democracy.
Singer merely takes Jefferson's egalitarian philosophy one step further by asking why should our concepts of equality and justice towards others end with the human species?
I agree with you we've both drawn lines in the sand as it were. And you're correct: the animal rights ethic is more inclusive than the pro-life ethic with its narrow focus solely on human beings.
Species membership as the criterion for personhood is discrimination, comparable to racism or sexism. *Sentience*, or the ability to feel pleasure or pain is a valid criterion for personhood which transcends species barriers.
Someone on USENET commented in the 1980s that, "...it doesn't take much to be sentient."
YES! That's the idea. If *sentience*, rather than membership in the human species is the criterion for personhood, we have to extend our circle of compassion to include animals and (at least) the unborn once they're sentient.
Christians in the West are enjoying the past 500 years of secular social progress: democracy and representative government in place of monarchy and the divine right of kings; the separation of church and state; the abolition of (human) slavery; the emancipation of women; birth control; the sexual revolution; LGBT rights, etc.
It's odd they would suddenly turn around and become an obstacle when it comes to animal issues! But Christians are the first to cry "MOVE" ! when confronted with secular arguments against harming or killing animals.
Are Christians using secular arguments and the secular and / or political arena to protect the unborn themselves exempt from secular arguments and activism to protect animals? I DON'T THINK SO!
You asked for the quote by C.S. Lewis.
Christian author C.S. Lewis put forth a rational argument concerning the resurrection of animals in The Problem of Pain. His 1947 essay, "A Case for Abolition," attacked vivisection (animal experimentation) and reads as follows:
"Once the old Christian idea of a total difference in kind between man and beast has been abandoned, then no argument for experiments on animals can be found which is not also an argument for experiments on inferior men. If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we re backing up our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reason. Indeed, experiments on men have already begun. We all hear that Nazi scientists have done them. We all suspect that our own scientists may begin to do so, in secret, at any moment.
"The victory of vivisection marks a great advance in the triumph of ruthless, non-moral utilitarianism over the old world of ethical law; a triumph in which we, as well as animals, are already the victims, and of which Dachau and Hiroshima mark the more recent achievements. In justifying cruelty to animals we put ourselves also on the animal level. We choose the jungle and must abide by our choice."
In the summer of 2006, in e-mail exchange with Jack Rice, a self-described "secular humanist for life", I wrote that there is a direct cause-and-effect relationship (karma) between the killing of animal beings and the killing of human beings. Trying to end the abortion crisis while ignoring animal suffering and killing would be like trying to stop or prevent lung cancer while ignoring smoking.
We're seeing global warming and the destruction of redwoods and rainforests due to raising animals for food. Is it really hard to accept there might be a connection between the way we treat animals and the way we treat other humans, especially the weakest and most vulnerable among us, like the unborn?
Colleen McCullough's novel The Thorn Birds was made into a television mini-series in 1983. It took place in 1930s Australia, and though it was concerned with forbidden romance, it indirectly touched on spiritual themes and persons raised in Christianity with a thirst for higher knowledge.
Richard Chamberlain played a Catholic priest, and in one scene he's escorting an elderly woman to her hotel room. She asks him to kiss her goodnight, and he kisses her on the cheek. She asks him again, saying, "Kiss me as if we were lovers!" He refrains, insisting, "I am a priest."
The old woman laments, "Inside, I'm still young!"
As followers of the Hindu religious tradition, we can understand that both God and the soul are eternally young. Father Bede Griffiths says of our main scripture, the Bhagavad-gita, "For a Christian, this is a wonderful confirmation of God’s love contained in the Gospel." Meister Eckhart wrote: "When we say God is ‘eternal,’ we mean God is eternally young." This is Krishna Consciousness. God is an eternal youth.
Matthew Fox’s statement that "God and God’s Son are ultimately attractive and alluring because of their beauty" is also consistent with Vaishnavaism or the worship of Lord Vishnu, or Krishna. The name "Krishna" means "the all attractive one."
For the most part, however, this knowledge is absent from Western theology.
In the mini-series, Rachel Ward plays Meg, a young girl growing up on a farm in rural Australia. At one point, the farm is nearly destroyed by a blazing fire, before rains put it out.
The fire causes Meg to question her faith in God. When the priest tries to console her, and tell her that it was a merciful God who sent the rains, she asks: "Who sent the fire?"
The doctrine of reincarnation, which provides an explanation for the apparent injustices and inequalities in the world, was widespread in the early Christianity, and openly espoused by Origen, whose influence on the Church was second only to Augustine. The doctrine of reincarnation wasn't banned by the Church and forced underground until 533 AD.
"I am not a Christian," wrote one animal rights activist in Animals, Men and Morals (1971), "but I find it incomprehensible that those who preach a doctrine of love and compassion can believe that the material pleasures of meat-eating justify the slaughter it requires."
You identify yourself as a Catholic. Fine. I'm not a Catholic. I'm not a Christian. I will admit, I've fallen head over heels for a sexy Catholic girl with whom I had a weekend fling in October 2007. And I must confess, although there have been other women since then, I'm more smitten with her now than I was three years ago. But, alas, she's the one who ended communication with me!
That being said, you must realize that Aristotle deviated from Plato, who was the greatest collector of Pythagorean literature in antiquity. (And Pythagoras may have gotten his ideas from India.) Catholic doctrine was essentially platonic until Aristotelianism began to infiltrate the Church, and that Aquinas was merely repackaging Aristotelianism; masquerading it as Catholic doctrine.
Frances Arnetta, founder of Christians Helping Animals and People (CHAP), claims that beginning with Descartes (who declared animals are automatons, or machines incapable of suffering), Western civilization took a tragic detour away from biblically-based compassion. Arguably, the turn for the worst happened earlier, as indicated by Aquinas' parroting Aristotle.
Jesus told his disciples to ALWAYS "pray without ceasing" (Luke 21:36), and Paul repeated these words to the gentiles (I Thessalonians 5:17). However, this is the only point on which Jesus and Paul agree. Paul taught a completely different theology from that of Jesus and the original apostles.
Jesus repeatedly spoke of God's tender care for the nonhuman creation (Matthew 6:26-30, 10:29-31; Luke 12:6-7, 24-28). Paul, on the other hand, in I Corinthians 9:9-10, asked scornfully, "Does God take care for oxen?" when referring to one of the commandments in Mosaic Law calling for the humane treatment of animals.
Christians think they are no longer under Mosaic Law, because Paul referred to his background as a former Pharisee and previous adherence to Mosaic Law (with its dietary laws and commandments calling for the humane treatment of animals) as "so much garbage." (Philippians 3:4-8)
Nothing in the synoptic gospels suggests a break with Judaism. Jesus was called "Rabbi," meaning "Master" or "Teacher," 42 times in the gospels. Jesus' ministry was a rabbinic one. He went to the synagogue (Matthew 12:9), taught in the synagogues (Matthew 4:23, 13:54; Mark 1:39), expressed concern for Jairus, "one of the rulers of the synagogue" (Mark 5:36) and it "was his custom" to go to the synagogue (Luke 4:16).
Jesus himself said, "Do not suppose I have come to abolish the Law and the prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill...till heaven and earth pass away, not one jot or tittle pass from the Law till all is fulfilled. Whoever, therefore, breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven...unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 5:17-20)
Jesus also upheld the Torah in Luke 16:17: "And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for the smallest portion of the Law to become invalid."
Nor do these words refer merely to the Ten Commandments. Jesus meant the entire Torah: 613 commandments. When a man asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life, Jesus replied, "You know the commandments." He quoted not just the Ten Commandments, but a commandment from Leviticus 19:13 as well: "Do not defraud." (Mark 10:17-22)
Jesus' disciples were once accused by the scribes and Pharisees of violating rabbinical tradition (Matthew 15:1-2; Mark 7:5), but not biblical law. Jesus never says anywhere in the entire New Testament that the Law is abolished; this was Paul's theology.
Sometimes Christians cite Matthew 7:12, where Jesus says "Do unto others..." and this "covers" the Law and the prophets. But Jesus was merely repeating in the positive what Rabbi Hillel taught a generation earlier. No one took Hillel's words to mean the Law had been abolished--why should we assume this of Jesus?
If Jesus *really* came to abolish the Law and the prophets, Simon (Peter) would not have resisted a divine command to kill and eat both "clean" and "unclean" animals (Acts 10), nor would there have been a debate in the early church as to what extent the gentiles were to observe Mosaic Law (Acts 15). When Paul visited the church at Jerusalem, James and the elders told him all its members were "zealous for the Law," and they were worried because they heard rumors Paul was preaching against Mosaic Law (Acts 21). None of these events would have happened had Jesus really come to abolish the Law and the prophets.
Paul says if anyone has confidence in the Law, "I am ahead of him."
Would that mean Paul places himself ahead of Jesus, who said he did not come to abolish the Law and the prophets? Would that mean Paul places himself ahead of Jesus, who said whoever sets aside even the least of the Law's demands shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:17-19)?
Would that mean Paul places himself ahead of Jesus, who taught that following the commandments of God is the only way to eternal life (Mark 10:17-22)? Would that mean Paul places himself ahead of Jesus who said that it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for the smallest portion of the Law to become invalid (Luke 16:17)?
Paul may have regarded the Law as "so much garbage," but it should be obvious JESUS DIDN'T THINK THE LAW WAS "GARBAGE"!
In The Story of Christian Origins, secular scholar Dr. Martin A. Larson notes further that Paul declares that his followers may even eat food offered to pagan idols (contradicting the resurrected Jesus in Revelation 2:14,20). Whereas Jesus honored women and found in them his most devoted followers, Paul never tires of proclaiming their inferiority.
Christians believe in Paul, not Jesus. Bertrand Russell called Paul the "inventor" of Christianity.
What does biblical tradition really say about animals?
According to the Bible, God intended the entire human race to follow a vegetarian diet.
"And God said: ‘Behold! I have given you every plant-yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree-yielding seed; you shall have them for food.’"
---Genesis 1:29
Although man was made in God’s image and given dominion over all creation (Genesis 1:26-28), these verses do not justify humans killing animals and then devouring them, because God immediately proclaims He created the plants for human consumption. (Genesis 1:29)
Dr. Michael Fox of the Humane Society argued in correspondence with Pope John Paul II during the 1980s that the word "dominion" is derived from the original Hebrew word "rahe" which refers to compassionate stewardship, instead of power and control.
Parents have dominion over their children; they do not have a license to kill, torment or abuse them. The Talmud (Shabbat 119; Sanhedrin 7) interprets "dominion" to mean animals may only be used for labor.
In his excellent A Guide to the Misled, Rabbi Shmuel Golding explains the orthodox Jewish position concerning animal sacrifices:
"When G-d gave our ancestors permission to make sacrifices to Him, it was a concession, just as when He allowed us to have a king (I Samuel 8), but He gave us a whole set of rules and regulations concerning sacrifice that, when followed, would be superior to and distinct from the sacrificial system of the heathens."
Some biblical passages denounce animal sacrifice (Isaiah 1:11,15; Amos 5:21-25). Other passages state that animal sacrifices, not necessarily incurring God's wrath, are unnecessary (I Kings 15:22; Jeremiah 7:21-22; Hosea 6:6; Hosea 8:13; Micah 6:6-8; Psalm 50:1-14; Psalm 40:6; Proverbs 21:3; Ecclesiastes 5:1).
Sometimes meat-eating Christians foolishly cite Isaiah 1:11, where God says, "I am full of the burnt offerings..." These Christians claim the word "full" implies God accepted the sacrifices.
However, in Isaiah 43:23-24, God says: "You have not honored Me with your sacrifices...rather you have burdened Me with your sins, you have wearied Me with your iniquities."
This suggests, as Moses Maimonides taught and Rabbi Shmuel Golding confirms above, that "the sacrifices were a concession to barbarism."
Jesus taught his disciples to pray for the coming of God's kingdom (Matthew 6:9-10), the kingdom of peace, in which the entire world is restored to a vegetarian paradise (Genesis 1:29; Isaiah 11:6-9). Recalling Psalm 37:11, he blessed the meek, saying they would inherit the earth. (Matthew 5:5) The kingdom of God belongs to the gentle and kind (Matthew 5:7-9) Christians are to "Be merciful, just as your Father is also merciful." (Luke 6:36) Those who take up the sword must perish by the sword. (Matthew 26:52)
Jesus repeatedly spoke of God's tender care for the nonhuman creation (Matthew 6:26-30, 10:29-31; Luke 12:6-7, 24-28).
Jesus taught that God desires "mercy and not sacrifice." (Matthew 9:10-13, 12:6-7; Mark 2:15-17; Luke 5:29-32) The epistle to the Hebrews 10:5-10 suggests that Jesus did not come to abolish the Law and the prophets (which Paul, and not Jesus, regarded as "so much garbage"), but only the institution of animal sacrifice, as does Jesus' cleansing the Temple of those who were buying and selling animals for sacrifice and his overturning the tables of the moneychangers in the Temple. (Matthew 21:12-14; Mark 11:15-17; Luke 19:45-46; John 2:14-17)
Jesus not only repeatedly upheld Mosaic Law (Matthew 5:17-19; Mark 10:17-22; Luke 16:17), he justified his healing on the Sabbath by referring to commandments calling for the humane treatment of animals.
When teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath, Jesus healed a woman who had been ill for eighteen years. He justified his healing work on the Sabbath by referring to biblical passages calling for the humane treatment of animals as well as their rest on the Sabbath. "So ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham...be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath?" Jesus asked. (Luke 13:10-16)
On another occasion, Jesus again referred to Torah teaching on "tsa'ar ba'alei chayim" or compassion for animals to justify healing on the Sabbath. "Which of you, having a donkey or an ox that has fallen into a pit, will not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day?" (Luke 14:1-5)
Jesus compared saving sinners who had gone astray from God's kingdom to rescuing lost sheep. He recalled a Jewish legend about Moses' compassion as a shepherd for his flock.
"For the Son of Man has come to save that which was lost. What do you think? Who among you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost until he finds it?
"And when he has found it," Jesus continued, "he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors saying to them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!'
"I say to you, likewise there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance...there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." (Matthew 18:11-13; Luke 15:3-7,10)
"The compassionate, sensitive heart for animals is inseparable from the proclamation of the Christian gospel," writes Anglican priest Reverend Andrew Linzey in Love the Animals. "We have lived so long with the gospel stories of Jesus that we frequently fail to see how his life and ministry identified with animals at almost every point.
"His birth, if tradition is to be believed, takes place in the home of sheep and oxen. His ministry begins, according to St. Mark, in the wilderness 'with the wild beasts' (1:13). His triumphal entry into Jerusalem involves riding on a 'humble' ass (Matthew 21). According to Jesus, it is lawful to 'do good' on the Sabbath, which includes the rescuing of an animal fallen into a pit (Matthew 12). Even the sparrows, literally sold for a few pennies in his day, are not 'forgotten before God.' God's providence extends to the entire created order, and the glory of Solomon and all his works cannot be compared to that of the lilies of the field (Luke 12:27).
"God so cares for His creation that even 'foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.' (Luke 9:58) It is 'the merciful' who are 'blessed' in God's sight and what we do to 'the least' of all we do to him. (Matthew 5:7, 25:45-46) Jesus literally overturns the already questionable practice of animal sacrifice. Those who sell pigeons have their tables overturned and are put out of the Temple (Mark 11:15-16). It is the scribe who sees the spiritual bankruptcy of animal sacrifice and the supremacy of sacrificial love that Jesus commends as being 'not far from the Kingdom of God.' (Mark 12:32-34)
"It is a loving heart which is required by God, and not the needless bloodletting of God's creatures," concludes Reverend Linzey. "We can see the same prophetic and radical challenge to tradition in Jesus' remarks about the 'good shepherd' who, unlike many in his day, 'lays down his life for the sheep.' (John 10:11)"
In Christianity and the Rights of Animals, Reverend Linzey finds two justifications for a Christian case for vegetarianism:
"The first is that killing is a morally significant matter. While justifiable in principle, it can only be practically justified where there is real need for human nourishment. Christian vegetarians do not have to claim that it is always and absolutely wrong to kill in order to eat. It could well be that there were, and are, some situations n which meat-eating was and is essential in order to survive. Geographical considerations alone make it difficult to envisiage life in Palestine at the time of Christ without some primitive fishing industry. But the crucial point is that where we are free to do otherwise the killing of Spirit-filled individuals requires moral justification. It may be justifiable, but only when human nourishment clearly requires it, and even then it remains an inevitable consequence of sin.
"The second point," Linzey explains, "is that misappropriation occurs when humans do not recognize that the life of an animal belongs to God, not to them. Here it seems to me that Christian vegetarianism is well-founded. For while it may have been possible in the past to rear animals with personal care and consideration for their well-being and to dispatch them with the humble and scrupulous recognition that their life should only be taken in times of necessity, such conditions are abnormal today."
A stumbling block for some Christians is the apostle Paul's having referred to his vegetarian brethren as "weak." Paul taught that it is best to abstain from meat or from food offered to idols so as not to offend the "weaker" brethren.
Since Paul refers to Christians who abstain not just from meat, but from food offered to pagan idols as "weak," would his definition of "weak" not have included the risen Jesus (Revelations 2:14-16,20) as well?
Paul's use of the word "weak" has been debated.
According to Christian theologian Dr. Upton Clary Ewing, Paul used the word "weak" with a positive connotation. According to Paul, "God has chosen the weak things in the world to shame the strong." (I Corinthians 1:27)
Describing his tribulations for the cause of Christ, being caught up in the heavenly spheres, and a revelation from Jesus, Paul wrote:
"If I must boast, I shall boast of matters that show my weakness...I will boast, but not about myself--unless it be about my weakness...the Lord...he told me, 'my strength comes to perfection where there is weakness.' Therefore," Paul concluded, "I am happy to boast in my weaknesses...I delight, then, in weaknesses...for when I am weak, then I am strong." (II Corinthians 11:30, 12:1-10)
Paul wrote further that Jesus "was crucified out of weakness, yet he lives through divine power, and we, too, are weak in him, but we shall live with him for your benefit through the power of God...We are happy to be weak when you are strong." (II Corinthians 13:4,9)
Taken in this context, the word "weak" suggests complete dependence upon God.
Admittedly, even if Paul did use the word "weak" with a positive connotation, it would not necessarily mean that it's wrong to eat meat (Genesis 9:3), but just that it's better to be a vegetarian (Genesis 1:29; Isaiah 11:6-9)
The Reverend J. Todd Ferrier, founder of the Order of the Cross (an informal mystical Christian order, believing in reincarnation and abstaining from meat and wine), wrote in 1903:
"But Paul, great and noble man as he was, never was one of the recognized heads at Jerusalem. He had been a Pharisee of the Pharisees...He strove to be all things to all men that he might gain some. And we admire him for his strenuous endeavors to win the world for Christ. But no one could be all things to all men without running the great risks of most disastrous results...
"But here as a further thought in connection with the teaching of the great Apostle an important question is forced upon our attention, which one of these days must receive the due consideration from biblical scholars that it deserves. It is this:
"How is it that the gospel of Paul is more to many people than the gospel of those privileged souls who sat at the feet of Jesus and heard His secrets in the Upper Room?"
Christian theologian Dr. Upton Clary Ewing writes:
“With all due respect for the integrity of Paul, he was not one of the Twelve Apostles… Paul never knew Jesus in life. He never walked and prayed with Him as He went from place to place, teaching the word of God.”
The great theologian Soren Kirkegaard, writing in the Journals, echoes the above sentiment:
“In the teachings of Christ, religion is completely present tense: Jesus is the prototype and our task is to imitate him, become a disciple. But then through Paul came a basic alteration. Paul draws attention away from imitating Christ and fixes attention on the death of Christ, The Atoner. What Martin Luther, in his reformation, failed to realize is that even before Catholicism, Christianity had become degenerate at the hands of Paul. Paul made Christianity the religion of Paul, not of Christ. Paul threw the Christianity of Christ away, completely, turning it upside down, making it just the opposite of the original proclamation of Christ.”
Gentile followers of Jesus address him as "Christ," which means "Messiah." The Bible teaches that with the coming of God’s anointed one will be the establishment of the Kingdom of Peace on earth. The prophecies of Isaiah 11:6-9 indicate this new world will in many ways resemble the Garden of Eden (Genesis 1:29-31), where everyone was vegetarian.
Christ’s return, Judgment Day, and the creation of a new heaven and a new earth were believed to be imminent. The earliest generations of Christians lived with this expectation. (Matthew 24:29-25:46; Mark 13:24-37; Luke 21:25-36; I Thessalonians 4:13-18; James 5:7-9; I Peter 5:7; II Peter 3:3-12; I John 2:18; Jude 17-18; Revelations 22:20) Vegetarianism was practiced in expectation of Christ’s coming kingdom. Among the various early Christian sects, the Montanists practiced vegetarianism with the belief that Christ would soon return.
From history, we learn that the earliest Christians were vegetarian. For example, Clemens Prudentius, the first Christian hymn writer, in one of his hymns exhorts his fellow Christians not to pollute their hands and hearts by the slaughter of innocent cows and sheep, and points to the variety of nourishing and pleasant foods obtainable without blood-shedding.
Seneca (5 BC - 65 AD), a leading Stoic philosopher and a tutor of Nero, was an ardent vegetarian. He started a vegetarian movement during one of Rome’s most decadent periods. Yet he had to abandon his cause. The early Christians were vegetarian. The Emperor became suspicious that Seneca might also be a Christian, so he went back to eating animal flesh. He wrote:
"Certain foreign religions (Christianity) became the object of the imperial suspicion and amongstthe proofs of adherence to the foreign culture or superstition was that of abstinence from the flesh of animals. At the earnest entreaty of my father, I was induced to return to my former habits."
Pliny, who was Governor of Bithynia, where Peter had preached, wrote a letter to Trajan, the Roman Emperor, describing the early Christian practices:
"...they met on a day before it was light (before sunrise) and addressed a form of prayer to Christ as to a god, binding themselves by a solemn oath never to commit any sin or evil and never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust, after which it was their custom to meet together again to takefood, but ordinary and innocent food."
The church father Irenaeus preserved a fragment of a quote by Papias, disciple of John the Evangelist:
"Papias related how the elders and John and heard the Lord teach that creation renewed and liberated shall yield an abundance of all kinds of food, seeds, grass, fruits, grains, and flour in corresponding proportion, and that all animals will use these foods and become in turn peaceful and in harmony with another and with man."
This teaching of Jesus corresponds to the visions of peace and vegetarianism given in Isaiah (11:6-9, 65:25).
Clement I, Bishop of Rome, in an epistle to the Corinthians (AD 88-97) wrote: "Perrenial springs, created for enjoyment...offer their life giving breasts to man and even the smallest of animals that they get together in peace. All things the Creator ordered to be in peace and harmony...take refuge through our Lord Jesus Christ."
The Clementine Homilies, Jewish Christian teachings written during the 2nd century, give us a picture of the life of Clement I, Bishop of Rome. Clement is portrayed as a spiritual seeker, going to various schools of thought, looking for solutions to his doubts about the origin of the world, the immortality of the soul, etc...
Eventually, he hears about how Jesus appeared in Judea. He undertakes a long journey through Egypt to Palestine, where he meets the apostle Peter in Caesarea. Clement becomes a Christian and is invited by (Simon) Peter to accompany him on his missionary journeys.
The text includes debates between Peter and Simon Magus. Peter refers to Jesus as "Teacher" and "Master," teaches Clement to love his enemies and persecutors, insists upon the renunciation of worldly goods, and connects flesh-eating to idolatry. In the Clementine Homilies, we read:
"The unnatural eating of flesh-meats is as polluting as the heathen worship of devils, with its sacrifices and impure feasts, through participation in which a man becomes a fellow-eater with devils."
Genesis 6 describes the "sons of the gods" (angels) having sexual intercourse with the daughters of men, and giving rise to a race of giants. The Clementine Homilies explain that the eating of animal flesh began with this perversion:
"...from their unhallowed intercourse spurious men sprang, much greater in stature than ordinary men, whom they afterwards called giants...wild in manners, and greater than men in size, insamuch as they were sprung of angels; yet less than angels, as they were born of men.
"Therefore God, knowing that they were barbarized to brutality, and that the world was not sufficient to satisfy them (for it was created according to the proportion of men and human use), that they might not through want of food turn, contrary to nature, to the eating of animals, and yet seem to be blameless, as having ventured upon this through necessity, the Almighty God rained manna upon them, suited to their variant tastes; and they enjoyed all that they would.
"But they, on account of their bastard nature, not being pleased with purity of food, longed only after the taste of blood. Wherefore they first tasted flesh."
The apocryphal Acts of Thomas was used by many of the early Christian sects. Dr. Edgar J. Goodspeed, in his book History of Early Christian Literature, writes that this scripture depicts the disciple of Jesus as an ascetic: "He continually fasts and prays, wears the same garment in all weather; accepts nothing from anyone; gives what he has to others, and abstains from meat and wine." Abstinence from animal flesh thus came to be regarded in gentile Christianity as abstinence from luxury and sensuality; asceticism.
The early church father Origen (AD 185-254), a vegetarian, explained: "when we do abstain (from eating meat), we do so because ‘we keep under our body and bring it into subjection’ (I Corinthians 9:27), and desire ‘to mortify our members that are upon the earth, fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence’ (Colossians 3:5); and we use every effort to ‘mortify the deeds of the flesh.’ (Romans 8:13)"
One of the greatest theologians in the early Christian church, Tertullian, or Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, was born in Carthage about AD 155-160. Cyprian, the Bishop of Carthage, called him the "Master." Tertullian was one of four early church fathers who wrote extensively on the subject of vegetarianism. According to Tertullian, flesh-eating is not conducive to the highest life, it violates moral law, and it debases man in intellect and emotion.
Responding to the apparent permissiveness of Paul, Tertullian argued: "and even if he handed over to you the keys of the slaughter house...in permitting you to eat all things...at least he has not made the kingdom of Heaven to consist in *butchery* - for, says he, eating and drinking is not the Kingdom of God."
Tertullian similarly scorned those who would use the gospel to justify gratifying the cravings of the flesh:
"How unworthily, too, do you press the example of Christ as having come ‘eating and drinking’ into the service of your lusts: He who pronounced not the full but the hungry and thirsty ‘blessed,’ who professed His work to be the completion of His Father’s will, was wont to abstain—instructing them to labor for that ‘meat’ which lasts to eternal life, and enjoining in their common prayers petition not for gross food but for bread only."
Tertullian made his case for moderate eating by referring to the history of the Israelites (Numbers 11:4-34): "And if there be ‘One’ who prefers the works of justice, not however, without sacrifice—that is to say, a spirit exercised by abstinence—it is surely that God to whom neither a gluttonous people nor priest was acceptable—monuments of whose concupiscence remain to this day, where lies buried a people greedy and clamorous for flesh-meats, gorging quails even to the point of inducing jaundice.
"It was divinely proclaimed," insisted Tertullian, "’Wine and strong liquor shall you not drink, you and your sons after you.’ Now this prohibition of drink is essentially connected with the vegetable diet. Thus, where abstinence from wine is required by the Deity, or is vowed by man, there, too, may be understood suppression of gross feeding, for as is the eating, so is the drinking.
"It is not consistent with truth that a man should sacrifice half of his stomach only to God—that he should be sober in drinking, but intemperate in eating. Your belly is your God, your liver is your temple, your paunch is your altar, the cook is your priest, and the fat steam is your Holy Spirit; the seasonings and the sauces are your chrisms, and your belchings are your prophesizing..."
Tertullian sarcastically compared gluttons to Esau, who sold his birthright in exchange for a meal. "I ever recognize Esau, the hunter, as a man of taste and as his were, so are your whole skill and interest given to hunting and trapping...It is in the cooking pots that your love is inflamed—it is in the kitchen that your faith grows fervid—it is in the flesh dishes that all your hopes lie hid...Consistently do you men of the flesh reject the things of the Spirit. But if your prophets are complacent towards such persons, they are not my prophets...Let us openly and boldly vindicate our teaching.
"We are sure that they who are in the flesh cannot please God...a grossly-feeding Christian is akin to lions and wolves rather than God. Our Lord Jesus called Himself Truth and not habit."
In general, Tertullian railed against gluttony, and taught that spiritual life consists of simple living. He explained, "if man could not follow even a simple taboo against eating one fruit, how could he be expected to restrain himself from more demanding restrictions? Instead, after the Flood, man was given the regulation against blood; further details were length to his own strength of will."
"Think of such a voice sounding through all the Churches of the world, and of such a message falling upon the ears of the people of this land who pride themselves on their advanced Christian civilisation," wrote Reverend J. Todd Ferrier, founder of the Order of the Cross, in 1903.
"Would any Government appoint Tertullian to be a Bishop?" asked Reverend Ferrier. "Would the worshippers tolerate him in any sanctuary? Nay, verily. To the world he would be a crank; and to the Church-goers an arch-heretic!
"Men and women whose minds are enslaved by the things of the flesh would say he was 'mad.' The like people in the time of the Lord said He had a 'devil.' So blind in all ages are the sensuous and sensual to the things of the Spirit! So rebellious are they when that Spirit insists upon those things which make for purer habits and humaner laws!"
In his commentary on the Book of Daniel, Hippolytus (AD 200) depicted the Biblical hero and his three companions as pious ascetics. Referring to the passage in Scripture which states that these four men did not wish to defile themselves with the king’s meat, Hippolytus equated the purity of their vegetarian diet with the purity of their thoughts:
"These, though captives in a strange land, were not seduced by delicate meats, nor were they slaves to the pleasures of wine, nor were they caught by the bait of princely glory. But they kept their mouth holy and pure, that pure speech might proceed from pure mouths, and praise with such (mouths) the Heavenly Father."
Clement of Alexandria (AD 150-220), or Titus Flavius Clemens, founded the Alexandrian school of Christian Theology and succeeded Pantaenus in AD 190. In his writings, he referred to vegetarian philosophers Pythagoras, Plato, and even Socrates as divinely inspired. But the true teachings, he insisted, are to be found in the Hebrew prophets and in the person of Jesus Christ.
Clement taught that a life of virtue is one of simplicity, and that the apostle Matthew was a vegetarian. According to Clement, eating flesh and drinking wine "is rather characteristic to a beast and the fumes rising from them, being dense, darken the soul...Destroy not the work of God for the sake of food. Whether ye eat or drink, do all to the glory of God, aiming after true frugality. For it is lawful for me to partake of all things, yet all things are not expedient...neither is the regimen of a Christian formed by indulgence...man is not by nature a gravy eater, but a bread eater...
"But those who bend around inflammatory tables, nourishing their own diseases, are ruled by a most licentious disease which I shall venture to call the demon of the belly: the worst and most vile of demons. It is far better to be happy than to have a devil dwelling in us, for happiness is found only in the practice of virtue. Accordingly the apostle Matthew lived upon seeds, fruits, grains and nuts and vegetables, without the use of flesh."
Clement acknowledged the moral and spiritual advantages of the vegetarian way of life:
"If any righteous man does not burden his soul by the eating of flesh, he has the advantage of a rational motive...The very ancient altar of Delos was celebrated for its purity, to which alone, as being undefiled by slaughter and death, they say that Pythagoras would permit approach.
"And they will not believe us when we say that the righteous soul is the truly sacred altar? But I believe that sacrifices were invented by men to be a pretext for eating flesh."
St. Basil (AD 320-79) taught, "The steam of meat darkens the light of the spirit. One can hardly have virtue if one enjoys meat meals and feasts...In the earthly paradise, there was no wine, no one sacrificed animals, and no one ate meat. Wine was only invented after the Deluge...
"With simple living, well being increases in the household, animals are in safety, there is no shedding of blood, nor putting animals to death. The knife of the cook is needless, for the table is spread only with the fruits that nature gives, and with them they are content."
St. Basil prayed for universal brotherhood, and an end to human brutality against animals.
"Holy people are most loving and gentle in their dealings with their fellows, and even with the lower animals: for this reason it was said that ‘A righteous man is merciful to the life of his beast,’" explained St. John Chrysostom (AD 347-407). "Surely we ought to show kindness and gentleness to animals for many reasons and chiefly because they are of the same origin as ourselves."
Writing about the Christian saints and ascetics, Chrysostom observed: "No streams of blood are among them; no butchering and cutting of flesh...With their repast of fruits and vegetables even angels from heaven, as they behold it, are delighted and pleased."
Chrysostom considered flesh-eating a cruel and unnatural habit for Christians: "We imitate the ways of wolves, the ways of leopards, or rather we are worse than these. For nature has assigned that they should be thus fed, but us God hath honored with speech and a sense of equity, yet we are worse than the wild beasts."
In a homily on Matthew 22:1-4, Chrysostom taught: "We the Christian leaders practice abstinence from the flesh of animals to subdue our bodies...the unnatural eating of flesh-meat is of demonical origin...the eating of flesh is polluting." He added that "flesh-meats and wine serve as materials for sensuality, and are a source of danger, sorrow, and disease."
In a homily on II Corinthians 9, Chrysostom distinguished between nourishment and gluttony:
"No one debars thee from these, nor forbids thee thy daily food. I say ‘food,’ not ‘feasting’; ‘raiment’ not ‘ornament,’...For consider, who should we say more truly feasted—he whose diet is herbs, and who is in sound health and suffered no uneasiness, or he who has the table of a Sybarite and is full of a thousand disorders?
"Certainly the former. Therefore, let us seek nothing more than these, if we would at once live luxuriously and healthfully. And let him who can be satisfied with pulse, and can keep in good health, seek for nothing more. But let him who is weaker, and needs to be dieted with other vegetable fruits, not be debarred from them."
In a homily on the Epistle to Timothy, Chrysostom described the ill effects of becoming a slave to one’s bodily appetites:
"A man who lives in selfish luxury is dead while he lives, for he lives only to his stomach. In other senses he lives not. He sees not what he ought to see; he hears not what he ought to hear; he speaks not what he ought to speak. Nor does he perform the actions of living.
"But as he who is stretched upon a bed with his eyes closed and his eyelids fast, perceives nothing that is passing; so is it with this man, or rather not so, but worse. For the one is equally insensible to things good and evil, while the other is sensible to things evil only, but as insensible as the former to things good.
"Thus he is dead. For nothing relating to the life to come moves or affects him. For intemperance, taking him into her own bosom as into some dark and dismal cavern full of all uncleanliness, causes him to dwell altogether in darkness, like the dead. For, when all his time is spent between feasting and drunkenness, is he not dead, and buried in darkness?
"Who can describe the storm that comes of luxury, that assails the soul and body? For, as a sky continually clouded admits not the sunbeams to shine through, so the fumes of luxury...envelop his brain...and casting over it a thick mist, suffers not reason to exert itself.
"If it were possible to bring the soul into view and to behold it with our bodily eyes—it would seem depressed, mournful, miserable, and wasted with leanness; for the more the body grows sleek and gross, the more lean and weakly is the soul. The more one is pampered, the more the other is hampered."
The orthodox, 4th century Christian Hieronymus connected vegetarianism with both the original diet given by God and the teachings of Jesus:
"The eating of animal meat was unknown up to the big Flood, but since the Flood they have pushed the strings and stinking juices of animal meat into our mouths, just as they threw quails in front of the grumbling sensual people in the desert. Jesus Christ, who appeared when the time had been fulfilled, has again joined the end with the beginning, so that it is no longer allowed for us to eat animal meat."
The 4th century St. Blaise is said to have established an animal hospital in the wilderness. The wildlife, in turn, protected him. St. Patrick (389?-481?) is said to have saved a mother deer and her baby from hunters. Commentators say it was this act of compassion which led to the conversion of the pagan.
"By saving the fawn they were about to kill," writes Richard Power in The Ark, St. Patrick made the Christian religion meaningful to the hardened Ulster warriors. Before that act of compassion, his preaching had failed to convince them." (The Ark is a bulletin published by the Catholic Study Circle for Animal Welfare.)
St. Jerome (AD 340-420) wrote to a monk in Milan who had abandoned vegetarianism:
“As to the argument that in God’s second blessing (Genesis 9:3) permission was given to eat flesh—a permission not given in the first blessing (Genesis 1:29)—let him know that just as permission to put away a wife was, according to the words of the Saviour, not given from the beginning, but was granted to the human race by Moses because of the hardness of our hearts (Matthew 19:1-12), so also in like manner the eating of flesh was unknown until the Flood, but after the Flood, just as quails were given to the people when they murmured in the desert, so have sinews and the offensiveness been given to our teeth.
“The Apostle, writing to the Ephesians, teaches us that God had purposed that in the fullness of time he would restore all things, and would draw to their beginning, even to Christ Jesus, all things that are in heaven or that are on earth. Whence also, the Saviour Himself in the Apocalypse of John says, ‘I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.’ From the beginning of human nature, we neither fed upon flesh nor did we put away our wives, nor were our foreskins taken away from us for a sign. We kept on this course until we arrived at the Flood.
“But after the Flood, together with the giving of the Law, which no man could fulfill, the eating of flesh was brought in, and the putting away of wives was conceded to hardness of heart...But now that Christ has come in the end of time, and has turned back Omega to Alpha...neither is it permitted to us to put away our wives, nor are we circumcised, nor do we eat flesh.”
St. Jerome was responsible for the Vulgate, or Latin version of the Bible, still in use today. He felt a vegetarian diet was best for those devoted to the pursuit of wisdom. He once wrote that he was not a follower of Pythagoras or Empodocles “who do not eat any living creature,” but concluded, “And so I too say to you: if you wish to be perfect, it is good not to drink wine and eat flesh.”
The 4th century St. Blaise is said to have established an animal hospital in the wilderness. The wildlife, in turn, protected him. St. Patrick (389?-481?) is said to have saved a mother deer and her baby from hunters. Commentators say it was this act of compassion which led to the conversion of the pagan.
“By saving the fawn they were about to kill,” writes Richard Power in The Ark, St. Patrick made the Christian religion meaningful to the hardened Ulster warriors. Before that act of compassion, his preaching had failed to convince them.” (The Ark is a bulletin published by the Catholic Study Circle for Animal Welfare.)
St. Ciaran of Ossory noted in the 5th century that animals have intrinsic rights because of their capacity to feel pleasure and pain. Butler’s four-volume Lives of the Saints describes many saints as abstinent from childhood, never eating flesh-meats, never touching meat or wine, compassionate to all creatures, etc.
According to Father Ambrose Agius:
“Many of the saints understood God’s creatures, and together they shared the pattern of obedience to law and praise of God that still leaves us wondering. The quickest way to understand is surely to bring our own lives as closely as possible into line with the intention of the Giver of all life, animate and inanimate.”
The Reverend Alvin Hart, an Episcopal priest in New York, says:
“Many Georgian saints were distinguished by their love for animals. St. John Zedazneli made friends with bears near his hermitage; St. Shio befriended a wolf; St. David of Garesja protected deer and birds from hunters, proclaiming, ‘He whom I believe in and worship looks after and feeds all these creatures, to whom He has given birth.’ Early Celtic saints, too, favored compassion for animals. Saints Wales, Cornwall and Brittany of Ireland in the 5th and 6th centuries AD went to great pains for their animal friends, healing them and praying for them as well.”
St. Benedict, who founded the Benedictine Order in AD 529, made vegetarian foods the staple for his monks, teaching, “Nothing is more contrary to the Christian spirit than gluttony.”
The Rule of St. Benedict itself is a composite of ascetic teachings from previous traditions, such as St. Anthony’s monasticism in Egypt, which called for abstinence from meat and wine.
Aegidius (c. 700) was a vegetarian who lived on herbs, water and the milk of a deer God sent to him. One day the deer was being hunted by a king and his entourage, and fled to Aegidius for protection. Aegidius stopped with his right hand the arrow intended for the deer, but which only perforated his hand.
In the 7th century, the hermit monk St. Giles was an Athenian, who resided in a French forest, dwelling in a cave, and living on herbs, nuts, and fruits. One day the King of France came hunting in the forest. He pursued a young deer which took refuge in Giles’ arms. The King was so impressed with Giles’ holiness he begged forgiveness and built him a monastery.
Boniface (672-754) wrote to Pope Zacharias that he had begun a monastery which followed the rules of strict abstinence, whose monks do not eat meat nor enjoy wine or other intoxicating drinks. St. Andrew lived on herbs, olives, oil and bread. He lived to be 105.
The early English mystic St. Guthlac of Crowland (673-714) is said to have been able to call birds in to feed from his hand. “Hast thou never learned in Holy Writ that he who led his life after God’s will, the wild beasts and the wild birds have become more intimate with him?” he asked. St. Gudival of Ghent once brought a slaughtered sheep back to life “because he saw in it Christ led like a sheep to the slaughter.”
St. Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) “was moved to feelings of compassion for animals, and he wept for them when he saw them caught in the hunger’s net.” St. Richard of Wyche, a vegetarian, was moved by the sight of animals taken to slaughter. “Poor innocent little creatures,” he observed. “If you were reasoning beings and could speak, you would curse us. For we are the cause of your death, and what have you done to deserve it?”
Vasu Murti| 12.20.10 @ 3:31AM
Nick (cont'd),
It's possible historically that Christianity, like Buddhism, began as a pacifist and vegetarian religion, but was corrupted over the centuries, beginning, perhaps, with the apostle Paul.
Secular scholar Keith Akers writes in his as of yet unpublished manuscript, Broken Thread, The Fate of the Jewish Followers of Jesus in Early Christianity:
"The 'orthodox' response to vegetarianism has been somewhat contradictory...The objection to meat consumption has been taken as evidence of heresy when Christians have been faced with outsiders; however, vegetarianism met with a kinder reception among the monastic communities...Vegetarianism does attain a certain status even in orthodox circles.
"Indeed, a list of known vegetarians among the church leaders reads very much like a Who's Who in the early church. Peter is described as a vegetarian in the Recognitions and Homilies. Hegesippus, quoted by Eusebius, said that James (the brother of Jesus) was a vegetarian and was raised as a vegetarian. Clement of Alexandria thought that Matthew was a vegetarian...
"According to Eusebius, the apostles--all the apostles, and not just James--abstained from both meat and wine, thus making them vegetarians and teetotalers, just like James. Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Basil, Gregory of Nanziance, John Chrysostom, and Tertullian were all probably vegetarians, based on their writings...they themselves are evidently vegetarian and can be counted on to say a few kind words about vegetarianism. On the other hand, there are practically no references to any Christians eating fish or meat before the council of Nicaea.
"The rule of Benedict forbade eating any four-legged animals, unless one was sick. Columbanus allowed vegetables, lentil porridge, flour, and bread only, at all times, even for the sick. A fifth-century Irish rule forbids meat, fish, cheese, and butter at all times, though the sick, elderly, travel-weary, or even monks on holidays may eat cheese or butter, but no one may ever eat meat.
"The Carthusians were especially strict about vegetarianism. The origin of their order is related by the story of St. Bruno and his companions, who on the Sunday before Lent are sitting before some meat and are debating whether they should eat meat at all.
"During the debate, numerous examples of vegetarians among their monastic predecessors are mentioned--the Desert Fathers, Paul (the Hermit), Antony, Hilarion, Macharius, and Arsenius, are all cited as vegetarian examples. After much discussion, they fall asleep--and remain asleep for 45 days, waking up when Archbishop Hugh shows up on Wednesday of Holy Week! When they wake up, the meat miraculously turns to ashes, and they fall on their knees and determine never to eat meat again.
"It is true that the church rejected the requirement for vegetarianism, following the dicta of Paul. However, it is interesting under these circumstances that there are so many vegetarians. In fact, outside of the references to Jesus eating fish in the New Testament, there are hardly any references to any early Christians eating meat.
Thus vegetarianism was practiced by the apostles, by James the brother of Jesus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Basil, Gregory of Nanziance, John Chrysostom, Tertullian, Bonaventure, Arnobius, Cassian, Jerome, the Desert Fathers, Paul (the Hermit), Antony, Hilarion, Machrius, Columbanus, and Aresenius--but not by Jesus himself!
"It is as if everyone in the early church understood the message except the messenger. This is extremely implausible. The much more likely explanation is that the original tradition was vegetarian, but that under the pressure of expediency and the popularity of Paul's writings in the second century, the tradition was first dropped as a requirement and finally dropped even as a desideratum."
In her 2004 book, Vegetarian Christian Saints: Mystics, Ascetics & Monks, Jewish scholar Dr. Holly Roberts (she has a Master's degree in Christian theology) documents the lives and teachings of over 150 canonized vegetarian saints:
St. Anthony of Egypt; St. Hilarion; St. Macarius the Elder; St. Palaemon; St. Pachomius; St. Paul the Hermit; St. Marcian; St. Macarius the Younger; St. Aphraates; St. James of Nisibis; St. Ammon; St. Julian Sabas; St. Apollo; St. John of Egypt; St. Porphyry of Gaza; St. Dorotheus the Theban; St. Theodosius the Cenobiarch; St. Sabas; St. Fugentius of Ruspe; St. Gerasimus; St. Mary of Egypt; St. Dositheus; St. Abraham Kidunaja; St. John the Silent; St. Theodore of Sykeon; St. Lups of Troyes; St. Lupicinus; St. Romanus; St. Gudelinis; St. Liphardus; St. Maurus of Glanfeuil; St. Urbicius; St. Senoch; St. Hospitius; St. Winwaloe; St. Kertigan; St. Fintan; St. Molua; St. Amatus; St. Guthlac; St. Joannicus; St. Theodore the Studite; St. Lioba; St. Euthymius the Younger; St. Luke the Younger; St. Paul of Latros; St. Antony of the Caves of Kiev; St. Theodosius Pechersky; St. Fantinus; St. Wulfstan; St. Gregory of Makar; St. Elphege; St. Theobald of Provins; St. Stephen of Grandmont; St. Henry of Coquet; St. William of Malavalle; St. Godric; St. Stephen of Obazine; St. William of Bourges; St. Humility of Florence; St. Simon Stock; St. Agnes of Montepulciano; St. Laurence Justinian; St. Herculanus of Piegaro; St. Francis of Assisi; St. Clare of Assisi; St. Aventine of Troyes; st. Felix of Cantalice; St. Joseph of Cupertino; St. Benedict; St. Bruno; St. Alberic; St. Robert of Molesme; St. Stephen Harding; St. Gilbert of Sempringham; St. Dominic; St. John of Matha; St. Albert of Jerusalem; St. Angela Merici; St. Paula; St. Genevieve; St. David; St. Leonard of Noblac; St. Kevin; St. Anskar; St. Ulrich; St. Yvo; St. Laurence O'Toole; St. Hedwig; St. Mary of Onigines; St. Elizabeth of Hungary; St. Ivo Helory; St. Philip Benizi; St. Albert of Trapani; St. Nicholas of Tolentino; St. Rita of Cascia; St. Francis of Paola; St. John Capistrano; St. John of Kanti; St. Peter of Alcantara; St. Francis Xavier; St. Philip Neri; St. Mary Magdalen of Pazzi; St. Jean-Marie Vianney; St. Basil the Great; St. Jerome; St. Ephraem; St. Peter Damian; St. Bernard; St. Catherine of Siena; St. Robert Bellarmine; St. Peter Celestine; St. Olympias; St. Publius; St. Malchus; St. Asella; St. Sulpicius Severus; St. Maxentius; St. Monegundis; St. Paul Aurelian; St. Coleman of Kilmacduagh; St. Bavo; St. Amandus; St. Giles; St. Silvin; St. Benedict of Aniane; St. Aybert; St. Dominic Loricatus; St. Richard of Wyche; St. Margaret of Cortona; St. Clare of Rimini; St. Frances of Rome; St. James de la Marca; St. Michael of Giedroyc; St. Mariana of Quito; St. John de Britto; St. Callistratus; St. Marianus; St. Brendon of Clonfert; St. Kieran (Carian); St. Stephen of Mar Saba; St. Anselm; St. Martin de Porres; St. Procpius; St. Boniface of Tarsus; St. Serenus.
In the (updated) 1986 edition of A Vegetarian Sourcebook, Keith Akers similarly observes: "But many others, both orthodox and heterodox, testified to the vegetarian origins of Christianity. Both Athanasius and his opponent Arius were strict vegetarians. Many early church fathers were vegetarian, including Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Heironymus, Boniface, and John Chrysostom.
"Many of the monasteries both in ancient times and at the present day practiced vegetarianism...The requirement to be vegetarian has been diluted considerably since the earliest days, but the practice of vegetarianism was continued by many saints, monks, and laymen. Vegetarianism is at the heart of Christianity."
Vegetarian writer Steven Rosen explains:
“...over the centuries, there has arisen two distinct schools of Christian thought. The Aristotelian-Thomistic school and the Augustinian-Franciscan school. The Aristotelian-Thomistic school has, as its fundamental basis, the premise that animals are here for our pleasure—they have no purpose of their own. We can eat them, torture them in laboratories—anything...Unfortunately, modern Christianity embraces this form of their religion.
“The Augustinian-Franciscan school, however, teaches that we are all brothers and sisters under God’s Fatherhood. Based largely on the world view of St. Francis and being platonic in nature, this school fits in very neatly with the vegetarian perspective.”
It is said that St. Francis of Assisi (1182-1226) bought two lambs from a butcher and gave them the coat on his back to keep them warm; and that he bought two fish from a fishwoman and threw them back into the water. He even paid to ransom lambs that were being taken to their death, recalling the gentle Lamb who willingly went to slaughter (Isaiah 53:7; John 1:29) to pay the ransom of sinners.
“Be conscious, O man, of the wondrous state in which the Lord God has placed you,” instructed Francis in his Admonitions (4), “for He created and formed you to the image of His beloved Son—and (yet) all the creatures under heaven, each according to its nature, serve know, and obey their Creator better than you.” St. Francis felt a deep kinship with all creatures. He called them “brother,” and “sister,” knowing they came from the same Source as himself.
Francis revealed his fraternal love for the animal world during Christmas time 1223: “If I ever have the opportunity to talk with the emperor,” he explained, “I’ll beg him, for the love of God and me, to enact a special law: no one is to capture or kill our sisters the larks or do them any harm. Furthermore, all mayors and lords of castles and towns are required to scatter wheat and other grain on the roads outside the walls so that our sisters the larks and other birds might have something to eat on so festive a day.
“And on Christmas Eve, out of reverence for the Son of God, whom on that night the Virgin Mary placed in a manger between the ox and the ass, anyone having an ox or an ass is to feed it a generous portion of choice fodder. And, on Christmas Day, the rich are to give the poor the finest food in abundance.”
Francis removed worms from a busy road and placed them on the roadside so they would not be crushed under human traffic. Once when he was sick and almost blind, mice ran over his table as he took his meals and over him while he slept. He regarded their disturbance as a “diabolical temptation,” which he met with patience and restraint, indicating his compassion towards other living creatures.
St. Francis was once given a wild pheasant to eat, but he chose instead to keep it as a companion. On another occasion, he was given a fish, and on yet another, a waterfowl to eat, but he was moved by the natural beauty of these creatures and chose to set them free.
“Dearly beloved!” said Francis beginning a sermon after a severe illness, “I have to confess to God and you that...I have eaten cakes made with lard.”
The Catholic Encyclopedia comments on this incident as follows: “St. Francis’ gift of sympathy seems to have been wider even than St. Paul’s, for we find to evidence in the great Apostle of a love for nature or for animals...
“Francis’ love of creatures was not simply the offspring of a soft sentimental disposition. It arose from that deep and abiding sense of the presence of God. To him all are from one Father and all are real kin...hence, his deep sense of personal responsibility towards fellow creatures: the loving friend of all God’s creatures.”
Francis taught: “All things of creation are children of the Father and thus brothers of man...God wants us to help animals, if they need help. Every creature in distress has the same right to be protected.”
According to Francis, a lack of mercy towards animals leads to a lack of mercy towards men: “If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the 'shelter' of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.”
One Franciscan monk, St. Anthony of Padua (1195-1231), who preached throughout France and Italy, is said to have attracted a group of fish that came to hear him preach. St. James of Venice, who lived during the 13th century, bought and released the birds sold in Italy as toys for children. It is said he "pitied the little birds of the Lord...his tender charity recoiled from all cruelty, even to the most diminutive of animals."
St. Bonaventure was a scholar and theologian who joined the Franciscan Order in 1243. He wrote The Soul's Journey into God and The Life of St. Francis, the latter documenting St. Francis' miracles with animals and love for all creation. Bonaventure taught that all creatures come from God and return to Him, and that the light of God shines through His different creatures in different ways:
"...For every creature is by its nature a kind of effigy and likeness of the eternal Wisdom. Therefore, open your eyes, alert the ears of your spirit, open your lips and apply your heart so that in all creatures you may see, hear, praise, love and worship, glorify and honor your God."
St. Bridget (1303?-1373) of Sweden, founder of the Brigittine Order, wrote in her Revelations:
"Let a man fear, above all, Me his God, and so much the gentler will he become towards My creatures and animals, on whom, on account of Me, their Creator, he ought to have compassion."
She raised pigs, and a wild boar is even said to have left its home in the forest to become her pet.
"The reason why God's servants love His creatures so deeply is that they realize how deeply Christ loves them," explained St. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380). "And this is the very character of love to love what is loved by those we love."
"Here I saw a great unity between Christ and us..." wrote Julian of Norwich (1360-?), "for when he was in pain we were in pain, and all creatures able to suffer pain suffered with him."
Christian mystic, Thomas A' Kempis (1380-1471) wrote in his devotional classic, The Imitation of Christ, that the soul desiring communion with God must be open to seeing, respecting and learning from all of God's creatures, including the nonhumans:
"...and if thy heart be straight with God," he wrote, "then every creature shall be to thee a mirror of life and a book of holy doctrine, for there is no creature so little or vile, but that showeth and representeth the goodness of God."
St. Filippo Neri spent his entire life protecting and rescuing other living creatures. Born in Florence in 1515, he went to Rome as a young man, and tried to live as an ascetic. He sold his books, giving away the money to the poor. He worked without pay in the city hospital, tending to the sick and the poor. He gave whatever he possessed to others.
St. Filippo loved the animals and could not bear to see them suffer. He took the mice caught in traps away from people's homes and set them free in the fields and stables. A vegetarian, he could not endure walking past a butcher shop. "Ah," he exclaimed. "If everyone were like me, no one would kill animals!"
The Trappist monks of the Catholic Church practiced vegetarianism from the founding of their Order until the Second Vatican Council in the late 1960s. According to the Trappist rules, as formulated by Armand Jean de Rance (1626-1700), “in the dining hall nothing is layed out except: pulse, roots, cabbages, or milk, but never any fish...I hope I will move you more and more rigorously, when you discover that the use of simple and rough food has its origin with the holy apostles (James, Peter, Matthew).
“We can assure you that we have written nothing about this subject which was not believed, observed, proved good through antiquity, proved by historians and tradition, preserved and kept up to us by the holy monks.”
A contemporary Benedictine monk, Brother David Steindl-Rast points out that the lives of the saints teach compassion towards all living beings. “Unfortunately,” says Brother David, “Christians have their share of the exploitation of our environment and in the mistreatment of animals. Sometimes they have even tried to justify their crimes by texts from the Bible, misquoted out of context. But the genuine flavor of a tradition can best be discerned in its saints...
“All kinds of animals appear in Christian art to distinguish one saint from another. St. Menas has two camels; St. Ulrich has a rat; St. Bridgid has ducks and geese; St. Benedict, a raven; the list goes on and on. St. Hubert’s attribute is a stag with a crucifix between its antlers. According to legend, this saint was a hunter but gave up his violent ways when he suddenly saw Christ in a stag he was about to shoot...Christ himself is called the Lamb of God.”
According to Brother David, “...the survival of our planet depends on our sense of belonging—to all other humans, to dolphins caught in dragnets, to pigs and chickens and calves raised in animal concentration camps, to redwoods and rainforests, to kelp beds in our oceans, and to the ozone layer.”
Roman Catholic Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801-90), wrote in 1870 that “cruelty to animals is as if a man did not love God.” On another occasion, he asked: “Now what is it that moves our very heart and sickens us so much at cruelty shown to poor brutes? I suppose this: first, that they have done us no harm; next, that they have no power whatever of resistance; it is the cowardice and tyranny of which they are the victims which make their sufferings so especially touching...there is something so very dreadful, so satanic, in tormenting those who have never harmed us and who cannot defend themselves; who are utterly in our power.”
Cardinal Newman compared injustices against animals to the sacrifice, agony and death of Christ upon the cross: “Think of your feelings at cruelty practiced upon brute animals and you will gain the sort of feeling which the history of Christ’s cross and passion ought to excite within you. And let me add, this is in all cases one good use to which you may turn any...wanton and unfeeling acts shown towards the...animals; let them remind you, as a picture of Christ’s sufferings. He who is higher than the angels, deigned to humble Himself even to the state of the brute creation...”
Another cardinal, Henry Edward Manning (1808-92), spoke out against cruelty to animals, especially experimentation upon animals. In a letter dated July 13, 1891, he wrote: “We owe ourselves the duty not to be brutal or cruel; and we owe to God the duty of treating all His creatures according to His own perfections of love and mercy.”
Bishop Westcott wrote, “Animals are in our power in a peculiar sense; they are committed by God to our sovereignty and we owe them a considerate regard for their rights. No animal life can be treated as a THING. Willful disrespect of the sanctities of physical life in one sphere bears its fruit in other and higher spheres.”
Cardinal Francis Bourne (1861-1934) told children in Westminster Cathedral in April 1931: “There is even in kindness to animals a special merit in remembering that this kindness is obligatory upon us because God made the animals, and is therefore their creator, and, in a measure, His Fatherhood extends to them.” Cardinal Arthur Hinsley (1865-1943), the former archbishop of Westminster, wrote, “The spirit of St. Francis is the Catholic spirit.” According to Cardinal Hinsley, “Cruelty to animals is the degrading attitude of paganism.”
A Roman Catholic priest, Msgr. LeRoy McWilliams of North Arlington, New Jersey, testified in October 1962 in favor of legislation to reduce the sufferings of laboratory animals. He told congressional representatives:
“The first book of the Bible tell us that God created the animals and the birds, so they have the same Father as we do. God’s Fatherhood extends to our ‘lesser brethren.’ All animals belong to God; He alone is their absolute owner. In our relations with them, we must emulate the divine attributes, the highest of which is mercy. God, their Father and Creator, loves them tenderly. He lends them to us and adjures us to use them as He Himself would do."”
Msgr. McWilliams also issued a letter to all seventeen thousand Catholic pastors in the United States, calling upon them to understand “what Christianity imposes on humans as their clear obligation to animals.”
In conversation with Father Emmanuel Jungclaussen in 1974, our spiritual master A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada said:
"We always have these (prayer) beads, just as you have your rosary. You are chanting, but why don't the other Christians also chant?...If you would like to cooperate with us, then go to the churches and chant, 'Christ'...or 'Krishna.' What could be the objection?...
"I think the Christian priests should cooperate with the Krishna Consciousness movement. They should chant the name Christ and should stop condoning the slaughter of animals. This program follows the teachings of the Bible; it is not my philosophy. Please act accordingly and you will see how the world situation will change."
In 1977, at an annual meeting in London of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), Dr. Donald Coggan, the Archbishop of Canterbury, said, "Animals, as part of God’s creation, have rights which must be respected. It behooves us always to be sensitive to their needs and to the reality of their pain."
Father Thomas Berry, a Catholic priest, author, and founder of the Riverdale Center of Religious Research in New York, wrote in 1987, “Vegetarianism is a way of life that we should all move toward for economic survival, physical well-being, and spiritual integrity.”
In an editorial that appeared on Christmas Day, 1988, Washington Post columnist Colman McCarthy, a prominent Catholic vegan writer and pacifist, observed: “A long raised but rarely answered question is this: If it was God’s plan for Christ to be born among animals, why have most Christian theologians denied the value and rights of animals? Why no theology of the peaceable kingdom?...Animals in the stable at Bethlehem were a vision of the peaceable kingdom. Among theology’s mysteries, this ought to be the easiest to fathom.”
A growing number of Christian theologians, clergy and activists are beginning to take a stand in favor of animal rights. In a pamphlet entitled "Christian Considerations on Laboratory Animals," Reverend Marc Wessels notes that in laboratories animals cease to be persons and become "tools of research."
Reverend Wessels cites William French of Loyola University as having made an identical observation at a gathering of Christian ethicists at Duke University—a conference entitled "Good News for Animals?"
Mother Teresa, honored for her work amongst the poor with the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize, wrote in 1992 to Marlene Ryan, a former member of the National Alliance for Animals. Her letter reads:
“I am praying for you that God’s blessing may be with you in all that you are doing to create concern for the animals which are often subjected to much cruelty. They, too, are created by the same loving Hand of God which created us. As we humans are gifted with intelligence which the animals lack, it is our duty to protect them and to promote their well being.
“We also owe it to them as they serve us with such wonderful docility and loyalty. A person who shows cruelty to these creatures cannot be kind to other humans also. Let us do all we can to become instruments of peace—where we are—the true peace that comes from loving and caring and respecting each person as a child of God—my brother—my sister.”
In an article entitled “The Primacy of Nonviolence as a Virtue,” appearing in Embracing Earth: Catholic Approaches to Ecology (1994), Brother Wayne Teasdale wrote:
“One key answer to a culture’s preoccupation with violence is to teach, insist on, and live the value of nonviolence. It can be done successfully, and it has been done for more than 2,500 years by Jains and Buddhists. Neither Jainism nor Buddhism has ever supported war or personal violence; this nonviolence extends to all sentient beings. Christianity can learn something valuable from these traditions. This teaching on nonviolence has been incarnated in the lives of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Fourteenth Dalai Lama with significant results...”
According to Teasdale:
“...it is necessary to elevate nonviolence to a noble place in our civilization of loving-compassion because nonviolence as ahimsa in the Hindu tradition, a tradition that seems to possess the most advanced understanding of nonviolence, is love! Love is the goal and ultimate nature of nonviolence as an inner disposition and commitment of the heart. It is the fulfillment of love and compassion in the social sphere, that is, in the normal course of relations among people in the matrix of society.”
Brother Aelred (Robert Edmunds), a Catholic monk living in Australia, discusses the moral question of killing animals for food in his book Encounter: Christ and Krishna. He points out that Jesus Christ greatly expanded the interpretation of the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” to include not getting angry without cause:
“My position is that Jesus’ teachings on mercy in the Beatitudes require an open-ended ethical inquiry. I ask, for example, how a Christian may speak of ‘mercy’ in the terms of Jesus Christ, and deny mercy to creatures of God who, as we do, experience fear and suffering. Isn’t it the case that Jesus constantly went beyond the ‘letter of the law’ to its spirit?”
Brother Aelred quotes the prophecies of Isaiah (11:6-9, 65:25) concerning the coming Kingdom of Peace. “The passage sees a time when pain and bloodshed will be no more; when prey and devourer will be reconciled. What a vision! Even if the passage is seen as just poetic exaggeration, it is clear that there is hope for a future which will be very different to the world we know. And surely we, as Christians, must be part of this ‘peace process.’ Perhaps our main burden, as Christians, is to be part of this message of hope and reconciliation.”
Brother Aelred concludes: “An Anglican Franciscan superior, in Australia, tells his novices that if they wish to eat flesh they must go out and themselves kill the animal. The moral responsibility must be theirs alone. I consider this a thoroughly sound position, and any Christian reading this article might well reflect on the brother’s teaching. In conclusion, I must report a sad truth. My own Christian formation taught me many things of great value, but ‘respect for all things living’ was not part of that formation. It was other religious traditions and ‘secular’ insights which gave me teaching in this area.”
In 1990, after numerous conversations with my friend Greg (raised Catholic, and influenced by his born again sisters), I was bold enough to proclaim that reincarnation and vegetarianism are the only two doctrines that separate Eastern and Western spirituality.
Brother Ron Pickarski, a vegan chef and Franciscan monk, made a similar statement in an interview in historian Rynn Berry's 1998 book, Food for the Gods: Vegetarianism & the World's Religions, saying he believes Christianity will one day embrace reincarnation and vegetarianism.
Alka Chanda, a Canadian Hindu and Bruce Friedrich, a practicing Roman Catholic serve together as PETA activists. Perhaps this represents the future of Hindu-Catholic relations? (Michelle Bean, I hope you're reading this!) And we've hardly touched Protestant vegetarianism.
Rose Evans, a pro-life Episcopalian and editor and publisher of Harmony: Voices for a Just Future, a "consistent-ethic" periodical on the religious Left, wrote an editorial in the late 1980s, "Animal Rights: Where Should a Pro-Lifer Stand?" According to Rose, there are more Christian vegetarians than Jewish vegetarians. Yet some people still react to the idea of Christian vegetarianism as though it were an oxymoron.
"Compassion cannot be rationed...The acceptance of one cruelty, under whatever pretext, predisposes men to accept and excuse any and every other cruelty, given suitable pretexts. And the one case of cruelty to which most men refuse to extend their compassion, is the case of slaughter for food..."The acceptance of that cruelty is what conditions men to accept and tolerate other cruelties like vivisection, hunting and trapping...There is little hope of abolishing the manifold cruelties to animals which disgrace our society, until men give up the habit of eating flesh."
---Reverend Basil Wrighton, Roman Catholic priest, 1965
"To stand for Christ is to stand against the evil of cruelty inflicted on those who are weak, vulnerable, unprotected, undefended, morally innocent, and in that class we must unambiguously include animals. There is something profoundly Christ-like about the innocent suffering of animals. Look around you and see the faces of Christ in the millions of innocent animals suffering in factory farms, in laboratories, in abattoirs, in circuses and in animals hunted for sport."
---Reverend Andrew Linzey, Anglican priest, 1998
"A great wickedness of the Christian tradition," observes Reverend Linzey, "is that, at this very point, where it could have been a source of great blessing and life; it has turned out to be a source of cursing and death. I refer here to the way Christian theology has allowed itself to promulgate notions that animals have no rights; that they are put here for our use; that animals have no more moral status than sticks and stones.
"Animal rights in this sense is a religious problem. It is about how the Christian tradition in particular has failed to realize the God-given rights of God-given life. Animal rights remains an urgent question of theology.
"Every year," says Dr. Linzey, "I receive hundreds of anguished letters from Christians who are so distressed by the insensitivity to animals shown by mainstream churches that they have left them or on the verge of doing so. Of course, I understand why they have left the churches and in this matter, as in all else, conscience can be the only guide. But if all the Christians committed to animal rights leave the church, where will that leave the churches?
"The time is long overdue to take the issue of animal rights to the churches with renewed vigor. I don’t pretend it’s easy but I do think it’s essential—not, I add, because the churches are some of the best institutions in society but rather because they are some of the worst. The more the churches are allowed to be left to one side in the struggle for animal rights, the more they will remain forever on the other side.
"I derive hope from the Gospel preaching," Linzey concludes, "that the same God who draws us to such affinity and intimacy with suffering creatures declared that reality on a Cross in Calvary. Unless all Christian preaching has been utterly mistaken, the God who becomes incarnate and crucified is the one who has taken the side of the oppressed and the suffering of the world—however the churches may actually behave."
Hare Krishna!
Nick| 12.22.10 @ 12:21AM
VM,
You need to learn how to be pithy in your responses. You can make your points without copying and pasting reams of quotes.
You are conflating the wrongfulness of cruelty to animals with the goodness of eating animals and using them for good purposes.
The many Catholic writers you quote never condemn people for eating animals, or using them. (I'll bet most of them wore leather sandals.) While they may have , personally, been vegetarians, and urged others to follow their example, they never claimed it was sinful to eat "fleshy meats."
The Catholic Church does not claim all of the teachings of the early Church Fathers and Doctors, are true, or Catholic Dogma. (Tertullian, by the way, broke with the Church and joined the Montanists, and later broke with them.)
The theory that Saint Paul taught a different Gospel than Christ is, quite frankly, ridiculous. Saint Paul was an Apostle, sent by Christ. He went to the 12 Apostles (the original 11, plus Matthias) as the chief persecutor of the followers of Christ, and showed them that Christ had sent him. They accepted Saint Paul.
Of course, God does not require blood sacrifice. Christ said this Himself. But, He never condemned the killing of animals.
When God made His convenant with Abraham, He swore a covenant oath (sacramentum) with him by telling Abram to bring animals, and to halve them (Genesis 15: 9-10.)
God, also, gave the Hebrews quail to eat, along with the manna from heaven. Simon Kephas (Rock (Petros, Peter)) was shown that the dietary laws of Moses were no longer binding on the followers of Christ.
So, yes, it is sinful to be cruel to animals. It is not sinful to practice animal husbandry.
Did you know that Christ, as rabbi, was the one who killed the Passover Lamb for He, and His disciples, to eat?
mzk1| 12.18.10 @ 6:04PM
This is not a Hindu country.
Vasu Murti | 12.19.10 @ 3:00AM
Yes, we really live in a secular society, and the Constitution says no religious test shall be required of anyone seeking office.
If Rand Paul, Sharron Angle, Sarah Palin, Chrisine O'Donnell, or any other figure on the right were to be discriminated against because of their religious beliefs, the right would be up in arms!
Nick| 12.19.10 @ 6:46PM
VM,
The "religious test" provision of the Constitution applies only to the Federal government.
I, as an individual, can vote, or not vote, for anyone for any reason I want.
And, I would never vote for anyone except an orthodox Christian, or orthodox Jew, because they follow the One, True God.
Anyone else is a danger to this country.
Like John Kerry.
Vasu Murti | 12.20.10 @ 3:49AM
The "One True God" ? I know some conservative Christians were offended when George W. Bush referred to Islam as an Abrahamic faith in one of his speeches as president.
Some Christians don't consider Islam an Abrahamic faith and claim Allah is not the God of the Bible. But, similarly, many Jews consider Christianity a false doctrine as well.
We worship a plural Godhead, similar to the Trinitarian conception in Christianity. Are Christians worshipping three Gods or One?
Even if we could somehow all agree on monotheism as an absolute truth, there would still be conflict, as Jews and Muslims regard belief in a Trinity as disguised polytheism.
In the course of interfaith discussion, for example, Rabbi Jacob Shimmel tells Satyaraja dasa (Steven Rosen) that because of belief in a Trinity, Christianity cannot be considered a truly monotheistic religion.
According to Christian scholar Keith Stump, Muslims similarly regard the Catholic veneration of saints as idolatry and polytheism.
A Roman Catholic priest, Reverend David K. O’Rourke, said, “Every religious group in the United States is a minority group. Some may be unhappy with this status and wish they had official standing. I am not unhappy with it. The Catholic Church, the largest of these minorities, has prospered greatly in this country where we separate church and state.”
Reverend Barry Lynn (an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ; a pro-choice Protestant denomination), Executive Director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State says, "The Religious Right is still spreading misinformation about church-state separation and Robert Boston’s book (Why the Religious Right is Wrong About Separation of Church and State, Prometheus Books, 2003) debunks it. This book uses everyday language to explain why the Religious Right is wrong about separation of church and state."
According to Boston, “We have a vibrant, multifaith religious society that, with the exception of a few fundamentalist Muslim states, is admired all over the globe. We have a degree of interfaith harmony unmatched in the world. Our government is legally secular, but our culture accommodates and welcomes a variety of religious voices. New faiths take root here without fear...
“Americans remain greatly interested in religion and things spiritual—unlike their counterparts in Western Europe, where religion is often state subsidized but of little interest to most people....Children are no longer forced to pray in school or read from religious texts against their will, yet they are free to engage in truly voluntary religious worship whenever they feel the need. The important task of imparting religious and philosophical training to youngsters is left where it always belonged—with each child’s parents or guardians...
"Some European nations have passed so-called anticult laws aimed at curbing the rights of unpopular new religions. Such laws would not be acceptable in the United States or permitted under the First Amendment.
“In a multifaith society such as the United States,” observes Boston, “a type of religious marketplace does exist. Religious groups that aggressively seek converts, such as the Mormons and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, are well aware that people in the United States are able and even willing to change their religious beliefs. To these groups, it’s well worth it to enter the marketplace and advertise their goods. Lots of people might buy them...
“Because the U.S. government is secular, religious groups are left to contend for members based solely on their own initiative. They create a free marketplace of religion that spurs competition and a vigorous religious life. This explains why the United States, which maintains church-state separation, retains a high degree of religiosity among its people.
“The more sophisticated and perceptive believers realize that the separation principle is a boon to their faith,” notes Boston. “They see danger in any attempt by government to decide which religion is true and which is false. They know that a faith that is in favor with the government today can be out of favor tomorrow. These believers are thankful for the free marketplace of religion and the secular state that makes it possible. They understand that the way to get new members is through persuasion, not government aid.”
In 1787 when the framers excluded all mention of God from the Constitution, they were widely denounced as immoral and the document was denounced as godless, which is precisely what it is. Opponents of the Constitution challenged ratifying conventions in nearly every state, calling attention to Article VI, Section 3: “No religious test shall be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”
An anti-federalist in North Carolina wrote: “The exclusion of religious tests is by many thought dangerous and impolitic. Pagans, Deists and Mohammedans might obtain office among us.” Amos Singletary of Massachussetts, one of the most outspoken critics of the Constitution, said that he “hoped to see Christians (in power), yet by the Constitution, a papist or an infidel was as eligible as they.”
Luther Martin, a Maryland delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 wrote that “there were some members so unfashionable as to think that a belief in the existence of a Deity, and of a state of future rewards and punishments would be some security for the good conduct of our rulers, and that in a Christian country, it would be at least decent to hold out some distinction between the professors of Christianity and downright infidelity or paganism.” Martin’s report shows that a “Christian nation” faction had its say during the convention, and that its views were consciously rejected.
The United States Constitution is a completely secular political document. It begins “We the people,” and contains no mention of “God,” “Jesus,” or “Christianity.” Its only references to religion are exclusionary, such as the “no religious test” clause (Article VI), and “Congress shall make no laws respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” (First Amendment)
The presidential oath of office, the only oath detailed in the Constitution, does not contain the phrase “so help me God” or any requirement to swear on a Bible (Article II, Section 1). The words “under God” did not appear in the Pledge of Allegiance until 1954, when Congress, under McCarthyism, inserted them.
Similarly, “In God we Trust” was absent from paper currency before 1956, though it did appear on some coins beginning in 1864. The original U.S. motto, written by John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson, is “E Pluribus Unum” (“Of Many, One”) celebrating plurality and diversity.
In 1797, America made a treaty with Tripoli, declaring that “the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” This reassurance to Islam was written under Washington’s presidency and approved by the Senate under John Adams.
We are not governed by the Declaration of Independence. Its purpose was to “dissolve the political bonds,” not to set up a religious nation. Its authority was based upon the idea that “governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” which is contrary to the biblical concept of rule by divine authority. The Declaration deals with laws, taxation, representation, war, immigration, etc., and doesn’t discuss religion at all. The references to “Nature’s God,” “Creator,” and “Divine Providence” in the Declaration do not endorse Christianity. Its author, Thomas Jefferson, was a Deist, opposed to Christianity and the supernatural.
“Of all the systems of morality, ancient or modern, which have come under my observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus,” wrote Thomas Jefferson. However, Jefferson admitted, “In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man and that other parts are the fabric of very inferior minds...” It was Thomas Jefferson who established the separation of church and state. Jefferson was deeply suspicious of religion and of clergy wielding political power.
Jefferson helped create the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom in 1786, incurring the wrath of Christians by his fervent defense of toleration of atheists: “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts as are only injurious to others. But it does no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” Jefferson advocated a “wall of separation” between church and state not to protect the church from government intrusion, but to preserve the freedom of the people:
“I consider the doctrines of Jesus as delivered by himself to contain the outlines of the sublimest morality that has ever been taught;” he observed, “but I hold in the most profound detestation and execration the corruptions of it which have been invested by priestcraft and established by kingcraft, constituting a conspiracy of church and state against the civil and religious liberties of mankind.”
Jefferson and the founding fathers were products of the Age of Enlightenment. Their world view was based upon Deism, secularism, and rationalism.
“The priests of the different religious sects dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight,” wrote Jefferson. “The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his Father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter...we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away all this...”
As late as 1820, Jefferson was convinced everyone in the United States would die a Unitarian. Jefferson, Madison and Paine’s writings indicate that America was never intended to be a Christian theocracy. “I have sworn upon the altar of God,” wrote Jefferson, “eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
In his 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists, Jefferson wrote: “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”
Similarly, in an 1824 letter to John Cartwright, Jefferson expressed anger at judges who had based rulings on their belief that Christianity is part of the common law. Cartwright had written a book critical of these judges, and Jefferson was glad to see it. Observed Jefferson, “The proof of the contrary, which you have produced, is controvertible; to wit, that the common law existed while the Anglo-Saxons were yet pagans, at a time when they had never yet heard the name of Christ pronounced, or knew that such a character had ever existed.” Jefferson challenged “the best-read lawyer to produce another script of authority for this judicial forgery” and concluded, “What a conspiracy this, between Church and State!”
As president, Jefferson put his “wall of separation” theory into practice. He refused to issue proclamations calling for days of prayer and fasting, insisting that they violate the First Amendment. As early as 1779, Jefferson proposed a bill before the Virginia legislature that would have established a series of elementary schools to teach the basics—reading, writing, and arithmetic. Jefferson even suggested that “no religious reading, instruction, or exercise shall be prescribed or practiced, inconsistent with the tenets of any religious sect or denomination.” Jefferson did not regard public schools as the proper agent to form children’s religious views.
As president, James Madison also put his separationist philosophy into action. He vetoed two bills he believed would violate church-state separation. The first was an act incorporating the Episcopal Church in the District of Columbia that gave the church the authority to care for the poor. The second was a proposed land grant to a Baptist church in Mississippi. Had Madison, the father of the Constitution, believed that all the First Amendment was intended to do was bar setting up a state church, he would have approved these bills. Instead, he vetoed both, and in his veto messages to Congress explicitly stated that he was rejecting the bills because they violated the First Amendment.
Later in his life, James Madison came out against state-paid chaplains, writing, “The establishment of the chaplainship to Congress is a palpable violation of equal rights, as well as of Constitutional principles.” He also concluded that his calling for days of prayer and fasting during his presidency had been unconstitutional.
In an 1819 letter to Robert Walsh, Madison wrote, “the number, the industry and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the state.” In an undated essay called the “Detached Memoranda,” written in the early 1800s, Madison wrote, “Strongly guarded...is the separation between Religion and Government in the Constitution of the United States.”
In 1833 Madison responded to a letter sent to him by Jasper Adams. Adams had written a pamphlet titled “The Relations of Christianity to Civil Government in the United States,” which tried to prove that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. Madison wrote back: “In the papal system, government and religion are in a manner consolidated, and that is found to be the worst of government.”
Madison, like Jefferson, was confident that separation of church and state would protect both the institutions of government and religion. Late in his life, Madison wrote to a Lutheran minister about this, declaring, “A due distinction...between what is due to Caesar and what is due to God, best promotes the discharge of both obligations...A mutual independence is found most friendly to practical religion, to social harmony, and to political prosperity.”
In the early part of the 19th century, a general understanding existed that the government should not promote religion, or favor one religion over another. Senator Richard Johnson of Kentucky wrote in 1829:
“It is not the legitimate province of the Legislature to determine what religion is true, or what is false. Our Government is a civil and not a religious institution. Our Constitution recognizes in every person the right to choose his own religion, and to enjoy it freely, without molestation. Whatever may be the religious sentiments of citizens, and however variant, they are alike entitled to protection from the Government, so long as they do not invade the rights of others...
“Among all the religious persecutions with which almost every page of modern history is stained, no victim ever suffered but for violation of what Government denominated the law of God. To prevent a similar train of evils in this country, the Constitution has wisely withheld from our Government the power of defining the divine law.”
Nick| 12.22.10 @ 12:34AM
VM,
Again, brevity is the soul of wit.
And of blogging.
It also helps to keep you from double quoting.
In the end, all of your quotes, assuming that they are accurate, have nothing to do with my point. You didn't address it at all.
I, as an individual, can discriminate any way I want to when I vote for someone. Again, the "religious test" provision was a constraint on the Federal government.
Also, the Constitution of the United States does mention Christ.
It clearly states that the document was signed by the delegates "[...] present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth."
The Declaration of Independence mentions God many times, by the way.
Tony in Central PA| 12.15.10 @ 9:14AM
There is a very long list of current and recent politicians at the highest levels of our government like Kennedy - Townsend who are apparently able use their " Catholic " faith as a means to get votes. In the old days, these people were known as heretics. Since such a word is disallowed these days in polite public discourse, so there are no descriptors allowed other than the ones they themselves provide for their irreconcilable differences with the faith they claim to hold. Recently catechized people like me are surprised to learn from them that the Church now determines her moral teachings democratically.
The reason the=se politicians have been successful is that in America over the last fifty or so years we have arguably had the most ignorant and apathetic group of Catholics the West has seen in the past five hundred years. As a recent convert, I have also encountered a surprising amount of what I can only describe as " willful ignorance " on the part of some outwardly devout " cradle Catholics " on the subject of what the Church actually teaches about abortion. These people need to find another religion.
Frisbee| 12.16.10 @ 1:55PM
or they need to "repent and believe".
Sandra| 12.15.10 @ 9:17AM
I am confused here, is this a "slam piece" on Mrs. Palin or a "slam piece" on Mrs. Townsend?
One seems to ACTUALLY practice her faith, and in a book called out faux-religious practitioners, like many of the Kennedy clan that originated in Massachusetts early in the last century.
The other, I don't know really much about her, but she and her extended family sure do posture and preen in front of the media. And have relatives that occupy positions in "self-promoting" non-profit enterprises.
I think the Palin's have paid a good chunk of change in taxes, has anyone related to the Kennedys paid ANY TAXES in this or the last century??
JP| 12.15.10 @ 10:11AM
It's a little of both. The author obviously prefers the simplicity of Palin, and rejects the moral hypocrisy of Kennedy. His assumption is that Palin never reads "serious" books or essays. Instead, the author believes that Palin lives her faith. And again he prefers Palin's simplistic faith to Kennedy's dry, hallow faith.
I have two problems with this kind of analysis. First, the same allegations were used against Reagan during the 1976 through 1984 election cycles. As it turned out, Reagan was very well read. Secondly, I think it is a bad habit to judge the level of someone's religious beliefs based upon a person's public personna. To assume that Ted Kennedy is in hell, or that his relative is half way there is unChristian. People are usually much more complicated than we assume. A person's closeness to God is between that person, thier confessor, and God.
Patrick O'Hannigan| 12.15.10 @ 12:41PM
JP, You're mostly right. Thank you for paying attention. This essay is not a slam on Sarah Palin. I recognize her flaws, some of which are self-documented, but trust her more than any Kennedy.
FWIW, I'm not one of those who ever considered Ronald Reagan an intellectual lightweight. He obviously was not. Your objections to simplistic analysis are well-taken. Please note that I said nothing to question the *sincerity* of any Kennedy's faith. My beef is with Kennedy family judgement (or lack of same), and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend's ridiculous brief for JFK and Ted became a sort of "prosecutor's exhibit A".
Skippy| 12.15.10 @ 8:16PM
I liked the article, sir.
Other commenters seem a tad too ready to jump down your throat re: Gov. Palin, but if we will be required to remain in humorless lockstep, I'm gonna revert to my natural skeptical self and slip whoopee cushions beneath some seats now and then.
We should be able to have some fun while restoring the Republic.
And Sarah is invaluable as a bugzapper for attracting suicidal liberals.
Her flame singes their wings so well!
Merry Christmas Patrick!
Frisbee| 12.16.10 @ 2:42PM
Patrick: Thanks for your excellent article. It does seem to be written above the level of some readers though. (Are you familiar with David Bentley Hart?)
When I was at Nevers France 10 years ago, I read an interview with St Bernadette Soubiroux in which she was asked if anything frightened her. "Nothing," she replied, "except bad Catholics". It struck me as silly at the time, but it rings more true every year.
And thanks for entering the comments section.
Sandra| 12.16.10 @ 3:13PM
Thank-you for addressing some of the comments, I now have a much better understanding of this piece.
MarkR| 12.15.10 @ 1:14PM
JP that was an excellent response and my sentiments exactly. Liberals love to play God. Lets stop playing it ourselves. Someone's destiny is not my domain. I can judge actions and I can postulate a hypothesis of a person's relationships and relationship to God but certitude on eternal matters is strictly out of my domain. --Also Reagan: He was villified in ways people either forgot or were not around to see. He was the "dummy" in the room sleeping in meetings and was a hand puppet-THEN we found those letters and correspondence and tapes and the truth triumphed. I hesitate to state one way or another whether Palin will be a force in the political arena that transcends present perceptions but I would be hesistant to bet against it.
Ted| 12.15.10 @ 3:44PM
Yes, Reagan was very well read. If any of you get the chance, read Bob Novak's memoir "The Prince of Darkness." At some point (can't remember if it was during the 1980 election campaign of after. Possibly in 1976) Novak interviewed Reagan. Novak himself was rather well read, and he asked Reagan a question about how he developed his political and economic philosophy. Kind of like the notorious Couric questoin (what do you read?). Novak noted that Reagan surprised him by talking about Bastiat's "On Law" and quite a few others (I recall Reagan mentioning Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom" as well - but don't hold me to that). Anyhow, Novak admitted that some of the authors President Reagan cited Novak had never heard of and he had to go look them up.
President Reagan had an active, inquiring mind.
Sandra| 12.16.10 @ 3:12PM
I have no desire to even venture a guess on anyone's "destination"
Richard Baker| 12.15.10 @ 9:25AM
Other than Old Joe, none of them have worked a JOB. For a family that is notorious for condemning the "rich" I suppose that their coupon clipping shouldn't be noticed because their "intentions" are so good.
Cam in MI| 12.15.10 @ 9:27AM
In contradiction to the many naysayers here, I thought this was an excellent column. I particularly enjoyed the reference to and quote of Hilaire Beloc. Bravo Mr. O'Hannigan!
Ken (Old Texican)| 12.15.10 @ 9:40AM
Folks,
Mr. O'Hannigan seems to be a Roman Catholic. He finds himself in an awkward position, I guess, evaluating a "Evangelical" like Sarah.
In my life-time many Roman Catholics honestly believed all we "protestants" were assuredly going straight to hell.
Conversely, we who believe only in "baptism of the believer" were honestly concerned about the "cradle Catholics" mentioned above. Did they find a relationship with Christ through the catechisms. We fervently hoped so.
As an adult, I finally decided that I would leave it in the hands of the Grace of The Holy Spirit.
I think that is why the Bishop was so warmly received at "Houston Baptist University". He seems to feel the same way.
The Homilies at Mass, also seem to offer an ongoing opportunity to "get in touch".
Publius| 12.15.10 @ 10:37AM
Strange but in my nearly 50 years on this planet, I have yet to encounter a Roman Catholic who believes Protestants are going to Hell.
Holding different beliefs does not necessarily imply error.
Doctor Right| 12.15.10 @ 11:28AM
Actually, it does.
Scripture is clear: There's only ONE way to the Father - through the Son.
Don't kid yourself; just because something labels itself as "Christian" don't make it so.
Scripture also says that on judgment day, many will cry "Father, Father...Did I not do your works?" to which the Lord will reply: "Away from me. I never knew you."
And "believing' is not enough, either. Satan believes in God and Christ, too.
JP| 12.15.10 @ 10:50AM
I don't think most Catholics in this day and age "evaluate Protestants". Pope JPII and then Cdl Ratzinger wrote an encyclical Dominus Jesus about 10 years ago. The encyclical dealt with the issue you bring up (namely Extra Ecclessiam Nulla Salus - no salvation outside the Church). Both JPII and Cdl Ratzinger attempted to a)reaffirm that the RCC is still the one true Church by virture of the continuity of its episcopate and b)reaffirm that there is salvation outside of the RCC. Using both the Gospels and Vatican II teachings the Pope gave an indepth teaching about the mystical bonds the Christ gives to all people. The graces that flow from Christ through the RCC (through the miracle of the Eucharist) know no boundaries and are available to all who accept. This gift along with the gift of Christ's teachings (which are expounded on in depth inside of the Cathechism) can reach even the ignorant.
It goes without saying that this encylical upset quite a few people. There were man Lutherans and Anglicans (and many Progressive Catholics) who believed that it sent the Church back to the Middle Ages (they believed that the time was approaching when the RCC would totally give up its ideas of primacy); still there was another group who thought that the Pope and Ratzinger "watered" down the theology to a point where it made the RCC's poisition too "easy". They argued that it was pointless remaining Catholic if everyone could be "saved" regardless of thier confession. Both groups misunderstood the encyclical.
Doctor Right| 12.15.10 @ 11:31AM
The Roman Catholic Church is NOT the "one, true church".
There's no "continuity of episcopate". Peter was NEVER a Pope; that is a willful misreading and distortion of scripture.
The RCC bears no relation to the first century Church.
Does this mean that Catholics are bad? NO.
Does this mean that Catholics aren't Christians? NO.
Does this mean that they're being taught false doctrines? YES.
PJ| 12.15.10 @ 11:52AM
Me thinks, someone is not well-versed in history!!
Spike| 12.15.10 @ 11:58AM
Me thinks, someone has an ax to grind with Catholics, because they aren't in lockstep with someone's personal interpretation exegesis.
PJ| 12.15.10 @ 12:21PM
Spike darling,
If you are trying to comment on Dr Right then you have to click on his "Reply To This".
Otherwise it looks like your comments are directed at me. If that is the case, they don't make sense.
Crusader Spike| 12.15.10 @ 12:35PM
PJ Baby, Snooky, Sweetie, Honey, me thinks readers can figure out from the previous posts,who's who.
PJ| 12.15.10 @ 12:56PM
Not really, esp when your copying of my phraseology was being used in a condescending way immediately after my posting of it.
Learn the flow of blogging; it prevents confusion!
Crusader Spike| 12.15.10 @ 1:22PM
Now, I'm up here.
How am I doin' ?
Me thinks thou protests too much.
Aaaaand, I don't wanna descend to descend to your condescending attitude accusing me ofwriting condescendingly about your phraseology.
PJ| 12.15.10 @ 1:44PM
This time there's no confusion. It's a bit condescending but amusingly put. Touche for you!
Occam's Tool| 12.15.10 @ 6:35PM
You know, Spike, I'm just thinkin' ("with what?," yes, I know) maybe PJ's a lady. In which case, let her hit you with shnookums all day long, I say. Could be worse. If PJ's a guy, saying "Spike, Darling" is odd, though. Oh well, back to the basement...
Doctor Right| 12.15.10 @ 1:10PM
Funny how whenever someone has a critique of Catholicism, it's always interpreted by Catholics as "an axe to grind".
No axe...Sorry. Just truth.
I was a Catholic for 32 years, so I'm not exactly an outsider.
I'll say it again:
The RCC bears no relation to the first century Christian Church.
Peter was NEVER a Pope.
Neither history nor scripture can refute those points. It's not a matter of "personal interpretation exigesis". By and large, scripture does not bend to "personal" interpretations". As someone already wisely pointed out, that's what led to denominationalism in the first place.
Check your facts and your premises.
Spike| 12.15.10 @ 1:32PM
There's nothin' worse than Reformed Whores & Lapsed Catholics.
PJ| 12.15.10 @ 2:12PM
Dr Right,
I am so sorry that you were not properly catechized. I ask that you to take a look at the Catechism of the Catholic Church not to try to revert you but to show you that all the beliefs are based on scripture. I want you to hate the truth of the Church not the inaccurate nonsense that floats around.
Have a blessed Christmas!
Doctor Right| 12.15.10 @ 3:50PM
Thanks, but I have no need of your man-made Catechism and it's man-made rules, especially the ones that contradict God's word in scripture.
If you believe that "all beliefs are based in scripture" then we really don't have much to discuss.
Happy Holidays!
Ted| 12.15.10 @ 3:15PM
Oh boy, here we go again.... You were Catholic for 32 years... Not to be rude, but that doesn't mean you prpperly learned the tenets of the faith (look at the Kennedys, for example). And if you did not, it is not your fault - it would be the fault of those entrusted with teaching you that faith.
And yes, you do have an axe to grind. That's my observation from following your posts which generally are lucid and amenable to correction. Somehow they descend whenever the Church comes up.
Time after time people try to "prove" the Catholic Church teaches false doctrines, and time after time they fail. I just wish I were as eloquent and charitable as Stuart Koehl (and others who post here) in "refudiating" the "proofs."
Doctor Right| 12.15.10 @ 3:59PM
Stuart Koehl has NEVER been able to refute a word I've ever posted about Catholicism.
He simply reverts to reciting Catholic Doctrine, and hoping that most people will mistake it for actual scripture.
Catholicism is easy to refute. One merely needs to read the Bible. So much of Catholicism is in direct contradiction to scripture that it's sad.
But since most Catholics have a very shallow understanding of scripture (by design - the Church hierarchy would prefer that you simply take their word for it), they can't really support their beliefs by referring to scripture.
By asking someone to prove that Catholicism isn't "the one true faith", Catholics play a cutesy game of disproving a negative. The honus is on Catholic scholars to prove, using only the Bible as a proof source, that they ARE the one, true faith.
I won't hold my breath. Catholics will say that their Catechism and traditions are on equal footing with scripture, and try to use THAT as a proof source. It's the intellectual equivalent of saying "Because I said so."
I've been down this road before, with some very bright folks, and NONE have been able to validate Catholicism.
And yes, my 32 years does count for something.
Again, criticism is not condescension. Crying "anti-Catholicism!" is the last refuge of the scoundrel, and something Liberals like to do.
Ted| 12.15.10 @ 4:34PM
"But since most Catholics have a very shallow understanding of scripture (by design - the Church hierarchy would prefer that you simply take their word for it), they can't really support their beliefs by referring to scripture."
Incorrect. The Church really wants you to read the Bible.
"I won't hold my breath. Catholics will say that their Catechism and traditions are on equal footing with scripture, and try to use THAT as a proof source. It's the intellectual equivalent of saying "Because I said so.""
You are on truly shaky ground asking to use only Scripture as the source for Christian faith. Time and again in his Epistles, St. Paul appealed to the readers to hold fast to what they had been taught, and this was before the full Christian Bible was in existence. So the Church is simply counseling what St. Paul himself counseled.
"The honus is on Catholic scholars to prove, using only the Bible as a proof source, that they ARE the one, true faith."
That would be an interesting exercise. However, why do we accept that the Christian Bible is the Christians Bible? We accept it as such because the early Church said it was/is. If you reject the Church's teaching authority and say it is not on par with Scripture, then you must accept that what constitutes the Christian Bible itself has no authority.
As stated above, it is only the Christian Bible because the early Church agreed and said it was/is. We had the Church before we had the full, complete Christian Bible. It would seem rather circular for the Church to appeal to the Christian Bible as the source for Her authority, when it is by Her authority that we have that source.
I too have been down this road. Many times, with many bright atheists, Catholics, and Protestants.
You lived it, so of course your 32 years counts for something. And please don't hold your breath. Cyanosis is generally a not so pleasant thing.
W| 12.15.10 @ 5:53PM
Do you believe that what you call scripture, which I assume, is the Old and New Testament, is literally true as the word of God?
Tony in Central PA| 12.15.10 @ 8:39PM
Dr. Right, if present - day Catholicism bears no resemblance to first century Christianity, here are a few questions I'd like you to take a crack at answering.
1) What are your historical source materials for this assertion ?
2) When, exactly, did the Church go " bad " ? Be specific. A corollary to this question would be, do you accept or reject the Council of Nicea ?
3) If your historical source materials are limited to the Bible ( KJV, I'm guessing ) on what basis do you accept them as authorotative ?
Doctor Right| 12.15.10 @ 1:02PM
Methinks that would be you.
Add in that you're not well versed in scripture, either.
Rufus Choate| 12.17.10 @ 1:49PM
Doctor Right,
I doubt you're even remotely aware of the first century church of the Early Fathers or the Councils who codified the Bible while you engage in the classic protestant culling of the scriptures of anything that doesn't agree with your slavish sola scriptura based on your personal tastes rather right reason. The Bible is a book canonized by councils and created to transmit the teaching of Christ to a wider audience not to supplant the teaching authority of the church and its Bishop (Apostles) or Priests but to augment it. When I have attended courses I studied under a Professor not a text book. The teaching of the professor determined the direction and information imparted not the text book. The Faith is the same. You're also lack most dull witted apostate Catholics in your tedious insistence that you win every argument.
You don't have intellectual wattage to understand how beaten down you are.
ds80| 12.15.10 @ 12:24PM
Sounds close to "invincible ignorance"
RCV| 12.15.10 @ 12:37PM
Me thinks God has a bigger and more charitable view of His creation than Dr. Right.
Doctor Right| 12.15.10 @ 1:13PM
Of course he does. It would be silly to assume otherwise.
He also has a strict view of "the truth". He doesn't look at the nuances, either.
In that regard, he probably does not hold the RCC in high esteem.
That's not an indictment of the faithful. It's a refutation of the leadership and the organization they created.
(Please note: I purposely said "they created"; Christ did not start the RCC. It's a wholly man-made enterprise)
Christopher| 12.15.10 @ 5:59PM
Doctor,, are you now a member of a church or religion, or whatever you wish to call it? Isn't whatever you belong to a man made enterprise, even if it is your own belief system if you are not a member of a larger group?
Ted| 12.15.10 @ 3:51PM
---The Roman Catholic Church is NOT the "one, true church".
Well, on this Doctor Right is right. Sort of. The Roman Catholic Church is not the one true church. The Catholic Church is the one true Church.
The Roman Catholic Church is but one Church within the larger Catholic (or Universal) Church.
Doctor Right| 12.15.10 @ 4:02PM
Cute, but irrelevant.
I'll clarify: The Catholic Church is NOT the "one, true church".
Better?
Nunya| 12.15.10 @ 4:36PM
Actually, not exactly.
The "catholic"--please note the use of the small "c"-- is what I believe Ted was referring to. The word catholic in this sense refers to the entire Christian community of churces, not to a specific one. In this sense, it is every church that proclaims a belief in Christ.
Your statement with the capital "C" stating "The Catholic Church is NOT the "one, true church" actually refers back to the Roman Catholic Church, and I agree on the statement. (Funny how changing one little thing changes the meaning of a statement!)
Saved| 12.15.10 @ 10:44PM
The church at Rome became prominent because of the triumph of "Saint" Augustine over Pelagius, although both were largely scripturally incorrect. Augustine held that humanity is saved through the church, while Pelagius, in part, held that free-will was important to salvation (which took power away from the organized church). Constantine chose Augustine so as to incorporate the organized church into his empire as a calming agent. The "church" prior to this time was fragmented into many factions. Constantine nonetheless didn't do Christianity any favors. He forced some of his own dogma on the body of believers that may well have better suited his god (Sol Invictus) than the God of the Bible. In sum, it is a good thing the God of the Bible is in control of salvation rather than humans.
John II| 12.15.10 @ 4:25PM
Which, in a sense, embraces Dr. Right. For the time being, he appears to be a Roamin' Catholic.
(Sorry. I couldn't resist. I've been reading a lot of Ogden Nash lately.)
Nick| 12.15.10 @ 6:23PM
Doctor Wrong, a.k.a. Pope Bigot I,
"Does this mean that they're being taught false doctrines? YES."
Riddle me this, Batman: Which church is teaching the right doctrines?
They can't all be right. So, which one is it?
And, why aren't you chastising all the other Christian denominations, who are teaching false doctrines, as much as you do the Catholic Church?
This is what makes you an anti-Catholic bigot, Doc.
Pope Bigot I| 12.16.10 @ 8:11AM
It's funny that you think your questions are complicated, 'cuz they're not.
Which Church is teaching the "right" doctrine?
That's easy!
The one that relies on scripture, and only scripture, to spread God's word.
Nick| 12.16.10 @ 2:46PM
Doctor Wrong, a.k.a. Pope Bigot I,
What a weaselly answer.
Something I would expect from someone like Rahm Emmanuel, or Keith Olbermann. No wonder you believe the New York Slimes.
Are the Lutherans teaching the right doctrines? Are the Baptists? Methodists, Presbyterians, etc.? Again, they can't all be right, because they all have different doctrines concerning Christ.
Yet, you only excoriate, with calumnies, the Catholic Church, and Her members. Thus, making you an anti-Catholic bigot.
Please, get help with your mommy and daddy issues, Doc.
Nick| 12.15.10 @ 7:21PM
Doctor Wrong, a.k.a. Pope Bigot I,
"There's no 'continuity of episcopate'. "
On this one point, you are Doctor Right!
It's called Apostolic Succession, brainiac.
Was Nancy Pelosi your catechism teacher?
Pope Bigot I| 12.16.10 @ 8:13AM
Gee, St. Ignatius...What a scholar you are!
Except you missed the fact that I didn't make up the phrase "continuity of episcopate"; I quoted one of your fellow Catholics.
LOL!
If you have a problem with that phrase, better tell him, not me! I don't care what it's called - it's still illegitimate.
Nick| 12.16.10 @ 2:53PM
Doctor Wrong, a.k.a. Pope Bigot I,
Which "fellow Catholic" would that be?
A quick google search finds the only fellow Catholic using that terminology is....you, Doc.
Do you have split personality disoder? Are you at war with yourself? Kind of like Mary, Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth I inhabiting the same body?
What a tortured soul you must be. I pity you.
Frisebee| 12.16.10 @ 2:03PM
The Roman Catholic Church is the "one, true church".
There is "continuity of episcopate". Peter was the first Pope; that is a correct reading of scripture. It actually pre-dates the Christian scriptures.
The RCC bears precise relation to the first century Church, as the same visible and irreplaceable Body of Christ.
Does this mean that Catholics are all good? NO.
Does this mean that they're all being taught true doctrines? No. Not at Notre Dame for example.
Rufus Choate| 12.17.10 @ 12:12PM
If you're absolutely correct in your assessment then the 32,000 splinter Protestant "Christians" were founded a scant 500 years ago by a failed monk (Luther) who modified the scripture to suit his inclination, a despotic power crazed French Lawyer who created the first totalitarian state and a mad syphilitic King who thought himself the sole authority on Christianity based on the dynastic needs of the Tudors. These are the reputable ones, most of the others are worse.
I am sure you find comfort in the utter collapse of the state supported "Protestant" churches throughout Europe to the point where the Largest Christian Community is the Roman Catholic Church.
Walkthetalk| 12.15.10 @ 10:57PM
The Apostle Paul told the Thessalonians to hold to the teachings he had passed to them, e.g., that they were chosen by God to be "saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth." What Paul had taught the people was doctrine straight from the so-called Old Testament, since that was the only source available that revealed the God of life. In truth, everything needed for knowledge of salvation is found in the Old Testament. It is all about God and life, and provides commentary on how men react to God. It gives an outline of salvation, and reveals who God is and how God will salvage fallen mankind. It describes the Messiah and sets the standards for his incarnation. Note that God did this without any "church" participation whether Catholic or Lutheran (protestant). The so-called New Testament reveals the man who fulfills all the Old Testament requirements of Savior (see Matthew). Jesus did this without any "church" participation whether Catholic or Lutheran. The New Testament letters reveal what so-called Christians are to do now that the Messiah has come. The letter writers did this without any "church" participation whether Catholic or Lutheran. So, "fallen" people are saved by God alone, with no participation by the "church" whether Catholic or Lutheran. God alone has the power to give life. Life is in Christ, not in any church. For more information see www.christforamericans.com.
Rufus Choate | 12.17.10 @ 12:44PM
Protestant theology is at it most childish and defective when it attempts to shoehorn the want and needs for a state religion in the 16th Century nascent nation state into their current desire for a personal creed. The "Reformation" had more to do with the political aspirations and avarice of its adherents than Theology. The Bible was canonized by Church Councils which was comprised of Bishops and Priests of Catholic (Universal) Church before the Great Schism (again politically inspired). Most Protestant sects share their theology with first century heresies rather than Orthodox creedal faith. Nice try for a really ugly site. Try this now this is a web site for a true religion not some store front nonsense.
http://www.vatican.va/phome_en.htm
Wes in MT| 12.15.10 @ 9:44AM
Ah yes, the private faith of the Kennedy's and the Bill Clinton. . . so private that neither bothered to inform their basest impulses to keep them in check. The entire arguement of private faith is a ruse by the secular left to push conscience out of the public sphere, setting the stage for the stupid arguement of the collective good. . . that worked out well in the last century for about a 100 million.
Tim*| 12.15.10 @ 9:44AM
"There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be."
— Fulton J. Sheen
Ken (Old Texican)| 12.15.10 @ 10:51AM
Tim*
This was one of your best comments to date.
Thank you
Nick| 12.15.10 @ 6:14PM
Ken,
That is because it wasn't Tim*'s.
It was Bishop Sheen's.
Tim*| 12.15.10 @ 6:59PM
" I feel it is time that I also pay tribute to my four writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John."
Fulton J. Sheen
Nick| 12.15.10 @ 7:37PM
I'm still waiting for answers, CINO Tim*.
Are you a Pope Pius the Tenther, i.e. a member of the Society of Pope St. Pius X?
And, was Pope Pius XII a true pope?
Also, how have I slandered you?
Tim*| 12.15.10 @ 8:31PM
Keep Waitin' Ya Mouthy Little CINO Punk Ass.
Are You saying Pope Pius The XII Wasn't a True Pope CINO Nick ?
Back Up Your Slandering Mouth or Apologize Twerp.
Nick| 12.15.10 @ 11:25PM
I apologize for nothing, CINO Tim*.
You were the one who called the Holy Father "Pope Pius XII'er Israel Firster," not me.
Pope Pius XII was a great pontiff, who should be made a saint.
Again, how have I slandered you?
And, are you a Tenther?
Tim*| 12.16.10 @ 7:53AM
I called You Nicky Girl, An Israel Firster because You Boot Lick Their Agenda.
Aaaand, Don't play your "Liberal Games " on Me. "too Clever By One Half " Agenda Creep.
You know the answer to your question, You baiting Twerp. I hardly ever was aware of That particular Society in America.
Now Get Bent.
If you were really A True Supporter of Pope Pius XII,You'd know who was attempting to block his canonization.
You're either A CINO oooor a Buffoon Useful Dupe.
Nick| 12.16.10 @ 2:32PM
You are deranged, CINO Tim*.
To call me a stinking, bleeding heart liberal is like calling Michael Moore a right-wing conservative. Or, like calling Tim* a Catholic.
I'm not shocked that you have never heard of Lefebvre's excommunicated group. You are ignorant of all things Catholic.
RCV| 12.16.10 @ 4:24PM
As a stinking, bleeding heart liberal myself, I can attest that Nick is not one.
Nick| 12.16.10 @ 5:01PM
RCV,
You don't stink, that much.
Ha-ha!
And your bleeding heart (sometimes bleating heart!) is not as riddled with conorary disease as the rest of your fellow liberals.
At least you can make an argument, and defend it, without descending into a complete jackass.
Merry Christmas to you, and your familiy, RCV.
God Bless!
RCV| 12.18.10 @ 2:36AM
And a merry and blessed Christmas to you, Nick, and to all your family. God bless us every one.
RCV| 12.15.10 @ 12:38PM
Agreed. Kudos.
Tim*| 12.15.10 @ 12:49PM
Uh Oh !
What Have I Done ?
RCV| 12.15.10 @ 1:28PM
There's hope for everyone, especially at this time of year. Have a Merry Christmas.
Tim*| 12.15.10 @ 1:56PM
Aaaand May Catholic Tim & Anglican/Episcopalian Dude RCV Wish All The Terminally Secular, A Merry Festivus , as they gather around the unadorned aluminum Festivus Pole, to perform the ceremonial "Airing of Grievances" & then go forward to perform " Feats of Strength " and tell stories of easily explainable Festivus Miracles.
Nunya| 12.15.10 @ 4:38PM
And, there you go spoiling it. :-)
Merry Christmas.
Occam's Tool| 12.15.10 @ 6:41PM
Tim*, the car you're chasing does not have a rib-eye attached! It's cold outside---put on your mittens before you run on all fours!
I wish to state that the above was in reference to the assault on RCV by Tim* that was quite mean spirited. I am NOT commenting on the Catholic argument. I do recall, however, that when I was best man at my Orthodox Catholic's friend wedding, the Priest was NOT helpful to this Jewish kid in his attempts to avoid screwing up, having never been at a Catholic service before. My friend, however, is one of the best people on the face of this planet. I think people should generally be taken as individuals, except for Tim* and Jihadists. They can all be lumped together.
RCV| 12.15.10 @ 7:11PM
...and I hope your Hannukah was a happy one as well, Occam, and that you didn't run out of oil for the latkes! :-)
Tim*| 12.15.10 @ 7:13PM
Uh Oh !
Israel Firster Tool Job gets in a couple of cheap shots on Tim & a Catholic Priest.
Oh You Zany Mixed Up Jew Shrink.
RCV| 12.15.10 @ 11:56PM
Tim, that's really disgusting. Please stop.
Tim*| 12.16.10 @ 7:46AM
Now Get Lost RVVLawBoy, If This Ain't Another Israel Firster Poeur. The Funny Stuff Is Over.
Christopher| 12.16.10 @ 11:20AM
To RCV, if Tim wanted to make people dislike Catholics he could not do a better job than he is doing pretending to defend Catholics.
to Tim: what is your agenda? If you are a Catholic and want to influence people, then change your tactics, and try Catholic compassion. stop calling people names.And don't bother to respond unless you have something positive to say.
Tony in Central PA| 12.16.10 @ 5:52PM
( crickets chirping )
Doctor Part| 12.15.10 @ 1:17PM
First: Criticism does NOT equal "hate". That's an old, tired liberal trick.
Second: Do tell, dear Mr. Sheen...What part do we "wrongly perceive"?
(Please note: Yes, I said "Mr". Sheen did not meet the criteria explicitly described in scriopture to be a "Bishop". As such, he wasn't one).
Crusader Spike| 12.15.10 @ 3:05PM
If you were , by your own standards , so stupid, as to be wrong for 32 years, why would we trust your judgment now, as a Lapsed Catholic?
What's upsettin' ya there Lapsed Catholic, Celibacy ?
Wasn't Paul the same guy ,who had Timothy circumcised (Ohhhhhh ! ) after the Jerusalem Council declared it wasn't necessary for Gentiles.
Fallible ? Infallible ?
Doctor Right| 12.15.10 @ 4:07PM
Celibacy?
Now that's a laugh! Looks like it's Catholic Priests who have the most trouble with celibacy!
Yes, Paul said in Galatians 5:6 that circumcision was no longer necessary..
...NOT some silly Council.
Nice try.
Crusader Spike| 12.15.10 @ 5:20PM
Duuuuuhhh ! Paul traveled from Antioch to attended that "some silly Council".
Then Paul had Timothy circumcised after Paul earlier had rebuked Peter regarding circumcision .
You're A Laugh !
The sexual misbehavior of a few Priests, doesn't negate celibacy anymore than your Lapsed Catholicism, negates Catholicism.
Now, let's hear some of your criticisms of Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Jews.
You're up Self-Styled Truths -Exegesis Boy.
Doctor Right| 12.16.10 @ 8:15AM
A "few" priests??
You're willfully self-deluded.
Crusader Spike| 12.16.10 @ 9:23AM
Do Your Homework Lapsed Catholic with The Ax To Grind Anti-Catholic Dr. Reich.
"Hofstra University professor Charol Shakeshaft reports that 6-10 percent of public school students have been molested in recent years—some 290,000 between 1991 and 2000. According to other recent studies, 2 percent of sex abuse offenders were Catholic priests."
I notice how you obsessive compulsive Anti-Catholic Agendista attempt to sneak back & add posts ,the days after the articles are changed & I Just Called You On It.
Kiss Off Obsessed Jerkass.
Doctor Right| 12.16.10 @ 8:17AM
And you missed the point...again.
When Paul addressed this "council" as you like to call it, he didn't issue a judgment after conferring with the "wise men"...He laid down the law. It wasn't a consensus opinion.
Nice try. Do come again.
Crusader Spike| 12.16.10 @ 9:14AM
The Lapsed Catholic Ax Grinding Anti-Catholic Dr.Reich sneaks back to open the door into his own face again.
Historians call it The Council of Jerusalem or Apostolic Council , You Imbecile Assface.
Do Your homework Buffoon. The confrontation between Paul & Peter came before Your Assface labeled " Some Stupid Council " . That's one reason The Council. after Peter spoke, changed on the obligation to keep many Mosaic Laws, including circumcision.. Then Paul goes and contradicts himself and has Timothy circumcised.
Do Get Stuffed Creepy Dude.
Christopher| 12.16.10 @ 11:23AM
Doctor, I again ask what you mean by scripture, is it the Bible? Which one? And what religion or church do you believe in?
RCV| 12.15.10 @ 1:27PM
Bishop Sheen, God rest his soul, was a font of unending wisdom and wonderful quotes. When I was a young lad growing up, my family would watch him on TV together, and always enjoyed his twinkling wit, profound wisdom, and unending compassion. He was one of God's finest.
Sandra| 12.16.10 @ 3:16PM
True then, still true now.
Spike| 12.15.10 @ 10:58AM
Perhaps if Mr. Bush or Mrs. Palin had engaged William Ayers to write their books, they would have been as compelling and intellectually rigorous as The Audacity of Hope.
Wasilla Woody| 12.15.10 @ 11:31AM
Obviously, you're Spike The Pagan, not to be confused with Crusader Spike .
Le Cracquere| 12.16.10 @ 9:46AM
I believe that quiet sound you missed was Spike's delicately aimed shiv zipping between the ribs of Mr. Ayers.
da monk| 12.15.10 @ 11:06AM
When Kennedy made his speech, 50 years ago, to the Bishops in Houston 1n 1960 the attitude of the electorate, which in this country are mostly Protestants, to Catholicism and a Catholic being elected President was negative. Fears of the Pope controlling the Presidency was rampant. And memories of Al Smith losing to Herbert Hoover because of his Catholicism 30 years prior was fresh in Kennedy's mind. Thus to alleviate any fears Protestants may have had Kennedy made his speech. Today the thought of a Catholic running for President casuses no stir. O'Hannigan is making much about nothing and is tilting at windmills
Vernon| 12.15.10 @ 1:53PM
When JFK made his speech, 50 years ago, it was for the sole purpose of getting ROMAN CATHOLICS, in key states, who would normally vote Republican, to vote for him.
RCV| 12.15.10 @ 2:56PM
Catholics were already going to vote for him - we had no illusions of American Catholics being "controlled" by the Pope in their official duties.
John II| 12.15.10 @ 5:13PM
"O'Hannigan is making much about nothing and is tilting at windmills"
1. The church-state issue is a tad more than nothing to make much about.
2. Within the context of your own asseveration, you're misusing the expression "tilt at windmills." You may want to reread "Don Quixote."
Failing that, you may at least want to read Archbishop Chaput's 2010 address to the Baptists regarding the consequences of the nominally Catholic Kennedy's 1960 address:
http://www.archden.org/index.cfm/ID/3489
Or am I tilting at windmills by suggesting that you do so?
And now back to a quick peek at "The Bells of St. Mary's" (1945), which coincidentally was filmed in Year Zero of the postmodern era, albeit still well before Militant Secularism became the established religion of the United States.
G.A.O'Neill| 12.15.10 @ 11:15AM
I think deeper a ques. is answered within this article. That is, how can so many educated people be so blind to the resultant damage caused by liberalism or the progressive policies espoused by the left? Examples are too numerous to mention.I do think that the sham christianity does hide the nonbeliever in a cloak that allows for acceptance by a believing society. Thus the representitives who are incapable of belief in a higher power ,that will reward the true practicers, act only in their own behalf without the true sacrifice required of the wise and forward thinking statesman. how many of our present leaders would you go to war with????
Alan Creeks| 12.15.10 @ 11:15AM
We hear that Obama's next book , ghost written by some unknown author named A.Brooks, is tentatively titled : I Lost My Nuts Feedin' Them Damned Squirrels.
But I digress.
Please, do carry on.
PJ| 12.15.10 @ 11:27AM
I like Sarah Palin. She knows who she is: a Christian woman trying to simply practice her faith. She knows that she isn't perfect, but she tries. She speaks from the heart but also uses her mind. Her ideas are pretty rational. I believe she knows she is not an intellectual heavyweight. Do we need one as president?
I'm willing to give her a try. Is it possible that she can be worse than Obama?--- NO!
On the other hand, any of the Kennedys --- so lightweight, so hypocritical, so irrelevant. Their dynasty is over! Thank God!
Norman Conquest| 12.15.10 @ 1:08PM
KKT is an idiot. When she was running for governor in Md. she often didn't even know what town she was in. "Hello Waldorf" she'd address a Frederick audience. She was such an abysmal candidate that Md, the bluest of blue states, actually elected a Republican governor for the first time in years, KKT was that incompetent.
By the way, her given middle name is NOT Kennedy.
mzk1| 12.18.10 @ 6:18PM
Unfortunately, her opponent, Bob Erlich, whom I personally like (we have a friend in common), fired a Catholic for admitting that he agreed with the Catholic teaching on Homosexuality. So he probably deserved to lose, although MD's rejecting him pretty much puts them in the same boat as CA (sinking).
ann| 12.15.10 @ 1:25PM
The only kennedy I ever respected was Eunice Kennedy Shriver, an ardent pro-lifer. Abortion may be a choice, but it is also murder, end of story. I am tired of the Catholics in Name Only, like Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and the likes. I am Catholic and I must follow the precepts of my religion, I must adjust to church teaching, church teaching does not exist or change for my convenience. It is not easy to be a Catholic, so be one or don't be one and that goes for the Kennedys too. If Sarah Palin had aborted her son upon find out he was handicapped, she would be the darling of the Kennedy, NOW, the cast of the View, ETC, etc. etc.
mzk1| 12.18.10 @ 6:19PM
If you think that's bad, imagine how we Jews feel!
Mike Bolognese| 12.15.10 @ 3:20PM
wonderful...what more needs to be said
JimP| 12.15.10 @ 3:36PM
"...Townsend as another palooka in a family full of them."
LOL. A great line and so true.
David| 12.15.10 @ 5:03PM
Christoper, you are correct to say that legal professionals are taught to write so they can be understood. Then, we gets loads of vague, intelligible writing called opinions from the appellate courts and supreme court.
Christopher| 12.15.10 @ 6:02PM
You are corrct. When attorneys get appointed or elected as judges, many the do whatever they want, especially appellate judges. Sounds like you have first hand experience!
mzk1| 12.18.10 @ 6:22PM
On the other hand, the opinion striking down ObamaCare was written in clear, simple, English. And I have no training in Western law, nor do I need my Talmudic training (which usually helps) to decipher it.
The one thing I cannot make head or tail out of is a treaty, which I assume is intentional.
Rob| 12.15.10 @ 5:40PM
If the religious beliefs and practices of others, past and present, are up for criticism, then surely the religious beliefs and practices (past and present) of Sarah Palin should be fair game for analysis.
Of course, when anyone wants to discuss her connections with the Wasilla Assembly of God and the Rev. Thomas Muthee, those discussions would be classified as "elitist" and "liberal bias."
mzk1| 12.18.10 @ 6:25PM
She left it. Obama only left Wright under pressure.
No, people's religious beliefs should not be under scrutiny. Do you consider "God ... America" (I won't even write it) from Rev. Wright to be a religious belief?
Bill Sundling| 12.15.10 @ 6:13PM
It's a waste to time to discuss JFK's alleged faith. He was a serial adulterer. That's really all you need to know about his faith.
mzk1| 12.18.10 @ 6:26PM
Yes, that was the basic problem.
Jay Pitsby| 12.15.10 @ 10:38PM
This is just a lovely article (notwithstanding the jobless nitwits that piled on early in the comments section--Trolls one and all). Palin is refreshing precisely because of her unashamed Christianity contrasted with president Klaatu's tortured efforts to placing distance betwixt he and the Mad Dog Wrights of the world. The Kennedys would do well to pull their pants up and return to that faith as delivered to the saints.
Yosemeti Sam| 12.15.10 @ 11:11PM
" ... Palin says "Cards on the table, please," while Townsend parries with "To demand that citizens display their religious beliefs attacks the very
foundation of our nation."...."
Speaking of cards on the table - what is the ACLU up to nowadays.
t.lewis| 12.15.10 @ 11:34PM
Catholics hate Palin since they know she supports life, and she sees through the evil coming out of the White House. After all, Catholics voted the pro abortion radicals in office after being misguided by their liberal progressive bishops, priest and sisters, who only cared about health care and illegals. Pray for the coversion of the clergy in the Holy Catholic Church.
RCV| 12.16.10 @ 12:03AM
The Catholic Church is the most consistently pro-life force in the world today, with unwavering opposition to abortion.
If you're going to wrap your anti-Catholic bigotry in some pseudo-rational cloth, you might pick something that makes sense.
mzk1| 12.18.10 @ 6:14PM
I think you are correct. Unfortunately from a chart I saw many years ago, Catholics have the most abortions and Jews the least, the latter perhaps because of birth control.
So what he should be praying for is for Catholics to become more Catholic, and maybe for the pro-life movement to get more united.
GBinPA| 12.16.10 @ 4:02AM
The constitutional prohibition of a religious test was a restriction on government; the voter is free to apply any test they wish. You would think a lawyer like Kennedy would know that.
Frisbee| 12.16.10 @ 2:20PM
Bingo GBinPA! Especially the First Amendment, which says Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. It is supposed to impede Congress, not citizens.
The modern tactic is to get the Fed government involved with everything (like public school), and then they suppress religion ostensibly to avoid "making a law". But oppressing religion (outlawing prayer in school) is just as much a "law" as requiring religion, is it not? And why can't they just "allow" it? That WOULD be the correct application of the First Amendment.
Sandra| 12.16.10 @ 3:21PM
you forgot the REST of the that...
"...or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;"
Thom Burke| 12.16.10 @ 12:10PM
Anyone else taken aback, if not down right confused, by Mr. O'Hannigan's use of "bookend" as a verb in paragraph three? Is this what passes for verbal gymnastics these days?
t.r.p.| 12.17.10 @ 12:03AM
I like Palin, and I like this article. I don't think that the author is taking a swipe at Palin, or hinting that she's too stupid, or insufficiently educated to be president. One can both like Palin and think that she has flaws. Even the best leaders have them. It's undeniable that she isn't a conservative intellectual. But that isn't a bad thing. She lives her values, drives the left crazy, sticks to all the right principles. Who cares what newspapers she reads?
led screen | 12.17.10 @ 3:14AM
I thinks so~
"morality cannot be sustained without the support of religious beliefs," Townsend misreads this acknowledgement of our collective debt to Judeo-Christian intellectual and religious capital as "a wholesale attack on countless Americans."
mzk1| 12.18.10 @ 6:11PM
I like his line about Palin's life being an answer to her opponents, but it's hard for me to visualize her as a role model, when she breaks the Schlesinger rule of one parent staying home with the children, particularly when one has a severe disability. On the other hand, it does put her resignation in an even more positive light, given that a person with a disabled child should not let themselves be bled dry financially.
But I really shouldn't judge. I hope to get her first book; it should be in paperback by now.