Pints With Aquinas - 181: The Morality of Meat Eating W/ Fr. Chris Pietraszko

Starting point is 00:00:00 G'day, what's up? Welcome to Pints with Aquinas. My name is Matt Fradd and today I am joined around the bar table by Father Chris Prochaszko to discuss veganism. What does Thomas Aquinas have to say about the butchering and eating of irrational animals? You know, can we use animals in that sense? Can we use them for our clothing and things like this? We really do hope that we don't set up straw men when we seek to engage with the arguments for veganism in this episode. You can be the judge of that. But I thought that since this was a topic I was seeing coming up more and more, it was high time that on Pints with Aquinas, we took a look at what Thomas Aquinas would have to say on this issue. I think you're going to find this discussion between Father Chris Prochaszko and myself very enlightening, very helpful. So here we go. Buckle up, get a beer.

Starting point is 00:00:50 You got one? I'll wait. Here we go. Using your heart G'day, welcome back to Pints with Aquinas, the show where you and I pull up a barstool next to the angelic doctor with Father Chris Prochaszko to discuss theology and philosophy. Look, I hope that you are sensational. I really do. Things are going great over here at Pints with Aquinas land.

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Starting point is 00:04:57 So if you're trying to get into a better routine when it comes to prayer, check out hallo.app.com. All right, here's my chat with Father Chris Pachosko. Father Chris Pachosko, how are you going? Hey, mate. How's it going? Good. I bet if we went back to the very first episode I ever did with you, it would have been me saying, Hey, Father Chris Pachosko. Yeah, it's a been me saying, hey, Father Chris Picaco.

Starting point is 00:05:27 Yeah, it's a common problem. But I have dominated it now. You have. You're doing well. For those who aren't familiar with you or haven't listened to some of those old episodes we've done, which they ought to because they're fantastic, tell us a bit about yourself, where you're living, where you're ministering. Yeah, I'm Father Chris. I've been ordained for almost about eight years.

Starting point is 00:05:46 I work in the London Diocese in Canada. Right now, I moved to Stratford recently, Stratford, Ontario. We actually got quite a few people from the States coming over here to see various shows. Yeah, my hobbies are I love reading St. Thomas Aquinas, growing in my spiritual life in that regard, and I love camping, fishing, all that good stuff. Nice. Nice, nice, nice. Well, today we want to talk about veganism, vegetarianism, our treatment of animals and these sorts of things. Was this your suggestion or mine? I forget. I don't remember because it's been so long since we were able to talk about it.

Starting point is 00:06:28 But I think I might have. You've been thinking about it pretty intensely, I think, for a little bit. Yeah, I think there's a lot of pastoral implications to all the stuff that we see coming from groups like PETA. And they're actually affecting people at Ground Zero right now. Who are Ground Zero? What do you mean Ground Zero? Well, it's regular parishioners. Oh, gotcha.

Starting point is 00:06:50 Yeah, I just mean that it's affecting our whole anthropology, our understanding of morality, and even our relationship with God. So I'd love to dive into it today. Well, for our listeners, one of the things I love about you, Father Chris, is you don't want to attack a straw man. And so a couple of weeks ago, you sent me that video and you're like, here's a really good explanation from someone who's not crazy, who is pro-vegan. And I just love that. I love that you did some research to try and find the best arguments sort of against your position in a way. Same thing with Thomas Aquinas. I thought that was really great. Yeah, and so some of the arguments that we often hear,

Starting point is 00:07:32 we're perhaps ill-equipped to respond to. And I was witnessing in that video a Catholic who was doing his best, and at the same time, you could tell that this other man kind of was burying him in very, it seemed seemed like logical arguments. So I think it's just a matter of just equipping the disciples of our church to know how to respond to this. Yeah, I imagine when people kind of saw the topic of today's podcast, you know, maybe they thought we would create a straw man. That it's like on one side, you got people who are like, animals are humans too. And then on the other side, you got someone shut up animals are tasty but no like that's not what we want to do we really want to try and understand where people are coming from and at

Starting point is 00:08:12 the same time teach the catholic faith is there any way you'd like to begin with do you want to begin with this article here or do you want to lay the groundwork a little first? Yeah, I was thinking of talking just a little bit about what Aquinas often does when he differentiates between the species, right? So he'll talk about the difference between angels and humans and humans and beasts or animals themselves. And one of the first articles I ever read about this was when I was in my theology classes, and this is the second part of the second part on question 64, whether it is unlawful to kill any living creature. So, you know, some of the objections here seem to be pretty reasoned. So read objection two first. Yeah, so read Objection 2 first. Yeah, I was just reading that then. Further, and I remember being stopped in Adelaide, the capital city of the state in which I grew up, and I was kind of being confronted with people who were saying like, murders are sin, and they were holding pictures of horses and cows and things like that.

Starting point is 00:09:23 that. I remember thinking it was kind of weird because I wasn't sure that they even believed in God or Christianity. So it was weird that they were citing it. But nevertheless, it sounds like this is sort of something we're seeing here, an objection to further murder is a sin because it deprives a man of life. Now, life is common to all animals and plants. Hence, for the same reason, it is apparently a sin to slay dumb animals and plants. Right. So, you know, we are acknowledging the fact that life is good. And in this objection, it kind of takes that to the point of suggesting that because it's a good, it would be to deprive an animal of life, which seems to be an evil, which seems to be, you know, a pretty good argument. Seems to be a pretty good argument, even if we're not differentiating between animals and human beings. We're just kind of playing a principle here about life. So why don't we just go right into his I answer that, would that be all right with you? Yeah, go for it. Would you like to read it or me?

Starting point is 00:10:20 Why don't you? Okay. There is no sin in using a thing for the purpose for which it is now the order of things is such that the imperfect are for the perfect even as in the process of generation nature proceeds from imperfection to perfection hence it is that just as in the generation of a man there is first a living thing, that's interesting, then an animal, and lastly a man, so too things like the plants, which merely have life, are all alike for animals, and all animals are for men. Wherefore, it is not unlawful if men use plants for the good of animals and animals for the good of men, as the philosopher states in the Politics. Now, the most necessary use would seem to consist in the fact that animals use plants and men use animals for food. And this cannot be done unless these be deprived of life. Wherefore, it is lawful both to take life from plants for the use of animals and from animals for the use of men. On fact, this is in keeping with the commandment of God himself, for it is written

Starting point is 00:11:42 in Genesis, Behold, I have given you every herb and all trees to be your meat and to all beasts of the earth. And again, in Genesis 9, 3, we read everything that moveth and liveth shall be meat for you. And just quickly, I want to kind of back up here and read the said contra where it looks like he's quoting Augustine, who says, When we hear it said, Thou shalt not kill, we do not take it as referring to trees, for they have no sense, nor to irrational animals, because they have no fellowship with us. Hence, it follows that the words, Thou shalt not kill, refer to the killing of a man. That's right. So he's highlighting an assumed context that was given to us in that law in the Ten Commandments, right? And so sometimes we read things too literal and we apply it too generally. And so there he's giving it a context, which is that, is if you take it to that logical extent, that first objection,

Starting point is 00:12:49 which is, you know, we've got to preserve all life, then as human beings, what we would be doing is we would be preventing animals from eating even vegetation. And therefore, we kind of find ourselves in a catch-22, which is, all life needs to be preserved no matter what, you're going to starve these animals to death. And likewise ourselves. And so, in fact, it points out kind of an irrational conclusion, which is ultimately these animals and this um this vegetation is for the sake of a hierarchical structure the the vegetation serves the needs of the animals and the animals likewise also serve

Starting point is 00:13:37 the needs of man and so later on he kind of points this out in another article, which I think is in the first part, question 96, whether Adam in the state of innocence had mastership over the animals. Okay. So do you mind if I read from that? Yeah, please. I just want to point out before you do that it is really interesting. Like, if you want to say that life as such is a good that ought not to be taken, of course, you're not only talking about animals, you're talking about plants as well. And there's that irony you pointed to that because we wish to respect life, all must die. It's kind of what it leads to because rice and beans come from living things and plants and animals, of course, eat vegetation. And so if for the respect of life, we ought not to kill anything,

Starting point is 00:14:30 then it would seem that everything was probably going to have to die. Right. Which just points to the fact that just because it's alive doesn't mean that that's a reason not to kill it. And so that leads us to the further discussion of, well, when can you kill something? What is it based on that gives us that justification? And I think that in this Article 96, we get a step closer to that. So in the I answer that, I'm just going to skip down to his first argument. And he says, first, from the order observed by nature. For just as the generation of things, we perceive a certain order of precession, of the perfect from the imperfect. Thus, matter is for the sake of form and imperfect form for the sake of the perfect. So also is the order in the use of natural things.

Starting point is 00:15:20 Thus, the imperfect are for the use of the perfect, as the plants make use of the earth for their nourishment, and animals make use of plants, and man makes use of both plants and animals. Therefore it is in keeping with the order of nature that man should be master over animals. Hence the philosopher says that the hunting of wild animals is just and natural because man thereby exercises a natural right and when i read that i was just like wow so aquinas would argue that people who are trying to prevent us from eating meat are actually depriving human beings of a natural right and so there's a sort of human rights issue actually taking place. The other way around, according to him.

Starting point is 00:16:10 Exactly. And then he says, secondly, this is proved by the order of divine providence, which always governs inferior things by the superior. Wherefore, as man man being made to the image of god is above other animals these are rightly subject to his government and then he says thirdly this is proved from the property of man and of other animals for we see in the latter a certain participated prudence of natural instinct in regard to certain particular acts whereas man possesses a universal prudence of natural instinct in regard to certain particular acts, whereas man possesses a universal prudence as regards all practical matters. Now, whatever is participated is subject to what is essential and universal. Therefore, the subjection of other animals to man is proved to be natural. So, I think there's that whole idea that we have to use

Starting point is 00:17:06 the animals in a reasonable way. So we can't just do whatever we want with them. There has to be that prudence applied to them. So what I find interesting, though, is that there's an assumed belief here, and Aquinas later goes into it and especially in the summa contra of the difference between a human being and an animal and in the video what I found interesting was the man who was arguing in favor of not killing animals constantly stressed that animals are sentient and in fact Aquinas really already agrees with that but he moves a step further to say but man is more than just sentient that he's intelligent as well and that didn't seem to be a distinction that was being made and so it's that added layer that difference or specific difference in logical terms that really kind of gets our mind around why it's okay to subordinate animals to the usage

Starting point is 00:18:13 of human beings in this whole schema of a hierarchy of serving man's interests. Well, let's just kind of break that down for somebody who's listening, who maybe that went a little over their head. Someone says, look, animals are sentient. Sure, plants have no nervous system, so far as we know. Animals appear to have ends. They'll go about their business unless you interrupt them. So it seems wrong to impose your will upon them to end their life. So maybe you can do it with plants, but surely not

Starting point is 00:18:46 with animals. So what's your kind of just like Father Chris Prochaska response to that without directing people directly to the quote of Aquinas? Yeah, first of all, the whole argument of imposing your will upon an animal would seem to be arbitrary only if the animal itself had free will. Because there's this whole idea of enslaving this animal to our own will. And that seems unjust because we wouldn't do that with human beings. But what's being conflated, it seems to me in that argument is this assumption that because an animal experiences reality in maybe kind of a passive way, that all of a sudden it has rights or all of a sudden it has to be treated like it has a free will and agency of its own, when in reality,

Starting point is 00:19:42 the animal is actually already enslaved to the material functionality of the world it's determined it doesn't have free will and so it's almost like if we're saying that it shouldn't be enslaved to human beings we would have to extend that further to say the animal shouldn't be enslaved to the laws of physics which actually cause it to act the way it does according to its makeup and its nature well i could see someone saying well we have no control over whether or not they are as you put it enslaved to the laws of nature but we do have control over whether or not we'll butcher them And so at least don't do that and let them live a happy existence. Yeah, I just, I don't see that as a compelling argument because its nature is to be enslaved to the laws of physics. And that's not a bad thing. That's

Starting point is 00:20:39 the way it's been created and designed to be. And by enslaved to the laws of physics, do you mean to not have free will? Is that what you mean by that? Essentially, yes. It doesn't have a will. So you can't suppress its will by enslaving it to man's needs. What about somebody who's seriously mentally retarded? Would they have free will?

Starting point is 00:20:59 Yes. They would have free will. Yeah. Are they able to exercise that free will? I would think so, yeah are they able to exercise that free will i would i would think so yeah the church would teach that i suppose there will be certain circumstances where someone might be so um i know mentally retardation is a maybe that was not a good way to put it i know people are offended by that i meant no offense but you know if somebody is so mentally handicapped that

Starting point is 00:21:21 they can't think properly i imagine there would be some humans whose mentally developed life wouldn't exceed certain animals. I think there's an important distinction between the intellect in terms of its maybe IQ and the freedom of that intellect. For example, you know, an ape can be trained to do all sorts of things, but it cannot ever conceive of the concept of half of something, like half of a banana. of something like half of a banana um whereas most human beings that experience some sort of uh mental delay or some sort of disability they still have that capacity um even though their iq might be lower and will we also say that they have the potential for it even if that potential has been stifled by a mental illness you know know what I mean? Like a fetus cannot conceive of half, for example, but that's because of its developmental stage. And so it's more because of what a human being is

Starting point is 00:22:34 as opposed to whether or not it can perform certain functions or conceive of what half means, hey? I'm asking, not telling you. I'm just trying to think this through. No, you're 100% right. I just don't want to make it sound as if people with mental delays can also be moral beings. In terms of their actual actualization, they can actualize their potential and become saints. I don't know the psychology in terms of what level of interior freedom they have. But let's say hypothetically, though, going along with that idea that their ability to be free was entirely suppressed, they would still have the nature, like you're saying, to be a moral agent.

Starting point is 00:23:19 And that would be their dignity, even though it was for some reason being blocked from its full optimization in this life. Okay. But then, so it wouldn't be appropriate for someone to say, well, this person is enslaved to the laws of physics and therefore we can butcher them. No, that's a good point. But we would also be speaking about the nature of the animal that does have a nature to be enslaved to the laws of physics versus someone who might be more controlled over it, but that's a disorder that we're finding in nature. So, you know, this idea of not being able to kill animals, it's like this common strand in it that kind of reminds me of when people want to push for like communism. You know, this idea that there should be no hierarchy in nature. There should be no hierarchy as it comes to a person's gifts and rewards that we should all be on an equal playing field sort of thing.

Starting point is 00:24:18 It kind of reminds me of like Lucifer's lie. This idea that we can become God, you know, that there should be no distinctions at all, not even between man and woman. Man and woman can just be a social construct and we're all just one sort of homogenous blob. And that's the only way we can apparently find freedom as opposed to recognizing the very obvious fact that there is a hierarchy in nature. Yeah. And I think you're raising something I read and I think it was R Rirm Navarum a number of years ago. It was talking about the problems with communism, and I think one of the comments it made was that oftentimes the disparaging attitude towards subsidiarity or hierarchy is born out of envy. Totally, totally.

Starting point is 00:25:09 And that envy that's often masquerading as, you know, trying to promote the needs of the less fortunate is actually the result of greed as well. Yep. Aquinas, this is a totally different podcast, I'm sorry. No, it's okay. Aquinas' whole idea of greed is so fascinating to me because he basically says that those who perceive themselves to be poor, even when they're not, they are the greedy ones. Wow. That reminds me of people in America who are whining about being disadvantaged when they live in the most prosperous nation the world has ever known.

Starting point is 00:25:47 I mean, and there can be legitimate disadvantages. I'm not saying they can't. But sometimes you get the sense like, you know, people are living a pretty good life and we're all walking around with smartphones and we have access to the world's wisdom. And we're munching down on avocado toast at a hipster coffee shop and whining about why life isn't fair. Yeah. And meanwhile, we should be poor in spirit, recognizing that we don't have what the soul truly longs for. Seeing ourselves as poor in the things of God rather than poor in material things. But yeah, I just thought that was an interesting point.

Starting point is 00:26:21 Just that thread of like everyone should be equal. Like there should be no one above the rest. And, you know, I think Australia kind of falls into that. Maybe Canada does too, more than the United States. We called it tall poppy syndrome. Like, if someone was rich, somehow they were the enemy. Even though they probably owned a business and were paying people's salaries, we looked upon them as if it were unfair. Yeah, this person may have worked their butt off to receive what they did. And this idea that we should be taxing them unfairly. Yeah, it can be greed and even theft to take someone else's money just because they have more of it than you. And anyway, but it sounds similar. You know, when we're looking at creatures and saying we're all exactly the same, there is no distinction between a cat, a cockroach and a man. Yeah, and I also think that part of the reason for this is our notion of maybe spirituality or dignity has been predominantly stressing the affect or emotional nature of men. Yes, interesting. Very interesting, yes. I can't tell you how many times, you know, I'm watching these TV shows and they'll say things like having emotions is what make you human. It's kind of like the whole Spock versus, you know, so this idea that we're stressing emotions as being what purely identifies human beings from everything else has been habituated into our own attitude towards our anthropology meanwhile dogs cats cows

Starting point is 00:27:48 they all have emotions so there really isn't that much of a distinguishing reality when we stress that part of us and not only that but that whole emphasis on empathy which i think is incredibly important but that it's not tied to this kind of moral notion it's just if i can empathize with an animal therefore we're equal to each other and and so i think that there's there's this inability for us to articulate in our day and age the difference between human beings because we're just focused we've got tunnel vision if you will with the affective or emotional side of human beings and i mean what else do we need to draw a straight line to emotivism than that that we experience all the time in our moral ethos, right? So I think that we've become blind to, in certain ways, understanding our own dignity and it's manifesting itself as a symptom

Starting point is 00:28:56 in the way that we're treating animals almost as if they have equal rights to us. Are you familiar with Peter Sanger? Yes. There's a man who's trying to be consistent. Yeah, absolutely. And give him credit for that. Except the problem is like he, he's basically like he wrote in one of his books that he thought animals should be able to vote.

Starting point is 00:29:21 No. And that is, I guess, consistent, but it's totally unreasonable. Good luck with that, you know. St. Augustine did say that, you know, if, I think it was if a hog or a pig knows what it is, then we baptize them. You know, because then they fall under that definition of being a human being, having a

Starting point is 00:29:45 rational soul. But it just doesn't apply to them. And so I think that this is where I was trying to get is because we now in our mind and our heart look at animals almost as if they're the same as human beings. What's happening is we're beginning to treat human beings like animals so in canada we now euthanize human beings um we also um think about the sex trade you know um we're enslaving human beings yeah um even children um which is absolutely horrible but they are treating these human persons like animals to gratify maybe a sexual appetite that's disordered but they're still treating human beings like animals and uh on top of that and this is perhaps a bit controversial but i have no problem saying it um we fix our dogs and our cats because they cannot

Starting point is 00:30:55 control their sexual impulses and we do the same to humans right yes we're doing the same to humans, right? Yes, we're doing the same to humans when it's, sometimes it's related to health issues, but a lot of the time it's related to just trying to avoid a pregnancy. And it's because there's no self-control. And that self-control is born of a rational soul with freedom that we have and so i'm what i'm saying is if we're adopting this idea of vegetarianism because we're treating animals as if they're on par with human beings that will lead to all of these things we're actually treating ourselves with dignity than we really have right we're not elevating the dignity of animals so much as we are devaluing the dignity of man. We're bringing us to their level, not them to us, in a way. That's the result very often. Like, even the Depro Provera shot,

Starting point is 00:31:54 they use this on sex offenders because it lowers their testosterone levels, I think, a great deal, but they won't give it to your dog. I just interviewed Jason Everett about this. People can go check that out on YouTube. It was a great deal, but they won't give it to your dog. I just interviewed Jason Everett about this. We can go check that out on YouTube. It was a fascinating discussion.

Starting point is 00:32:09 But yeah, like just to your point that we treat animals like humans and humans like animals. But you know, like there's something kind of like consistent and then non-consistent when it comes to this idea of treating animals like humans. Like if materialism is true and God does not exist, then animals and men are merely walking bags of chemical reactions, some more sophisticated than others, but still walking bags of chemical reactions nonetheless. Therefore, in that sense, how I treat one bag of chemicals doesn't really matter, I suppose, as to how I i treat another but if you want to say like well you should treat them both the same and it's kind of immoral not to you're

Starting point is 00:32:49 in another kind of um problem there because if materialism is true then there can't be anything like moral absolutes you know like if god doesn't exist if there is no spiritual then then then saying you ought not to do this or you ought to do that, you know, these are not scientific statements. I don't think we could even address the reality of free will in a materialistic… Well, that too. That too. How can we even discuss morality if all of us are determined? But it's often put in a moralizing framework.

Starting point is 00:33:21 Like when you see what Peter says and how they say it, it feels very moral, you know, like they're appealing to morality, but if God doesn't exist, then objective morality can't exist either. I don't think. And, and even further,

Starting point is 00:33:36 like if, if let's say animals are considered moral beings, like we're treating them equal to humans. What about lions and, and wild animals that are carnivores? Are they doing something socially unjust? Should we be protesting that? Well, I think what we would say to try and really kind of understand their argument,

Starting point is 00:33:57 I think they would say, well, they're not in a position to control eating the gazelle, and so we don't send them to jail. So they're not actually morally responsible. But we are. I think that would be the argument. And that's my point, though, is that in saying that, you're treating them like they have no free will. Again, so you're assuming a hierarchy there. Ah, yes. You are assuming a hierarchy, but then I think you would say with greater power comes greater responsibility. So the fact that you have free will and can choose to butcher or not to butcher, you should choose the higher route, that is to say not to butcher and to live in harmony with God's creatures rather than to interrupt their existence. Right.

Starting point is 00:34:39 And as kind of before, I think we are. You've responded to that. But yeah, we're embracing their existence in a sense because we're using them for what they were created for which was to provide nourishment to man now i was talking to no i used to run a podcast called love people use things with my friend noah church and so he would get on one week and i would go on the other week noah's a strict vegan and he finds not only pornography morally problematic he's an atheist but he finds eating animals pornography morally problematic, he's an atheist, but he finds eating animals morally problematic. And one of the arguments he used, which I didn't think was very good personally, but I wanted to throw it out there anyway, is if you were to kill a dog, if you were to kill a dog unnecessarily, without any good reason, you would go to jail. But the difference

Starting point is 00:35:21 between a dog and a pig, really not much of a difference, but we can kill pigs and eat them. And so his point was, if you can't kill a dog, then you shouldn't be able to kill a pig. What would your response to that be? Well, I mean, I think if you kill any animal for no purpose at all, that's usually a sign of some sort of psychological problem in the human person's psyche. There's often been studies that have shown that children, for example, who torture or kill animals are inclined to become psychopaths. So there's a sort of possibility of this person killing them for the sake of inflicting pain and causing them to be tortured and to enjoy to get pleasure out of that act of murder if we can use that term to kill that animal and that is a disorder that should be punished or maybe looked at from a psychological framework. It's not necessarily because the

Starting point is 00:36:30 dignity of that animal has been neglected, although I do think in part that's the case. If a dog was killed for food, I wouldn't have any moral problems with that. If the dog was meant to, have any moral problems with that if the dog was meant to uh if it was assigned the role as a pet that wouldn't make much sense because that's its use yes um but if a dog was uh which some people could see as a form of slavery like the other day i was at tim horton's good old canadian coffee and there was a one of those dogs in trainings and it had chains, it had like a muzzle around its mouth, but it was being trained for a blind person. And I thought, well, if we did that with a human being, that would be reprehensible. But we obviously treat this dog like it's meant to serve in this way. And so it just depends on

Starting point is 00:37:22 the purpose that has been assigned to by the agents of human beings, the agency that man has stewardship over these animals. And if it's just being destroyed in a way that doesn't make rational sense for what its purpose is supposed to be, then it is, I guess, in a sense, an abuse against the dignity of God's creation, as well as a disorder, a moral disorder within the human being who's imprudently using the gifts and fruits of the earth, including animals. Yeah, it is an interesting point. Like, I'm not allowed to kill an animal, but I can castrate it and keep it locked in my backyard. And I wonder what people would say to that i suppose they would say something like you know suppose you do have a child who is mentally handicapped you you would you know the the existence they would live would be very unlike the existence any normal person would want

Starting point is 00:38:18 to live in the sense that they can't have necessary plans of their own. And so we keep them confined in a wheelchair. And their life kind of revolves around ours, if you want, or the other way around. I'm not sure. But the point is, they have no higher aspirations because they're mentally handicapped. What's the proper way to say that? I keep saying it and feeling bad that i'm saying it i don't know why mental retardation became a bad word um i mean it's etymology makes sense but i think the way it's come to you become to use yeah you know what i mean like so you would say well let's like create for them a comfortable existence and it's not like they want to live a different existence if they're mentally retarded likewise an animal has no higher aspirations because it's cognitive state and the fact that it doesn't have free will. And so, you know, having them kind of lead me around and

Starting point is 00:39:10 guide me and help me is not any kind of imposition upon the dog. The dog's not unhappy about it. It's still getting a warm home and, you know, food and water and all that sort of stuff. Yeah. And I mean, and if you were to make those exact arguments for human being well this human being has given up its life but it should be happy because i've been given it a warm home i've given it food that wouldn't fly right but with a dog it makes sense and i think that's because of that that nature that the animal has that differentiates us between human beings and you don't see a rise up of dogs either usually anyway. Yeah well fair enough. I want to share a quote from Benedict XVI on the respect that is owed to animals and how we can

Starting point is 00:40:02 be you know use animals in an improper way. You're probably familiar with this quote in 2002. This is back when he was Cardinal Ratzinger. He was asked about the rights of animals, and here's what he said, quote, That is a very serious question. At any rate, we can see that they are given into our care, that we cannot just do whatever we want with them. Animals too are God's creatures. Certainly a sort of industrial use of creatures so that geese are fed in such a way as to produce as large a liver as possible. Hens live so packed together they become just characters of birds. This degrading of living creatures to a commodity seems to me, in fact, to contradict the relationship

Starting point is 00:40:45 of mutuality that comes across in the Bible. Your thoughts? I 100% agree with him, because just because the object of the act of killing an animal is good for the sake of food does not mean that any means necessary is proportionate or reasonable to that end, like anything in moral theology or moral philosophy. So, animals, they may be less dignified than man, but that doesn't mean we can treat them with less dignity than what they objectively have in the order of God's creation. So I think some people might argue, fair enough, like they'll say, but killing them is the ultimate evil. But I don't think that's actually the case. I think killing them is fulfilling what they're there for. But torturing them, whether it be from an emotional point of view or from a physiological point of view, it would be more so contrary to the dignity because they were not created to be tortured. they were not designed to fulfill some sort of neglect in that sense and i think that there is a character in animals that we as human beings share which is our affective and maybe we would

Starting point is 00:42:15 even say our passive intellect there's there's a sense that there is experience that happens in animals and we want to respect that reality because it is a beautiful and good thing and if we can't respect it in animals how are we going to respect that within ourselves as well but there are limits to it and so i think that um in our industry of taking care of animals, that is a fair consideration that we probably should look into how animals are treated, if they're mass produced and so on. I don't think that changes the object of the act in general, but it does ask us the means to producing those animals for that end have to

Starting point is 00:43:07 be examined and have to be proportionate to what the animals are there for. All right, so here's an argument. Suppose you say that cruelty to animals is always immoral. I think we would agree with that premise. And then the second, and we'd have to, of course, flesh out what cruelty meant. But suppose the second premise is something, killing an animal without a good reason is cruel. And suppose we don't have a good reason anymore to kill animals. Like maybe there was a time that in order to survive, we had to kill animals. But we don't really seem to live in that day and age right

Starting point is 00:43:45 now, right? Like we can sustain ourselves on, I mean, even if you want to say animal products, I don't know if people go further and say we shouldn't even be using animal products, but what if we just ate cheese and beans and rice and wouldn't that be a good thing since it's not necessary to harm them? Well, I think that God himself, at least from a theological point of view, God himself gave the animals to us in Genesis to be food. And so we would be paying God a compliment by using the animals for what he intended them to be. And part of that was to eat. So I think just from a theological point of view, that's fair. I think from a philosophical point of view is we're looking at the teleology of the animal, which is that they're there to eat. The scientific question that needs to be asked, and I don't think I can

Starting point is 00:44:46 adequately answer it, but is, you know, can we be nourished well without animal fats? Right now, I'm on the keto diet. And a lot of that actually depends on healthy animal fat. And actually, I've lost a significant amount of weight. My cholesterol has decreased. I've got good cholesterol now. And by the way, I'm not plugging keto. You have to go to your doctor and discern what's best for you and your body chemistry. But for me, animal fat is actually incredibly healthy. It's the omega-6 fats like from vegetables, having too much of that can be unhealthy. And so I think it's important to kind of scientifically look at what's actually healthy for man. And it seems to me that every generation has a new theory. This whole idea of eating fat, being very super unhealthy and only eating carbs or vegetables and stuff, that's totally flopped.

Starting point is 00:45:48 Yeah, yeah, yeah. But suppose we play devil's advocate because I don't think you're saying, okay, if you could prove that man does not need to eat animals to live a healthy life, then okay, it's therefore immoral to kill and eat animals. I don't think you'd say that, right? I think you're saying even if it were the case that man could survive and be just as healthy, if not healthier, by eating only vegetables, it wouldn't follow that it's wrong to kill and eat animals.

Starting point is 00:46:16 That's correct, yeah. I don't think, because I think it's in the nature of animals to be there to provide us for food. But do you think it's true that like Christians don't worry or aren't concerned about the suffering animals endure as much as they ought to? I live here in Georgia and I think, you know, Tyson, you probably

Starting point is 00:46:34 don't know this because you're up in Canada, but Tyson farms, we often see these big trucks on the highway stacked with cages and chickens just stuffed into them. They stink to high heaven. They look really unhealthy. I mean, forget what it's doing to us for a second to eat, you know, terrible meat like that. But it's an awful existence for these chickens to have to live like that. I mean,

Starting point is 00:46:57 should we Christians be more concerned than we are about this, even though there are other issues that warrant more concern? I think that we can't suppress one moral issue over another. We have to try to let out all of them all at the same time. So we can't do what I call as moral deflection, is just say, well, what about this issue? Let's ignore that one. On the other hand, I do think that we should be concerned about this. I'm living in Stratford, Ontario, and surrounded by the city of Stratford is lots of farmland and lots of animal farmland. And I was actually talking to a group of guys that get together here

Starting point is 00:47:42 and sometimes listen to your podcast, Matt. And they're big fans. So I just thought'd show very nice hello to all of your listeners anyway um a lot of them have worked on farms and they were expressing that they do care for their animals right and that they um that their animals are better off in their own farm. And if they were left to just run wild, they'd actually in our society today would die and uselessly. And so there's different ways to look at it. It's a very complex issue.

Starting point is 00:48:21 And I think we have to deal with the providers. We have to do maybe our research when we're getting food, not just to go to this company that's excessively and imprudently producing animals in maybe what we would say is a cruelly indifferent way to their own dignity. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, it's a good point. My friend John Henry has a farm at his house. And yeah, we went there and slit the throat of a chicken and de-feathered it and ate it. And it was funny. Well, not so funny,

Starting point is 00:48:57 but we had friends that were horrified that I would take my son to do this. And as John Henryry my friend explained like we respect animals they've been given to us we treat them well you know this chicken here has had a very good life you know um running about the farm and now we're going to kill it in a way in which it doesn't suffer you know like all of that was was i think a beautiful teaching lesson to my kids but the idea that if i just see it in a plastic, you know, package at a store, it's like we have no connection to what just happened.

Starting point is 00:49:32 The thing was still slaughtered, you know? And I think another abuse of animals can be our wastefulness of them. You know, like if we're cooking all this food, I think I used to work at Burger King, You know, like if we're cooking all this food, I think I used to work at Burger King and we would throw out so much food because it passed its time, right? Its expiration time. food, which is to me, I think it's a sin because there's a sense of not respecting that gift of food, not serving the homeless with it, all these kinds of regulations that we have now that really don't respect that process. So Pope Francis does talk about being

Starting point is 00:50:21 wasteful. And I think that there's a fair point in that, which is on the other end as well. And I think of like a lot of the Native Americans in Canada, you know, they had that mentality of using every single part of the animal. It was born out of a respect for that animal that they saw as a gift to give it. Now, from a theological point of view, we can adopt a lot of that, but just apply it to that God has given this animal for our use. So, we can use this for jackets. We can use it for food. We can use the bones for this and that. But we're trying to utilize everything as a way of showing that animal its true dignity. And killing the animal, you know, by slitting its throat instead of like torturing it to death is another way of

Starting point is 00:51:15 showing its dignity to it as not to cause it undue, unreasonable pain. I wonder if you've looked into this, I'm not sure, what would a vegan who was against the killing of animals say about eating an animal which has just died? You know, like, I have chickens, I care for them. One of them drops dead. It probably wouldn't be very good to eat if it just died. But, you know, like, would they say that that would be okay? You know, just like we would say that to eat the body of my grandma, if she would have died, that would be okay? You know, just like we would say that to eat the body of my grandma, if she were to die, that would be like a barbaric thing.

Starting point is 00:51:49 I wonder what they would say about animals. I don't know. My understanding is that when most animals die a natural death, there's toxins that are released. Well, suppose I hit a deer with my car, you know, like something. I wonder what they would say.

Starting point is 00:52:02 Yeah, that's a great question. All right. Okay, well, as we begin to wrap up, is there anything else you want to say? Anything else you want to draw from the Summa? I apologize if I took us on a tangent there, but I found this really fascinating. Yeah, no problem. Again, I'd like to go back to just the spiritual implications of this in our own faith life is I think we have to ask ourselves, what am I as a human being? And really begin to embrace that rational soul that we have that distinguishes us from animals. The other thing that I've noticed is that sometimes people will now have animals replace their own children. So they'll call them like dogs and cats. They'll actually replace having children with animals or they might refer to them as their own children.

Starting point is 00:52:49 And I think that this is not only morally unjust because we don't want to equate children with dogs and cats. But I think we're losing our sense of our own dignity and maybe becoming numb to something that is just a beautiful and amazing within us which is the image and likeness of god that is in each one of us so i think we need to be able to stress that and and one of the things that um is often controversial and i don't want to go too deep into it but often there's um there is a tendency to try to elevate animals into a higher category which we see when people insist um in an inordinate way that their animals are in heaven um and I and I'm not saying that they aren't okay um not not not even getting into that because I I've seen what happens when you bring up this issue.

Starting point is 00:53:49 You get yelled at by a lot of people. But the point is that Jesus, when he died for us on the cross, did not die to redeem the moral state of your tapeworm, of your dog, of your cat. He shed his blood for the human family. He became human. And I think that we have that realization that we are uniquely special is not a prideful thing for us to embrace. It's a gift from God. We haven't created or generated ourself. God has given us this wonderful gift of having free will, the capacity to love him. And we need to accept that fully. And we can do that by acknowledging the difference between animals and human beings and treating them the way that their dignity really is in contrast to our own. dignity really is in contrast to our own. And I think when we do that, we really learn to accept the great gift that God has given us in creating us in his image and likeness.

Starting point is 00:54:50 All right. Well put. Thank you very much. Hey, where can people go to learn more about you? Are you still producing the Feed Us at Ratio podcast? Yeah, I have a podcast. I think it's on Google Play now and on iTunes called Feed A at Ratio. So it's Faith and reason in Latin. And then just check me out on Facebook or Twitter. Twitter is at FR and then my crazy last name Petroshko. And yeah, just check me out. I'm happy to help you in any way I can there.

Starting point is 00:55:19 All right. Thanks so much, Father Chris. You're welcome. Take care, Matt. All right. Thank you very much for tuning in this week. I hope that conversation was really helpful. Tell us about it on Twitter if you want.

Starting point is 00:55:30 Tag me there, at Matt Fradd. I'd love to see your thoughts on today's discussion. Also, do us a favor if you have not yet reviewed Pints with Aquinas on iTunes or wherever you listen to this podcast. That actually helps us out a great deal. on iTunes or wherever you listen to this podcast. That actually helps us out a great deal. People end up seeing us a lot more often if it's highly rated and listened to and things like this. So who knows, maybe just by reviewing Pints with Aquinas,

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Pints With Aquinas - 181: The Morality of Meat Eating W/ Fr. Chris Pietraszko

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