Reinterpreting man’s dominion over other animals
Print Edition
FOREIGN VIEWS
Mainstream Christian thinking about animals is rooted in the Book of Genesis, where God is said to have granted man dominion over all the animals. St. Thomas Aquinas interpreted that verse as implying that it simply does not matter how man behaves toward animals; the only reason why we should not inflict whatever cruelties we like on animals is that doing so may lead to cruelty to humans.
A few Christian thinkers have sought to reinterpret “dominion” as “stewardship,” suggesting that God entrusted humanity to care for his creation. But it remained a minority view, favored by environmentalists and animal protectionists, and Aquinas’s interpretation remained the prevailing Catholic doctrine until the late twentieth century.
Pope Francis has now come down decisively against the mainstream view, saying that Christians “have at times incorrectly interpreted the Scriptures,” and insisting that “we must forcefully reject the notion that our being created in God’s image and given dominion over the earth justifies absolute domination over other creatures.” Our “dominion” over the universe, he declares, should be understood “in the sense of responsible stewardship.”
Against the background of nearly 2,000 years of Catholic thinking about “man’s dominion,” this is a revolutionary change. But the Pope’s recent encyclical includes another statement that could have even more far-reaching implications. That statement, which originally appeared in the Catechism of the Catholic Church issued by Pope John Paul II in 1992, calls it “contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly.”
When is suffering and death “needless?” If you can nourish yourself adequately without eating meat, isn’t buying meat needlessly causing, or at least being complicit in causing, the death of an animal? Isn’t buying eggs from hens who have led a miserable life, jammed into small wire cages, needlessly causing, or being complicit in causing, the suffering of animals?
Before Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI, he gave an interview in which he deplored the “industrial use of creatures” such as hens living “so packed together that they become just caricatures of birds.”
Animals suffer
Unfortunately, right now, tens of billions of chickens are being forced to live this way; indeed, mankind’s realm is full of unnecessarily suffering animals.
Although animal advocates implored Ratzinger to reiterate his views on animal welfare after he became Pope, he never did so. Francis, by contrast, appears to have been referring to factory-farmed animals when he spoke, in “The Joy of the Gospel,” of “weak and defenseless beings who are frequently at the mercy of economic interests or indiscriminate exploitation.”
Now, in his recent encyclical “Laudatio Si,” Francis quotes the passage in the Gospel of Luke, in which Jesus says of the birds that “not one of them is forgotten before God.” Francis then asks: “How then can we possibly mistreat them or cause them harm?” It is a good question, because we do mistreat them, and on a massive scale.
Most Roman Catholics participate in this mistreatment, a few by raising chickens, ducks, and turkeys in ways that maximize profit by reducing animal welfare, and the majority by buying the products of factory farms. If Pope Francis can change that, he will, in my view, have done more good than any other pope in recent history.
Peter Singer is Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2015.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
