Vatican official calls for more just relationship with animals

John Thavis of Catholic News Service reports that a Dec. 7 article in the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, titled "For a More Just Relationship With Animals" questions humanity's unqualified license to kill or inflict suffering on animals. Written by Marie Hendrickx, a longtime official of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the article says that the cramped and cruel methods used in the modern food industry, for example, may cross the line of morally acceptable treatment of animals.

Hendrickx said that in view of the growing popularity of animal rights movements, the church needs to ask itself to what extent Christ's dictum, "Do to others whatever you would have them do to you," can be applied to the animal world.

Community and religious leaders blocked the entrance to the Detroit News garage on March 6, 1996, eight months into the strike against the Detroit Free Press, The Detroit News and Detroit Newspapers, Inc., by unions representing editorial and production workers. Among those pictured here are the retired Episcopal Bishop of Michigan, Coleman McGehee (second from right) and The Witness' Bill Wylie-Kellermann (far left). An intense and often volatile labor dispute, the strike effectively ended this past December when members of two teamsters locals endorsed a "last and final offer." An economic and editorial boycott of the newspapers by the community reportedly cost their parent companies, Gannett and Knight Ridder, nearly $500 million in lost profits and strike-related costs and a third of their local circulation. During the strike hundreds of community leaders would not speak to the dailies in protest of the newspapers' management practices.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says it is legitimate for humans to use animals for food and clothing, and to domesticate them for work or leisure.

But Hendrickx pointed out that a small but significant change in wording was made between the catechism's first edition and its official Latin edition on use of animals for medical experimentation. Such experiments are now called morally acceptable only if they contribute to caring for or saving human lives.

Moreover, the catechism says that in general it is "contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly."

Hendrickx said the question today is whether "the right to use animals to feed oneself implies raising chicken in cages that are each smaller than a notebook. Or raising calves in boxes where they cannot move or see the light of day? Or pinning down sows with iron rings into a nursing position so that piglets can suck the milk without ever stopping, and thus grow faster?"

Likewise, she questioned whether the right to dress oneself with animal skins meant it was morally acceptable to let fur-bearing creatures die slowly in traps from hunger, cold or bleeding.

Hendrickx also questioned treatment of animals in traditional spectacles that have survived into the modern age, like bull-fighting or "throwing cats or goats off a bell-tower." She was referring to the tradition in a Spanish town of tossing a goat from a 50-foot bell tower into a piece of tarpaulin, to mark the beginning of the festival of St. Vincent, the town's patron saint. The town gave up the practice last year after years of protest from animal rights groups.

Global trade and HIV/AIDS first priorities for new alliance

A unique, broadly ecumenical body launched in Geneva last December has pledged itself to tackle issues of global trade and HIV/AIDS. For each issue, the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance will develop an educational approach as well as a specific strategy.

Participants in the founding meeting of the Alliance vowed to "speak out with one voice against injustice, to confront structures of power, practices and attitudes which deprive human beings of dignity and to offer alternative visions based on the Gospel."

Participants noted in their final communiqué that the Alliance "will be a flexible and open instrument enabling participating organizations from the broad ecumenical family to work strategically on priorities identified as common to our witness and work."

The founding meeting included 40 people from all continents representing the World Council of Churches (WCC), regional ecumenical organizations and fellowships, church agencies, specialized networks in the South, Christian world communions, international ecumenical and Roman Catholic organizations. The meeting was convened by the WCC.

In his opening address to the founding meeting, WCC general secretary Konrad Raiser said the time has come to take a courageous new step together to promote justice, peace and the integrity of creation. "The Alliance intends to continue and strengthen a commitment [whose] roots go back to the very beginning of the modern ecumenical movement. The Gospel must not remain a message of private salvation but [must] be translated into acts of justice and peace, affirming human dignity and offering reconciliation and fullness of life for all."

Speaking to representatives from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, Latin America, North America and the Pacific, Raiser said the past 10 years have seen not only the dismantling of the communist system and the end of the Cold War, but also the rapid expansion of globalization -- with dramatic effects on the lives of people all over the world, particularly in the South. "The gulf between rich and poor is widening both within and between countries and we witness the spread of a culture of violence. The number of refugees has increased dramatically and prospects for containing or reversing ecological degradation are vanishing."

From a list of 170 suggested issues, the meeting selected global economic justice, with a focus on global trade, and ethics of life, with a focus on HIV/AIDS, for attention over the next four years.

The meeting's final communiqué noted that global trade is dominated by a few economic powers: transnational corporations, governments and multilateral institutions. This makes it extremely difficult for many countries to access world markets equitably. "Advocacy work is particularly needed at the level of the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the European Union," participants said.

The communiqué identified the HIV/AIDS pandemic as one of the gravest challenges to health and also "to prospects of social and economic development and global security." HIV/AIDS' impact is a symptom of "systematic economic problems such as under-investment in health and unequal access to effective treatment." It is thus a particularly appropriate issue for churches, the communiqué said; while governments and private companies need to be involved, "churches need to speak out on causes, prevention, treatment and consequences."

"The Christ we follow tells us that when we minister to the sick, the hungry, the stranger and the prisoner, we are ministering to Christ himself. His identification with the marginalized, his rage at the moneylenders and his willingness to challenge established social boundaries in view of the Kingdom of God lead us to a life of confronting unjust structures of power in solidarity with the excluded. With this conviction and with trust in the grace of God, we launch this Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance," states the final communiqué.

The full text of the Alliance document, "A Covenant for Action," as well as of this communiqué are available by request, from <e-alliance@wcc-coe.org>. The communiqué is also on the WCC website at <www.wcc-coe.org/wcc/news/press/00/communique.html>.