The recent controversy over the traditional ‘Mnarja’ horse racing at Saqqaja made me put pen to paper to acknowledge the responsibility we humans have towards animals. It needs to be said from the beginning that safeguarding animal rights has to be put into a much wider context in order to avoid the vulnerable from being exploited, whoever they are.
The Catholic Church rightly acknowledges that while man is an integral part of creation, he also enjoys a unique place in it. Man is made in God’s special image and likeness. He is related to the animal kingdom in a special manner. Although a tiny creature when compared to other animals, man is morally bound to exercise his restricted dominion of the world and the rest of creation, including of course animals. Man constantly confronts the issue of how to care properly for the environment in which he lives. Man should never think that he has an absolute right to dominate over God’s creation whatsoever. As has already been stressed, man is called to make use of creation responsibly rather than abuse the powers the Creator has entrusted him with.
In this perspective, it is more apt to speak about animal welfare than animal rights. Animals can never have rights as we humans do. By animal welfare we mean the conscientious use of animals for reasonable purposes. In the animal welfare mentality there is no room for animal abuse!
The appropriate care and stewardship of animals should make man more aware not merely to face the weakness and vulnerability of animals but also that of his fellow human beings. How come for instance that some are willing to save the whales but seem to find no problem at all to abort human beings? Can we say that protecting animals must be taken on a par like protecting young humans from abortion, embryonic stem cell research or other kinds of experimentation?
Even though such a position is as morally tenable as it can be, it should never open the door to the erroneous and condemnable idea that animal abuse in our society is ethically permissible. Animal protection always remains an ethical issue that needs to be seriously and continuously addressed. This is what the Catholic Church has been doing. In fact, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, as Cardinal Ratzinger, once commented on the contentious subject of foie gras during an interview with a journalist. As many know, the production of foie gras implies the forced feeding of ducks and geese.
The then Cardinal Ratzinger said: “We cannot just do whatever we want with them. ... 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, or hens live so jammed together that they become just caricatures of birds, this degrading of living creatures to a commodity seems to me in fact to contradict the relationship of mutuality that comes across in the Bible.” He also emphasized that “animals too are God's creatures and even if they do not have the same direct relationship to God that man has, they are still creatures of His will, creatures we must respect as companions in creation.”
Thus while animals can be sacrificed or employed humanely for valid reasons such as those of obtaining food and clothing or progressing in serious scientific research the use for instance of animals to produce foie gras evidently falls into another category which can never be morally justified. It is clearly neither a human nor, (and much less for that matter), a reasonable use of animals. Foie gras production is simply oriented towards the satisfaction of a foolish desire, a disturbing desire to say the least, to fulfil the human appetite to the extent of championing animal mistreatment.
Animals play a significant role in God’s creation. And we, as human beings, should have an ordered and conscientious relationship with them, most of all by exercising the gift of stewardship responsibly.
Do I believe that our society can be really marked by respect, kindness and reason when animals and humans are treated humanely?
Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap
SAN GWANN