The consumption of animals and the Catholic tradition

Logos - Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture

Volumn 7, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 174-190

  Berkman, John ^a  

^a CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60950596372     PISSN: 10916687     EISSN: 1533791X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/log.2004.0002     Document Type: Review

References (52)

1. St. Basil of Caesarea's Homiliae in Hexaemeron I-IX [PG 29: 5 3-207], trans. A. C. Way, in The Fathers of the Church, vol. 46 (Washington, D. C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1963)
2. St. Isidore of Seville's De animalibus, Bk. XII of the Etymoligiarum; [PL 82:423-72]
3. and St. Albert the Great's De animalibus, trans. K. Kitchell and I. Resnick as On Animals (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). The Physiologus is an anonymous Alexandrian text dating back to the second century A.D. that describes characteristics of various animals and birds along with allegorical interpretations of them and thus functions as what Diekstra calls the "great source-book of Christian nature symbolism" [F. N. M. Diekstra, "The Physiologus, the Bestiaries, and Medieval Animal Lore," Neophilogus 69:1 (1985), 142], especially because it is the original and primary source for the innumerable bestiaries of the ancient and medieval periods. The Physiologus was apparently distributed extremely widely, leading the nineteenth-century scholar E. P. Evans to claim that "no book except the bible has ever been so widely distributed among so many people and for so many centuries as the Physiologus"
4. [E. P. Evans, Animal Symbolism in Ecclesiastical Art (New York: Henry Holt, 1896), 62]
5. For historical accounts of human attitudes toward animals in early Christianity, see S. Follinger, "Biologie in der Spätantike," in Georg Wöhrle, ed., Biologie. Geschichte der Mathematik und der Naturwissenschaften in der Antike, Band I. (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1999)
6. and Robert Grant, Early Christians and Animals (London: Routledge, 1999)
7. in the medieval period, see Joyce Salisbury, The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages (London: Routledge, 1994)
8. and David Salter, Holy and Noble Beasts (Cambridge: D. S. Bremer, 2001)
9. in the modern period, see Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500-1800 (London: Allan Lane, 1983)
10. Eric Baratay, L'Eglise et l'animal: France, XVIIe-Xxe siècle, (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1996)
11. and William French, "Beast-Machines and the Technocratic Reduction of Life," in Pinches and McDaniel, ed., Good News for Animals? (Maryknoll, N. Y.: Orbis, 1992), 24-43
12. Recent Catholic moral theology has witnessed a renewed interest in approaches to morality that make questions of character and the self methodologically prior to questions of moral norms. For most of the last four centuries, moral theology has been preoccupied with moral norms - with determining which acts should be "obligatory," "permitted," "necessary," and/or "justified." One of the difficulties facing a moral methodology that presumes the priority of moral norms is that it has a difficult time articulating the nature of the appropriate concern for nonhuman animals and the environment more generally. For further analysis of methodological options for Catholic moral theology, see John Berkman,"How Important Is the Doctrine of Double Effect? Contextualizing the Controversy," Christian Bioethics 3, no. 2 (1997)
13. See Porphyry, De Abstinentia 1:1-27
14. St. Jerome, Contra Jovinianum II: 12 [PL 23.290-312]. This attitude is not limited to patristic asceticism. Caroline Walker Bynum notes that in the Middle Ages the Carthusian order came to see perpetual abstinence from animal flesh as so crucial to their identity that a violation of this prohibition (even by the sick) meant expulsion from the order
15. See Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 42
16. See, for example, "Augustine's rule," 3.5 in The Rule of St. Augustine, trans. Raymond Canning (London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1984)
17. St. Pachomius, Praecepta 40 in Pachomian Koinonia, vol 2., trans. Armand Veilleux (Kalamzoo, Mich.: Cistercian, 1981), 151
18. Regula Orientalis 25 in Early Monastic Rules, translated by Carmela Vircillo Franklin, Ivan Havener, and J. Alcuin Francis (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1981), 75
19. See also Teresa Shaw, The Burden of the Flesh: Fasting and Sexuality in Early Christianity (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1998), 13
20. St. Benedict, The Rule of St. Benedict (Leominster, UK: Gracewing, 1990), rule XXXIX
21. Veronika Grimm, From Feasting to Fasting: The Evolution of a Sin (London: Routledge, 1996), 59
22. Early Christian asceticism is generally understood to have involved acts of physical self-discipline for the purpose of training the bodily appetites to the demands of reason and the law of God. Fasting is a central aspect of early Christian asceticism. While all Christians engaged in asceticism to some degree, there was significant variation among early Christians, and some scholars refer only to those who practiced askesis to a high degree to be considered ascetics. See Shaw, The Burden of the Flesh, 5-10
23. For an example of the difficulties faced by a contemporary scholar who studies a medieval scholar (such as Aquinas), and expects her understanding of the ontological status of other animals and human treatment of other animals to be closely aligned, see Judith Barad, Aquinas on the Nature and Treatment of Animals (San Francisco: International Scholars, 1995)
24. The discussion of the "weak" with St. Paul should not be confused with the previous reference to St. Benedict's "weak." Whereas the rule of St. Benedict is referring to those who are physically weak, the "weak" in the letters to the Romans and Corinthians likely refer to a spiritual or socioeconomic condition, rather than any physical status. For a detailed discussion of the context of Romans 14 in which Paul discusses the consumption of meat and becoming a "stumbling block" to a fellow believer, see Brendan Byrne, Romans, Sacra Pagina Series, vol. 6 (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1996), 402-23
25. See Andrew McGowan, Ascetic Eucharist (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 221-31
26. On gluttony as a vice, see, for example, Tertullian, De ieiunio I:1-2
27. St. John Chrysostom, Homilia I in Genesim 2 [PG 53.23]
28. and Basil of Caesarea, "On the Renunciation of the World," in The Luthers of the Church, vol. 9 (Washington, D. C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1950), 25
29. cf: Shaw, The Burden of the Flesh, 223n.7
30. Bynum notes that fasting and the Eucharist are the major food practices of medieval Christians, and this seems true of the tradition more generally. Bynum, Holy Feast, 5
31. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae (New York: Benziger, 1947), II-II, 147a.3
32. St. John Chrysostom, Homilia XIII in epistolam I ad Timotheum 4 [PG 62.569-70]
33. In addition to numerous patristic authors, this also can be found in medieval authors, for example, Aquinas, Summa theologiae II-II, 147a.8
34. St. John Chrysostom, Homilia XIII in Matthaeum 1 [PG 57.209]
35. St. Jerome, Adversus Jovinianum 1.18 [PL 23.247B-248A]
36. For a discussion of the significance of the stories of St. Jerome and St. Francis, see Salter, Holy and Noble Beasts
37. See also Maureen Tilley, "Martyrs, Monks, Insects, and Animals," in Joyce Salisbury, ed., The Medieval World of Nature (New York: Garland, 1993), 93-107
38. For a fourteenth-century account of the state of harmony that existed before the Fall, see Sarah Horrall, et al., The Southern Version of the Cursor Mundi (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1978), In. 677-700
39. See, for example, The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), §376
40. See Gen. 9:3 for the Priestly tradition's account of the postlapsarian enmity between humans and other animals. The Yahwist's account of postlapsarian alienation between humans and other animals center on humans being given "garments of skin" (Gen 3:21) by God after the Fall, though elements of the tradition (especially in the Orthodox Church) interpret "garments of skin" as referring to human flesh, as God enfleshing humanity. More generally, the new enmity between humans and animals is only one aspect of the Yahwist's broader narrative of postlapsarian alienation. For example, the alienation between God and humans is exemplified by their expulsion from the garden (Gen 3: 23); the alienation between men and women is exemplified by Eve's subjugation (Gen 3:16); the alienation between parents and children is exemplified in the pain of bringing forth children (Gen 3:16); the alienation between humans is exemplified by the murder of Abel (Gen 4:8); and the alienation between humans and the vegetative creation is exemplified by the fact that humans must till the earth (Gen 3:17-19). In terms of twentieth-century historical-critical scholarship of the Old Testament, most popular is Wellhausen's documentary hypothesis. For a general discussion of Wellhausen's documentary hypothesis and Pentateuch scholarship in the twentieth century, see Roland Murphy, "Introduction to the Pentateuch," The New Jerome Biblical Commentary (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1990), 3-7
41. According to this theory, Genesis 1:1-2:4a (the first creation narrative) and Genesis 9 are considered to be authored by the Priestly tradition and date to the seventh or sixth century B.C. On the other hand, Genesis 2:4b-3:24 are attributed to the circa-tenth-century B.C. Yahwist tradition. Both the Priestly and Yahwist traditions have something approximating a prelapsarian and postlapsarian vision of the world. For the Priestly tradition, the Edenic state is vegetarian (Gen 1:29-30), with humans becoming carnivorous after the flood (Gen 9:3). For the Yahwist tradition, the Edenic state is also vegetarian, with God giving humans "garments of skin" after the fall at Genesis 3:21. Vawter notes three oddities concerning 3:21, all of which point to an unusual significance given to the clothing of Adam and Eve with "garments of skin." First, the verse on the surface seems superfluous, since humans already clothed themselves with fig leaves at 3:7. Second, according to 3:21, God "makes" these garments for the humans, and here the Yahwist uses "make" which is otherwise reserved for the great creations of God. It is rather odd that this term would, as Vawter puts it, "be reduced to the paltry fashioning of breechcloths out of the skins of animals." Third, this verse also violates an inflexible rule for the Yahwist, to attribute to humans rather than to God the successive developments in human progress. See Bruce Vawter, On Genesis, (New York: Doubleday, 1977), 87
42. cf. Shaw, The Burden of the Flesh, 163, 181, 193
43. McGowan, Ascetic Eucharist, 89-142, 238, esp. 106, 114, 140-42
44. For recent Catholic examinations of eschatology, see, for example, Karl Rahner, On the Theology of Death, trans. C. H. Henkey (New York: Herder & Herder, 1961)
45. H. U. von Balthasar, Man in History, trans. W. Glen-Doepel (London: Sheed and Ward, 1968)
46. Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology, trans. M. Waldstein, ed. A. Nichols (Washington, D. C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1988)
47. Pope John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1994), 184-85
48. Evangelium vitae, §100
49. For a first-hand account of techniques of animal slaughter in the United States at the end of the twentieth century, see Gail Eisnitz, Slaughterhouse (New York: Prometheus, 1997)
50. and Matthew Scully, Dominion (New York: St. Martin's, 2002)
51. This is not a new viewpoint. Such attitudes can be found in, for example, Proverbs 12:10: "The just man takes care of his beast, but the heart of the wicked is merciless"; and Aquinas, "the Lord wished to withdraw them from cruelty even in regard to irrational animals, so as to be less inclined to be cruel to other men, through being used to be kind to beasts." Aquinas, Summa theologiae Io-II. 102. 1.r.2
52. Evangelium vitae, §42. To avoid misunderstanding, it must be noted that the primary purpose of Evangelium vitae is a vigorous defense of human life, especially those without voices. For a fuller analysis of recent Papal reflection on a prophetic witness on behalf of nonhuman animals, see John Berkman, "Prophetically Pro-Life: John Paul II's Gospel of Life and Evangelical Concern for Animals,"Josephinum Journal of Theology, 6, no. 1 (1999): 43-59