Vatican Official Urges Just Relationship With Animals

Modern food industry methods called into question; unnecessay suffering and deaths called "contrary to human dignity."

BY: John Thavis

VATICAN CITY, Dec. 8 (CNS) -- Human dominion over the natural world must not be taken as an unqualified license to kill or inflict suffering on animals, a Vatican official said.

The cramped and cruel methods used in the modern food industry, for example, may cross the line of morally acceptable treatment of animals, the official said in an article Dec. 7 in the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano.

The article, titled ``For a More Just Relationship With Animals,'' was written by Marie Hendrickx, a longtime official of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

She 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.

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.''

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