{"id":55,"date":"2008-07-29T09:31:17","date_gmt":"2008-07-29T09:31:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2008\/07\/popes-fur-faux-pas.html"},"modified":"2008-07-29T09:31:17","modified_gmt":"2008-07-29T09:31:17","slug":"popes-fur-faux-pas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/07\/popes-fur-faux-pas.html","title":{"rendered":"Pope’s fur faux pas"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pope<\/span>When Cardinal Ratzinger was elected Benedict XVI, one of the first–and perhaps more surprising, given its liberal bent–endorsers of the choice was PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. PETA has never been shy about invoking Christianity in its cause (an ad campaign last year <\/a>portrayed Jesus as a vegetarian at a Last Supper featuring the likes of k.d.lang and Paul McCartney).
\nBut Ratzinger’s statements about animals (plus his love of felines) were especially welcome to PETA, as the group notes in a message<\/a>, and his subsequent statements on the care of creation <\/a>have pleased animals rights fans and prompted the creation of a pope-themed anti-factory farming ad<\/a>.
\nNow, however, the pontiff’s passion for old-fashioned papal wear, most notably ermine-trimmed vestments like the camauro at right, have prompted the Italian Association for the Defence of Animals and the Environment (AIDAA) to launch an online petition asking Benedict to live up to his words and give the fur a rest.
\nAccording to this AFP story<\/a>, Lorenzo Croce, chairman of the AIDAA, denied being provocative or wanting to make an anti-religious statement:<\/p>\n

“We just want to ask him in a message of love and peace to give a strong signal towards the protection of animals and the environment through a small but very significant personal sacrifice,” Croce told the Italian news agency ANSA.
\n\"Ermine.jpg\"<\/span>The association has created a website to accept signatures and Croce wants to present the petition to the pope in September.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here is one of the pope’s better-known statements, from a 2002 interview about the proper treatment of animals:<\/p>\n

“That is a very serious question. At any rate, we can see that they are given into our care, that we cannot just do whatever we want with them. Animals, too, are God’s creatures…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 packed 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.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

HT: I neglected to give original credit where credit is due, to the RNS blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Cardinal Ratzinger was elected Benedict XVI, one of the first–and perhaps more surprising, given its liberal bent–endorsers of the choice was PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. PETA has never been shy about invoking Christianity in its cause (an ad campaign last year portrayed Jesus as a vegetarian at a Last Supper…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic","category-church","category-pop-culture","category-pope"],"yoast_head":"\nPope's fur faux pas - Pontifications<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/07\/popes-fur-faux-pas.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pope's fur faux pas - Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When Cardinal Ratzinger was elected Benedict XVI, one of the first–and perhaps more surprising, given its liberal bent–endorsers of the choice was PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}