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The Fellowship of Life |
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Animal welfare
The Catholic Herald has done a great service by publishing
Vivien Clifford's article, October 8, and the letters which it has
evoked, on animal welfare, for the indifference of the general
public towards animal suffering is a sore blot on our civilisation.
If our religion teaches us anything, it teaches us love, kindness
and compassion. Of all sins deliberate cruelty is surely the most diabolical.
Other sins are sins of human weakness, but to inflict suffering on
helpless animals is utterly devilish, and no one with a spark of
love of God in their heart could commit such acts, or witness them
without being moved to anger and action. The blackest page in man's black history is his barbarous
brutality to animals, including his own species. The early Church prayed for animals in the most solemn part of
the liturgy, and once when passing through Spain on pilgrimage I was
asked to lead the intercessions at Mass and I used one of these
prayers. I should like to see the whole of the encyclical letter De Salute Gregis of Pope St Pius V published - at least the part in which he
condemned bullfights unreservedly. Whenever I see our present Pope kissing the ground after
descending from his plane - an act which is no empty symbolism - I
think of that beautiful chapter in Dostoevsky's great novel, The
Brothers Karamasov, where the Monk exhorts us to "Love all God's
creation . . . love the animals, love the plants . . . ask the birds
for forgiveness . . . kiss the earth and love it . . . love all
men." Compassion is indivisible, and we delude ourselves if we think we
can have it for our own species and not for the rest of God's
sentient creatures. Constance Madden Return to 'Catholic Herald'
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