“If you care about animals, you must figure out why you care... the only reason I know to care for them is that they are my fellow creatures, sharing with you and me the breath of life, each in their own way bearing His unmistakable mark.”
Matthew Scully’s reflection is worth dwelling upon as it helps us to focus on who we are and who they are, on our purpose and on their purpose as we share “the breath of life.”
I feel that understanding who we are is fundamental to the way we treat others and animals as there is a deep connection between the two.
A belief in a loving and merciful Father God leads one to the humbling experience of one’s own fragility and vulnerability and yet to such an experience of empowerment and freedom when one follows His instructions.
He has placed us in community with a purpose to love and serve one another and all creation and to grow in our humanity in the process. To grow in charity and thanksgiving and to respond to suffering promptly and compassionately – be it human or animal suffering. I have always looked upon helping and empathizing with a suffering and needy animal as charity precisely because they bear “His unmistakable mark,” precisely because inflicting suffering through abandonment, neglect, ignorance torture and indifference is walking the road of moral blindness. A reflection that reminds me of Malcolm Muggeridge’s words: “How is it possible to look for God and sing His praises while insulting and degrading His creatures? “
Animals on our islands are suffering tremendously because so much suffering inflicted on animals is so conveniently and insensitively brushed aside as of no consequence. I feel at this point we have to re-evaluate our interpretation of suffering.
I think of dogs, by nature endowed with the virtues of loyalty, humility, gratitude and intelligence with the need to interact with us and with other animals and yet so many are deprived of this basic need.
So many on farms and in private homes are tethered 24 hours a day, exposed to the harsh elements of every season, given inadequate shelter, ignored and sometimes underfed. Other animals are confined to inhumanely small cages, unable to ever stretch their legs or wings, in dirt and with fresh water considered a luxury. It is our immunity to the physical and psychological hardships we subject the animals on our island to that is so sad and all the sadder because it can easily be corrected with intervention of the State and the Church, the decision makers of such influence. It is true we have an animal welfare team but how well staffed are they? Why should we hear of some heart breaking act of cruelty to animals when it is too late for that animal?
If farms are inspected randomly and often, the animals would never be permitted to be in any appalling state. If the state does not respect the value of animal life by revising the laws and applying them conscientiously, it is only, in reality, fuelling the prevailing mentality of immunity and indifference to the real hardship of animals. Many live like prisoners, without a voice and in constant fear of unpredictable owners.
We have been given dominion over them as their guardians, to look at them through the eyes of a moral being with a moral vision, for only then can we see the animal as it really is – awesome yet vulnerable and dependant and so deserving of our appreciation, kindness and compassion. They are not ours to abuse and dominate to satisfy our selfish whims.
Sadly, when an animal is looked upon as a disposable commodity, a meal, a nuisance, a laboratory subject or a purely financial asset we cease to see the animal and consequential inhumane behaviour follows. I think of the scourge of our modern times – factory farming. The suffering of these intelligent animals can never be justified and yet it is an accepted practice to which we have become immune.
My mind turns to the atrocity of dog fighting: what financial gain for some and such a high cost of animal suffering, what a waste of life because of human greed.
In the words of Reverend Andrew Linzey the human race becomes, in such situations, “a species that increasingly takes to itself God-like powers and who regards its own interests as unquestioningly the goal and purpose of creation itself “
I cannot help feeling that both Church and State need to take a moral inventory of the moral obligations we all have towards animals because they have the power to effect change and allievate suffering. The Church has a wonderful example of the true value of animals in the eyes of God, in Francis of Assisi.
May many members of the clergy and members of parliament be inspired to review their current understanding of the place and purpose of animals in our lives. The stuff of what a true politician is made of is clearly seen when one considers important even those that cannot vote.
May those concerned find the passion and compassion to respond with urgency to the silent suffering of animals. “They cannot draw meaning from their hardship, or find refuge in God, or pray for deliverance.”
But we can so, let us be open to conviction.
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