Welcome to The Vegan Report, my name is Ryan and today we are taking a close look at the documentary
Christ-Piercy. There's a strong impactful and clear Christian argument for veganism and my hope
was for Christ-Piercy to successfully make that argument to the Christian community.
But I discovered that this is not what the documentary is about. What I watched was
a patchwork of extraordinary claims that deserved some review. And who better to deliver that review
than today's guest Daniel Mascarenhas. Daniel is a Jesuit seminarian currently studying to become
a priest. He's also the activist behind vegancatholic.org, the resource for anyone
interested in understanding why Christianity and veganism go hand in hand. You will find in the
episode notes a link to vegancatholic.org and also a link to watch Christ-Piercy for free.
It goes without saying that this episode contains major spoilers.
I watched the documentary and I wrote down some comments and questions because I knew I was going
to talk with you and I kept thinking about you while watching the documentary. And first of all,
sorry, I think I forced you to watch the documentary. And also I want to start with something that is
prevalent in that film. And it's the sense that the life of the documentary makers is in danger
and that the church is going against them or will retaliate in some way. And I have to say,
I was very skeptical of those claims, starting with the fact that I know you and I know how
outspoken you are about veganism and animal ethics. And I was thinking, but Daniel never had his life
threatened by the church for speaking up. So can you tell us about that? Is there some conspiracy
out there, censoring Christians who speak about animal ethics?
The short answer is no. I have never felt threatened. I did not pay much attention to that
aspect of it. Now that you bring it up, I just thought it was a side show. No, if any of your
listeners are listening here, there is no such conspiracy as far as I'm aware. Nobody has ever
said anything to me as a priest in training. I have not seen any drones outside my window
anytime. I think it's a little bit of a, first of all, it's hard to say when you say what is
the church, right? I'm Catholic. There are many other Christians who are not Catholic.
So when the church goes after somebody, what do you mean by the church? Is it a Catholic church?
Is it a Presbyterian? Is it a Methodist? So in the documentary, it's unclear
who exactly is angry with the producers, right? I have heard not from a church, but from
more like a corporate executive, corporate America, they don't want their profits to be
harmed by any movement towards veganism. And so activists who go undercover and try to take
videos and things like that, they are gone after by corporate America, because
usually money is the main driver for these kinds of things. I don't think the church,
as far as I know at the Catholic church, doesn't stand to make or lose money in this fight of
whether we should eat meat or not. On the other hand, companies that own factory farms and sell
products in the market obviously have a lot to lose if people stop eating meat. And so they would
have an incentive to do something like that. But I found that to be a little overdramatic and
tangential to the topic at hand. And let me add that in our last podcast, you talked about how
Pope Francis took a very friendly position to animal advocates and animals. He mentioned,
I think, in one of his messages to the church that we should interpret dominion over animals as
stewardship, basically, with the makers of the movies we're talking about. And I kept thinking,
I don't think Pope Francis would be shocked or would feel like sending the army Swiss guards
after the makers of that documentary if we're talking about the Catholic church. Because yes,
I did find that they were using all sorts of labels in the most confusing way. Church is one
of them. Religion is another. I feel like they were confusing religion and spirituality, but also
religion and ethics and morality. All of that was very confusing. Yes. I think it's hard to put a
clear label on who is in charge. First of all, you have so many different religions. And then
in Christianity, you have so many different denominations. And even as a Catholic,
people think that whatever the pope says is final. If I don't listen to the pope, the pope will send
his army. Not really. First of all, the Vatican city is so small. And secondly, that's not how
our fate works. We have different levels of authority. The scripture is the highest authority,
and that's probably what I would want to discuss the most. But even if the pope says something,
it is not binding on Catholics. It is the way he says it. Is he speaking from his office
of the chair of Peter, or did he just say something while giving an interview? And those are two very
different things. If the pope is speaking from authority, he says so, and then he gives a
statement. If he's merely talking to a journalist at a different level of authority, and I'm
completely free to disagree with the pope if he's not speaking from authority. You mentioned how
the ultimate authority is the scripture. So let's talk about the scripture and something that is
core to Christ's piracy, which is this new interpretation of what happened at the temple.
Now, they find, I think they found a translator to present under a new light, what might have
happened between Jesus and the temple people. So there were many claims mixed up with that.
First of all, that the temple was basically a big slaughterhouse, and that what Jesus was reacting to
in there was not so much the financial part, the money, but the animal sacrifices.
So what do you make of that interpretation of the scripture in that episode?
So one of the critiques I heard of that section was the producers go to a Hebrew scholar and not
a Greek scholar. The New Testament, the gospels are part of the New Testament, were written in
Greek, not in Hebrew. So in the Christian Bible, you have the Old Testament and the New Testament.
The Old Testament, large parts, almost all of it, was written in Hebrew and then translated to
Greek, and that's called a Septuagint. It was translated officially, if you may, and there's
some talk about divine intervention because 70 different scholars translated the Hebrew to the
Greek in exactly the same way, and hence it was considered to be a divinely inspired translation.
The New Testament, on the other hand, was written in Greek from the start. Of course,
there could be Hebrew translations made after that. I don't know. There should be. The New
Testament has been translated into every language possible, so I'm sure there's a Hebrew translation
of the New Testament. So if they were looking for what the original says, it would make sense to go
to the Greek, not to Hebrew, because Hebrew would be one step removed. In the Greek, it does mean,
and I'm not a Greek scholar, so I asked somebody else, and the word does mean robber or thief.
Now when we think of robber, we can have all sorts of ideas about robbers. We can think of pirates.
We can think of pickpocketers. We can think of burglars. We can think of people who mug.
Now those who mug people are a little more violent than pickpocketers, right? So there's a whole
level of what a robber or thief is in any context. But what would be common to all of that would be
taking something that is not yours. And so if you apply that in the temple situation,
it seems like there might have been some sort of conspiracy as to how much money they would take
from people to conduct a sacrifice, both from a ritual standpoint to offer a sacrifice,
but also from meat consumption, because they could only eat.
There are different interpretations of this or different ideas of what kind of meat could
be slaughtered, but even today we have kosher meat, for instance. And so the idea was that you could
only eat meat that was slaughtered in certain places, which also kind of connects with what
St. Paul talks about later. And so sometimes my understanding of it is how you have in today's
world, when you have no competition, they can start charging more and more prices. That's why
we have antitrust laws, right? And so if there's only one place where you can get your meat,
then they have full control over the pricing. And then they would take a lot of money or take
a large amount of the animal flesh for themselves. And so you would think of them as robbers.
Or thieves, because they are price gouging. And in that sense, yeah, they are robbers and thieves.
They are taking money from people and kind of gatekeeping religious practice, but also
a food source. And so Jesus is angry because now the temple is no longer about living the law,
the Torah, which is very important for people, but it became more about how much money I can
get out of people. And so Jesus is angry, which kind of makes sense. So for me, that is a bit
of a stretch, the way the producers talk about it as the translation is wrong. Well, the translation
is probably correct, at least because it's from Greek, not from Hebrew. And as far as we know,
that was the reality of the temple, that it was used to kill animals, both for ritual purposes,
to offer sacrifice to God, and also as a source of meat, because the animal had to be killed in a
certain way, according to Jewish customs. Because remember, at this time, Jerusalem, the Holy Land,
was part of the Roman Empire. And so not everybody was Jewish. There were also a lot of Roman
people and other people in the area. And they had their own sources of food, which, because they
did not care about these rituals, but the Jews, those who were trying to follow the Torah,
were trying to keep these laws. And so I think, I don't think we can establish clearly that
Jesus was angry because of the meat trade, or he was just angry because of the way the money was
being overcharged. And I just want to make this point before I forget it. Like I had mentioned to
you that a lot of these conversations about whether Jesus ate meat or not is sometimes problematic,
because we cannot know for sure, because it's not directly said anywhere in the Scripture. And so
people say, oh, because we cannot know something, it doesn't matter. No, I mean, we cannot know many
things about Jesus. We cannot know, for instance, what he said about slavery, because it's not
mentioned in the Bible. Did he own slaves? Probably not, because he was too poor. Would he have
owned slaves if he had more money? Who knows? But that doesn't mean that we should have slaves today,
just because it's not clear in the Bible. And so I think we have to be careful when we try to do
this historical analysis, that there's a common tendency that if we cannot know something,
there's no point in trying to think about it anymore. And so people will say, oh, there's no
way to know that Jesus ate meat or not. He probably ate meat. So it's a free for all now, 2000 years
later. And so I just want to be careful when we do these historical analysis to keep in mind that
there's going to be uncertainty and how do we deal with uncertainty is an important aspect of this.
That's a really great point. Let's go back quickly to that interpretation of that episode of the
temple. My first question, from what you said, is it convincing or does it matter for everyday
Christians, the nuances of what happened at the temple? I feel like they make it a big deal in the
documentary, but I feel like everyday Christians would not care that much about that, because it's
really in the details and it's about technicalities of translation. I feel like this is something
that would go way above the head of your average Christian. And also, I feel like there are more
convincing arguments based on scripture to influence or convince someone of considering veganism,
considering protecting animals. And you do make on your website, vegancatholic.org,
those arguments. For instance, you talk about the Garden of Eden and how it's the ideal
place and how there was no animal consumption. So can you address those two points?
Yeah, since a lot of the arguments depend on a translation of one word, for me, that is
putting a lot of pressure on one word. And as I said, they are using Hebrew for some reason,
which doesn't make sense. Also, if Jesus was really against animal sacrifices or the temple
situation, why did he not say anything elsewhere? And then eating fish and fishermen and so on.
Sometimes the argument used is that, well, Jesus did not write the Bible, other people wrote the
Bible, so maybe Jesus said he was vegan, but the gospel writers are not writing down. Well,
that's where the element of faith comes in. We believe that the writers of the books of the
Bible were human, but they were inspired by God and God's Spirit was working within them.
And for 2000 years, God's Spirit works in all of us who are believers and kind of keep the faith
alive. So it would seem like either God or God's Spirit was deceiving us or incompetent
in misleading us for 2000 years. So a big thing for the Catholic faith is that we have a continuity
of our faith. And so the idea that it is not there in the Bible or we mistranslated one word,
or we mistranslated one word for 2000 years and we've been misled for so long, it kind of goes
against the basic ideas of our faith that the Spirit would have prompted us about something
that is so important. Now, that's why I always talk about a bigger picture of reading the Bible
and understanding our faith. As you pointed out, the Garden of Eden. So from Jesus, the discipleship
standpoint, I've always maintained, I'm a vegan, but I always maintain that if there's no other
option, one can eat animals as a human, because in our tradition, humans are like the highest
creature among, well, not really, angels are supposed to be higher than them. So humans are
the highest in this world, okay, on planet earth. And so we have dominion over other creatures. And
so we can use animals as far as needed. Okay. And that has to be balanced with the general call for
kindness and compassion, right? Jesus always talks about loving your neighbor, about serving those in
need, helping the poor, helping the widow, helping the orphan. That idea is to help those who are
oppressed, who are on the margins. And so I talk about it in terms of that, like obviously a dog
is not a human, but a dog has a capacity to receive kindness. As far as I know, an oak tree
doesn't have a capacity to receive kindness in the same way, right? And so if a dog can receive
kindness, I ought to show a dog kindness. And if a plant doesn't receive kindness in the same way,
and so I can use a plant for my sustenance instead of a dog or a cow, because showing kindness to a
dog or a cow would involve not killing it. So to take a step back from what is in the Bible,
that is more explicit and not about mistranslations, is the book of Genesis. So in the book of Genesis,
which is the first book in the Bible, but it was not written as the first book, it was written much
later when the Israelites were in exile in Babylon. But since it's the first book of the Bible,
it talks about creation. So this is how the Israelites, God's chosen people, saw their role
in the universe. And so that's the way they felt inspired that this is how God created the world
and where they stood in it. And so that is like a foundational text of where do we see ourselves
in God's creation. And in chapter one, it's God says that we should eat seeds and plants.
And then in chapter two, God says he creates animals as companions because the first human
was feeling alone. And so the idea that even these people who lived in a land that was quite dry
and they needed animals to use the hilly terrain for grazing and obviously have to slaughter or
milk them, also realized that maybe the idea that originally this good and compassionate God would
have intended something that is free from violence. But then violence came into the world through our
own sin, that is the fall, right? When Adam eats from the tree, the forbidden fruit. So they sensed
that, okay, God intended something good. We messed things up through our sin. And in the end,
we will go back to perfection, to Eden. God will unite all of creation to God's self,
peace and harmony when God comes to judge at the end of time. And that is also revisited in the
book of Isaiah, where Isaiah the prophet, he's probably the most famous prophet from the old
Testament who says like on God's holy mountain, so in God's reign, there will be no more violence.
All these animals, the snake and the child and the lamb and the lion will all be together and
they will not harm each other. So they envisioned that at the end of time, there will be no more
violence. So God's original intent and God's final intent are both without violence. We are in this
in-between time of God's original intent and before we believe in Jesus comes a second time,
that's when God will judge the world and then that will be the end times.
Now, when do we start eating meat in the Bible? Well, it's also in the book of Genesis, chapter
nine. So there's a lot of sin, lots of things are happening and then God is angry and then God
wants to flood the earth. So this is a great flood. Noah makes a boat,
takes all the animals with him in the boat, the flood ends. And then God allows humans to eat
animals because of the hardness of their hearts. Okay, that's how we live in the Bible. God allows
humans to eat animals because of the hardness of their hearts. Now, there are two important things
to remember in that context. One is allows. The word allows doesn't mean you have to, right?
We can be allowed certain things, but we can avoid doing it if it is not the best idea.
And secondly, it's also only because of the hardness of our hearts. Okay, so the best analogy
I like to give is a two-year-old or say like a five-year-old and her mother. Okay, so mother
and daughter. It is 5.30 in the evening and the daughter, a five-year-old really wants to eat
ice cream. And the mom says, no, do not eat ice cream. And this goes on for a while. The daughter
is throwing a tantrum, she's crying and she's saying all sorts of things. And so eventually
the mother says, okay, go ahead, eat ice cream. All right, so the mother said to eat ice cream
or the mother says, you can eat ice cream. All right, I will allow you to eat ice cream.
She's not ordering the daughter. She's saying, I'm allowing you to eat ice cream because of
the hardness of your heart. Now, the daughter, the five-year-old, if she knows her mother well,
will understand that the mother is not telling her to eat, like it's not forcing her,
it's not commanding her, she's allowing her. And the daughter also knows that the mother has just
like given up, the mother is tired. And if she has some sense of her mother's tiredness or fatigue,
she would probably not eat the ice cream even though she got permission, right? Because she
loves her mother and she wants to be true to her original intent of not allowing the ice cream.
And so that's how I like to see like our faith life in general. And when we talk about these laws,
you know, that are in the Bible or there are laws in Christianity as well, all of these rules,
it's not because like God wants us to be, you know, like in a straight jacket without freedom
or that God likes troubling us. No, it's a sense of relationship. Like we show that we are in
relationship with God by acting in a certain way. And so all of these laws that what God allows and
God doesn't allow is about relationship with God. And so I think a way to read the Bible is always
to say, what will enhance my relationship with God? And what takes me away from God? And so one of the
ways we relate to God is through what God has created, right? So like me and you and all other
people listening, and then we have non-human animals and then we have trees and we have the
earth. Well, all of it belongs to God because God created all of this. And so how we relate to
our fellow creatures kind of shows how we relate to God. You know, I mean, God is infinite, but God
has allowed us to interact with fellow creatures as a way of relating with God. And so
treating animals is different from treating plants is different from treating rocks.
And we have to show love and kindness to each of these creatures in the level that they're able to
receive. And at a better minimum, we shouldn't harm them as far as possible. I mean, for me,
that is the way to read the Bible. It's not about all the laws. The laws are important,
but it is important to know why they are there. And I think sometimes that is lost in the way
we read the Bible. So to get to the other one that they talk about briefly, and I may have talked
about this when we talked over email, I think St. Paul talks about people eating meat and those who
don't eat meat are weak. The cause and effect there is a bit of a misleading way that they have
portrayed in the movie. So what St. Paul is saying is that, okay, so connected with the temple,
because it was a Roman Empire, not everything was Jewish. There were a lot of people who were not
Jewish. They were either called pagans or gentiles. And so the Jewish people, so not just Jerusalem,
so now St. Paul is talking to different parts of, this is in the letter to the Romans, so they are
in Rome. There are different parts of Greece, modern day Turkey, and all of that. So people
are spread out. Jews are living among other people, and Jews are in the minority in most places,
except maybe in Jerusalem itself. And so a lot of times they had trouble keeping the law,
because they were such a small minority. But an important part of keeping the law for them
was to not eat meat that was sacrificed to the idols. Okay, so now imagine you're living in,
I'm living in Boston, and this is a place where everything is religious. We cannot think of like
star market or Safeway, or just separate. Here everything is connected with God. So a butcher
down the street will have his God, and when he's working, he will offer the meat that he's
slaughtering to his God. The Romans had lots of different gods. And so a Jewish person who
would go to that butcher now is buying meat that has been sacrificed to the idol. Okay,
and so that is a problem, because according to Jewish law, you shouldn't eat meat that has been
sacrificed to an idol, because you don't want to honor other gods. Jews and Christians now
also believe that there's only one God. And so it would be really hard sometimes to find
things not offered to idols, meat especially. And so St. Paul is trying to find this balance here of
allowing people to be more like liberal, if you may, and saying that what is important is our faith
in Jesus. Sometimes these other smaller things might not matter as much. So if you're going to
be strong in our faith in Jesus, St. Paul says, we don't have to worry about these smaller things
about meat to the idols and so on. But some of us might not be strong in our faith. And so we need
to take more precautions as weak people to not eat meat sacrificed to idols, just in case we don't
think of these supernatural things. But I mean, as a person of faith, I do believe that there are
evil, there's evil out there. And I should avoid bringing evil into myself. If I think that I'm
strong, maybe my body or my spirit can fight the evil. And so I'm fine. But if I'm weak, I'm fine.
But if I think that I'm weak, out of humility, I will think that I am weak. And so I will try my best
to avoid possibility of getting evil into myself, in this case meat from idols. So he says,
one person believes that one may eat anything. So strong people can eat anything, while the weak
person eats only vegetables. Well, he's a weak person. And that is why he's eating vegetables.
It's not that he has become weak because he's eating vegetables. Okay, so this is very important
here. So if you know that you are weak spiritually, you should avoid eating meat sacrificed to idols.
Okay, just eat vegetables, be safe. And that's what he's saying. So he's saying,
I think that idea of like strong and weak, I think it's helpful to be humble and say,
no matter how strong you are, I hope you be as a person of faith, I will be humble to say,
my faith is not perfect. There are weaknesses to my faith. And I will do my best to avoid things
that might cause me to stumble, to sin. Other things that might cause me to sin, I try to avoid
as much as I can and not tempt myself. There's a famous, I think, Greek story about those people
on the boat, the sirens. There are these sailors who are going to fight some war, but there are
these really beautiful mermaids or something in the water. And I will try to avoid that.
So they're going to fight some war, but they're not going to die. So they're going to die.
So they're going to die. And so there are different ways of avoiding like one of them ties himself
to the mast, one of them like covers his ears or something. So you don't want to tempt fate,
if you may. And that's what Saint Paul is saying. So it's not that vegetables make you weak. It is
that if you think that you are weak in your faith, you should avoid meat because it's coming from
a pagan source that has been offered to the idols. That's what he's getting at.
Yeah. So it is unfortunate because at least with a lot of men, meat is associated with strength
and manliness. And then they use this passage and say, look, even Saint Paul knew it. And that's
not how it is written. So beautifully said. I wish they hired you to advise them making this
documentary. I really do. Because the editing and the way they filmed the thing was just
beautiful from a visual perspective. It was stunning. But the content itself, I felt like
it lacked substance really. And I'm not sure how much, because that's the thing. I heard lots of
praises coming from people praising this documentary, but it always came from atheists or pagans or
who are vegans who I know who are not really religious or belong to different religious
traditions. And I kept thinking, where are the Christians? Is any Christian watching this movie?
I felt like this missed the target audience and that a Christian audience would be more receptive
to the case you've just made, clearly made that relates to their faith, relates to important
episodes of the Bible, fundamental beliefs, and not to episodes and conspiracies and certain
details and making those details into a whole situation. Like honestly, watching the documentary
felt like watching that movie, The Da Vinci Code. I think it's based on a book. That's what it felt
like. And yeah, I just wonder, you know, how much of the content is being made by the Christian
community? And I wonder, you know, how much does that documentary appeal to the target audience
and will make an impact, a positive impact among Christian communities? Yeah, you know, as I said,
like the idea that we were wrong for 2000 years really goes against our teaching. And also, I
think that people will feel attacked. And so, I think a more positive way of using the passages
that I talked about Genesis chapter one, chapter nine, the book of Isaiah, you know, and then in
Jesus's time, you know, there are certain places that could be helpful to think about. Like for
example, I like to think there's a parable in the Bible where Jesus tells a story. There's a king
who says, okay, let's call him high servant and low servant. There are different levels of servant.
So, the high servant who directly reports to the king has some debts and he's not able to pay them.
So, he goes to the king and asks the king for forgiveness. And then the king says, you know,
okay, I will forgive you, you know, out of the mercy and so on. So, the high, the top servant
is happy that he's been forgiven. But when the top servant goes home, he realizes that a low servant
is indebted to him. Okay. So, the top servant starts abusing the lower servant until he pays
him back. And the lower servant says, please forgive me. I will pay you as soon as I can.
Have mercy on me. But the top servant says, no, I will not forgive you. And he throws the lower
servant into jail. The king hears about this and so he summons the top servant and says,
why did you do this? When I showed you mercy, why couldn't you show me mercy?
Why couldn't you show your lower servant mercy? And so, he throws, the king throws the top
servant into jail. That's the relationship we have in creation. So, God is the king.
We humans are the top servants. As a Catholic, I have no problem saying that humans are more
important than animals. Okay. That's just the way it is. And the lower servant are the animals.
Now, notice we are in debt to God in the sense that God created us. And secondly, we have sinned
and we're offending God. God can rightly punish us for our offenses. But we ask God to show us
mercy. God is merciful and God shows us mercy. So, yeah, we are happy. Then we turn around and now
we have these lower servants, dogs, cats, pigs, and cows. Now, they have not borrowed anything
from us, but for the sake of the argument, let's imagine that, you know, they belong to us. They
owe us something just because they are there. But even then, we have to show them mercy.
I mean, that's what the story is about. Because if we do not show them mercy, those who are lower to
us, that God, who is higher than us, will not show us mercy as well. Because Jesus says explicitly
elsewhere, a blessed of the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy. All humans will be in need
of mercy when the time of judgment comes, because none of us is perfect and we have all sinned.
And so, because we want to be shown mercy by God, we have to be merciful, because that's what Jesus
said, blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy. And so, anybody or anything
that can be shown mercy, that can receive mercy, should be shown mercy. And that's why I say
mercy and compassion and kindness is shown to each creature based on its ability to receive.
As far as we know, like sometimes people say, oh, you know, trees are alive. What if they have
brains that we don't know about? Well, we may not know about it. I don't know. As far as we know
right now, like it's clear that a dog or a cow can receive mercy, because it can be hurt in some way,
we immediately know if I kick a dog, it starts yelping and I know that I have been unkind to
the dog with immediate feedback, right? We know from scientific studies that there's a central
nervous system that when a dog is in distress, it lights up certain parts of its brain. So,
it is receiving the unkindness, but it also can receive kindness. Anybody who has been near a dog
knows the difference between petting a dog and kicking a dog. And so, it's a very important
kicking a dog and how the dog responds. So, if a dog can receive mercy, we should show mercy.
A very simple way of showing mercy is to not kill them, right? With a tree on the other hand,
like, well, human substance is important, so I'm not going to starve to death. I have to eat
something. And so, if I eat something from a tree or if I cut grass and, you know, eat grain,
yeah, maybe there is some distress in the tree, if you may, in the plant, but it's not the same
level as a dog. You know, if I walk over grass, I don't apologize to the grass, right? We have this
ingrained within us that if I stamp on my cat's tail, I will say sorry to the cat. Most of us
will do that because the cat will be angry and then we will feel bad for hurting the cat. We don't
have that same sense of feeling when we walk across the grass or a tree branch breaks, right? So,
from both an emotional response and from a scientific standpoint, a tree or a grass doesn't
have the same level or same capacity to receive mercy, right? It doesn't mean I should do whatever
I want with it. Like, I shouldn't just go around cutting trees because that would be bad for the
environment and that would be bad for other animals and that would just be a misuse of what
God has given us, right? We use things that will enhance our life but also realize that this is
part of God's creation. But showing mercy to a tree or a rock is quite different from showing
mercy to a dog or a cow. I completely agree with that. There are many environmentalists talking
about such species of vegetation and how it's important to keep them, protect them. And then
you think, but why are they so important? Is it just because they are exceptional, unique?
In what way are they helping, supporting, sustaining sentient beings, which is, in my book,
the most important factor in determining what subspecies of bush should be protected.
Yeah, in the Bible, for instance, they said, God does tell us to eat seeds, but elsewhere,
I forget off the top of my head, I think in the book of Exodus, God talks about giving the Sabbath
rest to animals. The Sabbath, the seventh day is an important aspect of Jewish tradition.
And God talks about giving rest to the animals. Now, you could be cynical and say, well, that's
just good practice because if the animals rest, it will be able to work better, you know, for
utility arguments. But the fact that God says that the animals deserve rest, shows that the animals
can receive rest. God doesn't say that a tree should receive rest in the same way.
And so I think there is a sense that sometimes we just have this idea, it's all or nothing.
Oh, you know, plants also have feelings, so we should just do whatever we want. Oh, no,
there's a gradient here, right? I mean, cows and pigs or dogs receive, as far as we know,
and can experience, receive love and mercy differently from insects and then from plants
or grass and then rocks, right? There's a gradient. And the highest kindness would be
to reduce the amount of harm that we cause to creatures that can experience harm. So we
should go with plants to eat.
For the remaining time, I had, I noted two questions I heard. One from a state of
that I think an evangelist makes. He says, animals do not have spiritual rights. And,
you know, that felt like a stunning thing to say. And then the second one is a question
they keep repeating, which is, is there a Christian or spiritual way, I think, of killing
an animal or, yeah, killing an animal. And I wanted to just, you know, share those with
you and have you comment on them.
Yeah, the idea that animals don't have a spiritual life. Yeah, that is a, that is a,
an important question. You know, do, do dogs go to heaven? You know, and Pope Francis
created a bit of stir once by saying that the dogs will be in heaven. And so then we have to ask,
what does it mean? And so on. It's a great question. So there are two ways of looking
at this. One is that in the Catholic tradition, St. Thomas Aquinas, the most famous philosopher
of our tradition, would say that if we harm animals, like, you know, by being a monster,
we are harming ourselves. You know, it stains the soul. Okay. Now this may seem a little
self-serving here that, oh, I should be kind to animals just because I want to keep my
soul safe. It's a good, it's a good starting point. Like, I don't want to harm animals
because my soul gets harmed. So, hey, I'll just keep away. So good starting point. So
that would be a pretty standard way of seeing it. And then the third one is, is there a
standard way of seeing it? So that would be a pretty standard way of seeing it. Now,
whether animals go to heaven or not, you know, it's not, it's never said that animals don't
go to heaven. So then we have to ask, what is heaven? And, you know, in our tradition,
we are all about relationships. So God is Trinity, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
So the relationship within God is important. Our faith is always about relationship with
God. In the Bible, it's about covenant, which is again, relationship. Love your neighbor
is about relationships. Everything is about relationships. And so the idea is that, for
me, is what kind of relationships we have here on earth, and do these relationships
in heaven. You know, like, we can start with a human level and say, you know, I love my
parents very much. I mean, I have my brothers, my friends. Yeah, I will be with heaven in
heaven with God. But it seems for me a little incomplete to say that, that even though my
mom will be in heaven, I will have no relationship with her. For me, it seems unsatisfying. Yes,
I'll be with God. But I don't want these relationships, this beautiful existence that
I have here on earth, to just not matter. You know, like the people I connect with,
the people who I truly care. So same thing you could think about with pets. A lot of
people grieve when their pets die, you know. Having pets in this world is part of what
made them human. The fact that they were able to love and receive love from another creature
was part of their humanity. And so when we are in heaven, the idea is that it is not a break
from this to the next. It's not like a test that once you go on the other side, nothing else from
the previous life matters. It is a continuity. The idea that we will be resurrected, body and soul,
is a sense of continuity. That this world is going to continue with the next and not going to be a
break. And so I believe that animals can be in heaven for the same reason, because of relationships.
Now a dog or a cat or a cow will suddenly not become like human in heaven. They will still be
a dog or a cat or a cow, but in a glorified sense. So whatever relationship I had with
animals here will continue in heaven and those animals will have to be present there for the
relationship to continue. Otherwise it will be kind of awkward, like, oh I have a relationship
with a cat, but there are no cats in heaven. So I wouldn't say like animals that go to heaven,
but we can think of it in terms of relationships and how would they continue in heaven.
So there is no part of our tradition that explicitly says animals don't go to heaven.
It's just silent on the topic. And so we can try and think about what does heaven mean
and what would a loving God want in the future. What is the second point?
So that's the recurring question of is there a spiritual way to kill animals?
Yes, I would say it really comes down to necessity, right? I've already said this,
if a human being is starving for whatever reason, you are on a desert island and there's nothing
else to eat, or you're really hungry and the only food that is offered to you, you are homeless,
you are poor and you don't have your own capacity of purchasing food and somebody offers you meat
to eat, like you have no other option. So if you have no other option and your life is important,
it is at stake, then a Christian way of killing would be to recognize the necessity,
to recognize that this is an imperfect world that occasionally does need violence.
And to truly honor the life of the animal in some way and almost kind of apologize for saying,
killing the animal to say, I'm sorry, we are in this situation. This is an imperfect situation,
but I believe that God would want me to be alive by consuming your flesh
and kind of ask for forgiveness. And I'm not making a sentimental call here, but a real sense that
this is a necessity in an imperfect world and to recognize that. Not the idea the way we have it
today where we don't even know the animals we've killed. The animals are just like leading horrible
lives. We don't have to eat them. I mean, it's so removed from any sense of understanding that they
are fellow creatures of God's creation. And so I think, yeah, I think there's a Christian way of
killing, which would be strongly based on necessity and almost asking for forgiveness and saying that
this is an imperfect world and here we are. And to kind of use that as a way of recognizing the
value and the dignity of the animal that you are going to slaughter.
Beautiful. We have the answer in a few minutes only. We did not need an hour long documentary.
Thank you so much, Daniel, for having stopped by and answered my questions and gave your review
of Christ Piercy. Thank you so much.
You're very welcome. And thanks for your work.
Thank you everyone for listening. I kindly invite you to share this podcast with the
vegans you know. Let's encourage more people to take action. Again, thank you so much for caring
and I will see you next Tuesday for a new episode.