Vegetarianism is a Sin

Adam and Eve, in their state of primitive innocence, did not eat animal flesh. This is true. It is also true that some Catholic religious orders have, for their rule, an ancient discipline of total abstinence from meat. There is even a book of Christian saints and mystics whose palates were similarly - and purposefully - deprived.

The avoidance of meat can be practiced for legitimate reasons. Conformity to religious discipline, personal asceticism, and health concerns might inspire the practice. Aversion to the violence with which animals are killed - so long as it avoids any hint of elevating animals to the status of men - is not altogether wrong either. Writing in the 17th century, long before vegetarianism emerged as a sacred religious cause of the extreme anti-Christian Left, Bishop Jacques-Benigne Bossuet wrote of the discomfort that men naturally feel at spilling the blood of animals, a primal recognition that all bloodshed is a consequence of the Fall.

"Before the time of the deluge, men found food without violence in the fruits which fell of their own accord, and in the herbs which also dried so fast. This was, no doubt, some remnant of the primitive innocence and of the mildness to which we were formed. Now, for our nourishment we must spill blood, in spite of the horror it naturally excites in us; and all the niceties we use to cover our tables are scarcely sufficient to disguise to us the carcasses we must devour to satisfy ourselves." 

Protestantism, with its denial of the spiritual importance of fasting and abstinence, its rejection of monasticism and asceticism, its doctrine of total depravity which regards the innocence of Eden as so far beyond the reach of fallen man that striving is pointless, and its unspoken ethic of "whatever is not forbidden must be good for you", ultimately succeeded in removing most scruples, distinctions, and moral sensitivities with respect to food, despite the persistance of a few bizarre but unimportant sects. Modern vegetarianism, like so much else, is a fanatical (and predictable) reaction to this insistance on unreality.

Nevertheless, animals are not people, meat is not murder, and there is nothing inherently sinful or wrong in raising and killing animals for food. A vegetarianism which equates butchering a chicken with the sin of murder - or any other sin, for that matter - is itself a monstrously sinful thing. Society must not be ordered around by delusional people for whom vegetarianism is a religious substitute for the Christianity they have rejected. The erudite Fr. George Rutler, in a letter to Crisis magazine in 2003 (revisited by Dominico Bettinelli in 2007), further explains why vegetarianism is the more grievous error: 

I was delighted to read the Manichaean ramblings of Danel Paden, director of the Catholic Vegetarian Society (“Letters,” June 2003). It confirmed my theory that fanaticism in Western society alternates between nudism and vegetarianism, both of which contradict the order of grace.

As an optimist, I happily trust that Paden confines his extreme commitments to vegetarianism.

Taste is one thing; it is another thing to condemn meat eating as “evil” and permissible only “in rare and unfortunate circumstances.” Paden disagrees with no less an authority than God, Who forbids us to call any edible unworthy (Mark 7: 18-19), and Who enjoins St Peter to eat pork chops and lobster in one of my favorite revelations (Acts 10: 9-16). Does the Catholic Vegetarian Society think that our Lord was wrong to have served up fish to the 5,000, or should He have refrained from eating the Passover Lamb? When He rose from the dead and appeared in the Upper Room, He did not ask for a bowl of Cheerios, nor did He whip up a meatless omelette on the shore of Galilee.

Man was made to eat flesh (Genesis 1: 26-31; 9: 1-6), with the exception of human flesh. I stand on record against cannibalism, whether it be inflicted upon the Mbuti Pygmies by the Congolese Army or on larger people by a maniac in Milwaukee. But I am also grateful that the benevolent father in the parable did not welcome his prodigal son home with a bowl of radishes.

Vegetarians assume an unedifying posture of detachment from the sufferings of vegetables that are mashed, stewed, diced, and shredded. In expensive restaurants, cherries are publicly burned in brandy to the applause of diners. It is not uncommon for people to submerge olives in iced gin and twist the peels of lemons. Be indignant, vegetarian, but not so selectively indignant that the bleat of the lamb and the plaintive moo of the cow drown out the whine of our brother the bean and the quiet sigh of the cauliflower.

Vegetables have reactive impulses. Were we to confine our diet to creatures that lacked sense and do not even respond to light, we could only eat liturgists and liberal Democrats.

The Rev. George W. Rutler
New York City

Touche!

Comments

[Gina]

"Society must not be ordered around by delusional people for whom vegetarianism is a religious substitute for the Christianity they have rejected." Unfortunately, this is exactly what we see creeping in with society's return--yet again!--to those same old 3rd Century errors to which Fr. Rutler refers in his masterful rebuttal. Great post...I look forward to reading more!

[Dave Pawlak]

Very good article, but I would say the culprits are the factions of Protestantism which 1)decide that if something is bad for a few, then it is bad for all, and 2) straitjacket their adherents into a one-size-fits-none spirituality which everyone must follow. Because no distinctions are made in either case (for the first,abusus not tollit usum; for the second, the differences between someone called to be an ascetic and an average layman), radical attitudes result, of which vegetarianism and teetotalism are two. There are two good reasons to give up meat or alcohol: 1) From necessity (health issues, alcoholism - both because the matter is not good for that individual alone), or 2) precisely because meat and beer and wine are good, and the individual freely gives them up for a greater good. The Irish Temperance Movement founded by Fr. Mathew was based on the latter.

[Jeff Culbreath]

Thanks, Gina!

[Jeff Culbreath]

"... the culprits are the factions of Protestantism which 1)decide that if something is bad for a few, then it is bad for all, and 2) straitjacket their adherents into a one-size-fits-none spirituality which everyone must follow."

Good insights, Dave. You nailed it.