ANIMAL RIGHTS AND WRONGS
Dear Friend of Catholic Answers:
The British magazine "The Spectator" has a provocative article in the current issue. The title is "Animals Don't Have Human Rights," and the author is Jeremy Clarke. The article got me thinking about Pochi.
Pochi is a German shorthaired pointer, age six. My wife and I retrieved him from a "rescue" when he was a year old. His tail already had been docked, standard procedure for a breed that commonly is trained for hunting. Had it been up to us, we would have left him with a full tail, but the bit that is left gets plenty of exercise--it's constantly wagging.
His name deserves explanation. "Pochi" is the generic dog name in Japanese, the equivalent of "Bowser" over here. When Japanese acquaintances ask our dog's name, they laugh when we say, "His name is Pochi." No one in Japan names his dog Pochi, just as no one in America names his dog Bowser. Those are cartoon names.
Pochi seems unaware of the humor. Maybe he is too busy playing with his invisible friends in the back yard or with his real canine friends at the park where my wife takes him each day. She spends more time with him than I do, but he and I do guy things every once in a while. Recently I took him to the mountains when I went mountain biking.
He is a clever and brave dog, but almost too clever and brave for his own good. I was on singletrack that circled a high meadow, with Pochi running ahead of me, when we turned a corner and came on twenty head of cattle. I stopped to watch them. Pochi stopped for only a millisecond and then took off after them.
He ran up to and around the bulls, barking loudly, dodging between them. They responded by rearing up and trying to stomp and gore him, but he outran them. For safety's sake I had to remain a hundred yards away on an outcropping of rock. All I could do was to yell at Pochi, who conveniently ignored me. Eventually the cattle moved through a barbed wire fence into another pasture, and Pochi came back to me, probably thinking that he was an Australian cattle dog.
Back to the article in "The Spectator." It is about the proposed Animal Welfare Bill that is being considered by Parliament. The bill "has a new name for pets: 'companion animals,' it calls them, which sort of says it all."
"At the heart of the Animal Welfare Bill is a charter of pet rights called the 'Five Freedoms.' A kept animal, it proclaims, should have freedom from hunger and thirst; freedom from discomfort; freedom from pain, injury, and disease; freedom from fear and distress; and, controversially, freedom to express normal behaviour."
This may sound innocuous--who would be in favor of inflicting "pain, injury, and disease" on animals?--but animal-rights groups are pushing for a restrictive interpretation of the bill. "There is a strong possibility that anglers could also be liable for prosecution. It would be hard to argue that a fisherman was undertaking his duty to care for fish, when they've been mutilated by hooks and nets."
One pressure group, the Born Free Foundation, "took things a step further, urging the inclusion of insects, spiders, scorpions, and centipedes." Clarke wonders, "Will a Master of Foxhounds find himself sharing a prison cell with somebody doing time for cruelty to a beetle?"
The problem, he says, is that "at every stage the lobbyists and MPs are determined to ascribe anthropomorphic 'rights' to the animal kingdom." If animals have rights, the way people have rights, then it is not right to keep animals as pets, just as we don't keep people as pets. There are people who are our companions, and that explains the move to have pets be known as "companion animals."
Sorry, Pochi. I have great affection for you, even when you ignore my commands and run after a herd of annoyed cattle, but you are not my equal.
I am a man, created in the image and likeness of God and given both a material body and a spiritual soul. You mirror God in a different way. You have a soul, but it is not spiritual and not immortal, the way mine is. However smart you seem, you are incapable of abstract thought, because that is a function of spirit, not of matter.
You are my companion, yes, but you are that because you are my pet. I have rights over you, and because I have rights I have corresponding duties. I have the duty to treat you well, and you are treated very well. You live a much finer life than you ever could have lived in the wild, and you obviously are content with it.
You wouldn't understand this, Pochi, but rights always are paired with duties. One proof that you and other animals have no rights is that you have no duties. Has anyone ever insisted that pets (or "companion animals") are obliged to perform certain duties? Not even animal-rights people make that claim.
The absence of duties implies the absence of rights. The two always go together. I have rights as a citizen, and I have duties as a citizen. I have a right to own (yes, that's the correct word) an animal, but I also have duties toward that animal as part of God's creation, just as I have a right to own land and corresponding duties toward that land.
Here below man is the steward, of both the inanimate and animate. He has rights over things and duties toward them, and the rights and duties stem from his having been created "a little lower than the angels" and having been given governance over the world that God made.
As I said, Pochi, you wouldn't understand this. No matter. The day is fine. How about heading off on a trail with me? Maybe we'll find some cattle.
p.s., If you have a comment about anything appearing in this E-Letter, please do not hit your Reply button. Instead, go to Catholic Answers' new discussion forums at:
http://forums.catholic.com
where you may post your comment in the forum dedicated to the E-Letter. You will find a thread devoted to this issue of the E-Letter. Feel free to add your comment in the form of a reply to that thread.
|
C A T H O L I C A N S W E R S :
[TOP]
of
Discuss
Index
Prior issue
Next issue
Sign up