Dignity of life for all creatures

February 14, 2019
Patricia and Sharon Briggs
San Francisco
 
The recent well-attended and inspiring Walk for Life (“Peaceful, positive and personal pro-life messages mark 15th Walk for Life,” Jan. 31) must further lead us to contemplate how all life is worthy and we cannot pick and choose whose is and whose isn’t. Take for example the parish crab fest. Crustaceans are considered so lowly, not being warm, soft and fuzzy and living in an aquatic realm far removed from our terrestrial one, and considered far outside the moral arena. No one cares about them but everyone should.
 
Imagine throwing a living, feeling being into boiling water and then gluttonously dining on its flesh for a few moments of gustatory pleasure. What would Jesus say at the spectacle of us defiling his creation when he so emphasized the marginalized? The end to make a profit can never justify the means. These animals are so at our mercy, not unlike the mentally indigent, seniors with Alzheimer’s, and indeed the unborn and newly born child. We as moral agents owe them extra special protection. Each and every animal has its own right to life and its unique pursuit of happiness. Anthropocentrism and utilitarianism have no place in God’s plan, and this leads us further to realizing a meatless diet is the purest obedience to the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” Jesus did not sacrifice animals so to truly walk in his ways of peace and love, we must sanctify all his creation by forsaking the violence on our dinner plates.
 

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