PETA for the Pope
This may sound ludicrous, but there's a ring of truth to it, if you ask us:
PETA believes it may have a powerful new ally: the pope.
The star-studded animal rights group – whose high-profile spokespeople include Paul McCartney and Pamela Anderson – is saying that Pope Benedict XVI is an animal-rights supporter and they're hoping he will join their cause.
In support of their hope, they quote these words, apparently from Ratzinger's earlier writings:
“Certainly, a sort of industrial use of creatures, so that geese are fed in such a way as to produce as large a liver as possible, or hens live so packed together that they become just caricatures of birds, this degrading of living creatures to a commodity seems to me in fact to contradict the relationship of mutuality that comes across in the Bible.”
Benedict XVI will have little tolerance for Singer-types who equate fetuses and disabled human lives with the lives of, say, chickens, but we don't think it's farfetched that he may have concerns about the way we treat animals. Other respectable and sane voices have expressed legitimate concerns about the way we treat/torture animals in the name of the mass and efficient production of meat. We are stewards, after all, and much of what we hear about (e.g., the brutal treatment of calves in order to make better veal) strikes us as wrong.
