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Post by redmond on Sept 19, 2008 11:44:28 GMT
Hi again. In keeping with the Catholic forum's request to get busy exchanging opinions etc, I should like to add today a second front, the idea that the pope should get rid of his fur. This request was highly publicised recently and here is a letter I got published in full in the Catholic Times last week.
As a Catholic who spent 35 years as a mink-farmer I object to propagandathat portrays my career as one of a sadist perpetrating cruelties onanimals, so I should like to reply to your article on the ‘animal-rights’people that want the papacy to get rid of the fur-lined garments used overthe centuries.Be aware that these people are all part of a worldwide campaign to stop alluses of animals by mankind no matter the kind. They are funded by moneygiven to look after animals in America but diverted in the main to supportall kinds of activists from terror groups to paying rent-a-mob protestersto swell their numbers of volunteers. Their tactics are long term, usingthe domino system; first the fur trade, then hunting, then fishing, thencat shows and so on. They target children by means of the Internet andindoctrinate them relying on emotion rather than truth and film extremeswhere they can find them and will even set them up themselves. Young girlsare the most susceptible and these tactics can turn personalities fromnormal to disturbed. Very few will know of the damage these same people have done to thelivelihood of thousands of people worldwide (I lost my living, my means ofrearing a family of five through their lies) while they get fat on genuinedonations given to animal welfare, not their groupings. Few will know ofthe fate of the indigenous peoples of the northern forests who had to selltheir animal occupied forests for timber and mining when unable to selltheir surplus furs, even when foot-traps were banned. Unable to survive incities they simply died out riddled with alcoholism etc. Their ideology is not Christian. Within Christian thought animals do nothave ‘rights’, only man has ‘rights’ given by God to Adam. Animals were puton earth for man’s use and benefit, this means for food, clothing, forwork, as companions etc. Man however has responsibilities in this field,and society as a whole has formulated the parameters, accepted by theChurch throughout two thousand years. These ‘animal-rights’ groups however,wish to impose their ideals over those of society and are known to usetactics that are anti-human to achieve them.Do not be fooled by their pious words as though God is on their side, andimagine what they would describe Jesus’s act when he ordered the Apostlesto lower their nets and drag on board numeroud fish for the tables of man,or when the Father asked for sacrifice of lambs and all that entailed, Yours truly,
Now nobody can say I did not play my part in expanding this forum's subject matter. Look forward to the anti's hysterics.
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Sept 19, 2008 13:08:50 GMT
Redmond, you might have heard the line about 'It takes forty foxes to make a fur coat, but one idiot to wear it', or something like that. In Russia, they say it takes one idiot to go out in 50 below without one.
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Post by austringer on Sept 19, 2008 13:53:51 GMT
I hope someone corrected your letter before it got published because if they published it exactly as you've posted it your'e going to look like a six year old. Otherwise it just a paranoid rant, badly argued, badly written and completely confused.
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Post by Michael O'Donovan on Sept 19, 2008 15:48:09 GMT
... a paranoid rant, badly argued, badly written and completely confused. Wow! I have banned atheists for this kind of talk. But we'll let that go. What about a counter-argument? Though I am a former believer (in my non-Catholic youth) in animal rights and Peter Singer's ideas about animal liberation, and someone who is still actively involved in more mainstream animal welfare organisations, I do sympathise in general with the OP's view of the PETA-type animal rights people.
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Post by redmond on Sept 20, 2008 16:47:48 GMT
thanks Beinidict9, that is priceless.
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Post by redmond on Sept 26, 2008 0:24:22 GMT
I agree saintstephen. I suspect what he meant was that whereas he disagreed with my opinion, the letter itself was well thought out, brilliantly argued, beautifully written and as clear as a bell. Its just his way of putting it.
As regards your catechism quote, I could not agree more. I sure hope all those fish that St Peter hauled aboard were not needlessly left on board - or thrown back dead into the dead see if you will pardon the pun - when those Apostles left with Jesus, I would hate to think the Lord was out of line with some interpretations of the relationship between humans and animals. Indeed all my life I wondered what happened those fish. Would anybody think cutting a lamb's throat was cruel?
By the way the opening letter was replied to by THREE typical ENGLISH animal lovers who denied they had anything to do with the PETA crowd and that they were just good Catholics who believed the mere keeping of mink in cages constituted cruelty. No doubt they will next ask the Vatican to stop keeping mice, canaries, hamsters and budgies in cages as well. Now these good people still didn't get the message. Who decides this constitutes cruelty? Their version implies that for 30 years I spent every day amidst an orgy of 'cruelty'. Now I am a professional animal keeper. I know my animals. I knew if my animals were 'content' or not. I did not put human thoughts into animals like the 'animal-rights' people do.
I Saw real cruelty perpetrated on animals in my lifetime, just like that swan that had its head blown in half when fed a piece of bread with a banger in it. I saw a sheepdog kept in a barrel. But the worst cruelty I saw was 15,000,000 rabbits given a virus that bloated them out, turned them blind and rendered them unable to eat or drink and died over a period of 7-10 days. It was all done so that all the good people could have their vegetables, good people like those wanting to ban the Pope's fur garments. I am also aware that life in the wild is pure suffering to survive; hunger, death and cruelties beyond belief if one can accuse one animal with cruelty against another. Ever see the lions start eating a young deer or zebra still alive. Is this cruel and should man kill all the lions to stop it.
Yet see them pick out fur farming as something so 'cruel' that organisations, even Catholic ones according to the letter writers, had to be formed to put a stop to it all. Old ladies are easy targets to throw paint on for wearing a fox skin. Leather is OK for now, but when its turn comes, will the antis picket Landsdown Rd and squirt paint on the rugby players? Its all right for a fox to enter a farmer's hen house and kill every last chicken but if the farmer dishes out the same on a fox - a crime.
As I said before, I know the difference between cruelty and farming without cruelty. But it is really the principle that the anti's object to and if it takes a little emotional propaganda to achieve their aim, well what the hell, its all in a good cause, yes?. I tell you all that nobody on this earth lives free from 'cruelties’. Think who lives without the benefits of oil. From electricity to cars, yet billions of animals die from its pollution every day. Doesn't the Vatican use electricity? Doesn't the Pope use aeroplanes and gas-guzzling popemobiles? Stop wearing his fur garments I ask you. Haven't these people something better to do with their time and energy? Look I could go on but I better stop.
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Post by redmond on Sept 26, 2008 20:45:57 GMT
Thanks Saintstephen, you have the right balance as a Catholic. By the way in today's Catholic Times I was told I would have to answer to God for being a mink farmer. There's a judgment for you.
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Post by redmond on Sept 27, 2008 19:54:22 GMT
Saintstephan, if you ever contest the papacy you will have my vote.
A joke for you. On friday week last they showed a picture of Bruce Forsyth {'Nice to see you, to see you nice'} and his (third?) wife meeting the Pope. It invite captions as to what Bruce might have said. The winning caption was priceless: 'Nice to see you See, to see you See, nice'
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Post by redmond on Sept 28, 2008 15:11:56 GMT
Saintstephen, I cannot stop laughing. Absolutely delighted you have a sense of humour. An absolutely necessary ingredient for a well balanced Catholic.
I think we agree that common sense and a happy belief in God enables us to make good Catholic judgements as to what is expected of us by God in relation to His creation and especially animals. Indeed I have spent many a thought pondering on the subject. Animals do feel pain, we know that simply by standing (accidentially of course) on a cat's tail. Now we know that human pain serves a purpose in the plan of redemption, but what of animal pain. A huge question I would like to ask God is why did He create creatures that could suffer pain. I know God would give me a perfect reason. I have tried to answer this for myself and concluded on the capacity of creatures to UNDERSTAND pain. They do not think like humans so a lack of understanding of pain and death may well keep them immune from actual suffering as we humans understand it. The mere fact that God chose to create creatures made of flesh rendered them subject to pain, unlike flora that also has life but not pain. I just know that God is not the Creator of something that must suffer for no good reason if they do suffer that is. God is not careless like that. In other words if we humans have compassion for animals then God as their Creator is infinitely more aware of the matter than us.
As a mink farmer I was aware of the state of contentment of mink in my care. I do not kill spiders etc, I pick them up and place them outside. I rescue butterflies and moths and will stop mowing grass to allow a bee to fly off a daisy. I walk a neighbour's dog every day, hail, rain or snow because she cannot walk him and I do not want that dog to be stuck in a house all its life.
All creatures are so marvellous I see God in them all. I do not like them all (seals, kangaroos, monkeys and a few others) but concede that God created them for His glory. I see him in His many forms, just as nature has many forms, as a beautiful cloud or a volcano exploding. I hear God in many ways, from the song of a thrush to the roar of thunder. I see him as a timid deer and when angry as the lion. It keep me in mind that God will be gentle and kind if we love Him and TRY to keep His commandments, but He can be angry if we show contempt for His will.
My mink were fed and watered every day. My mink had their christmas dinner before I did. They were fed a perfect diet to keep them in prime condition. They had to be kept clean so cages were ideal. This makes them happy and they sleep a lot. In Summer they have their young and think of nothing else but rearing them. They lie out in the sun whenit shines and curl up in their beds of hay when it is cold. When it came to killing them I did it in a matter of seconds so that no stress, awareness or pain was involved. That is how I conducted my mink-farming. Then came the animal 'rights' people. They were good at propaganda, turning every aspect of farming into a torture scenario. For example, in anticipation of their dinner, mink would run up and down their cages. This was part of their rearing, their tread-mill, keeping them fit and healthy of body and fur so that they would keep disease at bay and in good condition for breeding and rearing their young. But the anti-fur people took films of this running action and portrayed it as animals driven mad in captivity and kept in starving conditions. Then they would find an amateur mink-farmer somewhere who did not clean out from under the cages properly and film it portraying it as how ALL mink farmers keep their animals. No minkfarmer ever subjected his animals to pain. Animal rights people relied on those who think animals comprehend and understand things like human beings do. They got people to think the mink were looking out of their cages wishing they were down at the river happy and free. They never said down at the river killing everything that they can, even for the sake of it as their nature directed and animals follow their nature.
So, this question is a huge mystery. Is God then responsible for the natural 'cruelty' perpetrated by animals and fish in their created nature? Was this the result of Original Sin making man responsible for it? There are many things we would like to ask Jesus if He came to dinner for a chat. I often wondered did the Apostles ask mundane questions of Him or were they only about salvation. The Bible covers all aspects of life, both mundane and in regards to salvation. Pope Benedict XV wrote the best encyclical on the Bible of all popes. He said the Bible was TRUE in both mundane and spiritual revelations. That is why I am a literalist in the scholastic vein, St Thomas Aquinas my ultimate Catholic teacher in such things.
So, let this thread now advance into a discussion on the relationship of God with His creatures, the flora and fauna of earth. Has anyone an opinion as to the merit or not of animal pain, or even if we can actually call it pain when it occurs in animals. Hopefully you readers will know what I mean and get involved.
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Post by redmond on Oct 2, 2008 21:33:47 GMT
Thanks for all those thoughts Saintstephen. One thing has always puzzled me. There are those who say the Bible says that all creatures 'lay down in peace' with each other and were vegetarians That death only came into the world after Original Sin.]then I read St Thomas Aquinas who said all God created is good. It is good for the species to eat to survive and as the whole eco system depends on this God must have created all together feeding on what they feed on now. If all were vegetarians before the Fall how then did creatures such as the sperm whale survive with its plankton filtering system? That is only one example of thousands, anteaters etc. Anyone any thoughts of this?
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Post by redmond on Oct 3, 2008 16:21:10 GMT
Sorry all for picking the sperm whale as a grid feeder, you are perfectly right Inedifix, they do eat giant squid which in itself fascinates me with those great battles beneath the ocean and the tales about giant squid trying to pull down ships in old times. My question about whether all creatures were vegitarians before the Fall however was for a Christian to answer. Of course you would find absurdities in the belief of some but with us Catholics (or Protestants) nothing is impossible to God. Personally I am undecided about it as is my right given the Church has never made any rule on the matter. My problem is that I do not see how certain flesh-eaters could ever have been vegitarians before Original sin. Now one could say that change does happen within kinds, the ability of finches for example to attain beak shapes to eat different things (Darwin's first discovery that evolutionists call evolution but in fact it is GENETIC SPREAD whereas evolution is supposed to account for cells evolving into fully developed creatures ). Perhaps this was the route from vegitarian to flesh eater? Could this explain how the change took place. Inedifix gave us a most interesting fact - if accurate -
"What should interest you about filter feeding (Baleen or Mysticeti) whales, is that their young grow teeth in the womb as embryos, then reabsorb them before growing filter feeding baleen plates instead. Coupled with the fact that fossil finds of earlier, now extinct Mysticeti whales did have teeth, we have an interesting scenario: a modern whale that still has part of the genetic coding from a prior, distinct ancestor species."
Of course it interests us Christians for it puts meat on the theory (please pardon the pun) for it shows us whales could have have been veg or meat eaters at one time depending on what was available at the time and depending on the 'nature' of the beast.
Again Inedifix, I say I do not have the energy to follow you up on every point of disagreement. I will however comment on these 4 points of yours above even though Saintstephen will probably answer them himself. 1&2 Christianity to be viable, even with God on our side, have to be REASONABLE. Thus when the Bible says Two of each Kind we know that this does not mean two of every SPECIES of kinds. So, two Tasmanian dragons, two crocs, and a pair of Lizards could well have been the two of a kind chosen. Now a couple of the big dinosaurs could have been chosen but did not survive for long after the flood. We know the world was warm all over before the Flood from the discoveries of science. But after the flood an ice age set in. That is one possible reason why the big dinosaurs did not survive. A second is the shortage of meat for the big ones. A third is man the hunter. So, no problem explaining the lad absence. But what of the big sea dinosaurs? Well geologists also know the world is covered with sedimentary rock which means the seas during the flood would have been MOSTLY filled with liquid sediment, meaning that there was a huge loss of life in the sea as well. Whales survived, says Inedifix, so where are the big sea going dinosaur types? DON'T know Inedifix, but they are no more and this leaves us BOTH with a mystery.
3 The Flood of Noah was world wide. Dinosaurs lived world wide before the Flood. The flood buried the world in sediments (that contained a chemical cement from that man now utilises) except where ignious rock pertruded. In these sediments are found dinosaurs, In certain places MILLIONS of them in mass graves which shows a vast Flood HAD to sweep them up into a mass grave. Now doesn't this conform with dinosaur fossils being found all over the earth?
4 Carbon dating. Ever read an expert's critique of this method? Carbon dating is only used to age things LESS than 10,000 years old, not long enough for the dinosaur theory of millions of years. The carbon cycle is complete in 32,000 years. Thus if the world is 6,000 years then this dating is useless and will give inaccurate readings. How much dust is on the moon where there is no weather or cementing into rock. In other words any cosmic dust falling on the moon's surface remains as dust. When the boys went to the Moon to find LIFE there they first built the legs of the lander about 30 Foot long to cope with the millions of years of falling dust that was supposed to be there according to modern scientific ageing theories. They worked out how much falls in 100 years and multiplied this by millions and came to their massive deposit calculations. The trouble was that when they got there there was only 6000 years worth of dust there. As yet they have not given a proper account as to how this could be so if the moon is billions of years old.
Over to you Inedifix
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Post by redmond on Oct 6, 2008 20:41:02 GMT
Dear friends, I have been betrayed and so I am now taking my leave from this forum. I have just noticed that at the top of this thread there has appeared an add for an organisation called PETA. If you read what I said of them in my opening remark on this thread you will see that they are not CATHOLIC and should not have been put on the top of this thread to make a propaganda tool out of my discussion forum. As a measure as to how sinister these people are, ask the moderator how they got to know of this thread and how did they get on to it.
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Post by Michael O'Donovan on Oct 6, 2008 21:57:42 GMT
Dear friends, I have been betrayed and so I am now taking my leave from this forum. I have just noticed that at the top of this thread there has appeared an add for an organisation called PETA. If you read what I said of them in my opening remark on this thread you will see that they are not CATHOLIC and should not have been put on the top of this thread to make a propaganda tool out of my discussion forum. As a measure as to how sinister these people are, ask the moderator how they got to know of this thread and how did they get on to it. We can't help people like PETA appearing here. This is a forum using free software which picks out the most often-mentioned nouns and verbs and combinations of them. Other sites pay to find forums where their favourite nouns and adjectives are mentioned, and then their stupid intrusive advertisemenets appear. The PETA loonies don't know you are here. Just ignore them, and continue to post.
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Post by redmond on Oct 7, 2008 21:31:42 GMT
I made some enquires and it seems these people can get on such a forum as this through an agency. I am also told the administrator can request such opposing sites be removed. Either way Michael G, your remark on Inedifix's MY LAST POST makes you unfit to be an administrator under a forum supposed to be for traditional catholics. As the dragon says on TV - I'm out.
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Post by Michael O'Donovan on Oct 8, 2008 20:14:05 GMT
I made some enquires and it seems these people can get on such a forum as this through an agency. I am also told the administrator can request such opposing sites be removed. Either way Michael G, your remark on Inedifix's MY LAST POST makes you unfit to be an administrator under a forum supposed to be for traditional catholics. As the dragon says on TV - I'm out. Redmond, I think you will find that PETA's advertisement has probably disappeared. We get different advertisements every day. As I explained, we use free software. The reason the suppliers can offer it free is that they make an income from hosting advertisements that might possibly be of interest to a forum's readers. The process is totally automated. It obviously picked up keywords in this thread that triggered a PETA advertisement. I can find nothing in the administrator's facilities to block particular advertisements. I do not apologise for my remark to Inedifix. We have no obligation as Catholics, Traditional or otherwise, to support or endorse ideas (for example the notion of the Genesis account of the Flood as a literal narrative, or the Medjugorje phenomenon) that are not part of Church teaching. My personal opinion is that fundamentalist readings of the Old Testament are a feature of the more unsophisticated Protestant sects, and private "revelations" have no standing. However neither I nor the new moderator have ever suppressed such opinions but, like all members, I am free to oppose them.
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