Your meatless Fridays may be having a positive impact not just on your Lenten spiritual exercises, but on creation as well.
Separated as most of us are from the messy business of the meat industry — except when we read of recalls and outbreaks of mad-cow disease — we’re often ill-informed when it comes to what our carnivorous diet is doing to the world. Humanity’s annual consumption of some 250 million tons of meat is, not surprisingly, harming people and places; and this implies something of a moral responsibility.
Now, you may be responding to that statement in one of three ways. Either you’re eager to explore how humanity’s increasing diet of meat is causing harm, or you may be wondering if we’re heading into some extreme animal-rights cause célèbre that sweeps aside important issues of the day, such as very real human life issues. Or you may not much care, in which case you wouldn’t have read this far.
Since you have, I would propose that there are ties between us, our diets and our Lenten journey to the Cross and beyond. I would also admit upfront that I would make a very unhappy vegetarian. I am fond of my steaks, chops and burgers. Furthermore, when I am confronted with a non-meat-eating member of my own species, I am secretly concerned that I am doing something wrong, either for my body, or my world, or both.
In fact, I am doing something wrong, to a degree — that is, to the degree with which I over-consume meat. The facts cannot be spun otherwise. Worldwide meat production swallows up enormous quantities of water to feed livestock; this is water that could otherwise sustain human beings. To produce one pound of beef takes about as much water as is used in one person’s daily showers over a six-month period. The same is true for food crops. By one calculation, if America alone cut its meat consumption by 10 percent, the excess grain not used for feeding livestock could nourish one billion people. If you think 10 percent is not significant, do the math. During Lent, Catholics cut their meat consumption by one-seventh; that’s a 14 percent reduction.
The list of problems with meat production goes on, including issues of air and water pollution, massive deforestation, waste disposal, and the injection of growth hormones and antibiotics into our food supply.
Faced with such information, Catholics might wish to consider if eating less meat should become more engrained in our lives. Yet if there were a call to ritual and regular vegetarianism, there might very likely be a corresponding outcry against it. A polarity of opinions would rise up and disagreements would abound, much the same way Catholics quarrel over climate change. Facts would be disputed; ideologies would be criticized; neighbor would fight against neighbor.
“Meat production is bad for the human race and the planet,” would be one refrain, and they’d probably be right. “But God gave Man dominion over animals to use and to eat” would come the counterargument, and they’d have difficulty justifying this, because Genesis 1:29-30 (and 2:18-20) seems to imply that animals were not created for food.
We can see, then, that the time-honored Catholic tradition of abstaining from meat might have precedent somewhere in the faith of our Jewish ancestors. But St. Paul (as he did so often) seems to have re-opened the matter.
When faced with another issue involving eating meat, from animals that had been sacrificed to pagan idols in Corinth, St. Paul makes an important point. He suggests that a well-formed Christian knows rightly that pagan sacrifice is meaningless and so the flesh of slaughtered animals could be eaten without fear of transgression; and so he seems comfortable with the general concept of a carnivorous diet, at least now that we reside outside of Eden. But in writing to the Corinthians, St. Paul is concerned that in eating meat sacrificed to idols, one might cause division and lead into sin those who wish to reject the spoils of pagan worship. St. Paul calls for those who know better to defer out of love for their neighbor and, in abstaining from pagan sacrificial flesh, build unity.
Today we may have a similar issue. If the current level of meat production is the dirty, gluttonous waste that experts tell us, and if some of our brothers and sisters in Christ would seek to reduce this harm by denying themselves, and if they asked others to do likewise — to any extent possible — what would be your response? If a debate did ensue from this question, St. Paul might ask both sides to refrain from extremism and, out of Christian charity and with Lenten humility, seek to understand the other’s point; because the debate about eating meat will continue for some time throughout the world, no matter what the liturgical season, and no matter what the day of the week.
