Why we should give moral consideration to individuals rather than species

Posted on February 1, 2019 by admin

This article from animal-ethics.org, supports Natalia Doran’s paper given at our session on Animal Suffering at the recent IOTA conference in Romania entitled: ‘Dominion, Stewardship, Priesthood – The theological models of how humans relate to animals.’

It is often believed that species should be considered and preserved because they have some sort of value in themselves, a value unrelated to what’s in the best interests of the individuals who are members of the species. It may be reasoned that species preservation should be supported because defending species means defending all the members of the species. But if we were to give moral consideration to the interests of animals, then we would reject the rights of species as a whole and give respect only to individual sentient beings.

A species is an abstract entity that cannot have experiences and therefore cannot be wronged in the way that sentient individuals can. Only individual beings can have positive and negative experiences, and therefore they are the ones we should respect, as explained in the argument from relevance. Attempting to preserve a species wouldn’t be bad if doing so didn’t harm anyone. A problem arises only when respect for a species entails disrespecting sentient individuals. This problem can be observed in common ecological interventions that aim to preserve a species with a particular set of traits at the expense of sentient individuals who do not exhibit the desired traits.

For example, the white-headed duck (Oxyura leucocephala) is considered a threatened species in Southern Europe. Their interbreeding with ruddy ducks (Oxyura jamaicensis), a common species of duck that is not native to Europe, results in hybrid ducks. The white-headed trait has become less prevalent in the new hybrid duck. Ecological interventions have been undertaken to preserve white-headed ducks by killing ruddy and hybrid ducks.

The prevalence of the ruddy duck poses no threat to ecosystems because the ecological function of both ruddy and white-headed ducks is identical. The aim of this measure has been to promote biodiversity itself regardless of the negative impact the intervention has on the lives of the sentient individuals who are affected by it. It may seem at first that this measure actually reduces biodiversity by killing all the ruddy ducks in the region, but the aim is to preserve the existence in the world of endangered white-headed ducks. Ruddy ducks are plentiful elsewhere, particularly in their native habitats in North and South America.

Another example of killing one species in a particular area in order to preserve a threatened species is that of grey squirrels who are killed in the UK in order to conserve red squirrels. Due to their greater adaptability and higher survival rates, the grey squirrels (who were introduced by humans there) may have contributed to the disappearance of the less hardy red squirrels in some areas. If what we care about is the wellbeing of sentient individuals, and because sentient beings are harmed by being killed, then killing sentient individuals in order to increase the number of members of a different species is not acceptable. A scenario in which there are few or no white-headed ducks or red squirrels cannot be said to be morally worse than a scenario in which they are just as common as ruddy ducks and grey squirrels. A species does not have a wellbeing, so preserving a species at the expense of sentient individuals belonging to another species is not a moral choice according to a non-speciesist view.

Speciesist views

Other defenses of species preservation include that if species disappear then empirical knowledge will be lost, that future generations will not be able to have contact with these species, and that the beauty of biodiversity will no longer be available to be experienced. These are all weak defenses. If biodiversity is intrinsically valuable, then it must be valuable independently of its benefits to humans or other beings, and these are all reasons that relate to human benefits of species preservation. That makes these defenses anthropocentric.

At first, there may seem to be nothing wrong with these reasons. Indeed, there is nothing wrong with appreciating the beauty of nature, in wanting to expand the scientific knowledge that biodiversity provides us with, and in wanting to preserve these things for future human generations. That is, unless doing so is harmful to nonhuman animals; then it is not acceptable. If we accept an anthropocentric view we will likely consider it acceptable to preserve biodiversity at any cost to nonhuman animals, believing that human interests (aesthetic, scientific, cultural, etc.) should take precedence over nonhuman animal interests. This is a speciesist view and should be rejected since there are no sound reasons to justify this discrimination against nonhuman animals.

Another problem with this view is the moral arbitrariness of decisions to preserve certain species. A common assumption is that the value of a species is inversely proportional to its population size, which would mean that members of endangered or rare species should have special consideration relative to members of those species with greater population sizes. But the sympathies of a significant portion of the public, including many environmentalists, go in a different direction. In practice it is often assumed that we should try to preserve the existence of some species while disregarding others, even if they are endangered. Defenders of the conservation of (some) species often value different species differently. Often some species are considered more valuable than others simply because humans like them more, and not because they exhibit some morally relevant characteristic. The reasons humans prefer some species over others are diverse: their members are big (e.g. elephants), or beautiful (e.g. giraffes), or are very similar to humans (e.g. chimpanzees). Accordingly, the preservation of animals that do not interest humans much, such as some small invertebrates like insects and spiders, are not seriously taken into account. Exceptions are sometimes made for invertebrates that are particularly appealing to humans, such as butterflies.

However, size, beauty, and similarity to humans are equally irrelevant in moral terms. All of these beings are sentient and therefore can be affected by what happens to them in morally significant ways: they can be harmed or benefited, regardless of their physical appearance or similarity to human beings. If there are any sound reasons to preserve species they will have to be reasons related to the wellbeing of individuals.

Species are not individuals

Some arguments have been made for respect for species on different grounds. Some theorists have argued that species are not mere aggregates of individuals but, rather, are life processes in themselves.¹ According to this argument, species must be preserved, just like all other living things or processes, independently of the interests of their members. There are strong reasons to dispute this position. One is that it is very questionable to view species as a life process. In order for an entity to be alive it needs to exemplify, at least in principle, some biological phenomena such as growth, reproduction, response to stimuli, etc.; it needs to perform some vital functions. Individual organisms have the capacity to carry out such functions. However, species, as a whole, do not. So, unless we are thinking in purely metaphorical terms, species cannot be claimed to be life processes. Most importantly, even if it were true that species were life processes, we still must question the moral relevance of simply being alive as a criterion.

Ecocentrists’ defense of species conservation

According to the environmentalist view called ecocentrism, the valuable elements of nature reside in ecosystems as wholes. We may think this means that proponents of ecocentrism believe species should be respected because they consider species to be holistic entities with intrinsic value. However, the leading figures of ecocentrism endorse a different position.² They claim that species must be conserved because they have an indirect value for the preservation of that which is really valuable in their opinion, that is, ecosystems. This means that for ecocentrists, the value of a species will be relative to how they contribute to the stability of ecosystems, and the conservation of any individual must be favored or not in accordance with two different factors: population density and ecological function. Many problems arise from this position because it implies that species that perform certain ecological functions in the ecosystem should be given moral precedence over those that do not. But caring about animal wellbeing means we should care about those individuals who can have positive and negative experiences (sentient individuals), not just animals who serve their environment in a particular way. The ecocentrist view may not only imply that a particular individual should not be “conserved”, but also that their elimination is desirable if allowing this individual to live negatively affects the aims that ecocentrists want to further. This explains why ecocentrists can defend the killing of animals for the sake of re-creating particular ecosystems.

Accepting the ecocentrist view would lead us to support scenarios in which sentient individuals are killed in order to preserve a particular endangered nonsentient species (such as a plant species) or other features of an ecosystem.³

Certain typical ecological interventions that occur in the wild reflect ecocentric views. Some interventions aim to bring the population levels of certain species down by killing the animals that don’t “fit in” to the ecosystem,⁴ or by introducing other animals that reduce prey populations through predation and other related harms.⁵ Despite the suffering and death of sentient individuals associated with these interventions, the interventions are typically regarded by ecocentrists as something good, because they promote the stability of the current ecosystem, or of a desired type of ecosystem. This type of intervention should be rejected for the following reasons:

(a) sentient individuals have morally relevant interests in being alive and in not being harmed;

(b) the interests in being alive and in not being harmed do not vary according to the population density or ecological function of a species;

(c) the same position would imply that the eradication of human species for the sake of Baobab Trees would be acceptable. After all, the human species is overpopulated and has no beneficial ecological function, but is actually harmful to the aims environmentalists intend to further.

It can be assumed that most people would be appalled by the last point. This shows that the ecocentrist view that respect should be granted to species based on their ecological function and impact is dubious. In addition, it shows why such views are ultimately subordinated to anthropocentrism (humans and often their preferred domesticated animals are somehow exempted from the requirement to be ecologically useful) and why ecocentrists have a biased consideration not only of individuals, but also of the species they intend to preserve.

Notes

1 Johnson, L. E. (1995) “Species: On their nature and moral standing”, Journal of Natural History, 29, pp. 843-849.

2 Callicott, J. B. (1980) “Animal liberation: A triangular affair”, Environmental Ethics, 2, pp. 311-338.

3 Some supporters of these position may be found in Johnson, L. (1991) A morally deep world: An essay on moral significance and environmental ethics, New York: Cambridge University Press; Rolston, H., III (1985) “Duties to endangered species”, BioScience, 35, pp. 718-726.

4 Shelton, J.-A. (2004) “Killing animals that don’t fit in: Moral dimensions of habitat restoration”, Between the Species, 13 (4) [accessed on 3 March 2013].

5 Horta, O. (2010) “The ethics of the ecology of fear against the nonspeciesist paradigm: A shift in the aims of intervention in nature”, Between the Species, 13 (10), pp. 163-187 [accessed on 13 March 2013].

http://www.animal-ethics.org/sentience-section/relevance-of-sentience/why-we-should-consider-individuals-rather-than-species/?fbclid=IwAR3zYsoYhzkFAXe79-l72_xmHq5DmEGzHR-Pk1dosAVWy1HR-W6GItg8M80

COMPASSION FOR ANIMALS IN THE ORTHODOX CHURCH

Posted on January 23, 2019 by admin

COMPASSION FOR ANIMALS IN THE ORTHODOX CHURCH

KALLISTOS WARE

Metropolitan of Diokleia

What is a merciful heart? It is a heart on fire for the whole of creation, for humankind, for the birds, for the animals, for the demons, for all that exists.

St Isaac the Syrian (7th century)

A place for animals in our worship?

As I sit writing at my table, I have before me a Russian icon of the martyrs St Florus and St Laurus. At the top of the icon is the Archangel Michael, and on either side of him the two saints. Then below them there is a concourse of horses, old and young: some have riders, others are riderless but with saddle and bridle, and others are running freely. I am not sure what is the connection between horses and these two stonemasons from Constantinople who suffered martyrdom in the early 4th century. But there the horses are, prominently depicted in the icon, and their presence gives me continuing pleasure.

Beside my bed I have another icon that shows the leading Russian saint of the 19th century, Seraphim of Sarov. He is seated on a log outside his wooden cabin in the forest, with his prayer-rope in one of his hands, and with the other hand he is offering a piece of bread to a huge brown bear. Great was the surprise and alarm of visitors to the saint’s hermitage when they came upon him in the company of his four-footed friend Misha.

Now, for members of the Orthodox Church an icon is not to be regarded in isolation, simply as a picture on a religious subject, a decorative item designed to give aesthetic pleasure. Much more significant is the fact that an icon exists within a distinct and specific context. It is part of an act of prayer and worship, and divorced from that context of prayer and worship it ceases to be authentically an icon. The art of the icon is par excellence a liturgical art.[1] If, then, Orthodox icons depict not only humans but animals, does this not imply that the animals have an accepted place in our liturgical celebration and our dialogue with God? We do not forget that, when Jesus withdrew to pray for forty days in the wilderness, he had the animals as his companions: ‘He was with the wild beasts’ (Mark 1:13).

What the icon shows us – that the animals share in our prayer and worship – is confirmed by the prayer books used in the Orthodox Church.[2] It is true that, when we look at the main act of worship, the Service of the Eucharist, we are at first sight disappointed; for in its two chief forms – the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom and that of St Basil the Great – there are no direct references to the animal creation. Yet, when we pray at the beginning of the Liturgy ‘for the peace of the whole world’, this surely includes animals. As one commentator puts it, ‘We pray for the peace of the universe, not only for mankind, but for every creature, for animals and plants, for the stars and all of nature.’[3]

Turning, however, to the daily office, we find not only implicit but explicit allusions to the animals. A notable example comes at the beginning of Vespers. On the Orthodox understanding of time, as in Judaism, the new day commences not at midnight or at dawn but at sunset; and so Vespers is the opening service in the twenty-four hour cycle of prayer. How, then, do we begin the new day? Throughout the year, except in the week after Easter Sunday, Vespers always starts in the same way: with the reading or singing of Psalm 103 (104). This is a hymn of praise to the Creator for all the wonders of his creation; and in this cosmic doxology we have much to say about the animals:

‘You make springs gush forth in the valleys they flow between the hills. They give drink to every beast of the field; the wild donkeys quench their thirst. Beside them the birds of the air have their habitation; they sing among the branches.’

The psalm continues by speaking of cattle, storks, wild goats, badgers and young lions, and it concludes this catalogue of living creatures with a reference to Leviathan, who must surely be a whale:

‘Yonder is the sea, great and wide, which teems with things innumerable,living things both small and great. There go the ships, and there is the great sea monster which you formed to sport in it.’

In this way, embarking upon the new day, we offer the world back to God in thanksgiving. We bless him for the sun and moon, for the clouds and wind, for the earth and the water; and not least we bless him for the living creatures, in all their diversity and abundance. with which he has peopled the globe. We rejoice in their beauty and their playfulness, whereby they enrich our lives:

‘How marvellous are your works, O Lord! In wisdom have you made them all.’

As we stand before God in prayer, the companionship of the animals fills our hearts with warmth and hope.

Nor is it only in the service of Vespers that the animals have their assured place. In the Orthodox book of blessings and intercessions known in Greek as the Evchologion, and in Slavonic as the Trebnik or Book of Needs, there are prayers for the good health of sheep, goats and cattle, of horses, donkeys and mules, and even of bees and silkworms; and also, on the negative side, there are prayers for protection from poisonous snakes and noxious insects. Up to the present day, the great majority of Eastern Christians dwell in an agricultural rather than an urban environment; and so it it only natural that their prayer – rooted in the concerns of this world as well as being otherworldly – should reflect the needs of a farming community. In daily prayer as in daily life, humans and animals belong to a single community.

As a typical example of a prayer for living creatures, let us take these phrases from a blessing on bees:

‘In ancient times you granted to the Israelites a land flowing with milk and honey (Exod. 3:8), and you were well-pleased to nourish your Baptist John with wild honey in the wilderness (Matt. 3:4). Now also, providing in your good pleasure for our sustenance, do you bless the beehives in this apiary. Greatly increase the multiplication of the bees within them, preserving them by your grace and granting us an abundance of rich honey.’[4]

A prayer for silkworms includes the words:

‘All-good King, show us even now your lovingkindness; and as you blessed the well of Jacob (John 4:6), and the pool of Siloam (John 9:7), and the cup of your holy apostles (Matt. 26:27), so bless also these silkworms; and as you multiplied the stars in heaven and the sand beside the sea-shore, so multiply these silkworms, granting them health and strength: and may they feed without coming to any harm…so that they may produce shrouds of pure silk, to your glory and praise.’ [5]

Yet not all these prayers for animals are as genial as this, for there are also exorcisms directed against the creatures that, in this fallen world, inflict harm on humans and their produce:

‘I adjure you, O creatures of many forms: worms, caterpillars, beetles and cockroaches, mice, grasshoppers and locusts, and insects of various kinds, flies and moles and ants, gadflies and wasps, and centipedes and millipedes, … injure not the vineyard, field, garden, trees or vegetables of the servant of God [name], but be gone into the wild hills and into the barren trees that God has given you for sustenance.’[6]

It will be noted here that the exorcism does not actually pray for the destruction of these baneful creatures, but only that they should depart to their proper home and cease to molest us. Even rats, hornets and spiders have their appointed place in God’s dispensation![7]

Here, by way of contrast, is a prayer by St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain (1748-1809) expressing tenderness and compassion for the animals:

‘Lord Jesus Christ, moved by your tender mercy, take pity on the suffering animals… For if a righteous man takes pity on the souls of his cattle (Prov. 12: 10. LXX), how should you not take pity on them, for you created them and you provide for them? In your compassion you did not forget the animals in the ark (Gen. 9: 19-20)… Through the good health and the plentiful number of oxen and other four-footed beasts, the earth is cultivated and its fruits increase; and your servants, who call upon your name, enjoy in full abundance the produce of their farming.’[8]

Many other examples of such prayers for the animals could be quoted, but these are enough to show that Orthodox intercessions are not exclusively anthropocentric, but encompass the entire created order. We humans are bound to God and to one another in a cosmic covenant that also includes all the other living creatures on the face of the earth: ‘I will make for you a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the creeping things of the ground’ (Hos. 2:18; cf. Gen. 9:15).[9] We humans are not saved from the world but with the world; and that means, with the animals. Moreover, this cosmic covenant is not something that we humans have devised, but it has its source in the divine realm. It is conferred upon us as a gift by God.

A striking illustration of this covenant bond is to be seen in the custom that once prevailed in the Russian countryside; perhaps it still continues today. Returning from the Easter midnight service with their newly-kindled Holy Fire, the farmers used to go into the stables with the lighted candle or lantern, and they greeted the horses and cattle with the Paschal salutation ‘Christ is Risen!’ The victory of the risen Saviour over the forces of death and darkness has meaning not for us humans alone but for the animals as well. For them also Christ has died and risen again. ‘Now all things are filled with light’ (hymn at the Easter matins).

Do animals have souls?

St Nicodemus, in the prayer quoted above, cites the words of Proverbs 12:10: ‘The righteous man shows pity for the souls of his cattle.’[10]Does this mean that animals have souls?[11]The answer depends upon what precisely we mean by the soul. The word psyche in the ancient world had a wider application than that which is customarily given in the present day to our word ‘soul’. Aristotle, for example, distinguishes three levels of soul: the vegetable, the animal, and the human.[12]According to this Aristotelian scheme, the vegetable or nutritive soul has the capacity for growth, but not for movement or sensation. The animal soul has the capacity for movement and sensation, but not for conscious thought or reason. Only the human soul is endowed with self-knowledge and the power of logical thinking. For Aristotle, then, psyche means in an inclusive fashion all expressions of life-force and vital energy, whereas in contemporary usage we limit the term ‘soul’ to the third level, the human or rational soul. If we today were to speak of potatoes or tomatoes as possessing souls, we should doubtless be considered facetious. But Aristotle was not trying to make a joke.

Employing the term ‘soul’ in a restricted sense, as denoting specifically the self-reflective rational soul, most thinkers in the West – and, on the whole, in the Christian East as well – have denied that animals are ensouled. Descartes held that they are simply intricate machines or automata. On such a view, there is a clear demarcation between human beings and the animal world. Humans alone, it is said, are created in God’s image, and they alone possess immortality, in contrast to ‘the beasts that perish’ (Ps.48 [49]: 12, 20). In modern Greek the horse is called alogon, ‘lacking logos or reason’. Animals, so it is maintained, cannot form abstract concepts, and so they are unable to construct logical arguments; they lack personal freedom and the faculty of moral choice, for they cannot discern between good and evil, but act solely from instinct.

Yet are we in fact justified in making such an emphatic division between ourselves and the other animals? (I say ‘other’, because we humans are also animals; we have the same origin as those whom we call ‘beasts’.) Many of the characteristics that we tend to regard as distinctively human are also to be found, to a varying extent, in the animals as well. This certainly was the view of early Christian writers. ‘The instinct (physis) that exists in hunting dogs and war horses’, observes Origen (c. 185- c. 254), ‘comes near, if I may say so, to reason itself.’[13]We may think of the behaviour of a monkey, confronted by a cage with a complicated latch, and with a banana inside. Seeking to open the cage, twisting the latch first in one direction and then in another, the monkey is evidently engaged in something closely similar to the process of thinking that a human being would employ in a similar situation. Animals as well as humans try to solve problems.

Origen has in view domesticated animals, but Theophilus of Antioch (late 2nd century) goes further, noting how the instinct in all animals, wild as well as domestic, leads them to mate and to care for their offspring: this indicates that they possess ‘understanding’.[14] Other Patristic authors point out that animals share with humans not only a certain degree of reason and understanding, but also memory and a wide range of emotions and affections. They display feelings of joy and grief, asserts St Basil of Caesarea (c. 330-79), and they recognize those whom they have met previously.[15] St John Climacus (c. 570- c. 649) adds that they express love for each other, for ‘they often bewail the loss of their companions’.[16] Indeed, some animals are faithfully monogamous, in a way that all too many humans conspicuously are not.

It is often argued that animals lack the power to articulate speech. Yet, as we can see from dolphins, they have other subtle ways of communicating with one another. Ants and bees are capable of social co-operation on an elaborate scale. Animals may not use tools; yet they do not simply exist within the world, but actively adapt the environment to their own needs. Birds build nests, beavers construct dams.

Nor is this all. If we are to accept the testimony of Scripture, it would seem that animals can sometimes display visionary awareness, perceiving things to which we humans are blind. In the story of Balaam’s ass (Num. 22: 21-33), the donkey sees the angel of the Lord, blocking the pathway with a drawn sword, whereas Balaam himself is unaware of the angel’s presence. As investigators of the paranormal have often discovered, animals react to unseen ‘presences’ in places reputed to be haunted. May it not be claimed that animals possess, at least in a rudimentary form, psychic insight and a capacity for spiritual intuition?

Instead of making a sharp separation between animals and human beings, would it not be wiser to keep in view the kinship that links us together? Nemesius of Emesa (late 4th century) is surely correct to insist upon the unity of all living things. Sharing as they do the same life-force, plants, animals and humankind belong to the single integrated structure of creation.[17] We and the animals are interdependent, ‘members one of another’ (Eph. 4:25). The world is variegated yet everywhere interconnected. As my history master at school used to say, ‘It all ties up, you see; it all ties up.’

Can we in fact be sure that animals do not enjoy immortality? At any rate there is good reason to believe that animals will exist in the future Age, after the Second Coming of Christ and the general resurrection of the dead. As Isaiah affirms, ‘The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion together, and a little child shall lead them’ (Isa. 11:6). When Martin Luther, distressed by the death of his pet dog, was asked whether there would be animals in heaven, he relpied: ‘There will be little dogs with golden hair, shining like precious stones.’[18]

It is not clear, however, whether these animals in the Age to come will be the same animals as we have known in this present life. Yet that is at least a possibility; we do not have good grounds for asserting that it could not conceivably be so. Let us leave the question open. Friendship and mutual love contain within themselves an element of eternity. For us to say to another human person, with all our heart. ‘I love you’, is to say by implication, ‘You will never die.’ If this is true of our love for our fellow humans, may it not be true of our love for animals? Although we are not to love animals in the same way as we love our fellow humans, yet those of us who have experienced the deeply therapeutic effect of a companion animal will certainly recognize that our reciprocal relationship contains within itself intimations of immortality.

Even if animals are not ensouled, yet they are undoubtedly sentient. They are responsive and vulnerable. As Andrew Linzey rightly says, ‘Animals are not machines or commodities but beings with their own God-given life (nephesh), individuality and personality… Animals are more like gifts than something owned, giving us more than we expect and thus obliging us to return their gifts. Far from decrying these relationships as “sentimental”, “unbalanced”, or “obsessive” (as frequently happens today), churches could point us to their underlying theological significance – as living examples of divine grace.’[19]

‘Cruelty is atheism’, said Humphrey Primatt (18th century). ‘… Cruelty is the worst of heresies.’[20] Indeed, not only should we refrain from cruelty to animals, but in a positive way we should seek to do them good, enhancing their pleasure and their unselfconscious happiness. In the words of Starets Zosima in Dostoevsky’s master-work The Brothers Karamazov: ‘Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and an untroubled joy. Do not trouble it, do not torment them, do not go against God’s purpose. Man, do not exalt yourself above the animals; they are sinless, and you, you with all your grandeur, defile the earth through your appearance upon it, and leave traces of your defilement behind you – alas, this is true of almost every one of us!’[21]

Unfortunately it has to be said that, while there can be found within Orthodoxy a rich theology of the animal creation, there exists a sad gap between theory and practice. It cannot be claimed that, in traditional Orthodox countries such as Greece, Cyprus or Romania, animals are better treated than in the non-Orthodox West; indeed, the contrary is regrettably true. We Orthodox need to kneel down before the animals and to ask their forgiveness for the evils that we inflict upon them. I have concentrated here upon the positive elements in the Orthodox teaching about animals; but we should not ignore the many ways in which we fall short of our pastoral responsibility towards the living creatures, domestic and wild, that God has given us to be our companions.

Dominion or domination?

‘Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?’ says Jesus. ‘Yet mot one of them will fall to the ground without your Father’s will’ (Matt. 10:29). ‘Not one of them’: God’s care for his creation, his love for all the things that he has made, is not merely an abstract and generalized love. He cares for each particular creature, for every individual sparrow. But Jesus then goes on to say, ‘You are of more value than many sparrows’ (Matt. 10:31). Every living thing has its unique value in God’s sight, but at the same time we dwell in a hierarchical universe, and some living things have a greater value than others.

The significance of this hierarchy is expressed in a more specific way in God’s creative utterance in the opening chapter of Genesis: ‘Then God said, “Let us make the human being in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth” ‘ (Gen. 1:26). Humans, then, are entrusted by the Creator with authority over the animals. Yet this God-given ‘dominion’ does not signify an arbitrary and tyrannical domination. We must not overlook the explicit reason that is given for this dominion: it is because we are fashioned in the image and likeness of God. That is to say, in the exercise of our dominion over the animals, we are to show the same gentleness and loving compassion that God himself shows towards the whole of his creation. Our dominion is to be God-reflective and Christlike.

How far does this dominion extend? Certainly it includes the right to use domestic animals for our service: to employ horses and oxen for ploughing, to keep cows for their milk, to breed sheep for their wool. Yet there are definite limits to what we can legitimately do. We should not adopt a narrowly instrumentalist attitude towards the animals. We are to respect their characteristic ‘life-style’, allowing them to be themselves. This is scarcely what happens with battery hens! We are not to inflict upon them excessive burdens that cause them exhaustion and suffering. We are to ensure that they are kept warm, clean, healthy and properly fed. Only so will our dominion be according to the image of divine compassion.

Does our dominion over the animals entitle us to kill and eat them? In the Orthodox Church, as in other Christian communities, there are many who on serious grounds of conscience refrain from eating animals. But the Orthodox Church as such is not in principle vegetarian. The normal teaching is that animals may indeed be killed and used for food, so long as this killing is done humanely and not wantonly. It is true that in traditional Orthodox monasteries meat is not eaten in the refectory; fish, however, is allowed. It is also true that in Lent and at certain other seasons of the year all Orthodox Christians, whether monastics or those in the ‘world’, are required to abstain from animal products. But this is not because the eating of animal products is in itself sinful, but because such fasting has disciplinary value, assisting us in our prayer and our spiritual growth. In the Gospels it is stated that Christ ate fish: ‘They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he ate before them’ (Luke 24:41-42). Since he observed the Passover, presumably he also ate meat.

Beasts and Saints

In the lives of Eastern Christian Saints – as among the saints of the West, especially in the Celtic tradition – there are numerous stories, often well authenticated, of close fellowship between the animals and holy men and women. Such accounts are not to be dismissed as sentimental fairy tales, for they have a definite theological significance. The mutual understanding between animals and humans recalls the situation before the Fall, when the two lived at peace in Paradise; and it points forward to the transfiguration of the cosmos at the end time. In the words of St Isaac the Syrian (7th century), ‘The humble person approaches the wild animals, and the moment they catch sight of him their ferocity is tamed. They come up and cling to him as to their master, wagging their tails and licking his hands and feet. For they smell on him the same smell that came from Adam before the transgression.’[22]

Not that mutual understanding between holy men and wild animals has always been complete! There is, for example, a story in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers about an unsociable lion: ‘There was a certain old man, a solitary, who lived near the river Jordan; and going into a cave because of the heat, he found there a lion. The lion began to gnash his teeth and to roar. The old man said to him, “What is annoying you? There is plenty of room here for both of us. And if you don’t like it, get up and go away.” But the lion, not taking it well, left and went outside.’[23]

Many of the 20th-century stories about humans and animals come from the Holy Mountain of Athos, the chief centre of Orthodox monasticism. I recall one such story, told to me many years ago. The monks in a small hermitage, as they prayed in the early morning, were much disturbed by the croaking of frogs in the cistern outside their chapel. The spiritual father of the community went out and addressed them: ‘Frogs! We’ve just finished the Midnight Office and are about to start Matins. Would you mind keeping quiet until we’ve finished!’ To which the frogs replied, ‘We’ve just finished Matins and are about to begin the First Hour. Would you mind keeping quiet until we’ve finished!’

Compassion for animals is vividly expressed in the writings of a recent Athonite Saint, the Russian monk Silouan (1866-1938). ‘The Lord’, he says, ‘bestows such rich grace on his chosen ones that they embrace the whole earth, the whole world within their love. … One day I saw a dead snake on my path which had been chopped into pieces, and each piece writhed convulsively, and I was filled with pity for every living creature, every suffering thing in creation, and I wept bitterly before God.’[24]

Such is in truth the compassionate love that we are called to express towards the animals. All too often they are innocent sufferers, and we should view this undeserved suffering with compunction and sympathy. What harm have they done to us, that we should inflict pain and distress upon them? As living beings, sensitive and easily hurt, they are to be viewed as a ‘Thou’, not an ‘It’, to use Martin Buber’s terminology: not as objects to be exploited and manipulated but as subjects, capable of joy and sorrow, of happiness and affliction. They are to be approached with gentleness and tenderness; and, more than that, with respect and reverence, for they are precious in God’s sight. As William Blake affirmed, ‘Every things that lives is holy.’[25]

[1] See Philip Sherrard, The Sacred in Life and Art (Ipswich: Golgonooza, 1990), pp. 71-74.

[2] Relatively little has been written on the theology of animals from an Orthodox viewpoint. Extensive material on saints and animals in both ancient and modern times can be found in the two books by Joanne Stefanatos, Animals and Man: A State of Blessedness (Minneapolis, MN: Light and Life, 1992), and Animals Sanctified: A Spiritual Journey (Minneapolis, MN: Light and Life, 2001). On the non-Orthodox side, compare the classic anthology by Helen Waddell, Beasts and Saints (London: Constable, 1934). There is not much from Eastern Christian sources in the two collections (in other respects, rich and representative) edited by Andrew Linzey, Animal Rites: Liturgies of Animal Care (London: SCM, 1999), and (with Paul Barry Clarke), Animal Rights: A Historical Anthology (New York: Columbia U. P., 2004).

[3] A Monk of the Eastern Church [Lev Gillet], Serve the Lord with Gladness: Basic Reflections on the Eucharist and the Priesthood (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1990), p.16.

[4] The Great Book of Needs (South Canaan, PA: St Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 1999), vol. 4, pp. 382-3 (translation adapted).

[5] Evchologion to Mega, ed. N. P. Papadopoulos (Athens: Saliveros, no date), p. 511.

[6] Exorcism of the Holy Martyr Tryphon, in The Great Book of Needs, vol. 3, p.53 (translation adapted).

[7] But, at a later point in this same exorcism, it is said that, if these creatures fail to obey the command to depart to their own place, ‘May he [God] kill you with pigs… and birds also will be sent by my prayers to devour you’ (The Great Book of Needs, vol. 3, p.54).

[8] Prayer of St Modestos, in Mikron Evchologion i Agiasmatarion (Athens: Apostoliki Diakonia, 1984), p. 297.

[9] See Robert Murray, The Cosmic Covenant: Biblical Themes of Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation (London: Sheed & Ward, 1992).

[10] I follow here the text of the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament used at Orthodox church services.

[11] See Kallistos Ware, ‘The Soul in Greek Christianity’, in M. James C. Crabbe (ed.), From Soul to Self (London/New York: Routledge, 1999), especially pp.62-65. For other passages in the Septuagint that mention the ‘souls’ of animals, see for example Genesis 1:21 and 24, and Leviticus 17:14.

[12] See Ware, ‘The Soul in Greek Christianity’, pp.55-56.

[13] On First Principles 3:1:3.

[14] To Antolycus 1:6.

[15] Hexaemeron 8:1 (PG 29: 165AB).

[16] The Ladder of Divine Ascent 26 (PG 88: 1028A).

[17] On the Nature of Man 1 (ed. Morani, 2:13-14; 3: 3-25).

[18] William Hazlitt (ed.), The Table Talk of Martin Luther (London: H. G. Bohn, 1857), p. 322.

[19] Animal Rites, p. 58.

[20] Quoted in Linzey, Animal Rites, p.151.

[21] Fyordor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, tr. Richard Pervear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Vintage Classics, 1991), p. 319 (translation adapted).

[22] Homily 82, in Mystic Treatises by Isaac of Nineveh, tr. A. J. Wensinck (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen, 1923), p. 386 (translation adapted).

[23] Helen Waddell, Beasts and Saints, p. 24 (translation adapted).

[24] Archimandrite Sofrony (Sakharov), Saint Silouan the Athonite (Tolleshunt Knights: Stavropegic Monastery of St John the Baptist, 1991), pp. 267, 469. But Silouan also warned against showing excessive affection towards animals (pp. 95-96).

[25] ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’, in Geoffrey Keynes (ed.), Poetry and Prose of William Blake (London: Nonesuch Press, 1948), p. 193.

DOMINION, STEWARDSHIP, PRIESTHOOD – THE THEOLOGICAL MODELS OF HOW HUMANS RELATE TO ANIMALS.

Posted on January 22, 2019 by admin

DOMINION, STEWARDSHIP, PRIESTHOOD – THE THEOLOGICAL MODELS OF HOW HUMANS RELATE TO ANIMALS. A paper given by Natalia Doran at the animal theology session of the recent IOTA conference.

THREE MODELS OF RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HUMANS AND ANIMAILS
In terms of the relationship between humans and animals, three models can be discerned in Christian theology: dominion, stewardship and priesthood. The aim of this essay is to critique the unlikely target of the stewardship model, but in order to put the discussion in context, a few words are needed about the other two as well.

DOMINION
The dominion model is based on the verses in the book of Genesis that give Man, or the Human, dominion over the fish in the sea, the fowl in the air, and the land-living animals. It is never interpreted, at least not by theologians, in such a way as to justify wanton cruelty or greed, but the concept does exist, and the interpretation falls, broadly speaking, into two categories: hard and soft dominion, as it were.

HARD DOMINION
Hard dominion presupposes:
– a hierarchy of creation, (Neoplatonic, or Dionysian, hierarchy of mineral-plant-animal-human-angelic), with humans very much at the top the material creation,
– an absolute metaphysical divide between humans and animals,
– an instrumental approach to animals (the assumption that animals were created for the sake of humans and can therefore be used for human needs),
– and, consequently, an absolute priority of human interests over those of animals.
This approach can be instantiated by Roger Scruton in the Protestant tradition, and Tristram Engelhardt in the Orthodox one.

SOFT DOMINION
Soft dominion can maintain all the above presuppositions, but stands the themes on their heads. It can allow for the hierarchy of material creation with Man at the top, but reminds us that, in the Christian tradition, the higher serves the lower, the logic being “whoever is greatest among you will be your servant”. This is the basis of Andew Linzey’s generosity theory. Professor Lynzey argues that human morality works on the principle of the ethical priority of the weak (women and children get on the life-boats first), and if we consider ourselves to be somehow “better” or “higher” that the animals, we should prioritize their interests. In the Orthodox tradition the same idea is contained in a “desert story” about the great Russian mystic St Sergius of Radonezh. St Sergius had a bear for a companion, whom he fed. One day, when food in the monastery was scarce, St Sergius was seen still feeding the bear. People told him, “Whoever heard of taking monks’ food and giving it to the bear?” To which he replied, “Whoever heard of a bear fasting?” The idea being that if we consider ourselves to be somehow better than the bear, we ought to be able to sublimate our hunger, for example into an ascetic practice, whereas the bear would just go hungry.

STEWARDSHIP
Soft dominion blends, more or less, into the concept of stewardship, teaching that we should love and care for God’s creation. Stewardship is the model of choice in a large part of modern Christian discourse. Many Christian organisations that champion animal welfare routinely use this word.

DISADVANTAGES OF THE STEWARDSHIP MODEL – JOHN ZIZIOULAS
A note of caution is sounded, however, by no less of an authority – for the Orthodox, in any case, than Bishop John (Zizioulas) of Pergamon. While acknowledging that stewardship is certainly preferable to the kind of interpretation of dominion that leads to the exploitation of nature, he nonetheless points out two main limitations, or disadvantages of the stewardship model. The first one is what Bishop John calls a “managerial” approach, treating nature as an object to be managed. The second one is a “conservatist” attitude (once again, Bishop John’s term), attempting to preserve nature in a given state, an “unrealistic, and in some cases even undesirable” project. These reservations are worth a closer look, because they are not just theoretical concerns on the part of an eminent theologian, but real problems in conservation that lead to early and violent deaths for numerous animals.

“MANAGERIAL”
The “managerial” character of the stewardship model can result in a conservation paradigm that rather arrogantly assumes that nature cannot manage itself, and needs humans to manage it, a kind of “white man’s burden”, but in relation to nature. In practice it often means killing, or “culling” individual animals who are deemed to be too numerous for the ecosystem, in the name of helping the ecosystem. The killing is said to be humane, because the animals die quickly.

EXAMPLE OF THE “MANAGERIAL” APPROACH IN ACTION
One typical example of this type of conservation in action is the killing of animals in London Royal Parks. Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, Regents Park, St James’ Park, etc., are some of the most iconic urban open spaces in the entire world. Londoners and tourists go there to relax, to reconnect with nature, and to meet the animals, from the more unusual deer and parakeets to the more common pigeons, geese and squirrels – actually, the latter are the most popular animals with the tourists. However, as a Freedom of Information request by the animal protection organisation Animal Aid revealed, the very animals whom visitors photograph and admire are killed in exceptionally high numbers. (1) In an official statement from the Royal Parks authorities the killing is justified by appealing to the need for balancing out and managing the ecosystem. The justification sounds plausible, but is nonetheless ethically problematic, because it rests on at least three questionable assumptions.

QUESTIONABLE ASSUMPTIONS THAT THE “MANAGEMENT” IS BASED ON
1 – The first questionable assumption is that ecosystems, or species, or biotic communities, are more important than individual animals, and that individual animal lives can therefore be sacrificed for their sakes. This assumption does not take due notice of animal sentience. The reason animals are accorded special moral consideration at all is because they are sentient. But the characteristic of sentience is predicated not of species or ecosystems, but of individual animals. It is not the ecosystem that feels fear or pain, but an individual animal. In this sense ecosystems are secondary: they have moral value inasmuch as individuals flourish in them, they are a means to an end. And if we then destroy individuals, for the sake of whom the ecosystems exist, in order to preserve the ecosystem, we are putting the ethical cart before the horse.

2 – The second questionable assumption is that there is no difference between our positive moral obligations, what we should do, the “do”s, and negative moral obligations, what we should avoid doing, the “don’t”s. Animals kill each other, they suffer from environmental factors, they outcompete each other. We cannot carefully balance out the ecosystem to stop all that, and it is irrational to even try. But it is realistic for us to aspire not to harm – either the ecosystem as a whole, or individual animals. So when we kill hundreds upon hundreds of animals in the name of “helping the ecosystem” it is morally counter-productive: we are taking on a positive moral obligation to balance out and manage, which is not realistic and not even strictly speaking ours to take on, while violating a negative moral obligation not to harm, which is both realistic and ours to follow.

3 – The third questionable assumption is that the killing is “humane” if the death is quick and painless. In terms of environmental science, “death is not a welfare issue”. This attitude leaves unanswered the argument from foreclosed life opportunities for the individual animals. If there is goodness in the animal’s life to do be had, and it does not come about, it is, precisely theologically speaking, a serviceable definition of evil.

“CONSERVATIST”
Going back to Bishop John’s reservations about the stewardship model, it is its “managerial” character, one could argue, that results in these ethical problems. His second reservation, the “conservatism” one, is even more serious.

PRACTICAL PROBLEMS RESULTING FROM “CONSERVATIST” CONSERVATION
The first problem is a practical one: the desire to go back to, and maintain, some kind of ideal past “golden age” state of nature sets Man on a collision course with Nature itself. Nature does not stand still, it changes all the time. It is surprisingly resilient, and can even deal with the ecological mess we create, although not always in the way we would like it to or expect it to. This Man versus Nature conflict in conservation is exemplified by the current irrational dislike for alien species. The mantra is very much “native good, alien bad”. It is irrational, because it is purely a question of fashion. In the 19th century the fashion was the opposite, it was fashionable to collect animals from all parts of the world and try to establish them on other continents. It was called acclimatization. Now the pendulum of fashion has swung in the opposite direction and, at least as far as traditional conservation is concerned, alien species are public enemy number one, regardless of their actual ecological impact. This attitude costs millions of animals their lives, and costs millions in money for the tax-payer, who is forced to pay for eradication programmes that target the species that are simply the most successful and can adapt to our economic activities and even our ecological mess.

THEORETICAL PROBLEMS OF “CONSERVATIST” CONSERVATION
In terms of theory, and precisely theology, the “conservatist” character of the stewardship model is also highly problematic. The idea that we fell from a state of perfection to which we now have to return is not an Orthodox one (St Maximus the Confessor explains this at length, for example). We fell from a state of potentiality, if anything, and “restoring a past golden age” either for ourselves or for the Creation that we were put in charge of cannot be part of the Christian agenda.

NOTHING SPECIFICALLY CHRISTIAN ABOUT STEWARDSHIP
This theological lack of clarity seems to be symptomatic of the stewardship model as a whole. It is certainly better to look after God’s Creation than to exploit it, but the idea of stewardship is, for all that, theologically almost vacuous. It has a lot of intellectual safety in it, but its practical outworking, even the benign (non-culling) kind, has nothing specifically Christian about it: we can be taking care of God’s Creation, or serving Mother Earth, or following any kind of secular agenda; our actions would be the same. And it remains obvious that even if we do manage to stop all abuse and exploitation of animals, they will still kill each other and die of disease, “nature red in tooth and claw” has not been abolished. In a world created by a loving God.

PRIESTHOOD
This dilemma can only be answered by the third theological model of how humans relate to animals, i.e. the priesthood one. Unlike the intellectually safe area of stewardship, this model is highly speculative. But the need for priesthood in relation to nature has been articulated, most famously by Bishop John (Zizioulas). What brings this essay to its conclusion is an attempt to sketch a picture of what that model might look like, an attempt based on the writings of modern theologians: Bishop John (Zizioulas), Panayotis Nellas and Bishop Anthony of Sourozh, as well as traditional giants of classical Christian metaphysics: St Maximus the Confessor, Dionysius the Areopagite and the Cappadocian fathers.

SKETCH BASED ON THE THEOLOGY OF DIONYSIUS
One way of introducing the priesthood model would use the Dionysian/Neoplatonic hierarchy of Creation that was mentioned at the beginning: mineral-vegetable-animal-human. If we consider every tier of this hierarchy, we notice that humans consist of the same chemical elements as the rocks, have nutrition and growth like plants, have feelings and movement like animals, as well as their own specific features. This enables theologians to speak of Man as a microcosm, we have in us everything that is found in the rest of the material Creation. Furthermore, we have the cognitive capacity for abstract thinking, which allows us to conceive of Creation as a whole and refer it to God in the act of Eucharist, and then receive it back from God as transfigured life that, through us, can pass back to the rest of the material Creation. Here the word priest is used in its primary meaning of mediator with the Divine.

SKETCH BASED ON THE THEOLOGY OF ST MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR
Another way of expressing the same idea would make use of St Maximus’ famous concept of logoi. In his system of thought, there are logoi of individuals, of species, of genera, and they all find their unity in the one Logos of Christ. These logoi are not just empty universals, they are, as one theologian put it, “invitations to relation”, something that connects us organically with the rest of Creation: we are material objects, we are living beings, we are sentient creatures. This gives Man the capacity to recapitulate the World and to provide a link between the material and the immaterial in the grand Cosmic Liturgy. According to St Maximus, this is our destiny.

PRIMACY OF THE PRIESTHOOD MODEL
The above statement is a very lofty one indeed. But it is worth noting that many Fathers, from the very beginning of the formulation of classical theology, have seen Man as the bridge between the material and the Divine. Which suggests that the priesthood model, although very challenging in terms of academic theology, is the only one that can do justice to the subject of who we are and how we relate to animals.

NOTES
1 – The Freedom of Information process also revealed that no scientific assessment of the parks’ carrying capacity has been undertaken and that non-lethal methods of population control, though mentioned in policy statements, are not employed.

A THEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE INTERCONNECTION OF CLIMATE CHANGE, DIETARY CHOICES AND ANIMAL SUFFERING

Posted on January 17, 2019 by admin

A THEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE INTERCONNECTION OF CLIMATE CHANGE, DIETARY CHOICES AND ANIMAL SUFFERING

This is a revised version of my article in the latest edition of the International Journal of Orthodox Theology and part of my book Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Animal Suffering: Ancient Voices in Modern Theology. It formed the basis of my recent presentation at the IOTA conference in Romania in January 2019.

A THEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE INTERCONNECTION OF CLIMATE CHANGE, DIETARY CHOICES AND ANIMAL SUFFERING

The Living Tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Church

Some might argue that the topics covered in this article are outside the sphere of Eastern Orthodox theological or ethical discourse. This is not the case. We have both early and contemporary teachings, which give us the authority to engage with these important subjects.

“Which of you, having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well, will not immediately pull him out on a Sabbath day?” (Lk 14:5) ¹

“Now, among the ‘all things’ our world must be embraced. It too, therefore, was made by His Word, as Scripture tells us in the book of Genesis.” (St. Irenaeus) ²

“And do not wonder that the whole world was ransomed; for it was no mere man, but the only-begotten Son of God, who died on its behalf.” (St. Cyril of Jerusalem) ³

“God has foreseen all, He has neglected nothing. His eye, which never sleeps, watches over all. He is present everywhere and gives to each being the means of preservation. If God has not left the sea urchin outside His providence, is He without care for you?” (St. Basil) ⁴

An example of contemporary authority is in H. A. H. Bartholomew’s address to Eastern Orthodox Scholars:

“Orthodoxy is a faith at once rooted in the past, yet at the same time, a Church looking toward the future. It is characterized by a profound sense of continuity with the times and teachings of the Apostolic Church and the Church of the Fathers; but it is also a Church that draws from its rich heritage in order to respond to modern challenges and dilemmas. It is precisely this dual nature that permits Orthodoxy to speak boldly about critical contemporary issues-precisely because it is a “living tradition”.” ⁵

This article enacts this “living tradition” by examining the challenging contemporary issues of animal suffering in relation to climate change, dietary choices and animal-based food production. The issue of dietary choice is one issue among many that are important for billions of humans across the globe, not only because of the animal suffering involved, but also because of the link between our choice of an animal based diet and the significant impact it has upon our environment and human health. An exhaustive investigation of the interconnection of these subjects is not possible here, as it would require its own monograph. I have tried instead to balance the need for facts and realism rather than platitudes, whilst limiting the material used and being mindful of the need to be compassionate to the reader. This discussion specifically examines the practical implications and animal suffering involved in our choice of food, together with the soteriological implications.

An Inconvenient Truth – Sacrifice and Spiritual Revolution

The continuing challenge before us all is how we are to apply both early and contemporary Orthodox teachings on compassionate care for “all things” in the creation and extending our understanding of community, justice, mercy and rights, to the animals within the intensive farming system. Stylios (1989) suggests that we are to lead a “life of justice” ⁶which is interpreted by Harakas as “the avoidance of immoral profiteering, injustice and exploitation”. This aligns with Met. Kallistos’s teaching on “evil profits” and the “immoral use of animals” in the intensive farming industry. ⁷ Harakas also states that justice is the “right ordering” of human nature ⁸ where the inherent value of creation demands a responsible approach, “its proper treatment.” ⁹ In this sense, Harakas shares similar views to Bonhoeffer (1971)¹⁰ who states that duties flow from rights, which he accorded to the natural world. H. A. H. Bartholomew and Met. John Zizioulas express a similar view when they counsel us to extend our understanding of community, to be a voice to the rest of creation whose rights are violated ¹¹ and to extend our love to the non-human world. ¹²H. A. H. Bartholomew advocates extending justice “beyond one’s fellow human beings to the entire creation”:

“One of the more fundamental problems that constitute the basis of the ecological crisis is the lack of justice prevailing in our world…The liturgical and patristic tradition…considers as just, that person who is compassionate and gives freely, using love as his or her sole criterion. Justice extends even beyond one’s fellow human beings to the entire creation. The burning of forests, the criminal exploitation of natural resources…all of these constitute expressions of transgressing the virtue of justice.”¹³

Eastern Orthodox theologians have repeatedly called for humanity to change its ethos from one based upon a theory of continual consumption, to one with a Eucharistic and aesthetic ethos of love, virtue, sacrifice, abstinence and purification of sin. In essence, they remind us of patristic teachings to restrict and control our desires. H. A. H. Bartholomew confirms Orthodox teaching on the damaging and continuing mind-set of domination rather than loving dominion:

“Unfortunately, humanity has lost the liturgical relationship between the Creator God and the creation; instead of priests and stewards, human beings have been reduced to tyrants and abusers of nature.” ¹⁴

“All too often they are innocent sufferers, and we should view this undeserved suffering with compunction and sympathy.” ¹⁵

“As living beings, sensitive and easily hurt, they are to be viewed as a ‘Thou’, not an ‘It’, to use Martin Buber’s terminology: not as objects to be exploited and manipulated but as subjects, capable of joy and sorrow, of happiness and affliction.” ¹⁶

H. E. H. Bartholomew’s use of the word ‘nature’ indicates that his teaching incorporates animals and corroborates the argument that the abuse and exploitation of animals has negative consequences not only for the abused animals in the form of physical pain, suffering and psychological fear but also negative soteriological implications for humankind. I submit that in addition to those who perpetrate acts of cruelty and exploitation, those who know of such acts but are indifferent to them and those who know but shy away from trying in some way to alleviate the abuse, are in a sense giving tacit approval to that process and are accessories after the fact. He states that for Orthodox Christians this ascetic ethos “is not negation, but a reasonable and tempered use of the world.” He also draws our attention to the inconvenient truth of the missing dimension and need for sacrifice:

“This need for an ascetic spirit can be summed up in a single key word: sacrifice. This is the missing dimension of our environmental ethos and ecological action.” ¹⁷

He clarifies this point with teachings on self-limitation in consumption and interprets self-restraint in terms of love, humility, self-control, simplicity and social justice, all of which are essential teachings for our choice of diet and the products we choose to purchase. Crucially, he acknowledges the fundamental problem of inaction and the difficulties in effecting change:

“We are all painfully aware of the fundamental obstacle that confronts us in our work for the environment. It is precisely this: how to move from the theory to action, from word to deeds.” ¹⁸

“For this spiritual revolution to occur, we must experience radical metanoia, a conversion of attitudes, habits and practices, for ways that we have misused or abused God’s Word, God’s gifts, and God’s creation.” ¹⁹

These are profound teachings and reminiscent of the warnings from the prophets of old. This spiritual revolution is also required for a conversion in the way we view animals and thus the way we treat them. Many of his teachings urge us to reflect the asceticism of the early Fathers and the urgent need for changes in human behaviour. In our greed and lust for ever increasing profit, we “violently and cunningly subordinate and exploit creation.” This not only destroys creation but also “undermines the foundations and conditions necessary for the survival of future generations.” This aligns with Met. Kallistos’ comment on “evil profit” in chapter six of my book and St. Irenaeus’s teaching that we must not use our freedom as a “cloak of maliciousness”. It also hints at the environmental crisis, a modern example of the cosmic disharmony the Fathers frequently highlighted, where various forms of injustice pollute the land; where natural disasters and starvation are the result of the evil that people have done and that this evil pollutes the earth and angers God. Arguably little appears to have changed, for we are beginning to experience the devastating results of our continued abuse and misuse of creation in general and animals in particular. Our inability to move from theory to practice indicates that our weaknesses make it difficult for us to attain the Christian ideals. What is different however, is the lack of time we have to make significant changes to our behaviour.

Dietary Choices and Environmental Degradation

Keselopoulos (2001) addresses some of the human and environmental problems associated with the animal-based diet and food industry. He explains that famines in Africa, caused by drought and desertification, are due to the monoculture of commodities to supply food for the animals of the North. The result is:

“The cynical phenomenon of reserves of dried milk being sent to dying children in Africa, while their own land, instead of producing traditional foodstuffs for local use, is made barren by the monoculture of animal foodstuffs destined to feed Europe’s cattle.” ²⁰

This is a crucial point. Our misuse of the land and water in order to meet our ever-increasing desire for animal-based food products has created an imbalance in the natural world, which results in harm to both humans and animals. One forensic question arising here is, is it a sin to continue to use this system and its products once we become aware of its devastating effects? Keselopoulos speaks to the point by explicitly linking our use of animals as food with the practice of aestheticism, compassion and pity for the natural world:

“Thus, aestheticism prophetically throws into high relief the prerequisite of compassion and pity for both nature and the beauty of the world. This is what can impede the downward spiral into barbarism that murders the animal kingdom by genetically mutating animals raised for beef or dairy products into freaks of nature and makes the land infertile.” ²¹

Keselopoulos not only illustrates the tension between economic interests and animal suffering, particularly in the animal-based food production industries, but also that fasting limits the number of deaths. In so doing, he affirms the teachings of H. A. H. Bartholomew and others on greed and evil profits; St. Gregory’s teachings on use not misuse and of the need for sacrifice. I condense his comments:

“If the motives for all these human activities is insatiable greed and the desire for easy profits, then fasting, as a voluntary self-restriction of human needs, can enable man to free himself, at least to a certain degree, from his desires. He can again discover his pristine character, which is to turn toward God, his neighbour and creation, with a genuinely loving disposition. Abstinence from meat, observed by monks all year long limits the amount of death we provoke in our relationship to the world. Abstinence from certain food simultaneously aims at protecting, even for a short period of time animals that in great numbers are so cruelly devoured by man. The spirit of fasting that we are obliged to preserve today throughout our culture requires that we change course in our relationship to nature from a predatory thirst for blood to that state of gratitude, which is the distinctive mark of the Eucharist.” ²²

I concur with his analysis, which aligns with the latest scientific research. ²³ Met. John Zizioulas provides a similar argument:

“Restraint in the consumption of natural resources is a realistic attitude and ways must be found to put a limit to the immense waste of natural materials.” ²⁴

If this argument is apposite for wastage of ‘resources’, then it is equally apposite for the wastage of animal life. I interpret his use of ‘resource’ as referring to the inanimate creation but as there is, once again, room for confusion on its meaning, I remind the reader of the need for greater mindfulness in our choice of language. Despite Met. John’s belief that it would be unrealistic to expect our societies to follow an asceticism that echoes the lives of the saints, many of whom were vegetarian, millions of people choose this non-violent diet. They understand that whilst they as individuals may not be able to change the abusive practices of the animal food industries, they have the freedom to choose the alternative non-violent diet advocated by God and do so out of compassion and mercy for the animals and the environment. Met. Anthony of Sourozh indicates that the vegan/vegetarian diet is one to emulate and the tragedy of not doing so:

“It is frightening to imagine that Man, who was called to lead every being along the road to transfiguration, to the fullness of life, came to the point that he could no longer ascend to God, and was compelled to obtain his food by the killing of those, which he should have led to perfection. This is where the tragic circle closes. We find ourselves inside this circle. All of us are still incapable of living only for eternal life and according to the word of God, although the saints have in a large measure returned to God’s original conception of Man. The saints show us that we can through prayer and spiritual endeavour gradually free ourselves from the need to feed on the flesh of animals, and, becoming more and more assimilated to God, require less and less of it.” ²⁵

This is important recognition from Met. Anthony. He links the eating of animals with a loss of human freedom and our inability to transfigure our fallen lives and ascend to God. Keselopoulos argues that vegan/vegetarianism breaks this circle. The fact that many ascetics were and are vegan/vegetarian ought to remind us of God’s original dietary choice and thus the most appropriate dietary path to follow. It is important to remember that whilst God gave us the dispensation to eat meat, He does not command or force us to do so; we retain the freedom to return to God’s choice. Perhaps if Met. Anthony had known more about the cruelty involved in animal food production he may also have chosen to become vegan/vegetarian. Met. Kallistos recognizes this possibility:

“Methods such as factory farming are rather new and I feel that if more people knew what happened they may well give up eating meat…People who live in towns like me eat the products but don’t know too much about the background and I think if I knew more about the background I might feel I might have to become a vegetarian.” ²⁶

It is interesting to note that he also acknowledges that it is easy to find information available on the web, in reports and research and makes the obvious point. So perhaps it is more that people do not want to know, rather than not being able to access the information. Here we see a trace of Kahneman and St. Paul; we know what to do but choose not to act in the right ways. If we as individuals or as leaders of our Church advocated the non-violent diet of vegan/vegetarianism, this would not only reduce the number of animals who suffer but also reduce the many environmental problems associated with animal food production. Our increasing desire to consume animal products has resulted in the breeding of such vast numbers of animals that severe negative impacts have arisen for our environments. Knight (2013) provides us with the following important scientific information:

In 2006, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (Steinfeld et al,) calculated that when measured as carbon dioxide (CO2), 18 percent of worldwide greenhouse gases (GHGs) –totalling 7.5 billion tons annually, result from the production of cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, camels, horses, pigs and poultry. These emissions result from land-clearing for feed crop production and grazing, from the animals themselves, and from the transportation and processing of animal products. In contrast, all forms of transportation combined were estimated to produce around 13.5 percent of global GHGs. The GHGs produced by animal production are composed of CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, and ammonia. Steinfeld and colleagues calculated that the livestock sector is responsible for 9 percent of anthropogenic CO2 emissions-that is, those attributable to human activity-which mostly arise from deforestation caused by the encroachment of feed crops and pastures. Animal production occupies some 30 percent of the Earth’s land surface and is increasingly driving deforestation, particularly in Latin America. [Circa] seventy percent of previously forested Amazonian land has now been converted to pastures, with feed crops covering a large part of the remainder.

Animals kept for production emit 37 percent of anthropogenic methane, which has been calculated as exerting seventy-two times the global warming potential (GWP) of CO2, over a twenty year time frame, mostly from gastrointestinal fermentation by ruminants (particularly, cows and sheep). They also emit 65 percent of anthropogenic nitrous oxide with 296 times the GWP of CO2, the great majority of which is released from manure. They also emit 64 percent of anthropogenic ammonia, which contributes significantly to acid rain and ecosystem acidification.

In 2009 Goodland and Anhang calculated that at least 22 billion tons of CO2 emissions attributable to animal production were not counted and at least 3 billion tons were misallocated by Steinfeld and colleagues. Uncounted sources included livestock respiration, deforestation and methane underestimates. They concluded that animal production actually accounts for at least 51 percent of worldwide GHGs and probably significantly more. Although the precise figures remain under study, it is nevertheless clear that the GHGs resulting from animal production are one of the largest contributors to modern climate change.²⁷

Although the precise figures remain under study, it is nevertheless clear that the impact of the animal-based diet on global warming continues to be underestimated and underreported. It is true that this situation is changing, but one wonders how many people have actually read the recent IPCC and other reports, which give us updates on these figures and the extent of ice-melt in Antarctica, etc.

Whilst Orthodox does not have a legalistic system, I believe we would fail in our duty to the laity and indeed our role as ‘Priest of Creation’ if we do not do more than is currently the case. Using the argument of self-interest as a motivating factor, we can see how abstinence from an animal-based diet could have immediate beneficial impact on climate change, our water sources, health and thus our future survival. We do not need to wait for world/government agreements in order to effect real and immediate change.

This partially addresses the human and environmental aspect of this theme but what about the animals, what do we know of their suffering in these industries? If we as individuals or as leaders of our Church are to engage with the theological and ethical implications of animal suffering, we need to acquaint ourselves with the available knowledge not only on the environmental impact of an animal-based diet but also on the suffering involved in the systems used. There is a tremendous amount of research in this area and here I condense some of that research whilst referencing others:

In order to meet the requirements of industrial production and high-density housing, animals are routinely branded with hot irons, de-horned, de-beaked, de-tailed and castrated without any sedation or painkillers…piglets have tails cut off and males are castrated by crushing or pulling off their testicles without analgesics, even though these procedures cause “considerable pain” (Broom and Fraser 1997). The same happens to lambs…The price for the mutilation is high for individual animals. Piglets show signs of pain for up to a week afterwards (including trembling, lethargy, vomiting and leg shaking). In lambs, stress hormone levels take a huge leap and they show signs of significant pain for four hours or more. Dairy calves who are dehorned show pain for six or more hours afterwards (Turner 2006). Birds too are mutilated without analgesics; beaks are trimmed and at times inside toes are also cut. After debeaking the animals will experience acute pain for circa two days and chronic pain lasts for up to six weeks (Duncan 2001). As stock numbers are vast, illness and injuries are likely to go undetected and result from high density, lack of space, lack of mental stimulation and physical exhaustion; physical and mental health problems quickly arise (Broom & Fraser 2007). Veal calves are often kept in tiny enclosures and tied down by their necks and quickly succumb to “abnormal behaviour and ill health” (Turner 2006; European Commission 1995). Intensive egg production weakens bones and leads to lameness, osteoporosis and painful fractures as all calcium and minerals are used for eggs causing “both acute and chronic pain”…it can also lead to internal haemorrhages, starvation and ultimately death which will be painful and “lingering” (Webster 2004:184). Cows suffer from mastitis and lameness (Stokka et al, 1997) and kept pregnant to keep milk yields high, (Vernelli 2005; Turner 2006).²⁸

There is no other reason for these practices other than the desire for increased profit; the “evil profit” that Met. Kallistos describes. One question arising here is whether the required “spiritual revolution” should apply to the animals within such industries? If the answer is no, we ought to examine why we have chosen to exclude trillions of animals from receiving compassion, mercy and justice. If we conclude that they are merely for that use, then I believe we are in danger of continuing the mind-set of domination, which in turn, indicates that only human suffering is relevant to God. I submit that this mind-set is against the teachings of the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church and akin to the type of heresies the early church Fathers fought so hard to overcome.

Having given a small indication of the suffering endured during the rearing of animals, we should also consider their death. Most people no doubt believe that the killing of animals is ‘humane’ and undertaken close to home. Research provides evidence that even in countries with strict animal welfare laws, many millions are likely to suffer in the process of transportation and slaughter. Live animals are routinely transported by road, rail, sea or air across continents. All animal welfare charities agree that long distance transport causes enormous suffering through overcrowding, exhaustion, dehydration, pain and stress. For example, in the EU, up to 35 million chickens are dead by the time they reach the slaughterhouse. Australia exports around four million live sheep every year, mostly to the Middle East. These animals can travel up to fifty hours by road before they start the three weeks journey by sea and a further journey by road in the importing country. It is estimated that tens of thousands of sheep die before reaching their destination. Despite the Australian government’s implementation of an export supply-chain assurance scheme, investigations by animal welfare groups have documented terrible suffering at slaughter after export. Canada transports farm animals thousands of miles within its borders and to America. Animals can experience exceptionally harsh conditions as the climate changes from freezing cold to the scorching sun. The trucks used are often without air conditioning. In India, cattle travel vast areas as only two states are legally allowed to slaughter cows. Animals are often brutally treated and overcrowded during transport, resulting in severe injuries and fatalities. Thousands of animals travel from South America and reared for beef production in Asia and Africa. These journeys often involve the animals spending weeks at sea and result in inhumane slaughter. This is in addition to the problems of transportation, when delays, errors or accidents occur and thousands of animals die in tragic circumstances.

The spread of diseases is another worrying factor. Diseases such as bluetongue virus, foot and mouth disease, avian influenza and swine fever can be directly attributable to the live transportation of farm animals. Moving livestock long distances to markets and slaughterhouses can spread infectious diseases between animals around a country. Animals can travel from country to country with few medical checks, which can result in the spread of disease. In 2007, some cattle imported from continental Europe arrived with bluetongue virus because they had not been tested before their journeys began. The suffering often does not end when the journey is over. Duncan informs us that:

“Of all the things we do to our animals on the farm the things we do to them in the 24 hours before they are slaughtered reduce their welfare the most.” ²⁹

In many countries animals are brutally loaded, unloaded and moved using electric goads, sticks, ropes, chains and sharp objects. Standards of slaughter vary. Some animals are inadequately stunned or not stunned at all before slaughter:

“Birds such as broiler chickens and turkeys are pulled and dragged by their feet and shoved into crates with great haste (up to thousands per hour). Dislocations and broken bones are common, as are internal injuries and death. Due to problems with stunning, birds face greater risk of missing the stunning machine and of entering the scalding tank alive and conscious.” ³⁰

“Bleeding techniques can be poor, which means the pigs may regain consciousness whilst hanging upside down from the slaughter line shackles with a puncture wound in their chest. These animals will desperately try to right themselves, unable to comprehend what is happening to them. (Grandin 2003). ” ³¹

“Fish placed on ice take up to 15 minutes to lose consciousness, eventually dying through suffocation, and means that fish may be conscious when their gills are cut off.” ³²

Gross informs us that pigs are not the only animals to regain consciousness during the slaughter process. When we become aware of the harmful realities of consuming animal food products, we understand why Met. Kallistos describes his experience of intensive farming as unchristian and the financial gains as “evil profit.” One question that begs asking here is where is the compassion, justice, mercy and inclusion into our community called for by the Ecumenical Patriarch, for the animals used in these systems?

Having outlined in my book, an Eastern Orthodox theory of love and compassion to all creatures, we must again ask if we are to apply it to animals in the food production industry. Again, if the answer is no, we ought to examine why we have chosen to exclude trillions of animals from inclusion in our spiritual revolution. If the answer is yes, we have the challenge of how we are to apply teachings on extending our community, justice and rights to the animals within these systems. This will not be easy, for those who use such practices or consume its products need to accept that changes are necessary.

In the context of this part of the discussion, there appear to be only two solutions: a) the animal food production industries stop reproducing vast numbers of animals. b) Consumers reduce or refrain from animal-based food products, thus reducing the demand, the number of animals reared, the environmental damage they cause and the overall suffering incurred. The first seems unlikely since the industry meets the demands of the consumer and makes huge profits in the process. The solution therefore, appears to lie with the consumer. This is where the leaders of our Church can play a significant role. If individuals were encouraged to refrain or reduce their consumption of animal-based food products this would be both an effective and immediate way of decreasing the demand, the animal suffering involved and the damage to the environment and human health. Basing the argument upon the likelihood that people will choose self-interest over altruism, Christians may be more accepting of this teaching if they knew of the health problems associated with an animal-based diet. Whilst this information is usually available via the health professions and the media there is also an important role for the Church. Patristic teachings evidence the destruction of God’s creation because of human passions and one frequent example is the self-centred love of gluttony. St. Gregory offers guidance:

“Use, do not misuse…Do not indulge in a frenzy of pleasures. Don’t make yourself a destroyer of absolutely all living things, whether they be four footed and large or four-footed and small, birds, fish, exotic or common, a good bargain or expensive. The sweat of the hunter ought not to fill your stomach like a bottomless well that many men digging cannot fill.”³³

A question arising here is if gluttony is a sin, is the killing of animals to feed this gluttony also a sin? St. Gregory’s use of negative language to describe the process: pillages, eradicates, artful hedonists, may indicate that this is so. Whilst St. John Chrysostom does not identify the food in the following, he does acknowledge the link between food and ill health:

“Don’t you daily observe thousands of disorders stemming from laden tables and immoderate eating?” ³⁴

Russell (1980) informs us that:

“The control of the appetite was never over; it is instructive that it is gluttony as much as sexuality which was their continuous field of battle.” ³⁵

Many people are ignorant of the detrimental health effects of consuming animal products. This, in part, is due to the vast sums of money used to market animal products as healthy, yet when we examine the research into diet and ill health we see a direct correlation between adopting the animal-based diets in developing countries with an increase in Western health problems, which includes obesity. In the UK, obesity has more than trebled in the last 25 years with nearly a third of adults and a fourth of children diagnosed as obese. Health experts believe that obesity is linked to a wide range of health problems, including some cancers ; diabetes; heart disease; high blood pressure; arthritis; infertility; indigestion; gallstones; stress, anxiety, depression; snoring and sleep apnoea.

Consuming animal-based food products is the norm for many cultures and despite numerous health warnings associated with animal food products, vast numbers of people continue to eat themselves into ill-health. Again, we see the importance of Kahneman’s work. Attitudes to diet will not be easy to change without education. Certainly, such education should be ongoing in schools and colleges; however this is another area where the leaders of the Church can play a significant role.

Moving to the soteriological implications of our actions H. A. H. Bartholomew offers some clarity. He begins with listing environmental calamities such as nuclear explosions, radioactive waste, toxic rain and polluting oil-spills then unusually, he adds a form of animal abuse to the list:

“We may also think of the force-feeding of animals so that they will provide more food for us. All this constitutes an insolent overthrow of natural order.” ³⁶

This is a rare and essential teaching for the animal-based food production aspect of animal suffering. His acknowledgement of the violence and inhumane production processes involved is clear recognition that force-feeding animals is an example of the exploitation of ‘nature’. His language reminds us of St Gregory’s negative language in his teaching on “Use; do not misuse!” He also acknowledges the ill effects of the insolent overthrowing of the natural order to human health:

“Indeed, it is becoming generally accepted that the disruption of the natural order has negative effects on the health and well-being of human beings, such as the contemporary plagues of humanity, cancer, the syndrome of post virus fatigue, heart diseases, anxieties and a multitude of other diseases.” ³⁷

His acknowledgement of the link between exploitative food production practices and harm to animal and human health is also critically important, for it highlights the interconnectedness of the created world. The question arising here is whether he has identified these processes as sins? A related and equally challenging moral and ethical question is whether it is right to kill innocent animals in medical research to treat disorders that have arisen from this form of human self-indulgence? H. A. H. Bartholomew’s teaching on humanity’s exploitation of nature in “greedy and unnatural ways” may help us to answer that question. I argue that these practices indicate not only the desire for evil profit but also continuing human arrogance and the sinful misuse of our freedom.

The teaching on the overthrowing of the natural order is equally applicable to another aspect of animal suffering, i.e. their loss of freedom. Animals kept in pens or cages are restricted in both their movements and natural behaviours. Examples would include gestation and veal crates; ‘battery’ and crush-cages; small cages or enclosures for animals with fur, or wild animals kept for human curiosity and entertainment. Keeping animals in these conditions causes physiological and psychological distress and ill-health. It seems reasonable therefore to include his specific example of force-feeding animals and my additions to it, as further examples of sins against animals. H. A. H. Bartholomew also speaks to the point on the negative soteriological implications for those who by their inaction and/or use of the products are part of the problem:

“We all share the responsibility for such tragedies, since we tolerate those immediately responsible for them and accept a portion of the fruit that results from such an abuse of nature.” ³⁸

In applying his teaching to our theme, I can state that whilst we may not be killing or rearing the animals in inhumane ways, by our demand for animal-based food products, fur clothing or entertainment, we are part of the reason why such practices and processes exist. Essentially, we create the demand and the market. A helpful analogy here is the receiving of stolen goods. The challenge of moving from theory to practice remains.

A Role For The Church.

Eastern Orthodoxy teaches on the need for a spiritual revolution and on the extension of justice, rights, mercy, compassion, nonviolence and inclusion of nature into our community. We are also to be a ‘voice for the voiceless’, which indicates that we ought to act in ways that reduce animal suffering. What then are we as Eastern Orthodox Christians and the Church to say when we learn of the animal suffering involved in both the rearing and death of animals within these systems? Limouris speaks to the point when linking our Christian duty to identify injustices, which brings us back to personal sacrifice:

“Christian men and women must also have the courage to spell out the injustices, which they see, even though this might require them to make personal sacrifices. These sacrifices will include costly involvement and action.” ³⁹

“We must repent for the abuses which we have imposed upon the natural world…We must work and lobby in every way possible…For ourselves, this means a recommitment to the simple life which is content with necessities and…a new affirmation of self-discipline, a renewal of the spirit of asceticism.” ⁴⁰

“Words, however – even changed attitudes – will no longer suffice. Wherever we find ourselves, as Christians we need to act in order to restore the integrity of creation. A creative, cooperative, active and determined plan of action is required for implementation.” ⁴¹

If it is our individual Christian duty to identify injustices and act to prevent them, it seems reasonable to conclude that it ought to be the responsibility of the leaders of the Church. What then are the possibilities for us as individuals and leaders of our Church? Changing the attitudes of those who run these industrial processes will be difficult if not impossible without intervention from outside. This is one area where the leaders of the Eastern Orthodox Church could play a significant role just as they have done in their engagement with environmental issues. Examples here are H. A. H. Bartholomew’s Religion and Science environmental symposiums; his visit to the World Economic Forum at Davos and his recent coordinated action with Pope Francis where each convened business, scientific, and academic leaders in Rome and Athens respectively, to hasten the transition from fossil fuels to safe renewable energy. It is also possible therefore, to have this type of coordinated action for discussions on the environmental impact of an animal-based diet.

In my book we learn that some in authority are beginning to define cruelty, abuse and exploitation of animals within the animal-based food industries as a sin and an abuse of human freedom. We also have the following teaching from Abbot Khalil:

“Christians need to avoid eating meat wherever possible out of mercy for the animals and care for creation.”⁴²

I have been a vegan/vegetarian for 50 years and never before tried to ‘convert’ others to this diet. Times have changed. All of us ought to speak out to address the very real and imminent catastrophe of increasing climate change. In my work, I have repeatedly argued that abstinence from animal-based food products is a crucial element of effectively reducing animal suffering, environmental degradation and global warming. In defining the sin of exploitation and abuse in contemporary animal-based food production practices, the leaders of our Church would also be reaffirming Christ’s teaching in Luke 14:5 and the early Church tradition that we should act to prevent the suffering of God’s non-human beings. I argue that it will also be effective in moving our spiritual journey towards the likeness of an all-loving and compassionate God.

I am encouraged that those with authority urge us to be a voice for the voiceless and I am encouraged that the Eastern Orthodox environmental debate urges actions rather than words. This process has begun via Eastern Orthodox discussions on environmental issues and I respectfully submit that these discussions must now extend into the areas of animal suffering that arise from the same mind-set of domination over the natural world. I am also encouraged by teachings on the negative soteriological implications for those who inflict abuse, those who are indifferent to it and those who know, are concerned, but do not act to reduce the suffering. I repeat H. A. H. Bartholomew’s important teaching on the need for action:

“We are all painfully aware of the fundamental obstacle that confronts us in our work for the environment. It is precisely this: how to move from the theory to action, from word to deeds.” ⁴³

Part of this process requires us to be mindful of our language. If we continually refer to animals as ‘the environment’, ‘nature’ or ‘resources’, it is unlikely that the majority of the laity will ever view them as part of our community, worthy of justice, rights and mercy and, unlikely to consider them as worthy of our love and compassion. Let us instead, begin to refer to them as animals or better still cows, sheep, chickens, etc., so that we facilitate the process of seeing them as individual beings loved by God, rather than as units of production or disposable life.

Sherrard’s description of our collective psychosis- our continuing walk to the abyss, indicates that we as individuals have not sufficiently understood Eastern Orthodox teachings and the leaders of our Church and our academics must address this failure. Part of this process will be to ensure that our priests and laity understand the Eastern Orthodox teachings related to animal suffering. For this to occur we need our leaders to engage with the subject. It has, apparently, been difficult for Christian Church leaders to advocate a vegan/vegetarian diet. This form of diet is almost the equivalent of a permanent strict fast, which requires daily sacrifice. Some have argued that we should promote the Orthodox fast and I agree that if everyone accepted this, it would certainly help. But we have little time. The scientists give us approximately 12 years to ‘turn the ship around’. We must be realistic. The question therefore is how realistic is it to expect others to adopt the complicated Orthodox fasting system? That said, there is nonetheless a significant role for the Orthodox Church. The concept of sacrifice is alien to many in contemporary societies but this is precisely where the leaders of the Eastern Orthodox Church have their role. Eastern Orthodoxy has the ascetic tradition and thus the authority to promote a diet that requires daily sacrifice, unlike other Christian faiths, secular ethicists or environmentalists. In order to facilitate this possibility, I end my discussion on the animal-based diet by presenting some practical proposals:

1) Orthodox leaders could urge Orthodox Christians and those outside our faith, to give up animal-based diets entirely or, as a first step, abstain from foods produced in intensive farming practices. In so doing, the impact on animal suffering, human health and environmental damage would be enormous.

2) If our Patriarchs and Bishops were to declare their intention not to consume or provide animal-based food products at their meetings, this would send a strong message and focus the minds of both clergy and laity.

3) Our leaders could affirm the sin of inflicting harm upon God’s animal creation in order to achieve ever-increasing profits.

An essential part of changing the view of animals as ‘disposable lives’ will require the education of our priests on the many problems associated with the animal food production industries. Seminary modules can be adapted from the module framework, outlined in Appendix B of my book. Such training would enable our priests to teach a coherent message that will result in the reduction of animal suffering, improvements in our health and the environment and in advancing our spiritual journeys. I have been invited to speak at the forthcoming Summit in Istanbul, where I am to ‘inspire’ the leaders of our seminaries and academies to include a module on environmental and animal care. I ask for your prayers in this important work.

As a way of further facilitating the above, the Pan-Orthodox Concern for Animals charity, is working in an ecumenical context, to produce an ethical framework to guide the policy and practice of Churches and other Christian institutions, about farmed animal welfare. This initiative aims to develop resources and work with institutions to support the development and implementation of policy in this area. The endorsement of Eastern Orthodox Church involvement in such initiatives sends a clear message to the laity and manufacturers that it is time to change their practices.

Finally, to be clear, I do not state that all those working within this industry are cruel or evil people, though there are many recorded instances of people exhibiting such tendencies. What I do say, is that the system itself is a form of legalized violence to animals which is contributing to climate change, human ill-health and animal suffering, thus repeating the cosmic disharmony discussed by the early church Fathers. I submit that it is incompatible with early and contemporary teachings of the Eastern Orthodox Church and ought therefore, to be rejected.

Ref: 1. Luke 14:5. 2. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 2.2:5; 4.18.6. 3. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Homilies, 13:2; see also 13:35 & 15:3. Note Cyril of Jerusalem’s point on stewardship, Catechetical Homilies, Homily 15:26; also, Mt 5:16. 4.Basil,Hexaemeron 7:5. 5. H. A. H. Bartholomew. https://www.patriarchate.org/-/address-by-his-all-holiness-ecumenical-patriarch-bartholomew-to-the-scholars-meeting-at-the-phanar-january-5-2016-. 6. Harakas, ‘Ecological Reflections on Contemporary Orthodox Thought in Greece.” Epiphany Journal 10 (3): 57. 7. Met. Kallistos interview Ch. 6, in, Nellist. C. Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Animal Suffering: Ancient Voices in Modern Theology, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018. 8. Summarized by Clement of Alexandria,as the ‘Harmony of the parts of the soul’, Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 4.26; also, Harakas, ‘The Integrity of Creation’, 76. 9. Harakas, ‘The Integrity of Creation: Ethical Issues” in, Justice Peace and the Integrity of Creation: Insights from Orthodoxy, edited by L. Gennadios, 70-82. Geneva: WCC, 1990:77. 10. Bonhoeffer, Ethics. Ed. E. Bethge. Translated by N, Horton Smith. London & NY: SCM Press, 1978:176. 11. Bartholomew, “Caretaker of the Environment.” 30^th June, 2004. http://www.ec-patr.org. 12. Bartholomew, Encountering the Mystery: Understanding Orthodox Christianity Today: His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, Auckland: Doubleday. 2008:107; also, Chryssavgis, Speaking the Truth, 297; Met. John, ‘Man as Priest of Creation.’ 13. Bartholomew, “Justice: Environmental and Human” composed as “Foreword” to proceedings of the fourth summer seminar at Halki in June (1997) in, Chryssavgis, Speaking the Truth, 173; also, “Environmental Rights” in, Chryssavgis, Cosmic Grace, 260. 14. Bartholomew “The Orthodox Church and the Environment,” in Chryssavgis, Cosmic Grace, 2009:364

15. Met. Kallistos (Ware) ‘Orthodox Christianity: Compassion for Animals’, paper given at IOTA conference, Iasi, Romania, 2019. Also in The Routledge Handbook of Religion and Animal Ethics, ed by A. Linzey and C. Linzey, Routledge, 2018.

16. Ibid.

17. Bartholomew, “Sacrifice: The Missing Dimension” in Cosmic Grace, 2008:275.

18. Ibid.

19. Bartholomew, “Address before the Twelfth Ordinary General Assembly,” in Speaking the Truth, 2011:283.

20. Keselopoulos, Man and the Environment: A Study of St. Symeon the New Theologian, trans. E. Theokritoff. Crestwood, NY: SVSP, 2001: 93.

21. Keselopoulos “The Prophetic Charisma in Pastoral Theology: Asceticism, Fasting and the Ecological Crisis” in Toward Ecology of Transfiguration: Orthodox Christian Perspectives on Environment, Nature and Creation, eds. Chryssavgis J., and B. V. Foltz, NY: Fordham University Press, 2013:361.

22. Keselopoulos in Chryssavgis & Foltz, p 361-2

23. See the latest IPCC, WMO, NASA reports and the latest edition of The Lancet.

24. Zizioulas, ‘Comments on Pope Francis’ Encyclical Laudato Si’’. Available at: https://www.patriarchate.org/-/a-comment-on-pope-francis-encyclical-laudato-si-.

25. Met. Anthony (Bloom) Encounter, 135.

26. Met. Kallistos, Ch. 6 in, Nellist, C. Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Animal Suffering: Ancient Voices in Modern Theology. 2018.

27. Knight A, “Animal Agriculture and Climate Change” in, The Global Guide to Animal Protection, ed. A. Linzey, pp. 254-256. Urbana, Chicago and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2013; also in Nellist op. cit., pp. 250-1.

28. Broom and Fraser Farm Animal Behaviour and Welfare. (NY: CABI Publishing, 1997; Turner Stop, Look, Listen: Recognising the Sentience of Farm Animals, (A Report for Compassion in World Farming. 2006; Duncan ‘Animal Welfare Issues in the Poultry Industry: Is There a Lesson to Be Learned’, Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, 2001; Webster, “Welfare Implications of Avian Osteoporosis.” Poultry Science 83 (2004), pp. 184-92; G. Stokka, J.Smith and J. Dunham, Lameness in Dairy Cattle, (Kansas State University Agricultural Experiment Station and Cooperative Extension Service, 1997). Available at: https://www.bookstore.ksre.k-state.edu/Item.aspx?catId=567&pubId=672; T. Vernelli, The Dark Side of Dairy-A Report on the UK Dairy Industry, 2005. Available at: http://milkmyths.org.uk/pdfs/dairy_report.pdf; European Commission, 1995, 2001, 2012; Aaltola, Animal Suffering: Philosophy and Culture (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave, 2012:34-45. Aaltola provides many other reports and scientific studies, which outline numerous examples of suffering.

29. Duncan, 2001:216.

30. Duncan, 2001:211. See also Gregory and Wilkins, “Broken Bones in Domestic Fowl: Handling and Processing Damage in End-of-Lay Battery Hens.”; Weeks & Nicol, “Poultry Handling and Transport”; Webster, “Welfare Implications of Avian Osteoporosis.”

31. Grandin, T. ‘The welfare of pigs during transport and slaughter’ Pig News and Information, 24:3, 83-90. Those who follow Judaism and Islam still slaughter animals in the biblical tradition. A recent undercover investigation highlights the inhumane actions and immense suffering of animals: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5456263/Men-chanted-tribal-style-dance-killed-sheep-spared-jail.html; also, http://www.ciwf.org.uk/news/2013/05/illegal-slaughter-of-animals-in-cyprus/.

32. Lymbery, ‘In Too Deep: The Welfare of Intensively Farmed Fish’ available at: http://www.eurocbc.org/fz_lymbery.pdf.

33. St. Gregory of Nyssa, On Love for the Poor, 57.

34. St. John Chrysostom, On Repentance and Almsgiving, 10.5, 130.

35. Russell, The Lives of the Desert Fathers, Oxford. Mowbray & Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1981:37.

36. “Message by H. A. H. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew upon the Day of Prayer for the Protection of Creation,” 1^st September 2001, in Chryssavgis, Cosmic Grace, 56.

37. Ibid.

38. The acceptance of stolen goods makes the point. “Message by H. A. H. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew upon the Day of Prayer for the Protection of Creation” 1^st September, 2001 in, Chryssavgis, Cosmic Grace, 57.

39. Limouris Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation: Insights from Orthodoxy, 1990:24, no 30.

40. Ibid, 12, no 37.

41. Ibid, 12, no 38.

42. Abba Khalil, private conversation, 15th April 2018. Used with permission.

43. Bartholomew, “Sacrifice: The Missing Dimension,” in Cosmic Grace, p. 275.

Dr. Christina Nellist, Visiting Fellow & Researcher at Winchester University, Editor of Pan Orthodox Concern For Animals. Email: panorthodoxconcernforanimals@gmail.com.

MESSAGE By His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew To the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP 24)

Posted on December 12, 2018 by admin

This is an important message by the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to the delegates at COP 24.
Please read and share.

MESSAGE By His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew To the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP 24)
(Poland, December 3-14, 2018)

Dear and distinguished friends,

We are pleased to send this brief greeting of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to the members of the United Nations Conference of the Parties and to all people of good will assembling in Poland this year to reflect on the impact of climate change and the urgency of addressing its implications.

We also welcome this opportunity to engage with and endorse implementation of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals with a view to fostering collaborative and concerted action toward this purpose for all people and for the entire planet. We believe that it is the responsibility of faith communities to remind their respective governments of this mandate.

Nevertheless, we are convinced that the time for reflection and deliberation is long gone. We wonder when the leaders of our world will realize how late we have left our response to the climate crisis. A few years ago, we wrote of reaching a point of no return. This was neither euphemism nor exaggeration. Scientists have long warned – and most recently in Inchon, Korea, they forcefully reaffirmed – that we have reached several tipping points; governments seem reluctant to respond, preferring to delay.

Of course, as a religious leader, we profess that God’s grace offers forgiveness and opportunities – indeed, many chances – for reconciliation. But Scripture also underlines that the time will come when we are obliged to face the consequences of our actions. The Gospel of Matthew describes a judgment where we will not be asked about our success and prosperity, but about our response to suffering and poverty. Indeed, in a parable of the same gospel, the rich man ignored the poor Lazarus and, upon pleading forgiveness, was told it was too late.

This is why, for the last thirty years, we have declared the intimate connection between the way we treat the earth and the way we treat our fellow human beings, especially the poor. At our symposium held in Athens this past June, entitled Toward a Greener Attica for a Sustainable Environment: Preserving the Planet and Protecting its People, we highlighted the religious and spiritual roots of the ecological crisis, while emphasizing that the necessary spiritual transformation of human beings and their attitude toward creation requires the collaboration of all social sectors and scientific disciplines.

In our understanding, the way we relate to nature as creation directly reflects the way we relate to God as Creator. There can be no distinction between concern for human welfare, protection of the environment, and care for our salvation. In order to restore the planet, we need a spirituality that brings humility and respect with regard to our attitudes and actions, our life choices and lifestyles. It should be abundantly clear by now that we must direct our focus away from what we want to what the planet needs.

Dear friends, we must of course remain optimistic – confident in the love of God and hopeful in the response of humankind. But when will we understand how important it is to leave as light a footprint as possible on this planet for the sake of future generations? The truth is that we can no longer afford to wait; indecision and inaction are not options. Faith makes it clear that we have a choice. The time to choose is now.

At the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the 10th of December, 2018.

✠ Bartholomew
Archbishop of Constantinople – New Rome
and Ecumenical Patriarch

Hunting – “a soul-subverting exercise” and “pomp of the devil”.

Posted on December 7, 2018 by admin

This is an interesting story as it represents the situation in countries across the world. When we consider that we have already wiped out around 60% of the wildlife in the world, it is time for our governments to take decisive action to stop people killing animals as part of their recreational activities or hotly debated ‘management’ programs. If there is a genuine need to limit animal populations, there are other methods such as neutering or relocation. Economics should not be the prime factor in ‘conservation’ or ‘management’ programs. As Christians we have very clear teachings on participating in hunting or even attending hunts. St Cyril of Jerusalem teaches that hunting is an example of the “pomp of the devil” and a “soul-subverting exercise”. Hopefully Christian Church leaders will reiterate these early teachings so that we can protect what is left of our wildlife.

In 2012, a hunter in Wyoming shot and killed Yellowstone National Park’s most famous wolf—alpha female of the Lamar Canyon pack, known as 832F or 06 for the year she was born—not far from the park’s protected area. After that tragedy, 06′s daughter, named 926F or “Spitfire,” took over as the alpha for the pack. Just like her mom, Spitfire became a beloved and familiar sight in the park. Although she weighed only 80 pounds and was smaller than the other wolves in the Lamar Canyon pack, she more than made up for it in spirit. Her determination was vital in keeping the pack together over the years.

“I always called her the little wolf that could,” wildlife photographer Deby Dixon told the Jackson Hole Daily. “06 was well loved because she was bold and out there, but I don’t think that people got to watch her for as long as we watched this particular wolf.”

Just six years after her mother’s death, Spitfire has suffered the same fate. A trophy hunter shot and killed her in Cooke City, Montana, less than five miles from the northern entrance to Yellowstone National Park. And just like the hunter who shot her mother, Spitfire’s killer broke no laws.

“It was a legal harvest, and everything was legitimate about the way the wolf was taken,” Abby Nelson, a wolf management specialist for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, told the Jackson Hole Daily. “The circumstances are obviously a little bit harder for people to stomach, because that pack had showed signs of habituation.”

It’s currently wolf-hunting season in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. What’s especially hard to stomach is that when wolves wander outside the park boundaries into these states that border it, “they have zero protection,” Brooks Fahy, executive director of the nonprofit Predator Defense, told The Dodo. “This tragedy should be one more wake-up call,” he said.
Montana legalized wolf hunting in 2009. It allows hunters to kill five wolves in hunting zones just north of Yellowstone, but hunters regularly ignore this quota, the Jackson Hole Daily reports.

Spitfire was a fifth-generation descendant of the 31 wolves from Alberta, Canada reintroduced to Yellowstone in the mid-1990s. “One of the big reasons 926 is so very important to so many people is her lineage, which goes back to the very beginning,” Rick McIntyre, with the Yellowstone Wolf Project, told the Jackson Hole Daily. For over 20 years, there has been an ongoing debate between conservationists who argue that as a key species, wolves play an essential role in the ecosystem, and hunters and ranchers who complain that the wolves are a livestock-killing nuisance.
To prevent more wolf killings near Yellowstone’s boundaries, the states surrounding the national park should enact laws that ban any from being hunted and killed. That’s what happened in 2001 in Ontario, Canada, after hunters were killing wolves outside of Algonquin Provincial Park.

The hunting ban resulted in what Maggie Howell, executive director of the Wolf Conservation Center (WCC), called an amazing transition. “Protected from hunting, not only did the Algonquin wolf population hold steady, there was also a rapid transition to more stable, family-based packs,” she told The Dodo. “With added protections, eastern wolves reclaimed their place as a keystone species within the ecosystem.” Until Yellowstone’s wolves are better protected, Dixon offered some good advice for advocates of their welfare. Instead of wasting our energy hating trophy hunters, we should focus instead on raising awareness and educating people about the wolves. “We’re not going to change the minds of the die-hard wolf haters,” she told the Jackson Hole Daily, “but we can change the minds of their children.”

Lessons from the Desert Fathers for Today

Posted on December 4, 2018 by admin

Lessons from the Desert Fathers for Today
Fr. Athanasius Shaw

Saint Nikolai Velimirovich says in “The Prologue” that the inner enemies of man, the
passions and the manifold vanities, constantly flare up afresh in the city, while in the
wilderness, or desert, they wither and disappear.
The Saints, Holy Fathers and Mothers, monastics and pilgrims have gone out into
the wilderness “to flee the corruption of cities, to wage war with their passions, but
especially to encounter the holy,” as Saint Jerome related in the 4th Century. Our Lord Jesus
Christ gave us the example of going out into the wilderness to pray. In the Tradition of the
Church, the wilderness is a place where we can draw closer to God.
When I was eleven years old I went on a fifty mile backpacking trip through the
Olympic Mountains in Washington State. There I experienced something of the holy,
though at the time I was unaware of the source of that holiness. I remember the great joy I
felt as I hiked up over a mountain covered with wild flowers and surrounded by snowcapped
peaks and a pure blue sky. I remember experiencing profound gratitude and love;
and I can still hear the deep silence of the wilderness. I had a sense that this place was
sacred.
I continued to drink from this fountain throughout my life – I couldn’t get enough of
the mountains, streams and forests; the wilderness seemed to refresh and lift up my soul.
However, it wasn’t until my participation in a Christ in the Wilderness backpacking trip in
the High Sierras in 2004 that I became aware that the experiences of holiness that I had in
the wilderness throughout my life were encounters of the presence of Jesus Christ in
Creation. The realization that my relationship with Jesus Christ can be enriched through my
love of wilderness was a wonderful discovery.
God reveals Himself through His Creation. St. Paul proclaimed this is Romans 1:20:
“For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being
understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead…”
St. Basil the Great exclaims: “This marvelous creation” is the “supreme icon” of
Christian faith which leads to knowledge of the “Supreme Artisan.” Nature is a vast icon of
Christ.
Icons are windows into heaven; they offer us access to Divinity, therefore they have
to be approached with love and humility. The passions that manifest as arrogance, anger and
judgment of our neighbor are blocks to approaching the “supreme icon” of Creation and
thereby touching the hem of Christ’s garment.
My experience in Christ in the Wilderness has shown me in a powerful way that the
passions result as scales over my eyes, blinding me to the beauty around me, and within
myself and my brothers and sisters. It has been the practice of Orthodox spiritual life from
the beginning to struggle against the passions and make real in one’s own life the Godly
attributes of Jesus Christ as the path to communion with the Lord; to “put on Christ”, as we
sing while circling around the Baptismal font.
In Christ in the Wilderness, the focus is to “exercise ourselves unto godliness” (1
Tim. 4:7), as St. Paul tells us to do. This is done by practicing each day one of the virtues of
thanksgiving, humility, seeing the beauty of the Lord in and around oneself, silence, or
solitude, and love for Creation and one’s neighbor. Most participants have expressed the
commitment to continue the practice of these virtues in their daily life.
Wilderness offers the opportunity to learn spiritual lessons from nature. One time St.
Anthony the Great was asked how he got along out in the desert without any books. He
answered “My book is the nature of created things, and as often as I have a mind to read
the words of God, it is at my hand.”
St. John Chrysostom tells us: “From the creation, learn to admire the Lord… He has
made the mode of creation to be our best teacher…”
In our Theology, everything that God has created is a particular manifestation of God’s
will through the Divine Logos; everything in nature has something to say about God, some
2
lesson to teach us about ourselves and the spiritual life. St. Basil instructs us to learn from
the ant, to learn from the bee, in order to become more productive disciples of Jesus Christ.
Our Lord himself drew out lessons from nature… .
“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow…” (Matt .6:28-29) and
“Behold the fowls of the air…” (Matt.6:26-27)
Most of us are constantly surrounded by distractions; our society pulls at us to turn
away from God. Going out into the wilderness and seeking to draw closer to Jesus Christ,
practicing the virtues and learning spiritual lessons through His beautiful Creation informs
our walk in Christ and therefore is a valuable experience for our parish life.
One teenage participant offered this refection of her experience in the wilderness:
“During the following days I practiced turning to God constantly, something I easily forget
in my daily life. I learned how to address everything with prayer and how to quietly bless
places and people. We faced our inner challenges. This [time in the wilderness] was indeed
a pilgrimage.”
His Beatitude Patriarch Ignatius IV of Antioch and the East has stated
“Without the contemplation of nature, one never comes
to the mystical side of Orthodoxy.”
The Christ in the Wilderness program puts these words into action.

—————————————————–

Animal Welfare in an Eastern Orthodox Convent

Posted on November 23, 2018 by admin

A timely article on fishing quotas

Posted on October 11, 2018 by admin

A painstaking five-month long investigation by Crispin Dowler [@CrispinDowler] shows that a small group of wealthy families control huge swathes of the country’s fishing quota. Just five families on the Sunday Times Rich List hold or control 29% of the UK’s fishing quota. The finding comes from a new Unearthed investigation that traced the owners of more than 95% of UK quota holdings – including, for the first time, those of Scotland, the UK’s biggest fishing nation.

It reveals that more than two-thirds of the UK’s fishing quota is controlled by just 25 businesses – and more than half of those are linked to one of the biggest criminal overfishing scams ever to reach the British courts. Meanwhile, in England nearly 80% of fishing quota is held by foreign owners or domestic Rich List families, and more than half of Northern Ireland’s quota is hoarded onto a single trawler.

The news comes as the government is preparing to publish a new fisheries bill, which will set the legal foundations for the UK’s fishing industry after Brexit. Small scale fishermen told Unearthed that successive governments have mismanaged fishing rights, allowing quota to be consolidated on a handful of supertrawlers while smaller-scale, low impact fishermen had been progressively starved of access. Jerry Percy, director of the New Under Ten Fishermen’s Association, told Unearthed successive government in a situation where the smaller inshore vessels that make up 77% of the fleet had ended up with “less than 4% of the quota”.

“This is privatisation of a public resource,” added Mr Percy, who campaigns on behalf of fishermen with smaller, under-10m long, vessels.

But while the government is hoping it can net access to more fishing rights in the Brexit negotiations, it has said the new bill will not see any redistribution of the UK’s existing quota rights. As Unearthed’s investigation shows, this will leave the bulk of UK fishing rights in the hands of a small domestic elite and a handful of foreign multinationals. It reveals:

The five largest quota-holders control more than a third of UK fishing quota
Four of the top five belong to families on the Sunday Times Rich List
The fifth is a Dutch multinational whose UK subsidiary – North Atlantic Fishing Company – controls around a quarter of England’s fishing quota
Around half of England’s quota is ultimately owned by Dutch, Icelandic, or Spanish interests
More than half (13) of the top 25 quota holders have directors, shareholders, or vessel partners who were convicted of offences in Scotland’s £63m “black fish” scam – a huge, sophisticated fraud that saw trawlermen and fish processors working together to evade quota limits and land 170,000 tonnes of undeclared herring and mackerel
One of the flagships of the “Brexit flotilla” – which sailed up the Thames in 2016 to demand the UK’s exit from the EU – is among the UK’s 10 biggest quota-holders
Around 29% of UK fishing quota is directly controlled by Rich List families. Some of these families have investments in dozens of other fishing companies, meaning companies holding 37% of UK quota are wholly or partly owned by these Rich List families.

What is a fixed quota allocation?

Most fishing rights in the UK are distributed by fixed quota allocations (FQAs). An FQA gives the holder the right to land a certain share of the UK’s “total allowable catch” (TAC) of a particular stock. The TAC for each stock varies from year to year, based on scientific advice and negotiations in Brussels. There is an active market in the trading and leasing of FQAs. The latest revelations follow Unearthed’s 2016 investigation into English quota holdings which revealed that a tiny fiberglass dinghy apparently “held” more than a fifth of the fishing quota for the entire South-West.

Now, Unearthed’s first UK-wide dive into the opaque world of fishing rights has uncovered further striking statistics. Those with the biggest hoards of quota can earn millions leasing it to others without casting a net. In one recent case a company got rid of its boat and – while waiting for a new one – carried on earning millions from its quota alone. That boat, the Voyager, holds more than half (55%) of Northern Ireland’s fishing quota. In late 2015 the owners disposed of their old, 76m trawler and ordered a replacement . Company accounts show that the new Voyager was not delivered until September 2017, and in the meantime, the company made money by leasing out the quota. In 2016-17 the company made an income of nearly £7m from its quota – reporting an operating profit of £2.5m – despite having no vessel for the full financial year. Despite holding more than half of the country’s quota, the new 86m-long Voyager has not landed its catches in Northern Ireland, because it is too big for Kilkeel Harbour. Instead the vessel operates out of the Republic of Ireland port of Killybegs. Unearthed approached Voyager Fishing Company and its owners, but they were unavailable for comment.

The black fish millionaires

In Scotland – the biggest fishing nation in the UK, with two-thirds of the quota – the domination of the fishing industry by Rich List families is most pronounced. Five Rich List families control a third of Scottish quota and have minority investments in companies that hold a further 11%. This means, in total, companies holding close to half (45%) of all Scottish fishing quotas are wholly or partly owned by five wealthy families. But the investigation also reveals how many of those at the centre of one of Scottish fishing’s most infamous episodes – the black fish scandal – continue to dominate the industry. The scandal came to light in 2005, when Scottish officials raided fish factories to uncover “serious and organised” schemes to systematically evade quota restrictions for mackerel and herring, using underground pipes, secret weighing machines, and extra conveyor belts to land 170,000 tonnes of over-quota fish over several years.

A multi-year police investigation followed, resulting in a series of court cases over 2011 and 2012 in which three fish factories and more than two dozen skippers were hit with fines and confiscation orders for “black landings” of undeclared fish. Unearthed’s investigation found that of the 20 biggest holders of Scottish quota, 13 have directors, shareholders, or vessel partners who were convicted of sea fishing offences in the black fish scandal. Among those prosecuted were four members of the Tait family – worth £115m according to the Rich List – whose Klondyke Fishing Company is the second-largest quota holder in Scotland. The four men – all skippers on its vessels – were hit with fines and confiscation orders of more than £800,000 for their part in the scam. Two years later, one of those skippers, Peter Tait, 50, reportedly bought the most expensive house sold in Scotland that year. Over the past five years Klondyke has paid out shareholder dividends totalling £56m. Unearthed has reached out to Klondyke but the company declined to comment.

The Scottish top 10 also includes the vessel partnership that runs the trawler Christina S. In 2012, two men involved in that partnership – Ernest Simpson, 71, and his son Allan Simpson, 49, both of Aberdeenshire – were handed fines and confiscation orders totalling more than £800,000 for their involvement in the black fish scam. Four years later, the Christina S was among the flotilla of vessels that sailed up the Thames with Nigel Farage, to protest EU fisheries policy weeks before the Brexit referendum. John Anderson is chief executive of the Scottish Fishermen’s Organisation, a huge fish producer organisation which has several members – including the Christina S – that were involved in the black fish scandal. He told Unearthed: “The pelagic fishermen and processors involved will be the first to acknowledge that, in the past, mistakes were made.” As a result, he continued, the sector had founded the Scottish Pelagic Sustainability Group to oversee the certification of its main fisheries to Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) standards. Since that time, he added, “98% of the group’s stocks have been certified as sustainable and well managed by the MSC.”

Foreign flagships

In England, the UK’s second largest fishing nation, three Rich List families control around 30% of the quota. A further 49% is ultimately held by Dutch, Spanish and Icelandic interests who have bought up English vessels and quota. The most significant of these interests is Cornelis Vrolijk Holding, a Dutch multinational whose UK subsidiary alone holds 24% of English quota, making it the biggest quota-holder in England, and one of the five biggest in the UK.

Matthew Cox, chief executive of North Atlantic Fishing Company, Cornelis Vroljik’s UK subsidiary, said the company had been established in the UK since 1984, employed around 60 UK fishermen, had two UK offices, and had launched a UK apprenticeship scheme. He also suggested that the type of fishing his company does is not well suited for small-scale fishermen. He added: “North Atlantic does not operate at the expense of small-scale fishermen. Pelagic [midwater fish such as mackerel and herring] and whitefish fishing are very different and a simple comparison/substitution between each is not possible.

“The deep sea nature of the environment make pelagic fishing difficult, dangerous and not very attractive for artisanal fishermen who tend to focus on low volume, high value fish such as cod or monkfish.”

The bulk of the company’s quota is for pelagic fish – which swim at midwater – and it has always emphasised the fact that its nets do not damage the sea bed. However, after the Brexit vote in 2016 the company bought a beam trawler – with nets attached to a heavy beam designed to trawl for “demersal fish” that are found close to the sea bed – and bought up quotas for plaice and sole. Mr Cox said: “Following the 2016 decision for the UK to leave the EU it was very clear early on, to the directors of North Atlantic Fishing, that there would be changes to the UK fishing industry. North Atlantic had always focused on pelagic fishing and it was therefore decided that the company should spread its risk in the interests of the company and its workforce and enter the demersal fishing industry in a very limited manner.”

Jobs

Large scale fishing interests consistently argue that their businesses generated hundreds of direct and indirect jobs, and that it was misleading to rank businesses by quota holdings alone, when the amount and value of fish that can be landed against those holdings varies between species, and area, and from year to year. Several also pointed out that many of the biggest quota holders identified by Unearthed were trawlers focused on midwater pelagic stocks, like mackerel and herring. These fisheries, they claimed, were environmentally friendly – with a low carbon footprint and no impact on the seabed – but the fish were too low-value and far from the coast to be attractive to small-scale fishermen.

John Anderson is chief executive of the Scottish Fishermen’s Organisation – a huge fish producer organisation with several of the top 25 in its membership. He told Unearthed: “While it is true that there has been considerable consolidation within the pelagic catching sector over the past 20 years, with a trend towards fewer, more efficient vessels each with a greater concentration of fishing opportunity, the economic reality is that small-scale, inshore fishermen, many of whom are also members of the SFO, do not have the necessary capacity or markets needed to fully utilise the pelagic quotas that are already available to them.”

Mr Percy retorted: “If you go back years ago, there was any number of smaller inshore boats that were reliant on mackerel and especially herring in the North Sea before the inshore herring fisheries were decimated by overfishing by larger-scale interests.”

Nick Underdown, of the Scottish campaign group Open Seas, said it was hard for smaller boats to take up mackerel quota without investment in onshore facilities to support them. “At the moment, the supply chain infrastructure favours bigger boats,” he told Unearthed. “But if we invest in processing with the strategic intention to help the smaller-scale fleet, then inshore fishery could bounce back. “This would be a lifeline for those harbours where fishing has declined due to consolidation.”

A spokeswoman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “We are clear fishing communities and our wider economy should benefit as much as possible from those fishing the UK’s quota, and we are working closely with fishermen to review and reform the rules around the economic link condition.”

WORLD WILD ANIMAL DAY AND GLOBAL WARMING

Posted on October 4, 2018 by admin

WORLD WILD ANIMAL DAY AND GLOBAL WARMING

I have just received an email outlining the latest research on global warming. It is indeed harrowing but those of us who have followed the science know that this only confirms what some scientists have been discussing these past decades. Attached to that email is the following statement from American Bishops in 2007 and unusually they include scientific statistics from that time (2007). Today the situation is far worse, yet we as individuals and as societies stumble towards the abyss in some sort of collective psychosis, seemingly incapable of altering our ways. As today is World Wild Animal Day (4^th Oct) I thought I would pull together some strands in the hope of highlighting the interconnectedness of our creation and how we as individuals may take an important step in both reducing climate change and the suffering of animals. I present the Bishop’s Statement, followed by a short piece on extinction. I continue with some comments and science from my forthcoming book on how we as individuals can make an immediate difference to the situation, followed by an article outlining the latest research.

GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE: A Moral and Spiritual Challenge (May 23, 2007).

The following statement, “Global Climate Change: A Moral and Spiritual Challenge,” was adopted by the Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas (SCOBA) at their May 23, 2007 session at St. Vladimir’s Seminary in Crestwood, NY. The document conveys a theological understanding of the role of the human person and the environment, with particular emphasis on climate change.

Beloved Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

“For favorable weather, an abundance of the fruits of the earth, and temperate seasons, Let us pray to the Lord.” At every Divine Liturgy the Orthodox Church repeats this petition.

The Book of Prayers (Euchologion) contains numerous prayers for gardens, animals, crops, water and weather conditions. In her wisdom, then, the Church has always known that human beings are dependent upon the grace of God through the world around us to nurture and sustain civilized society. Indeed, “God has worked our salvation through the material world” (St. John Damascene, “On the Divine Images,” 1, 16). While God is the Source of all that we have, and His presence fills the entire world (see Acts 17.28), we humans share a God-given responsibility to care for His creation and offer it back to Him in thanksgiving for all that we have and are. “Thine own of thine own, we offer unto thee, in behalf of all and for all.”

The action of returning creation back to God in gratitude and praise summarizes the commands that God gave humanity in the first chapters of Genesis. These commandments are intended to guide us into a fullness of the spiritual and material goods that we need. God tells us to “have dominion over the earth” (Genesis 1.28), which means that we are to care for the earth as the Lord would care for it. In the original Hebrew, the word for dominion (radah) means to rule in the place of the Lord. In the Greek Septuagint, the word for full dominion (katakyrieuo) contains the root word kyrios, the same word that we use for Christ as Lord Ruler over all. From this, it follows that our responsibility as human beings is to enter into His will and to rule as the Lord would rule.

“We are all personally responsible to identify and adopt appropriate moral and ethical approaches to the changing conditions of the world.”

God also tells us that we are “to cultivate and keep the Garden of Eden” (Genesis 2.15, LXX). The literal meaning of this passage is that humans are required to serve the earth as well as to protect it from desecration or exploitation. We are responsible to God for how we use and care for the earth in order that all people may have a sufficiency of all that is needful. It is through our proper use of the material and natural world that God is worshipped:

“Through heaven and earth and sea, through wood and stone… through all of creation visible and invisible, we offer veneration and honor to the Creator” (Leontius of Cyprus, Sermon 3 on Icons).

What is further implied in the same commandment is thanksgiving to God for all that we have received through the physical world. Thus, each person has a “priestly” responsibility before God (1 Peter 2.5) to offer back to God that which belongs to Him. All this is implied in the Divine Liturgy, when the presbyter offers back to God what He has placed into human care. Indeed, the commandment “to cultivate and keep” the Garden implies an expectation that we are to share the things of the world with those who are suffering, with those in need, and to have concern for the good of humanity and the entire creation. Even though our first parents fell away through disobedience, our Lord restored this priestly responsibility to humanity through His life-giving Death and Resurrection.

“Immediate measures must be taken to reduce the impact of these changes to the world’s climate. If we fail to act now, the changes that are already underway will intensify and create catastrophic conditions.”

In our day, however, society has failed to remember these holy mandates about the right conduct of human beings. In our pride, gratitude has often been replaced with greed. As a people, we have forgotten God and foregone our mandated responsibilities. We no longer strive for sufficiency and moderation in all things. Too often, instead of receiving the gifts of God as He would bestow them, we heedlessly take from the earth and needlessly waste its resources, disregarding the impact at our greed exerts upon the life of our neighbors and the life of the world. There is no doubt that the pollution and degradation of the world is directly related to the pollution and the degradation of our hearts. “Look within yourself,” writes St. Nilus of Ancyra, “and there you will see the entire world.” (Epistles 2,119)

As Church leaders, our concern is service to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who’s Gospel of love teaches us that our response to the welfare of our neighbor and respect for the creation are expressions of our love for God. This means that we are all personally responsible to identify and adopt appropriate moral and ethical approaches to the changing conditions of the world.

Faithful to the responsibility that we have been given within God’s good creation, it is prudent for us to listen to the world’s scientific leaders as they describe changes occurring in the world’s climate, changes that are already being experienced by many people throughout the world. Global climate change assumes many different shapes and appearances within our own country. In Alaska, for instance, the average temperature has risen by 7º, causing glaciers to retreat and the Arctic Ocean to lose its summer ice. In Florida, Hawaii and the islands of the Caribbean, coral reefs are dying. In ocean waters such as those off the coast of San Francisco, higher temperatures now result in lower concentrations of plankton, reducing a primary food source for fish and bird life, and ultimately, for humans. Across the western states, a modest increase in temperature has contributed to a six-fold increase in forest fires over the past two decades. In many parts of America, previously distant tropical diseases, such as West Nile virus, are appearing as a direct result of rising temperatures.

These are all clear signs of a rapidly changing climate. It cannot be predicted in precise detail how climate change is going to unfold, but the seriousness of this situation is widely accepted. And, while it is true that the world’s climate has also undergone changes in past centuries, three crucial considerations make the current changes serious and unprecedented:

The rapid extent of temperature increase is historically unparalleled. Past changes in climate occurred over extended periods of time and were considerably less severe.

The human role in changing the climate is unique today. In earlier centuries, people did not have the technological capability to make such radical changes to the planet as are now taking place.

The impact that climate change will exert upon society is great and diverse, inevitably including conditions which deeply disrupt the lives and livelihoods of people on an unprecedented scale.

Climatologists label these changes as the result of measurable increases of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere. These gases are produced primarily by the burning or combustion of gasoline, coal and other fossil fuels. Among the many consequences, the atmosphere and the oceans are warming; wind and rainfall patterns are changing; and sea levels are rising. Forces of climate change also increase the acidity of the oceans; they raise the ferocity of storms, especially hurricanes; they cause droughts and heat waves to become more intense; and, in some areas, they disrupt normal agriculture. Furthermore, the changes are not occurring evenly: some parts of the world experience drought and others greater rainfall, even flooding. Importantly, the conditions that we observe now are only the early alterations to our climate. Much larger and far more disruptive changes will result unless we reduce the forces causing climate change.

It should be clear to all of us that immediate measures must be taken to reduce the impact of these changes to the world’s climate. If we fail to act now, the changes that are already underway will intensify and create catastrophic conditions. A contributing root cause of these changes to our climate is a lifestyle that contains unintended, but nevertheless destructive side effects. It may be that no person intends to harm the environment, but the excessive use of fossil fuels is degrading and destroying the life of creation.

“We wish to emphasize the seriousness and the urgency of the situation. To persist in a path of excess and waste, at the expense of our neighbors and beyond the capability of the planet to support the lifestyle responsible for these changes, is not only folly; it jeopardizes the survival of God’s creation…. In the end, this is not only is it sinful; it is no less than suicidal.”

Moreover, the impact of our thoughtless actions is felt disproportionately by the poorest and most vulnerable, those most likely to live in marginal areas. By our lack of awareness, then, we risk incurring the condemnation of those who “grind the face of the poor” (Isaiah 3.15). As Church leaders, it is our responsibility to speak to this condition inasmuch as it represents a grave moral and spiritual problem.

Therefore, we wish to emphasize the urgency of the situation. To persist in a path of excess and waste, at the expense of our neighbors and beyond the capability of the planet to support the lifestyle directly responsible for these changes, is not only folly; it jeopardizes the survival of God’s creation, the planet that we all share. In the end, not only is it sinful; it is no less than suicidal.

But there is hope. Society can alter its behavior and avoid the more serious consequences of climate change. To do this, however, we must work together to reduce the way that we have exploited the earth’s resources, especially its fossil fuels. As Americans, we comprise barely 4% of the world’s people; yet we consume over 25% of its resources and energy. Justice and charity for our neighbors demand a more frugal, simple way of living in order to conserve the fruits of creation.

In order to make the required changes, we are called to pray first and foremost for a change in our personal attitudes and habits, in spite of any accompanying inconvenience. Such is the depth of metanoia or repentance. The issue is not merely our response to climate change, but our failure to obey God. We must live in a manner that is consistent with what we believe and pray. Our heart must be “merciful, burning with love for the whole of creation” (Abba Isaac the Syrian, Mystic Treatises, Homily 48). At minimum, this means caring about the effect of our lives upon our neighbors, respecting the natural environment, and demonstrating a willingness to live within the means of our planet. Such a change will invariably require reduction in our consumption of fossil fuels as well as acceptance of alternative energy sources such as solar or wind power, and other such methods that minimize our impact upon the world. We can do these things, but it will require intentional effort from each of us.

Nevertheless, we cannot stop there. We must also learn all that we can about the emerging situation of climate change. We must set an example in the way that we choose to live, reaching out and informing others about this threat. We must discuss with parishioners and – since climate change is not only an issue for Orthodox Christians –– we must raise the issue before public officials and elected representatives at the city, state and national levels. We are all responsible for this situation, and each one of us can do something to address the problem.

In each generation, God sends some great tests that challenge the life and future of society. One of the tests for our time is whether we will be obedient to the commands that God has given to us by exercising self-restraint in our use of energy, or whether we will ignore those commands and continue to seek the comforts and excesses that over-reliance on fossil fuels involves.

At every Divine Liturgy, we pray for seasonable weather. Let us enter into this prayer and amend our lives in whatever ways may be necessary to meet the divine command that we care for the earth as the Lord’s. If we can do this, if we can render our lives as a blessing rather than a curse for our neighbors and for the whole creation, then, God willing, we may live and flourish. This is not an optional matter. We will be judged by the choices we make. The Scriptures bluntly tell us that if we destroy the earth, then God will destroy us (see Revelation 11:18).

Let us all recall the commands of God regarding our use of the earth. Let us respond to the divine commandments so that the blessings of God may be abundantly upon us. And let us responsibly discern the right, holy and proper way to live in this time of change and challenge. Then we shall “perceive everything in the light of the Creator God” (St. John Climacus, Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 4, 58).

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As previously stated, this was 2007 and yet despite our Patriarchs and Bishops continuing to highlight the problems of global warming, little effective action is being taken by our governments. I now present extracts from a short article on extinction in the non-human animal world to focus attention of the loss of Wild Animal species.

ANIMALS THAT HAVE GONE EXTINCT IN THE LAST 100 YEARS

The following article by Laura Goldman in September 2018 informs us that nearly 500 species have gone extinct during the last century–and that in most cases, we humans are to blame. Of course this is an underestimate, for we cannot tell how many unknown species have disappeared due to the destruction of native rainforests across the globe. Nonetheless it is a reminder that when we speak of climate change and human actions we tend to forget the devastation to non-human animal species that also comes from our selfish indulgences.

According to a 2015 study by the National Autonomous University (UNAM), 477 species have disappeared since 1900 due to our degradation and destruction of their natural habitats. The researchers said it was the largest mass extinction of species in history. Last year, Stanford University biologists discovered declining populations for more than 30 percent of all vertebrates. On average, two vertebrate species go extinct every year. One of the researchers referred to this as “a biological annihilation occurring globally.”

These are just some of the animals that have gone extinct in the past 100 years. To help prevent more species from meeting the same fate, the Stanford biologists recommend curbing human overpopulation and consumption. Humans must stop believing “the fiction that perpetual growth can occur on a finite planet,” the researchers urged. For a photograph see Wikimedia Commons

Passenger pigeons, which disappeared just over a century ago, once numbered in the billions and were the most populous birds on Earth. They could reach speeds of up to 60 mph as they flew over North America, the huge flocks actually darkening the sky. Unfortunately, when Europeans arrived, they found the pigeons to be a source of cheap meat. Every year, tens of millions of the bird were killed. By the early 20th century there was only one captive survivor, Martha, who died at the Cincinnati Zoo in September 1914.

Carolina Parakeet (1918)

Once the only parrot species native to the eastern United States, Carolina parakeets had the heartfelt but dangerous habit of remaining beside injured or dead flock members, making them easy targets for hunters.Bottom of Form Although flocks were still occasionally being observed from New York to the Rocky Mountains in the early 1900s, they had disappeared by 1918, when the last captive Carolina parakeet died at the Cincinnati Zoo – in the same cage where the last passenger pigeon had died four years earlier. For a photograph see Wikimedia Commons

Heath Hen (1932)

These hens, native to the northeast U.S., were once known as a source for “poor man’s food.” Although the state of New York passed legislation back in 1791 protecting this species, they continued to be hunted. By the mid-1800s, they could only be found on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. Within 50 years, poaching, disease and feral cats led to their near demise. Thanks to a 1908 hunting ban and the creation of a preserve, the heath hen population rebounded to over 2,000. Tragically, a fire six years later killed most of the hens. The last surviving heath hen, Booming Ben, died in 1932.

Tasmanian Tiger (1936)

Looking more like a dog than a tiger, the Tasmanian tiger was the largest modern carnivorous marsupial. It roamed Australia and Tasmania until its extinction due to hunting, disease, human encroachment and the introduction of dogs. The last known survivor died in captivity at Tasmania’s Hobart Zoo in 1936. For a photograph see Wikimedia Commons

Gravenche (1950)

These freshwater whitefish were once plentiful in Lake Geneva, between France and Switzerland. In fact, over two-thirds of the fish caught in the lake were these bottom feeders, and that’s what led to their demise. The last Gravenche was seen back in 1950. For a photographs see Wikimedia Commons

Japanese Sea Lion (1974)

These sea lions used to make their homes in the Sea of Japan, where they were hunted for their skins, bones, fat and even their whiskers. By the early 20th century, over 3,000 of them were being killed every year, and their natural habitat was pretty much destroyed during the sea battles of World War II. The last unofficial sighting of a Japanese sea lion was about 30 years later, in 1974. For a photograph see: Wikimedia Commons

Pyrenean Ibex (2000)

This subspecies of the Spanish ibex made the Pyrenees Mountains its home. It’s not known what caused them to start disappearing in the 19th and 20th centuries. By 2000, they were extinct. A 2009 attempt to clone a Pyrenean ibex failed when the female died shortly after she was born. For a photograph see: Wikimedia Commons

Caribbean Monk Seal (2008)

Hunted since the late 1600s for their meat, fur and oil, the final nail in the coffin for this species was coastal development that led to the destruction of their habitat in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. The Caribbean monk seal was declared extinct in 2008. It has the sad distinction of being the first type of seal to go extinct because of humans.

Western Black Rhinoceros (2011)
These rhinos used to roam sub-Saharan Africa. Because of poaching, their population dropped to just a few hundred in the 1980s. By 2001, as demand for rhino horn grew, only five of these rhinos remained on earth. None have been seen since 2006, and the species was officially declared extinct in 2011.

10. Pinta Island Tortoise (2012)

While these tortoises were once plentiful on this small island, the last survivor—Lonesome George, who was believed to be around 100 years old—died six years ago. The causes of their extinction were being hunted by sailors and fishermen, as well as the introduction of goats to the island, which destroyed the vegetation the tortoises ate to survive. For a photographs see: Wikimedia Commons

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In light of the above I present some arguments from my book where I argue that we as individual can make a difference and that our Church can play an important part in effecting change.

A WAY FORWARD FOR ALL CREATED BEINGS

If our governments cannot provide meaningful legislation to curb our excesses, and of course they cannot do so in democratic societies, is there a way forward for us as individuals and leaders of our Church? I have already written on how St Cyril of Jerusalem defines hunting as the “pomp of the devil” and a “soul-subverting exercise” and we have a recent statement from Bishop Isaias of Tamasou in Cyprus, that hunting for fun is a sin. I argue that it is time for our leaders to make a statement that killing animals for fun, ‘sport’ or ‘recreation’ is against the teachings of Christianity and should be banned from Church land. Here, I focus on how we as individuals can make a difference and if our Church made a similar declaration the effect would be considerable. Whilst it might seem a radical suggestion I propose that if we chose/advocated the non-violent diet of veganism, God’s original choice for us, this would not only reduce the number of animals who suffer in the ‘animal industries’ but in so doing would quickly reduce the many environmental problems associated with animal food production. Most people are unaware of the impact of our diet on global warming and so it is important to highlight some points here. Our increasing desire to consume animal products has resulted in the breeding of such vast numbers of animals that serious negative impacts have arisen for our environments. Knight (2013)^[1] provides us with the following important scientific information.

In 2006, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (Steinfeld et al,) calculated that when measured as carbon dioxide (CO₂), 18 percent of worldwide greenhouse gases (GHGs) – totaling 7.5 billion tons annually, result from the production of cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, camels, horses, pigs and poultry. These emissions result from land-clearing for feed crop production and grazing, from the animals themselves, and from the transportation and processing of animal products. In contrast, all forms of transportation combined were estimated to produce around 13.5 percent of global GHGs.
The GHGs produced by animal production are composed of CO_2,methane, nitrous oxide, and ammonia. Steinfeld and colleagues calculated that the livestock sector is responsible for 9 percent of anthropogenic CO₂ emissions-that is, those attributable to human activity-which mostly arise from deforestation caused by the encroachment of feed crops and pastures. Animal production occupies some 30 percent of the Earth’s land surface and is increasingly driving deforestation, particularly in Latin America. [Circa] seventy percent of previously forested Amazonian land has now been converted to pastures, with feed crops covering a large part of the remainder.
Animals kept for production emit 37 percent of anthropogenic methane, which has been calculated as exerting seventy-two times the global warming potential (GWP) of CO₂, over a twenty year time frame, mostly from gastrointestinal fermentation by ruminants (particularly, cows and sheep). They also emit 65 percent of anthropogenic nitrous oxide with 296 times the GWP of CO₂, the great majority of which is released from manure. They also emit 64 percent of anthropogenic ammonia, which contributes significantly to acid rain and ecosystem acidification.
In 2009 Goodland and Anhang calculated that at least 22 billion tons of CO₂ emissions attributable to animal production were not counted and at least 3 billion tons were misallocated by Steinfeld and colleagues. Uncounted sources included livestock respiration, deforestation and methane underestimates. They concluded that animal production actually accounts for at least 51 percent of worldwide GHGs and probably significantly more. Although the precise figures remain under study, it is nevertheless clear that the GHGs resulting from animal production are one of the largest contributors to modern climate change.

These are some of the important facts for us to consider. Despite these facts, the impact of the animal-based diet on global warming continues to be underestimated and underreported.^[2] I have fluctuated between being a vegan or vegetarian, depending on the country I lived in, these past 50 years and until recently have never sought to influence others for I believed that my own ethical choices should not be imposed on others (husband, children, society in general). Today the situation is different – it is vital for us to understand the ramifications of our dietary choices and that we can make a difference if we change them. It is not at all easy to give up animal products but Christianity informs us that we are to sacrifice and repent if our actions cause harm to others.

In addition to this argument, we may use the argument of self-interest as a motivating factor, for there is significant scientific evidence of how our abstinence from an animal-based diet could have immediate beneficial results for our water sources, climate change and thus our future survival. We do not need to wait for world/government agreements in order to effect change.

This brief extract from the book partially outlines the human and environmental aspect of this theme but what about the animals, what do we know of their suffering in these industries? If we as individuals or as leaders of our Church are to engage with the subject of the suffering creation, we need to acquaint ourselves with the available knowledge not only on the environmental impact of an animal-based diet but also on the suffering involved for the animals in the systems used for there are clear soteriological implications resulting from our choices. There is a huge amount of research in this area and here I condense some of that research whilst referencing others:

In order to meet the requirements of industrial production and high-density housing, animals are routinely branded with hot irons, dehorned, de-beaked, de-tailed and castrated without any sedation or painkillers…piglets have tails cut off and males are castrated by crushing or pulling off their testicles without analgesics, even though these procedures cause “considerable pain” (Broom and Fraser 1997). The same happens to lambs…The price for the mutilation is high for individual animals. Piglets show signs of pain for up to a week afterwards (including trembling, lethargy, vomiting and leg shaking). In lambs, stress hormone levels take a huge leap and they show signs of significant pain for four hours or more. Dairy calves who are dehorned show pain for six or more hours afterwards (Turner 2006). Birds too are mutilated without analgesics; beaks are trimmed and at times inside toes are also cut. After debeaking the animals will experience acute pain for circa two days and chronic pain lasts for up to six weeks (Duncan 2001). As stock numbers are vast, illness and injuries are likely to go undetected and result from high density, lack of space, lack of mental stimulation and physical exhaustion; physical and mental health problems quickly arise (Broom & Fraser 2007). Veal calves are often kept in tiny enclosures and tied down by their necks and quickly succumb to “abnormal behaviour and ill health” (Turner 2006; European Commission 1995). Intensive egg production weakens bones and leads to lameness, osteoporosis and painful fractures as all calcium and minerals are used for eggs causing “both acute and chronic pain”…it can also lead to internal haemorrhages, starvation and ultimately death which will be painful and “lingering” (Webster 2004:184). Cows suffer from mastitis and lameness (Stokka et al, 1997) and kept pregnant to keep milk yields high, (Vernelli 2005; Turner 2006).^[3]

There is no other reason for these practices other than the desire for increased profit; the “evil profit” that Met. Kallistos describes in Chapter Six of my forthcoming book. From this arises the challenging question that once we know of the suffering involved in the production of our food and we continue to consume those products are we guilty of being indifferent to the suffering of a large portion of God’s creation? The subsequent question is whether the required “spiritual revolution” so often called for by our Patriarchs and Bishops should apply to our treatment of the animals within these industries? If the answer is no, we ought to examine why we have made the choice to exclude billions of animals from receiving compassion, mercy and justice. If we conclude that they are simply for that use, then I believe we are in danger of continuing the mind-set of domination rather than dominion spoken of above, which in turn, indicates that only human suffering is relevant to God. I submit that this mind-set is against the teachings of the Eastern Orthodox Church and tantamount to the type of heresy the early Fathers fought so hard to overthrow. …………………………………………………………………………………….

To conclude this piece, I present an edited version of the article by Dahr Jamail, 1st Oct 2018, who introduces the dangers of runaway climate change and the existential threat that this represents for all of us.

How Feedback Loops Are Driving Runaway Climate Change

IF you think this summer has been intense as far as record warm temperatures, wildfires, drought, and flooding events around the Northern Hemisphere, you haven’t seen anything yet — unless you happen to live in the Arctic.

According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), air temperatures there are increasing at an “unprecedented rate” — twice as fast as they are around the rest of the globe. NOAA’s 2017 Arctic Report Card states unequivocally that the Arctic “shows no sign of returning to reliably frozen region of recent past decades.” The Executive Summary of the report also adds, “Arctic paleo-reconstructions, which extend back millions of years, indicate that the magnitude and pace of the 21st century sea-ice decline and surface ocean warming is unprecedented in at least the last 1,500 years and likely much longer.”

A recent report from National Geographic revealed that some of the ground in the Arctic is no longer freezing, even during the winter. Along with causing other problems, this will become yet another feedback loop in the Arctic, causing yet more greenhouse gasses to be released from permafrost than are already being released and impacting the entire planet.

The simplest explanation for a positive climate feedback loop is this: The more something happens, the more it happens. One of the most well-known examples is the melting of sea ice in the Arctic during the summer, which is accelerating. As greater amounts of Arctic summer sea ice melt away, less sunlight is reflected back into space. Hence, more light is absorbed into the ocean, which warms it and causes more ice to melt, and on and on.

Dr. Ira Leifer is an academic researcher who specializes in bubble-related oceanographic processes (such as subsea bubble plumes emanating from the ocean floor), satellite remote sensing, and air pollution. Working closely with NASA on some of his projects, Leifer uses the agency’s satellite data to study methane in the Arctic and its role in climate disruption. One of his concerns about a feedback loop already at play in the Arctic is how the heating of that region is already being amplified by ocean currents that transport warmer, more southerly waters northwards into Arctic seabed waters where it can affect methane deposits in submerged permafrost and sub-seabed methane hydrates.

“The release of this methane contributes powerfully to overall warming – methane is a very potent greenhouse gas, which actually has a bigger effect [on] the atmosphere’s radiative balance than carbon dioxide on decadal timescales” (Dr. Leifer).

Although climate is generally thought to occur on century timescales, human timescales and ecological adaptation timescales are measured in decades instead of centuries, and this is now how many climate processes are being monitored given the rapidity of human-forced planetary warming.

Dr. Peter Wadhams is a world-renowned expert who has been studying Arctic sea ice for decades. His prognosis for the Arctic sea ice is grim: He says it is in its “death spiral.”

“Multi-year ice is now much less than 10 percent of the area of the ice cover; it was 60 percent or more before 2000,” Dr. Wadhams states that “[Sea ice] extent in summer is down to 50 percent of its value in the 1980s.”

Dr. Wadhams, who is also the President of the International Association for the Physical Sciences of the Ocean (IAPSO), noted that this primary feedback loop is much further along than most of us realize.

“I see the summer sea ice disappearing by the early 2020s,” Wadhams said. He noted that the change of albedo (a measure of reflection of solar radiation) due to the loss of sea ice and snowline retreat across the Arctic “is sufficient to add 50 percent to the warming effect of CO2 emissions alone.”

Alarmingly, on August 21, Arctic scientists told The Guardian that the oldest and strongest sea ice in the Arctic had broken up for the first time in recorded history. One of them described the event as “scary,” in part because it occurred off the north coast of Greenland, which is normally frozen year-round. The region has long been believed to be “the last ice area”: It was thought, at least until now, to be the final place that would hold out against the melting impacts from an increasingly warmer planet.

Abrupt Acceleration

Temperatures are rising most strongly in the Arctic, with some areas already showing an increase of as much as 5.7 degrees Celsius (10.26 degrees Fahrenheit). Dr. Michael MacCracken, Chief Scientist for Climate Change Programs with the Climate Institute in Washington, DC, explained how, now that the Arctic is warmer, the temperature gradient between the tropics and the traditionally cold Arctic is reduced. With a reduced gradient, the movement of warmth from low to high latitudes is slowed. As Earth rotates, this leads to a wavier jet stream that can carry low latitude warmth up to Alaska and elsewhere in the Arctic, and the southward reach of cold air in the Arctic to lower latitudes. This explains why New Orleans, for example, has recently experienced unusual freezing winter weather.

“In addition, the waves in the jet stream that result are shifting to the east less rapidly, which means the unusual weather patterns that are more frequently occurring are moving eastward less rapidly,” Dr. MacCracken explained. “So both wet and dry periods are lasting longer, contributing to both excessively wet (e.g., flooding) and excessively dry (e.g., wildfire) conditions.”

Dr. Wadhams is concerned about this as well.

“The jet stream effect is because Arctic air is warming faster than tropical air, so the temperature difference is decreasing,” he explained. “This reduces the driving force on the jet stream, so it then meanders, which brings hot air to the higher latitudes (and cold air to some low latitudes).”

Summer weather patterns are now increasingly likely to become stalled out over places like North America, portions of Asia, and Europe, according to a recent climate study that showed how a warming Arctic is causing heatwaves in other places to become more intense and persistent due to a slowing of the jet stream. Dr. Leifer warned that as these processes continue and the Arctic continues to heat up faster than the tropics, the pole-equator temperature difference that controls our weather and causes three major weather circulation “cells” — tropical, mid-latitude, and arctic — will merge into a single weather cell. A similar merging of weather cells occurred during the time of the dinosaurs.

“The jet stream, which controls seasonal storms in the midlatitudes, is a result of these three cells, and would disappear in a single weather cell planet, dramatically altering rain patterns and almost certainly heralding an ecosystem catastrophe,” Leifer explained. “The plants that underlie the food chain would be replaced by others that the local animals (insects to apex predators) could not utilize — in short, an abrupt acceleration of the current Great Anthropocene Extinction event.”

The diminishment of the jet stream also contributes to another potentially catastrophic feedback loop within the Arctic seabed: Changes to the jet stream are causing longer and more intense heat waves to occur across the Arctic, which of course causes the Arctic Ocean to warm further. Kevin Lister, an associate with the Climate Restoration Foundation in Washington, DC, co-authored a paper with Dr. MacCracken for the United Nations that addressed the crisis in the Arctic, among other climate disruption-related issues. Unlike the most commonly accepted idea that global temperatures should not be allowed to increase by more than 1.5°C, Lister stated that the planet reaching 1.5°C above baseline “is fundamentally dangerous and that the rate of change we are seeing today means we will not even be able to stop the temperature at this level.”

Lister said this conclusion was reached, in part, due to initial observations from Dr. Wadhams regarding how the loss of sea ice was amplifying rates of change in the Arctic. Lister states that “methane emissions [in the Arctic] are already a severe risk,” and that he and Dr. MacCracken’s UN paper shows that once temperatures started rising they would be largely unstoppable due to the interacting nature of the feedback mechanisms.

“Thus, one feedback mechanism, such as sea ice melting, can trigger another, such as methane releases, which then accelerates the first in a tightening spiral,” he explained. “In reality, there are many critical feedback mechanisms and the interlocking effects between them means that the climate is far more unstable and irreversible than we are led to believe, and the climate’s change is likely to follow a super exponential progression once the temperature rises above a certain level.”

Dr. Leifer, who has been studying Arctic methane for years, shares the same concern.

“There is the potential for seabed methane deposits off Greenland to be destabilized by the input of warm melt water and also heat transport,” he said, in addition to having pointed out that this process has been occurring in other areas around the Arctic for many years.

As I have written in the past, we are currently facing the very real possibility of a major methane release in the Arctic. Such a release would be a catastrophe for the global climate — and the survival of humans and other species.

Could a Dire Situation Lead to a “War for Survival”?

Lister and Dr. MacCracken both believe that the global focus on a maximum allowable temperature increase target of 1.5°C above baseline is both dangerous and unachievable. Most media and governmental attention has centered on keeping the Earth from warming 2°C over pre-industrial revolution baseline temperatures, and ideally limiting warming to 1.5°C. This is based on a politically agreed upon goal set forth during the 2015 Paris Climate talks, which were nonbinding.

“It reflects the way that intergovernmental climate change policy has been managed which has been to arbitrarily set a temperature target, which was firstly 2°C and then latterly 1.5°C, and then to see if economic and political policy can deliver an appropriate carbon budget,” Lister explained. “This is clearly not a rational way to develop climate change policy.”

Lister and Dr. MacCracken both believe that, in an ideal world, the process would be the other way round; governments would decide a safe temperature rise based on the best science and then set an appropriate climate change policy. But this is not the world we live in.

Mark Serreze, the director of the US National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder, recently pointed out how the Arctic climate system has entered uncharted territory, so that even computer models are “no longer providing a reliable guide to the future.”

Dr. Leifer said that even if we prepare for the inevitable sea level rise from Greenland melting alone, accelerated melting there is “very bad,” as it reduces the time to implement plans. However, he noted, most countries are not in preparation mode to begin with.

“For example, a forward-looking society would encourage relocation through, say, tax incentives and disincentives from, say, most of Florida, to higher ground — even purely on a hurricane insurance basis,” he said. “Sadly, forward-looking is incompatible with our political system’s biannual money festival, aka elections. Still, very few other countries are doing better — excepting some northern European countries, like Holland — despite differences.”

The impacts of climate disruption aren’t waiting for our preparations, or lack thereof. Dr. Leifer believes that, sooner or later, the sea levels will rise dramatically. Once this happens, he believes coastal cities will have to be abandoned due to sea level rise and increasingly destructive hurricanes. He believes that the sooner that departure happens, the less destruction and loss of human lives we will experience.

The Slowing and Potential Failure of the Gulf Current (AMOC)

Dr. Leifer also expressed concern about the changes to the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which is currently weakening and already at its weakest in at least the last 1,600 years. Dr. MacCracken states that his greatest concern about Arctic feedback loops is that of the melting of the plateau of the Greenland Ice Sheet. He explained that the meltwater and warmth at the surface is penetrating down into the ice sheet, softening it enough that the glacial ice has started flowing outward, and as this happens, the surface of the ice sinks to lower altitudes. This kicks in a feedback loop that ultimately causes warming to accelerate, which causes the ice to flow faster, which further accelerates the melting.

“The ice making up the Greenland Ice Sheet holds about the equivalent of 6-7 meters (~20 feet) of global sea level rise, and glaciological evidence makes clear that an order of approximately half of that melted during the last interglacial about 125,000 years ago, contributing significantly to the 4-8 meter rise in sea level at that time,” Dr. MacCracken said. He pointed out that this rise was caused by a 1°C temperature increase, similar to the temperature increase Earth is experiencing right now (1.16°C above baseline).

“At that time, the atmospheric CO2 concentration was near 300 ppm and the warming was due to differences in the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. Today, the orbital parameters are less favorable to significant warming, but the CO2 concentration is a good bit higher and growing,” Dr. MacCracken said. “And its warming influence acts all year long, making it not surprising that the loss of mass of ice from the Greenland Ice Sheet is going up rapidly with a stronger and stronger influence on sea level around the world.”

The rapidly melting Greenland Ice Sheet is precisely what is causing the AMOC to slow. Moreover, an Arctic that is continuing to warm could lead to the failure of the Gulf Current, Dr. Leifer said.

“The resultant deep freeze that would hit Europe would destroy European agriculture and likely lead to a massive war for survival,” he warned.

Full article available at : https://truthout.org/articles/how-feedback-loops-are-driving-runaway-climate-change/ …………………………………………………………………………………..

We may now better understand the urgency in the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew’s recent 1st September declaration. This World Wild Animal Day focuses our attention, or should do, that is time for us all to take stock and make changes in the choices we make and the way we live.

[1] Knight, A, “Animal Agriculture and Climate Change,” in The Global Guide to Animal Protection, ed. A. Linzey, 254-256. Urbana, Chicago and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2013.

[2] The carbon footprint produced by animals is as follows: cow 16Kg CO²per 1Kg of meat; sheep 13Kg CO²; pig 5Kg CO²; chicken 4.4Kg CO²as compared to mussels, which hardly register on the scale, Horizon, “Should I Eat Meat?” Also, United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s Report (2006) “Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues & Options.” UNFA Report (2013) “Tackling Climate Change Through Livestock.” European Commission, (2010) “Roadmap for Moving to a Low-Carbon Economy in 2050.” International Food Policy Research Institute, (2009) “Climate Change: Impact on Agriculture and Costs of Adaptation.” Organic Centre State of Science Review, “Impacts of Organic Farming on the Efficiency of Energy Use in Agriculture.” The Royal Society, (2010) “Energy and the Food System.” United Nations Environmental Programme Convention on Biodiversity (2007) “Biodiversity and Climate Change.” World Bank Agriculture & Rural Development Department, Report (2009) “Minding The Stock: Bringing Public Policy to Bear on Livestock Sector Development.” International Panel on Climate Change “Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change.”

^[3] Aaltola, Animal Suffering, 34-45. Aaltola provides many other reports and scientific studies, which outline numerous examples of suffering. Also, Broom & Nimon, 1999, 2001; European Commission, 1995, 2001, 2012; Mench, 2002, 2008; Sanotra, Berg and Lund, 2003; Julain, 2004; Appleby 2007. For other references to misuse and cruelty, see the European Commission Reports (1995, 2001, and 2012) and the Compassion in World Farming website: http://www.ciwf.org.

Russian Icon of Saints Flores and Laurus.

Posted on September 23, 2018 by admin

The Icon depicts Archangel Michael entrusting a herd of horses to Saints Flores and Laurus who were protectors of domestic animals.

HAH Ecu. Pat. Bartholomew’s 1st Sep 2018 ‘Day of the Protection of the Environment’

Posted on September 21, 2018 by admin

Prot. No. 738

✝ BARTHOLOMEW
By God’s Mercy Archbishop of Constantinople-New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch
To the Plenitude of the Church: Grace, peace and mercy
From the Creator of All, our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ
***

Beloved brothers and sisters in the Lord,

Twenty-nine years have now passed since the Mother Church established the Feast of Indiction as the “Day of Protection of the Environment.” Throughout this time, the Ecumenical Patriarchate has inspired and pioneered various activities, which have borne much fruit and highlighted the spiritual and ecological resources of our Orthodox tradition.

The Ecumenical Patriarchate’s ecological initiatives provided a stimulus for theology to showcase the environmentally-friendly principles of Christian anthropology and cosmology as well as to promote the truth that no vision for humanity’s journey through history has any value if it does not also include the expectation of a world that functions as a real “home” (oikos) for humanity, particularly at a time when the ongoing and increasing threat against the natural environment is fraught with the possibility of worldwide ecological destruction. This evolution is a consequence of a specific choice of economic, technological and social development that respects neither the value of the human being nor the sanctity of nature. It is impossible to truly care for human beings while at the same time destroying the natural environment as the very foundation of life, essentially undermining the future of humanity.

Although we do not consider it appropriate to judge modern civilization on the grounds of criteria related to sin, we wish to underscore that the destruction of the natural environment in our age is associated with human arrogance against nature and our domineering relationship toward the environment, as well as with the model of eudemonism or disposition of greed as a general attitude in life. As incorrect as it is to believe that things were better in the past, it is equally unfitting to shut eyes to what is happening today. The future does not belong to humanity, when it persistently pursues artificial pleasure and novel satisfaction—living in selfish and provocative wastefulness while ignoring others, or unjustly exploiting the vulnerable. The future belongs to righteous justice and compassionate love, to a culture of solidarity and respect for the integrity of creation.

This ethos and culture are preserved in Orthodoxy’s divine and human ecclesial tradition. The sacramental and devotional life of the Church experiences and expresses a Eucharistic vision, approach and use of creation. Such a relationship with the world is incompatible with every form of introversion and indifference to creation—with every form of dualism that separates matter from spirit and undermines material creation. On the contrary, the Eucharistic experience sensitizes and mobilizes the believer toward environmentally-friendly action in the world. In this spirit, the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church emphasized that “in the sacraments of the Church, creation is affirmed and human beings are encouraged to act as stewards, protectors and ‘priests’ of creation, offering it in doxology to the Creator” (Encyclical, par. 14). Every form of abuse and destruction of creation, along with its transformation into an object of exploitation, constitutes a distortion of the spirit of the Christian gospel. It is hardly coincidental that the Orthodox Church has been characterized as the ecological expression of Christianity inasmuch as it is the Church that has preserved the Holy Eucharist at the core of its being.

Consequently, the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s ecological initiatives were not simply developed in response or in reaction to the modern unprecedented ecological crisis, but as an expression of the Church’s life, an extension of the Eucharistic ethos in the believer’s relationship to nature. This innate ecological conscience of the Church was boldly and successfully declared in the face of the contemporary threat to the natural environment. The life of the Orthodox Church is applied ecology, a tangible and inviolable respect for the natural environment. The Church is an event of communion, a victory over sin and death, as well as over self-righteousness and self-centeredness—all of which constitute the very cause of ecological devastation. The Orthodox believer cannot remain indifferent to the ecological crisis. Creation care and environmental protection are the ramification and articulation of our Orthodox faith and Eucharistic ethos.

It is clear, then, that in order to contribute and respond effectively to the ecological challenge that we face, the Church recognize and research the relevant issues. We all know that the greatest threat to our world today is climate change and its destructive consequences even for our survival on the planet. This topic was paramount in the 9^th Ecological Symposium, entitled “Toward a Greener Attica: Preserving the planet and protecting its people,” organized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate last June on the Saronic Islands of Spetses and Hydra. Unfortunately, the recent devastating fires in Attica and the impending consequences of this immense environmental destruction constitute tragic proof of the views shared by the symposium participants on the severity of the ecological threat.

Venerable hierarchs and beloved children in the Lord,

The ecological culture of the Orthodox faith is the realization of its Eucharistic vision of creation, summarized and expressed in its church life and practice. This is the Orthodox Church’s eternal message on the issue of ecology. The Church preaches and proclaims “the same things” “at all times” in accordance with the unassailable words of its Founder and Leader, that “heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Lk. 21:33). Adhering to this tradition, the Mother Church calls upon its Archdioceses and Metropolises, as well as its parishes and monasteries throughout the world, to develop initiatives, coordinate projects, organize conferences and activities that foster environmental awareness and sensitivity, so that our faithful may realize that the protection of the natural environment is the spiritual responsibility of each and every one of us.

The burning issue of climate change, along with its causes and consequences for our planet and everyday life, offer an opportunity to engage in dialogue based on principles of theological ecology, but also an occasion for specific practical endeavours. It is vitally important that you emphasize action at the local level. The parish constitutes the cell of church life as the place of personal presence and witness, communication and collaboration—a living community of worship and service.

Special attention must also be directed to the organization of Christ-centered educational programs for our youth in order to cultivate an ecological ethos. Ecclesiastical instruction must instil in their souls a respect for creation as “very good” (Gen. 1:26), encouraging them to advocate and advance creation care and protection, the liberating truth of simplicity and frugality, as well as the Eucharistic and ascetic ethos of sharing and sacrifice. It is imperative that young men and women recognize their responsibility for the practical implementation of the ecological consequences of our faith, while at the same time becoming acquainted with and promulgating the definitive contribution of the Ecumenical Throne in the preservation of the natural environment.

In conclusion, we wish you all a blessed ecclesiastical year and abundant benefit in your spiritual struggles, invoking upon you the life-giving grace and boundless mercy of the Giver of all good things, our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ, the Pioneer and Perfecter of our faith, through the intercessions of Panaghia Pammakaristos, whose honourable icon, the sacred heirloom of all Orthodox people, we reverently and humbly venerate today.

September 1, 2018

✝ Bartholomew of Constantinople

Your fervent supplicant before God

Russian Church Animal Blessing dedicated to homeless animals.

Posted on August 26, 2018 by admin

Sent to us from our friend James with the following link: https://foma.ru/kotyi-v-tserkvi-v-podmoskove-otsluzhili-neobyichnyiy-moleben.html#comment-77132

Translated from the Russian.

Cats in the church: in the suburbs served an unusual prayer

On Saturday, August 18, a prayer service for the preservation of God’s creation dedicated to homeless animals was held in the village of Lemeshovo near Ilyinsk near Podolsk near Moscow.