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4elise
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Just FYI - It isn’t a tradition with the men in mine or my husband’s family, so that may be something you are assuming to be universal - and the one hunter on this thread that shared her story is a woman.
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4elise
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This is a very well thought out position - I appreciate how well you articulated the connection to our role with God’s creation. I have certainly had a great deal of satisfaction growing my own veggies as well as preparing meals for the family from what has come from the back yard.Well, I have some thoughts about hunting that define what I think about “sport” hunting.
Hunting as a practical activity has a clear end - animal products to be used. The Church has always taught that this is, in itself, fine and good. Of course it is possible to do it in an immoral way like other activities. (Around here I have seen people who target endangered animals, don’t bother to go after shot animals that run away, or use lead shot in areas that it isn’t allowed.)
Many people also enjoy the activity. There is always a feeling of satisfaction with a job done well and increasing skill. Many people enjoy the contact with the outdoors.
And at a deeper level, I think it is an activity that connects us to our basic human needs in a way that can be very fulfilling - just like working in a garden to raise food can be. It is a kind of direct interaction with our place in creation that something like working in an office does not really compare to. Both people who raise their own food and hunt say that it helps them connect with themselves and God, and I think that is what it is about. (Although I wonder about those guys who hunt with thousands of dollars worth of technology and equipment - it seems to be rather like trying to hunt in the office to me.)
So where does sport hunting fit in? And by sport hunting I would say hunting where the animal is not used in any way by the individual doing the hunting, or far surpasses the needs of the person, or even simply becomes an end in itself.
To me, this is separating something that is intrinsically joined, trying to get that feeling of accomplishment or connection without the actual end of the activity being met. It is essentially like artificial birth control, or using a vomitorium. After all, how can you get that satisfaction of being part of creation and playing that role without actually using the activity in the way it was meant to be used?
I think as a result, it tends to encourage an unhealthy attitude towards creation and our place in it.
Given your understanding of our role in creation - I wonder if you were to learn about the way animals are raised in factory farms for food and diary if you would think we should avoid this? This was the conclusion I came to as I learned about factory farming.
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Marfran
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Well, you are sounding very defensive! I started this thread with the simple topic of hunting for sport, as opposed to hunting to feed your family. I don’t believe that I indicated an opinion in my OP. I actually started the thread as a request from another CAF member. I started the thread this AM and returned many hours later to see that it was already on the 4th page. (I had to work today, yes on Sunday, I work with animals and they still have to be fed and exercized on the weekend.) Since I hadn’t even weighed in on the thread that I had started, I thought I would share some of my opinions.
I come from a hunting family, and if I sound judgemental it is from personal experience. I have also worked in a wildlife rehab where I have had to tend to many animals with GSW’s and other wounds inflicted upon them by people. The really sad part is that many of the GS victims show up ***out of season *** and are often not even legal species. Just how do you mistake a Red Tail hawk for a pheasant or a turkey?
My hobbies??? Getting enough sleep. Making lunches for my kids. I won’t let them eat the garbage hot lunch at the school. Reading. Yes, I buy books–but I share them and also borrow books from friends.
I have only tried tofurkey once. It was terrible, and I think it is actually cheaper than meat. I have ***never ***had a soy latte, never–don’t even know what they taste like. I don’t go to coffee houses.
***And how you expect the average family to afford those rather expensive food items? *** What are you taking about? Organic food? Vegan? Vegetarian? I ***am ***the average family and I know that you can eat healthy on a budget. You should see the documentary film Food Inc. That film will scare anybody into making healthier choices. It’s not about vegan or vegetarian food–the ***v ***word is not even used in the film. It’s all about our corrupt food industry and all the corn filler and high fructose corn syrup that is found in all our cheap processed food.
Michael Pollan is highlighted in this film. He is anti-factory farm and thinks that ***hunting ***and organic meat is better than factory farm meat (99% of our meat comes from factory farms and is full of anti-biotics and hormones and is produced with institutionalized cruelty).
BTW: I tried growing my own vegetables this year. Great way to save money and be free of chemicals/pesticides. That’s my new hobby.
I’m not being accusatory, I’m just saying that if you want to pick apart what people spend on things, well, recall that if someone follows you around, they could probably pick you apart too. You are welcome to follow me around.
My point about the gadgets and expenditures of sports hunters is that it does not make for an economical meat, and that if one were hunting to feed their family out of need, they couldn’t afford these things. Sports hunters hunt, not out of need, but for psychological reasons–how does hunting make me feel? And I pose the question–if not hunting for need, can hunting and killing for the game of it be justified? The CCC states clearly that we are to be kind to animals and not cause them to suffer or die needlessly.
I think that vegans/vegetarians have come to some understandings and conclusions that omnivores, or those who are unfamiliar with this choice or diet, have difficulty imagining for themselves, and often feel threatened by. It is uncharted territory for many people. Many of us were raised as omnivores (myself included). All the vegans/vegetarians that I know are peace loving people and would love to share what they have learned, and love to share the health benefits of their diets with their omnivore brothers and sisters. In fact, it makes us sad to see our omnivore friends, relatives and loved ones suffer from diet related illness. If you detect any bitterness in my voice, it is because I have relatives/loved ones killing themselves with food, and I am powerless to help them. I hate the Big Mac and the Dunkin Donut, and all the unhealthy excesses of our Western culture.
I think that hunting, once used for survival, has morphed into a sport. Sometimes we forget how things started and for what reason. Actually only a small percentage of the population hunts. As a hunter who perhaps encounters negative attitudes toward your choice of sport, I would use this thread to try to understand why people object to it. People are not trying to one-up you on moral superiority–they have legitimate objections and differing attitudes toward animals.
And are there other hunters, or other hunting attitudes that*** you ***object to? Do you find the idea that one would pay $10,000 to $50,000 to participate in a “canned hunt” of an exotic retired zoo or circus animal to be an objectionable form of the hunt?
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rpp
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What a profoundly anti-catholic thread. The OP is making posts and expressing opinions that are completely opposed to authentic Catholic teachings.
What a waste.
What a waste.
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fultonfish
Guest
Is it ok to kill insects and c*ckroaches for sport?
Or is it the motivation and attitude of the “killer” that determines the morality of the killing of animals.
Or is it the motivation and attitude of the “killer” that determines the morality of the killing of animals.
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rpp
Guest
The presumption that those who hunt animals are evil.
The presumption that animals have rights equivalent to people.
The presumption that God ddi not give both dominion and responsibility over the Earth.
The presumption that God sinned when he made clothes for Adam and Eve out of Animal Fur.
In short, the OP is asserting that God is evil. Nothing less. Her position is both fundamentally anti-Catholic and utterly without merit.
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Marfran
Guest
NO opinion was stated in the OP. We are discussing the merits of hunting for sport, as opposed to hunting for need. Are you a big trophy hunter? Pay big bucks to bag an elephant? What authentic Catholic teachings are you talking about?? The Catechism of the Catholic Church that states that we are to be kind to animals and not to cause them to suffer to to die needlessly?
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4elise
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severus68
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I assume this is a serious question and will respond accordingly. Why should or would anyone want to kill even pests cruelly. Have you heard of little boys who used to pull off the wings of flies as a start and grew up to be serial killers?
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Eric_Hilbert
Guest
Keep the discussion civil or the thread will be locked.
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fultonfish
Guest
Many of those little boys who used to pull off the wings of flies also grew up eating white bread.
Oh, the horror.
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severus68
Guest
You have said that the OP’s other thread on the ethics of fur is a waste etc. I do hope you are not getting personal. This is a thread on a forum and everyone is entitled to voice his/her opinion.
You are making presumptions yourself. To say the OP is asserting that God is evil is rather wrong and unChristian of you.
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aspawloski4th
Guest
Come to the west side of Grand Rapids sometime. The business where the work force is dominated by males, especially the blue collar ilk. You might as well shut things down during the first to or week and 1/2 of the firearm portion of the deer hunting season. Those males left are either have health problems that keep them from hunting, or the against the grain type people who have no friends on the west side. Part of the big friction between me and my dad is because I never took interest in hunting.
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Marfran
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Yes, where in the Catholic Church is killing animals for “sport” or “pleasure” promoted and regarded as a positive virtue? Again, the example of the “canned hunt,” paying big dollars to kill a retired exotic zoo or circus animal–can anyone defend this under the guidlines of our Church?
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Bluegoat
Guest
In any case, I don’t think the fact that hunting is traditional in some places, either by men or women, is any kind of an argument in itself. If it were wrong, or even ok but somehow being used wrongly in the tradition, the fact that it was “traditional” would not justify it. And if it is ok and being practiced in a good way, the argument that it is traditional isn’t really necessary.
It seems rather a red herring to me.
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Bluegoat
Guest
Yes, I think we should be very conscious of where we get our food. Factory farming (of animals or plants) I think is one example of a practice that can easily come between us and a proper understanding of our role in creation, and a proper appreciation of life. It has a way of making us harden our hearts or willfully ignore what we see - neither of which is good for us spiritually.
I’m not airy-fairy about the animal word or life in general. I think death and pain are a fact, and that they are there for a reason, and that we cannot escape them. Teaching kids that living a good vegan lifestyle will keep them from having to deal with such facts is also a kind of separation from reality. I have massacred a lot of worms in my vegetable garden for example, and I don’t think that kind of death is somehow more or less acceptable than other kinds, or the death of plants. We are all part of this world which is a great cycle of life and death, and I don’t think we will find something new until the second coming.
But we need to do these things carefully, intentionally. Plato said justice is each thing being in it’s proper place and used in it’s proper way, and Christianity agrees with that. To me, factory farming is just not just, either from the point of view of using animals correctly, but also treating plants and farmland and people who work on farms in a just way.
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4elise
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Great points… so much of what I have learned about CAFO is exactly that - not using each thing in it’s proper place and it’s proper way - it is not simply the issue of the way the animals live but the pollution to land and water and how this impacts the workers and neighboring communities as well as the health issues.
I think it is sad how disconnected we’ve all become from where our food comes from and as I learned more I just had to remove myself from the animal / dairy circle - I don’t know if everyone who learns about this issue would make the same choice, but it seemed like the only response my faith allowed me to make. We’ve a group here on CAF of Catholic Vegetarians and Vegans which is made up of people - some who have made this choice long ago, but some who are just now exploring the possibility - so it is just a path we are all on, trying to become more aware, and making choices that reflect that -
As some who aren’t involved with hunting, some who hunt for food for their family - I don’t think anyone on this thread supported anything to do with hunting and letting the animal rot — so to the OP I think most (if not all) here agree that sport hunting is wrong.
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pete_29
Guest
Where did this come from? This is about the fourth or fifth thread you started about is doing this with animals ethical or is doing that with animals ethical. If you don’t want to eat meat, then DON’T EAT MEAT, but don’t come here with your moral smugness implying that your so much better than people like me because you don’t eat meat. Now do you understand or do I have to draw you a map!!!Wow, where did that response come from?? Right out of left field!!
No, but people who eat meat are closer to cavemen.
This thread is about killing animals for “sport,” as opposed to killing them for “meat,” though one can probably pretend one is hunting for the “food” aspect, when one is really motivated by the personal satisfaction and “thrill” of the hunt.
In a “canned hunt” it is pretty hard to look like you are hunting for any “honorable reason.” Canned hunts are often exotic, retired zoo and circus animals.
Hunters often claim to be “conservationists”. In my opinion, this is a way to “paint” the activity a prettier color. Hunters often donate the meat that they kill–for a better public image–not because they care about people, but because they care about the continuation of hunting.
I have to question any “enjoyment” derived from the activity of hunting.
As far as people who have brought up the topic of hunting for “meat”–I think it is healthier to obtain one’s meat this way, as opposed to eating factory farmed meat–and the animal leads a normal life until the point of death–as opposed to an entire life of suffering on a CAFO (Confined animal feeding operation).
Many sportshunters spend more money on equipment, gadgets, clothing, lodging and alcohol, all in the pusuit of a kill–bringing the cost of the meat to astronomical proportions, not seen in any grocery store!!!
P.S. 4elise I have some pork, beef, and chicken recipes I’d be happy to share with you.
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