Taking Babies from Mothers: The Hypocrisy of Vegan Billboards and Abortion Laws
“Dairy Takes Babies From Their Mothers.”
A professor I used to know once saw the above statement written in big letters on a billboard in Dublin, along with a picture of a momma cow licking her cute baby calf. At the bottom of the billboard was the website GoVeganWorld.com. Its title page stated: “We all have the right not to be used or killed regardless of species.”
The great English writer and Catholic convert, G.K. Chesterton, a large man who loved bacon and beer, once claimed to be a vegetarian. In 1909, Chesterton wrote:
Well, I am a vegetarian—between meals. From breakfast to lunch not a leg of mutton crosses my lips…Only four times a day I will eat, like a man; for the rest of the day I will browse happily, like all the beasts of the field.
In making fun of vegetarians, Chesterton was actually defending traditional Christian freedom. Someone wrote that he was defending conviviality (good cheer) against those who practiced militant vegetarianism and teetotalism (no drinking) while advancing the idea that the government should impose its socialist will on the populace. That socialist will included the promotion of artificial birth control, abortion, and divorce—things that go against Christ’s commandments, destroy families, and empower tyrannical governments.
It’s interesting: a couple decades after Chesterton’s vegetarian quip, the National Socialist Party in Germany imposed its will on the populace. Its leader, Adolph Hitler, was the epitome of socialist intolerance. He was also a non-smoker, a teetotaler, and a vegetarian.
But back to the overly-sentimental billboard in Dublin. The professor wrote: “The mother cow, with bovine pride, licks her cute calf, from which she is soon to be parted so evil humans can drink the surplus milk.” The irony was that the billboard was placed above a café that no doubt sells gallons of milk and cream a day. The professor noted that the billboard started going up around Ireland just a few months after the Irish people overwhelmingly voted to legalize abortion.
In the re-paganized Ireland, abortion—the ultimate example of taking babies away from their mothers—should be legal, while dairy farms should be illegal. And so, it appears, the professor wrote, we all have the right not to be used or killed regardless of species, as long as the species is a sub-human one. As a friend of the professor put it: “1500 BC: worship animals, sacrifice babies; 2020 AD: worship animals, sacrifice babies.” There is nothing new under the sun. So states the Bible.
The Bible also states:
If you choose you can keep the commandments, they will save you; if you trust in God, you too shall live.
“If you choose”—this is the freedom of choice that separates man from the animals. We call it “free will,” and this free will makes man closer to God than he is to the lower animals. The Church explains: “God created man a rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions” (CCC 1730). St. Irenaeus, who died in 202 A.D., wrote: “Man is rational and therefore like God; he is created with free will and is master over his acts” (see CCC 1730).
The wise sage Sirach, about 150 years before Christ, wrote: “…he has set before you fire and water to whichever you choose, stretch forth your hand.”
Christ mentioned fiery Gehenna three times in the Sermon on the Mount. Gehenna was a valley in a south neighborhood of Jerusalem that was associated with evil. In Christ’s time, it was a garbage dump where fires constantly burned. In the prophet Jeremiah’s time, Jews sacrificed their children there, burning them in fires offered to pagan gods. Christ used fiery Gehenna then, as a euphemism for hell.
Fire or water. Heaven or hell. Understand something lost on our post-Christian world: God does not choose for us. God sends no one to heaven or to hell. No, where we go is our own choice. The modern heresy, that has been with us now for 500 years, is that man does not have free will. It claims man is more like a saddle horse, either ridden by God or the evil one, who both fight over the reins. This kind of thinking downgrades man to the level of a beast, a creature who cannot control his passions. He becomes closer to the visible animals than to the invisible God above. And then he acts like an animal, as he browses through the filth of this world.
The vegetarian-socialist-types in Chesterton’s day argued that we all come from monkeys in a godless cosmic accident. They still argue as much today. It’s actually their religion. And people join that religion because it is a faith that ultimately does not hold anyone accountable for their actions. How can they be, if everyone is a monkey or a saddle horse? Monkeys don’t make moral choices. Nor do they reconcile with their brother before bringing their offering to the altar. Horses don’t go to confession.
If we have no mastery over our actions, if we are just high-end monkeys, what is the point of life on earth? What is the point of the Holy Sacrifice of Mass? Why be present for Holy Mass if we are all just “born that way” and so totally depraved that we have no control over ourselves?
That is what the world that has turned away from Christ asks. That’s what millions of fallen-away Catholics ask since the Holy Sacrifice for sin has given way to something more akin to an overly sentimental, therapeutic, and self-affirming exercise. No longer with fear and trembling do people come to offer themselves to God. Instead, they arrive with ideas on how they can become better versions of themselves. Better saddle horses.
He has set before you fire and water; to whichever you choose, stretch forth your hand.
My friends, fear God and come reconcile with your brother—who is Christ. Go to confession. That way your gift at the altar won’t be a sacrilegious one that could end you up in Gehenna. What then do you choose to be—a saddle horse, or a human being?
Christ told people to stretch out their withered hands, and He healed them. Stretch forth your hand at Holy Mass, and Christ will grab it and lead you up Calvary. He won’t ride you like a horse to the top, however. No, with Christ out in front, you will both walk up, with crosses on your back.
Hanging way up high with Christ, you will get a good view of the passing away world. Looking down on the valley of slaughter, you will realize that you are closer to God than you think. Up there you will be given the strength to conquer your sins and master your passions. If only you so choose.
If you choose you can keep the commandments, they will save you; if you trust in God, you too shall live.
Photo by Stijn te Strake on Unsplash
