Catholic Concern for Animals

President:
Rt Rev Malcolm McMahon OP, Bishop of Nottingham
Patrons:
Rt Rev John A Baker
Rev John Buckley, SPS
Mgr Michael Buckley
Very Rev Canon S A Condon
Rev Fr Aidan Nichols OP
Mgr Jeffrey Scott
Rev James Thompson
The Rt Hon Ann Widdecombe, MP
Committee:
Chairman:
Dr Edward Echlin, 13 Thornbank Crescent, Bexhill, E. Sussex TN39 3ND
Vice Chairman:
Judy Gibbons, Laburnum Cottage, East Hanney, OX12 0JF
Treasurer:
Mrs. Catherine Allen, 9 Woodgate Close, Charlton Kings, Cheltenham GL52 6UW
Membership Secretary:
Ann Bates, 36, Broad Oak Park, St Johns, Colchester, Essex CO4 4JY
Retreats Secretary:
Irene Casey, 32 Pindars Farm Drive, Warrington WA1 2GF
Committee:
Margaret Harrington, Wanda Oberman
General Secretary and Editor of The Ark:
Deborah Jones, 15 Rosehip Way, Bishops Cleeve, Cheltenham, Glos, GL52 8WP deborahjark@aol.com

For a sample copy of The Ark and all membership details
or for questions, comments and submissions, contact:
Deborah Jones, 15 Rosehip Way, Bishops Cleeve, Cheltenham, Glos, GL52 8WP
deborahjark@aol.com

Deborah Jones has been working as General Secretary of Catholic Concern for Animals part time since 1999. She combines that with freelance journalism and studying for a doctorate. The thesis is on the status of animals in Catholic theology, a subject very close to her heart as it brings together two great interests of her life.

She grew up in the country, surrounded by animals, and maintains a great interest in preserving the natural environment. Her concern for animals began many years ago, when, as a child, she saw hens in a friend’s farmyard being rounded up to be imprisoned in batteries. After university and some years in teaching, Deborah spent time with a Franciscan Order studying theology in Rome. Back in England, she took up the post in 1980 of Director of Adult Religious Education for the Diocese of East Anglia, the first for a lay person in the UK. She combined that work with lecturing, editing and writing, also helping to launch a Catholic theology college for women in Cambridge. After sixteen years she was invited to become Editor of the national weekly newspaper, the Catholic Herald. Two years later she moved, with her mother, to Oxfordshire where she worked both for Catholic Concern for Animals and, until October 2004, as deputy to the Dominican Editor of a journal of pastoral theology. Her interests are painting, reading and music.

Catholic Concern for Animals in the United States:
Chairman:
Jan Fredericks
Catholic Concern for Animals
P.O. Box 266
Wayne, NJ 07474-0266 Godscre@msn.com

A note on vegetarianism

Catholic Concern for Animals has no policy on vegetarianism – other than to recommend it. Some of our members are vegan, consuming and using no animal products at all, most will be vegetarian to some extent or other, while others believe that by buying organic, locally-sourced meat known to be reared to high welfare standards they are encouraging good practices in farming. All points of view are accepted by the committee, although we would all deplore the collaboration of factory-farming methods by buying meat produced intensively. However, we would never discourage people who have not yet become aware of the suffering of animals in so much of our farming from joining us and taking part in our activities.

We do not subscribe to the view that Jesus and the early disciples would have been vegetarian; it just would not have been considered an animal welfare issue in those days. Nor that the Essenes were vegetarians, which some nineteenth-century people suggested, before the archaeological evidence which has disproved it.

But we do believe that the compassion that is at the heart of the Christian message extends to all of God’s creatures and it is inconceivable that our Lord would have tolerated cruelty in any form – and these days that extends to the way animals are reared, transported and slaughtered. For evidence of the way that modern farming practices are undeniably cruel, see the website of Compassion in World Farming, or read the book by Matthew Scully: ‘Dominion: the power of man, the suffering of animals, and the call to mercy’, New York: St Martin’s Press, 2002, ISBN 0-312-26147-0.