Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in America on February 24, 1979, titled “Vegetarianism and Religion.”
Vegetarianism is no longer simply a fad in our country. While men and women who refrain from eating meat and fish (ovolacto vegetarians) and those who refrain from eating cheese, milk and eggs (vegans) are still rare enough to be of interest or concern when met at dinner parties, in restaurants or on airplanes, it is nevertheless true, as one newspaper reported last summer, that vegetarians are no longer “oddballs” or vaguely “un-American.” We are fast becoming used to the variety of meatless and vegetable cookbooks, and are not surprised to discover meatless entrées on the menus of fashionable restaurants. Yet, we may feel, the issue of what one eats is in the final analysis peripheral: It is what one does that really counts.
There are good reasons, however, for further consideration of the religious significance of vegetarianism, the choice of a diet that does not include meat and fish products. Looking back into our tradition, we are aware today that since Vatican II we have dismantled significant portions of an older, somewhat dated spirituality and practice; gone are many of the devotions and prayers, the fasts and abstinences that characterized an earlier Catholicism. With them, too, there has fallen into disuse a whole theology and ecclesiology which had served well for centuries. While we do not wish to look back with yearning to that age, we must admit that we have not yet been able to put back together theology and the lived piety of the church; we have yet to construct sufficiently coherent and comprehensive models that can nourish everyday, routine Christian life, and we are still looking for a new, organic unity of mind and heart that can be lived “in ordinary times.”
Looking to the future, we are more and more aware of the vast social issues of peace and justice facing us. As we live more clearly in a “global village,” and attend more seriously to structural injustices that oppress and degrade whole groups of people and nations, we are seeking a kind of spirituality that can enable us to internalize and experience affectively these apparently vague and general concerns. Both for those who work with the poor and need a spirituality to support them in the strenuous and often unrewarding efforts involved, and for those of us who rarely see that oppression firsthand, we are seeking a kind of asceticism that unites us more deeply to the world and its people and helps us to embody the Gospel as a source of social, institutional change in the world.
It is my suggestion here that vegetarianism offers one plausible, effective way in which the contemporary Christian can again integrate the more speculative and general concerns of the church with a concrete personal piety. The experiment with vegetarianism, when undertaken prudently and with sufficient reflection, can offer a solid contribution toward the development of new and dynamic forms of spirituality. To understand how this can be so, it is helpful to examine some of the reasons usually given for becoming a vegetarian.
Vegetarianism is good for your health.
The point is made here that we Americans eat too much meat, and would do ourselves good by becoming vegetarians. While it is true that we do eat too much meat, and while a good and nourishing diet need not include meat at all, the argument in itself is not entirely convincing. On the one hand, what is called for concerning good health need only be moderation in the consumption of meat, not abstention; on the other, it is well known that nonmeat diets can be seriously deficient in necessary vitamins and proteins, and in the long run at least as detrimental to health as an excessive consumption of meat.
Vegetarianism offers us a simpler life style.
According to this argument, our lives are too complicated, too “consumerized,” removed from the natural and addicted to the rich, the expensive and the novel; vegetarianism would be a serious step toward a more gentle, cleaner and purer way of living. The restriction of diet involved would teach us to value more fully what we do choose to eat. Akin to this, of course, is the movement toward natural and organic foods, the rejection of the artificial and synthetic. To some extent, there is thus involved an ambivalence about the value of technological society, a yearning for an earlier simplicity and closeness to nature. Therein lie both the value and the weakness of this argument. Our consumption of meat and the attitudes thereby implied can indeed be taken as appropriate symbols for a society increasingly bound to various artificial and commercial values, and vegetarianism can offer a constructive and wholesome critique of that tendency. However, not only is vegetarianism liable to the same commercialized packaging (as can be demonstrated by the proliferation of natural-food emporiums, expensive and gourmet “countercultural” cookbooks, etc.), but it can easily be reduced to a fairly comfortable substitute for any more complicated, more urgent efforts to understand and respond to the problems of a technological age.
Vegetarianism responds to an unjust economic system.
Even those of us who have not traveled to third-world countries or into our own inner-city areas are becoming aware that in many ways meat is a luxury, a rare treat for many families who must otherwise subsist on vegetable products. Moreover, there is a greater awareness today that the production of animal protein is an inefficient and costly process, requiring a far greater proportion of energy and feed than would an equivalent amount of vegetable/grain protein. Thus, for example, if 10 people can be nourished for a certain period of time on the meat of one cow, a hundred people could be nourished for the same time period on the grain used to feed and fatten that cow for market. It is often the case, too, that economic profits induce poor countries to use valuable land to graze cattle and/or grow grain for feed, often for export to this country—rather than using the same resources more efficiently and justly to feed their own malnourished people. Responding to this systematized inequity, the vegetarian chooses to refrain from eating meat as a kind of personal reminder and protest, to live voluntarily according to the diet forced upon many people by the realities of prices and economic systems. Involved is a kind of consciousness-raising, reminding the vegetarian that meat even once a day is a luxury, one gained at the expense of many people who are not even adequately nourished. This kind of effort, which can also be seen as a kind of traditional “penance” for the sinful effects of an economic system, is worthwhile on a personal basis and makes concrete for the vegetarian otherwise abstract issues. It is most worthwhile when it becomes a group effort, either as a community decision or project, or in conjunction with constructive efforts to change the system, e.g., by joining Bread for the World or some similar organization.
Vegetarianism embodies a respect for life.
From this point of view, vegetarianism is a further, clearer effort to remind the person that all life is precious and should not be taken except in urgent necessity, and that when there is such necessity, when we have to eat, higher forms of life deserve more respect. Thus, the refusal to eat meat and fish includes both a respect for these animals, which in some ways share life as we do, and a preference to gain sustenance from those forms of life that are more rhythmically, seasonally renewable. When the vegetarian admits that he or she does in fact “kill” plant life for food, we are all relieved of a kind of absolutism which would say that no life can be taken for any reason. Like everyone else, the vegetarian recognizes that choices must be made, that there is a qualitative difference between plant and animal and between animal and human being; the vegetarian does not, however, see human life as utterly distinct from and above all other kinds of life. Similarly, the vegetarian can admit that there are extreme circumstances when the eating of meat or fish is called for, yet also concludes that to make meat-eating a daily necessity is unrealistic and an unnecessary form of violence. The respect for life thus emphasized so simply on a daily basis heightens the vegetarian’s appreciation and reverence for all life, calls him or her to a deeper sense of stewardship and truly humane dominion over a world of nature and offers a more acute awareness of all kinds of violence and disrespect for human life woven into the fabric of everyday social patterns.
Vegetarianism makes manifest the unity of creation.
There is a story about St. Francis of Assisi to the effect that one cold winter’s day, Brother Leo came into his small hut to light a fire for the shivering and frail ascetic. Francis stopped him, saying: “No, let me be cold: If I cannot bring warmth to so many of my brothers and sisters who are cold today, then at least I can join them by being as cold as they are.” We are very aware today of the darkness of life, the suffering woven into existence, the loneliness and fear that surround the lives of so many people. In a small yet significant way, the vegetarian chooses to be like St. Francis, to step in the direction of that darkness and be closer to those who are trapped there. There is fostered the awareness that we are all truly one, and that only in a togetherness that accepts and does not flee our common plight can any of us find happiness. Nor are the limits of this unity closely restricted, for as St. Francis and many of the saints have seen, we are one with the animals too, and with all life, and do ourselves a great disservice in forgetting that unity. Vegetarianism reminds us, very quietly and persistently, of this reality before us.
Should one become a vegetarian? While the responses presented are not wholly compelling, the least that can be said is that the choice to become a vegetarian can be a prudent and religious one, founded in values not alien to our tradition. In the years to come, as our awareness of social issues grows sharper and as we enter into a deeper and more familiar dialogue with the religions of the East, wherein the practice of vegetarianism has a somewhat broader and more popularly accepted currency, the possibilities and values of vegetarianism will perhaps become even clearer and more easily available to the Christian community as a whole.
In conclusion, two aspects of the choice may be noted. First, the decision to become a vegetarian may begin on a variety of levels, more or less profound, but inevitably the whole person will be involved, as an individual and member of society. The former, because what we eat is so fundamentally characteristic of who we are, and because vegetarianism as a change of diet often leads to a much quieter, gentler experience of life; the latter, because even as a private choice vegetarianism is acted out within the context of the meal, a basic milieu of human society and discourse, and inevitably leads to reflection and discussion within the given community as to the reasons for the decision, the values, etc. So, too, the heightened awareness of social realities and injustices afforded by vegetarianism may very well lead to broader, more visible decisions about life style, position within American society and a larger global community.
The second aspect of the choice to be noted is the manner in which the decision is made. For many, it has begun as a very tentative decision, an experiment for a short period of time. For some, a broader leap is made and found to be easier. The decision may be a strong and positive response to a suddenly realized understanding of the world about us, with its virtues and faults, or it may be simply the manifestation of an inner experience, an interiority that is also a kind of cosmic unity. Whatever the specifics of the manner, however, the Christian may discover one fundamental dynamic: the heartfelt desire to discover anew in our age the Lord who has always chosen to be found in the context of the meal.
