THE B-LIST: QUESTIONABLE MUSICAL MOMENTS #3 – BIG MEAT EATER

It’s the story you never knew you wanted to see! A scientifically inclined butcher accidentally creates a stockpile of radioactive meat scraps which not only has the power to raise the dead, but also attracts the attention of alien invaders who want the new element “balonium” for themselves. Oh, and just for good measure, there’s a gargantuan homicidal cannibalistic janitor turned butcher’s assistant who wants to kill and eat the whole town. AND it’s a musical!

Here’s the title song. Um, you vegetarians out there might want to give it a pass though, as there is much gratuitous mashing and mangling of meat in this clip.

Blech! That clip is almost enough to make a fellow swear off eating animals altogether. If only their charred dead flesh weren’t so tasty and full of proteins!

Oops. Was that insensitive? My apologies to any vegetarians reading this. But, you know, it’s not like eating meat is a sin. As Father George Rutler wrote (quite tongue in cheek) in a 2003 letter responding to Danel Paden, director of the Catholic Vegetarian Society, “Taste is one thing; it is another thing to condemn meat eating as “evil” and permissible only “in rare and unfortunate circumstances.” Paden disagrees with no less an authority than God, Who forbids us to call any edible unworthy (Mark 7: 18-19), and Who enjoins St Peter to eat pork chops and lobster in one of my favorite revelations (Acts 10: 9-16). Does the Catholic Vegetarian Society think that our Lord was wrong to have served up fish to the 5,000, or should He have refrained from eating the Passover Lamb? When He rose from the dead and appeared in the Upper Room, He did not ask for a bowl of Cheerios, nor did He whip up a meatless omelette on the shore of Galilee. Man was made to eat flesh (Genesis 1: 26-31; 9: 1-6), with the exception of human flesh.” Well, thank heavens for that last part.

Still, just because the Catechism assures us that “God entrusted animals to the stewardship of those whom he created in his own image. Hence it is legitimate to use animals for food and clothing”, that doesn’t necessarily give us carte blanche to go about it in any way we please. As the soon to be Pope Benedict XVI noted when questioned by a German reporter in 2002, “Are we allowed to make use of animals, and even to eat them? That is a very serious question. At any rate, we can see that they are given into our care, that we cannot just do whatever we want with them. Animals, too, are God's creatures. Certainly, a sort of industrial use of creatures, so that geese are fed in such a way as to produce as large a liver as possible, or hens live so packed together that they become just caricatures of birds, this degrading of living creatures to a commodity seems to me in fact to contradict the relationship of mutuality that comes across in the Bible.” So, there would seem to be legitimate moral reasons over which one might choose vegetarianism that have nothing to do with being an animal rights whacko.

Just remember, whichever diet you choose, you’re still under the obligation to take care of yourself. “Life and physical health are precious gifts entrusted to us by God.” the Catechism reminds us, “We must take reasonable care of them.” So, if you choose a meatless existence, you still need to make sure you're getting enough proteins from other sources. And if you go the other route, preferring a menu of all creatures great and small, well… take a look at our big meat eater Abdulla up there. There are wrong ways to go about being a carnivore too.