Catholic priest Fr Terry Martin reflects on the Church’s teaching about animals and asks whether it has gone far enough in confronting the realities of factory farming. Drawing on Laudato si’, Catholic theology and his recent correspondence with the Vatican, he argues that animals must be taken more seriously within the Church’s moral life.
Christianity and Animals
In Bong Joon Ho’s film Okja, a young girl called Mija loves a remarkable animal.
Okja is enormous, gentle, intelligent and deeply bonded to her. To Mija, she is not a product, not a unit and not a walking supply of meat. She is a companion. A friend. A beloved creature with habits, fears, pleasures and a life of her own.
But the world around Mija sees Okja differently. Corporate executives, marketers and food producers have another language for her. Okja is not someone to love, but something to sell. Her body is valuable because it can be processed, branded and consumed.
That is the emotional force of the film. It does not need to persuade us that Okja matters. Once we see her through Mija’s eyes, the argument is already won. The painful question is why so many other animals like her remain unseen.
Why does one animal become lovable, mournable and worth saving, while countless others disappear behind words like livestock, pork, beef, poultry and produce?
Not One Pig – Can Christianity change the way we see farmed animals? was last modified: June 29th, 2026 by admin
In this deeply personal and thought-provoking reflection, Dr Daniela Rizzo, Lecturer in Systematic Theology at Alphacrucis University College, explores how childhood concern for a beloved cat became the starting point for a wider theological journey. Challenging visions of salvation centred on escape from creation, she argues for a richer Christian hope rooted in the healing and renewal of all that God has made.
I Rejected the Rapture Because of My Cat – Daniela Rizzo was last modified: June 6th, 2026 by admin
In The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien imagines a world of hobbits, wizards, forests and ancient powers. Among its most memorable creatures are the Ents: tree-like beings who act as shepherds and guardians of the forests.
The most famous of them is Treebeard. When the hobbits Merry and Pippin encounter him, they meet a being whose speech belongs to an older, slower world. His words are not efficient. They do not rush towards usefulness. They grow, like roots beneath the soil, from memory, place and long attention. To speak too quickly, in Treebeard’s world, is almost to fail to speak truthfully.
This is part of what makes the Ents so compelling. They are not voiceless, but their voices do not fit the pace of those around them. They require patience. They require humility. They require listeners willing to be slowed down.
The Spirit Who Teaches Us to Listen: The Lord of the Rings, Pentecost and the song of creation was last modified: May 24th, 2026 by admin
When we look into the frightened eyes of an intensively farmed animal, what do we see?
Speaking at the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Humanities Forum, the philosopher Slavoj Žižek gives an unsettling answer. We might assume that the question concerns animal consciousness: what does the animal feel, know, fear or understand? But Žižek turns the question around. The deeper question is not only what we see in the animal, but what the animal’s gaze reveals about us. In the gaze of the frightened animal, Žižek says, ‘you see your own monstrosity.’
The Eyes We Dare Not Meet: What animal suffering reveals about the image of God in us was last modified: May 4th, 2026 by admin
In Blade Runner 2049, there is a quiet, unsettling scene in which a replicant, an engineered being designed for labour, is told that his memories are not his own. They have been implanted. Manufactured. He is, in every meaningful sense, a product. And yet, as the film unfolds, it becomes increasingly difficult to sustain that description. He feels. He longs. He suffers. He hopes.
The world of Blade Runner 2049 is built on a contradiction: beings who are treated as things, yet cannot help but appear as lives.
A similar tension runs through Ex Machina. Ava, an artificial intelligence embodied in a humanoid form, is confined behind glass, observed, tested, evaluated. The question posed by her creator is clinical: can she convincingly simulate consciousness? But the question that emerges for the viewer is far more troubling: what kind of person can look at a being like this and see only an object?
These films are not really about the future. They are about us. They ask, with disarming clarity, what it is that allows human beings to recognise, or to refuse to recognise, life.
And that question is not abstract. It presses urgently upon us, here and now.
Seeing ‘Life’ Where The World Sees ‘Product’ – A Christian Vision Of Who We Are Called To Be was last modified: April 24th, 2026 by admin
On Easter morning, church bells ring and Christians greet one another with ancient words: Christ is risen.
We gather in light after darkness. We speak of life after death. We proclaim hope stronger than the grave.
Yet on the same morning, in the same country, slaughterhouses are operating as usual. Lambs are processed for seasonal demand. Chickens move along mechanised lines. Bodies become units. Units become products. Products become part of the Easter table. For most of us, these realities never meet. Resurrection belongs to church. Slaughter belongs somewhere else.
But what does resurrection mean in a world of slaughterhouses?
What Does Resurrection Mean in a World of Slaughterhouses? was last modified: April 11th, 2026 by admin
Christmas is a season of abundance. Tables groan under food. Kitchens fill with the familiar smells of roasting, herbs and spice. Families gather, traditions are honoured, and we reassure ourselves that this is what celebration looks like.
And yet Christmas tells another story.
It is the story of a God who enters the world quietly and without excess. A child born among animals, not above them (Luke 2:7). A saviour whose first bed is a feeding trough, whose arrival is announced not to the powerful but to shepherds keeping watch through the night. Christmas does not begin with triumph, but with vulnerability.
Which raises an unsettling question, one we rarely ask amid the festivities:
What would Jesus eat for Christmas?
What Would Jesus Eat for Christmas? was last modified: April 11th, 2026 by admin
Every November, millions of people around the world take part in World Vegan Month — a time to celebrate plant-based living and to reflect on our relationship with animals and the planet. For Christians, it offers more than a dietary challenge or lifestyle trend. It’s an opportunity to rediscover a deep current of compassion running through Scripture — a call to live in greater harmony with all God’s creatures.
Christianity, Animals and World Vegan Month was last modified: October 5th, 2026 by admin
St Francis of Assisi has long inspired Christians to see animals not as lesser beings, but as beloved fellow creatures—brothers and sisters under God. In this timely and thought-provoking article, Dr Daniela Rizzo, Associate Lecturer in Systematic Theology at Alphacrucis University College, Sydney, invites us to rediscover the radical implications of St Francis’ vision in the face of environmental crisis, mass extinction and theological neglect of non-human life.
In the Footsteps of St. Francis: The Path Towards Zoological Mission – Daniela Rizzo was last modified: October 13th, 2025 by admin
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