Thank you, RObert, Pickled herring (nice name, are you a herring from the North Sea, hehe) and Scout.

RObert,
thanks for providing those bible quotes; true that the Church is only human-focussed. What I’d like to gain from this discussion is for Christians to explain why they think that animals are not worthy of their compassion- and to make them realise that they can help make a difference if they allow themselves to open up to this issue.
In a previouscomment on the ‘Legal Abuse of Animals’ article I said, in short: “I find it saddening that these (religious and church) groups have a lot of potential power to make positive changes for the animals, but that nothing positive happens … These groups could be such an asset to animals and farmers if only…”

Scout,
perhaps your title including ST Francis would have been a better title than this one! We can keep that for later ;)
Perhaps Christians feel attacked by my title- not surprisingly, but I wanted to attract their attention to animal discussions. I found this on the net:

“ Francis wrote a Canticle of the Creatures, an ode to God’s living things. “All praise to you, Oh Lord, for all these brother and sister creatures.”

Wendy, thanks for sharing your knowledge about the politics on this animal topic.
If there is a group of vets that put the animals first, they could form a group outside the AVA and make their voices heard!
Christians,
if you think that animals are not worthy of your compassion, think about the fact that many things in life are related; think about cause-effect.
If you agree with the cause/effect theory, then animal welfare DOES have an effect on people’s issues and therefore the church leaders should get involved.

Perhaps we could make these connections, between animal welfare and human welfare in this discussion, or alternatively, we could open a new discussion about this, if there’s no response.

For example, cramming as many chickens as possible together in cages is a breeding ground for diseases, like the birdflu or mad-cow disease

Sorry Wendy, I forgot to include your name in my thanks in the previous post- while you are such a valuable contributor (and door banger!). Just didn't properly double-check what I wrote.

To continue:
Chickens (pigs etc) have to be fed antibiotics routinely to keep diseases at bay- if you feed your kids meat from animals raised on antibiotics it may have an effect on their health.
Will your children become resistant to some strains of bacteria? What will happen if this goes on and on for the next hundred years: it surely can't be healthy for people to keep consuming these kind of products!

I just want to stress that I am not out to merely attack religious people- I want to stimulate Churches involvement, if not for the sake of the animals, then for the sake of the future health of your children.

I said something about the health connection, but there are other connections too: what about jobs for Australians? Slaughtering the animals here in Australia instead of live exporting them will provide many more jobs, meaning fewer poor Australians.
I know you want to help jobless people, here's your chance.

Some Christians, I have noticed, seem to favour the straight-edge view, saying that ‘being homoseexual’ is unnatural, that it is unnatural for women to take contraceptive pills etc.

If you are one of these straight-edgers, and you like unnaturalness, ask yourself: Is it natural for our animals to live in cramped, unnatural conditions all their lives, and is it natural for them to spend up to three months on some dirty ship to be exported before they are being slaughtered? Is it natural that antibiotics are part our food-chain? Is it natural that we consume this meat/produce?

Hello everybody,
I loved to go to church as I teenager in the middle of the night.
It seemed to me the only place to find peace.
But many years later I dropped out of the Church as they -to me personally- seem only to be interested in collecting monies to buy and keep their estates.
I noticed that our Priests hardly spoke of animals in a sense that we should look after them and if they did it was on the day the animals were blessed.
As the words are very limited on this forum I will give you the name and one particular paragraph which springs to my mind so you can read it up yourselves. I can't find the other ones in a hurry as the bookmarks fell out of the good book when I moved.
Deuteronomy 22:1-7

I also would like to remind you to sign the Petition Against Live Exports which you can find here.

To view the Petition signatures: http://consciousevolution.com/onshu/view_signatures.php

To sign the Petition:
http://consciousevolution.com/onshu/Petition.php

Thats an easy question to answer they have retired into their own private little hells to find someone else they can judge and punish. Why do they insist on their blasphemouse activities taking away their gods only earthly pleasure ie sending the wicked to eternal damnation (I've often wondered if that meant being demoted to a muslim or vice versa if your a muslim).

I generally tend to take the position that I don't really care what people believe, just as long as they don't try to push it down everyone else's throat. But the total absence [so far] of the religiously moralising ones on this thread, and also on the animal welfare thread, really does show them up for the hypocrites they are. People like that may be the main reason for the drift away from organised religion, even though many people who leave the churches do retain their spiritual feelings.

Still no need to duck for flying halo's coming my way?

Do you know what- it's obvious that we've been snobbed by the church goers on here. Surely they must have been curious about the title and read the post, but then they left without commenting.

I'd hate to be so ashamed of my convictions that I couldn't even defend my beliefs and views if they were questioned. Don't you feel ashamed, church-goers?

Ignoring the animal lovers as much as the animals themselves is probably their best defense- I mean how could they reasonably justify the church's lack of compassion for the suffering animals? There is no logic justification, is there?

Perhaps the church can go crying holy tears to the media again for being under attack. I wonder why! Perhaps if they were a bit more open minded and a bit more compassionate, they'd be respected more and less attackable.

We'll see, perhaps time for St Francis to go knocking on the closed church doors, Scout and Wendy. Give it a few more days? Wait till Tuesday, perhaps some will still go to church on Sunday to ask others or the church leader for advice on this issue- there's always hope!

Christians, it might sound like I dislike religious people, but I honestly don't, but I don't like your uncaring attitude towards animals that are, often unnecessarily, suffering. I do recognise that the church does a lot of good things as well.

Thanks, all of you, for your sensible words and wonderful support!
Such a shame you're not Christian church goers ;)