A question my wife and I often ask each other when we hear of lavish treatment of someone's pet in this country while there are so many poor people wondering how they will eat or so many orphans needing a home. Substitute "Dog" or "Cat" for "Parrot" and see if you don't agree.

BOB
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Can a Parrot be Worth More than an Orphan?

Some men, instead of learning how to keep house and look after themselves, have recourse to domestic servants, and get themselves cooks and housemaids.

Others, womanizers, spend whole days with their lady loves, telling lewd stories and corrupting them with their remarks and their deceitful actions.

Others still, become slaves to lust through the influence of high-ranking prostitutes and behave like pigs in the trough.

Some of our women are happy to spend their lives in the company of effeminate men.

Other women, more sophisticated, amuse themselves bringing up as pets such creatures as birds or peacocks. They play with them and find their pleasure in them.

But they neglect the widow, who is obviously worth much more than a thoroughbred lapdog and they despise the elderly who in my opinion are more deserving of love than an animal is. They do not entertain orphans, but they do bring up parrots. Or they completely abandon their offspring out of doors while they coddle their pet birds in the house.

And they do not give any food to the hungry even though they are more beautiful than a monkey and know how to say something more interesting than the song of the nightingale.

Clement of Alexandria, The Teacher, 3, 4, (Patrologia Cursus Completus, Series Graeca, J-P Migne, Paris, 8, 592) quoted in Spidlik, Thomas, Drinking from the Hidden Fountain, A Patristic Beviary, Ancient Wisdom for Today’s World, First American Publication by Cistercian Publications, WMU Station, Kalamazoo, Michigan 49008, 1993.

And yet if you care for the widow or orphan you are considered odd. You inevitably care for the suffering person because of a misguided ego or from being a goody-two-shoes, while those who coo and caw over animals are doing so out of an altruistic love for those creatures which cannot care for themselves or express their gratefulness. It is interesting the arguments people will make.

I think it comes down to superficiality. A parrot doesn't care if you put on a pretty face for two minutes while you give it attention while a person can see through the facade. A dog doesn't need you to actually understand and meet its emotional needs while a person needs to be fed spiritually, physically, and emotionally. A cat doesn't care if you ignore it all day and only play with it when you feel like it. A person's needs don't always occur at convenient times and cannot be filled by putting out a bowl of food and water at your convenience each day. A person requires much more depth of presence and concern during the same amount of physical presence, which many people simply can't seem to muster.

I take it neither of you have ever had a dog.

I think it is often easier to help someone nearby, than the poor half a world away. In many parts of the world, transportation and distribution systems are often inefficient, or even non-existent. Sometimes the problem is not a lack of charity, but a lack of effective distribution. Add to this corrupt political regimes, and the problems worsen. I don't see having pets or helping the poor as an "either/or" situation.

I didn't take the quote to be against pets in general at all. Just against the absorption of all one's time, energy, and finances on an animal when there are widows and orphans in need of your time, talent, or treasure right around the corner. But too many people are too blind to see it because they are too busy cooing and cawing over their pets to see the needs of human beings who have no one else there for them.

I think there is quite a difference between the average pet owner and the pet owner who is completely absorbed in the animal to the detriment of human interactions.

David:

I never had a dog, but have grown up with relatives who have had them. Wish I could have had one, but time and funds didn't permit. I've always treated animals with respect and am troubled when I see them abused.

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Just to comment in general--

As I read this passage, I felt called to priorities: what is more important in a hierarchy of priorities.

I don't think St. Clement was against people having pets, but see this as a rebuke for those who seem to treat pets as more important than people. The beginning of this passage, though titled as though it were to be about pets alone, starts out as a rebuke of different forms of laziness and physical sinfulness. So I think that the thrust is toward reminding people that we should be "temperate, industrious, diligent, devout, and charitable" to lift a set of adjectives from a prayer that comes to mind: simply a call back to what the good Christian should be doing in being a prophetic witness to what Christ calls us to be.

When I step back even farther to take a look, I am reminded that the profound dignity of those who are recreated in Christ's image by Baptism is not something to be thrown away by worldly ways of living. We need to see ourselves as the new creation by Baptism having a profound dignity and seeing all other persons created in Christ's image as being the same. As such, we need to take care of the Lord's icon in each one: starting with ourselves and then being concerned for the orphan, the widow, and the elderly. We also need to be aware that we are destroying the image of God in another of his creatures when we descend into physical sin ourselves and take them with us. We are not animals and we need to act as the special creatures we are--in God's image.

In Christ,

BOB

There are far too many people who care more about saving whales and endangered snakes, beetles or what have you than care about abused, hungry and lonely human beings. People who would be outraged at the killing of a bald eagle could care less about the baby getting murdered at the abortion clinic. I see St. John's point very clearly.