New Ecologies: Postconciliar Thought and Animal Cruelty

Abstract

The inquiry about the distinction between human beings and animals is as old as human reason. We can identify two extreme positions: the conceptualization of the human kind as a dictator over nature who rules the species’ life and death according to its utility to the human project, and the view of the human being as nature’s administrator, as the one in charge of its harmonic development. The Second Vatican Council oriented the Catholic Church towards the second alternative. In this context, bullfights –a paradigmatic example– can be questioned by post-conciliar Catholicism and, more specifically, from Francis’ integral ecology.