Statement from Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D., Director of Education, The National Catholic Bioethics Center, Philadelphia, PA:

I am very glad to be able to participate in today's press conference. The Catholic Church recognizes how man holds a special place in creation, and yet he is himself an integral part of that creation. He is made in God's image and likeness, yet remains a member of the animal kingdom. He occupies a unique position in the order of creation, feet on the ground, head looking up to the stars, and exercises a limited dominion over the world and over the rest of creation. But man's unique place means he exists in relationship to a creation which is malleable and vulnerable in his hands. Man is perennially faced with the question of how to properly exercise his dominion, which is not an absolute right of domination over God's creation. He must address the question of how to reasonably use, rather than abuse, the powers he has received. He faces a very real ethical challenge. He also faces certain desires and appetites within his own heart that may be disordered, leading him at times to tolerate or even promote the abuse of God's creation.

I currently work as an ethicist for the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia...I welcome the opportunity this morning to discuss ...[an] important topic in ethics, namely, the production of foie gras by repetitively forced tube-feedings of ducks and geese. When these animals are force-fed in this way, they balloon to many times their normal body weight, and their swollen livers can then be harvested to prepare liver delicacies for customers in upscale restaurants.

It is a procedure that is...oriented toward the satisfaction of an inordinate desire, a disturbing desire to satisfy the palate to the point of promoting serious animal mistreatment. Some old Catholic manualists might even advert to the term, "morose delectation" to describe the root problem of a disordered palate that promotes other disorders. Animals are an important part of God's creation, and we must live in an ordered way with them, exercising a responsible stewardship of the gift that they really are.

As Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, once phrased it so clearly during an interview with a journalist: "We cannot just do whatever we want with them. ... 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."

Animals are a vulnerable part of creation, and that vulnerability should continually prompt us to examine our decisions on how we relate to them: are we exercising a reasonable and ordered stewardship, or are we exploiting their vulnerability for selfish, disordered or sinful ends? To the extent that we are attentive to the weakness and vulnerability not only of our brother human beings, but also of our friends in the animal kingdom, we decide the sort of society we will become: either a society marked by justice, respect, kindness and reason; or one that is marked by various forms of barbarism.

In light of these considerations, I would strongly urge the City Council of Chicago to maintain its ban on the sale of foie gras that was passed into law recently, and to resist the repeal of this important ordinance. Thank you.