This is a little long, but it’s hilarious, from a priest who is no stranger to Corner readers. This closing line is one of the all-time

greats in epistolary history. It appears as a letter in the current issue of

Crisis magazine:

I was delighted to read the Manichaean ramblings of Danel Paden,
director of the Catholic Vegetarian Society (“Letters,” June 2003). It
confirmed my theory that fanaticism in Western society alternates between
nudism and vegetarianism, both of which contradict the order of grace.
As an optimist, I happily trust that Paden confines his extreme
commitments to vegetarianism.
Taste is one thing; it is another thing to condemn meat eating as
“evil” and permissible only “in rare and unfortunate circumstances.” Paden
disagrees with no less an authority than God, Who forbids us to call any
edible unworthy (Mark 7: 18-19), and Who enjoins St Peter to eat pork chops
and lobster in one of my favorite revelations (Acts 10: 9-16). Does the
Catholic Vegetarian Society think that our Lord was wrong to have served up
fish to the 5,000, or should He have refrained from eating the Passover
Lamb? When He rose from the dead and appeared in the Upper Room, He did not
ask for a bowl of Cheerios, nor did He whip up a meatless omelette on the
shore of Galilee.
Man was made to eat flesh (Genesis 1: 26-31; 9: 1-6), with the
exception of human flesh. I stand on record against cannibalism, whether it
be inflicted upon the Mbuti Pygmies by the Congolese Army or on larger
people by a maniac in Milwaukee. But I am also grateful that the benevolent
father in the parable did not welcome his prodigal son home with a bowl of
radishes.
Vegetarians assume an unedifying posture of detachment from the
sufferings of vegetables that are mashed, stewed, diced, and shredded. In
expensive restaurants, cherries are publicly burned in brandy to the
applause of diners. It is not uncommon for people to submerge olives in iced
gin and twist the peels of lemons. Be indignant, vegetarian, but not so
selectively indignant that the bleat of the lamb and the plaintive moo of
the cow drown out the whine of our brother the bean and the quiet sigh of
the cauliflower.
Vegetables have reactive impulses. Were we to confine our diet to
creatures that lacked sense and do not even respond to light, we could only
eat liturgists and liberal Democrats.
The Rev. George W. Rutler
New York City