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In this episode Trent examines the arguments of Fr. Daniel Horan who claims that Catholics should seriously consider that some animals are people and also claims it is a sin to misgender someone.
Welcome to The Counsel of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic answers.
Trent Horn:
We humans need to open our minds to the personhood of non-human animals, why Catholics should use preferred gender pronouns and names. These are two articles by Father Daniel Horan or father Dan Horan. He is a Franciscan priest, publishes The National Catholic Reporter.
Trent Horn:
And I would like to dive into these articles and talk about them because I’m doing a lot of research for my book on liberal Catholicism and how it strays towards the edges of orthodoxy and threatens to run headlong over a cliff. And none of us want to have that happen.
Trent Horn:
So, we’re going to jump into it and talk about this today. Father Horan has also written several books, one academic book. He has also written I think … I forget the title right off top of my head. I think it’s A White Catholic’s Guide to Racism.
Trent Horn:
He promotes modern anti-racism, not just the church’s longstanding condemnations of racism, but a modern perspective on it that in many respects is incompatible with things that the Catholic church teaches.
Trent Horn:
Now I’ll get into that in a future episode. I’ll be addressing that in my book as well. But today I want to talk about these articles that he’s written. So, if you’re not familiar with Father Dan Horan, he’s basically a Franciscan Father James Martin. I’m sure Father Dan would consider that a compliment, other people not so much.
Trent Horn:
So let’s jump right into it. The first one is on animal ethics. It says we humans need to open our minds to the personhood of non-human animals. All right. So what does that mean here? What’s the argument here? What is he talking about?
Trent Horn:
And what’s hard here is that he will say things that are true. And this happens a lot in more liberal kinds of Catholicism and also in conservative types of Catholicism that go a bit too far away from where the church teaches. It will start with something that is true and then press the point so hard you’ve suddenly veered off an error.
Trent Horn:
So, he talks about how we are composed of the environment, right? We are star dust, as Carl Sagan would say. A less romantic way to put it would be we’re nuclear waste, right? The carbon that comes from the nuclear reactions and stars makes up our bodies. We are United to creation. We are a part of it. That’s absolutely true.
Trent Horn:
And so he writes here, “Too often we humans live as if everything is about us and all non-human creation is intended for us to do with as we please.” No creation is not intended for us to do as we please, but we are called to be stewards.
Trent Horn:
And creation itself it isn’t for us primarily, it’s actually for God. This is what was hard for me reading this article, which actually was disappointing because he talks about how we need to take care of animals. That animals have a lot of particular traits that appear person-like or people have discovered.
Trent Horn:
But he doesn’t make any strong case to animals are persons. And I think Father Horan would have to admit no non-human animals are not made. I don’t know if this is his exact stance or not. I would ask him, “Are they made in the image and likeness of God? If they are then why don’t we baptize them?” Shouldn’t … We baptize mentally handicapped infants who may never reach a rational stage of awareness, but we baptize them not because of what they can do, but because of what they are.
Trent Horn:
So, if Father Horan is going to say that non-human animals are persons, is he going to go full throttle and say, “Yeah, we should baptize them.” I don’t know. You’d have to ask him. But he goes through here and mostly he just says other academics have taken this seriously, so we should too.
Trent Horn:
Well, I have questions about these academics. Catholic theologians, such as St. Joseph’s sister Elizabeth Johnson, the emerita professor at Fordham writing the book, Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love. Already right off the bat I’m not happy about the citation.
Trent Horn:
Sister Elizabeth Johnson is a controversial theologian. I think she’s a feminist theologian and the USCCB criticized a book she wrote about the nature of God in 2011. And this is what they said about that book. They said, it’s right here, “The problem is not that Sister Johnson’s book, that the book attempts to express the faith of the church in terms that have not previously been used and approved.”
Trent Horn:
Because she was saying, “The bishops don’t like it I’m using terms no one’s used before.” No, people come up with different terms, that’s fine, rather than repeat traditional formulas.
Trent Horn:
The problem is that the language used in the book does not adequately express the faith of the church. “On several points, as the committee has noted, the different language used in the book does not in fact convey the faith of the church.”
Trent Horn:
So right off the bat I’m not impressed with the citations of Father Horan when it comes to animal personhood. I agree we should be kind to animals. We should care for them. But he goes on here saying, “Oh, there’s people who have thought about proposing animal personhood and there’s theologians.”
Trent Horn:
But as you read through it, there’s not an argument here for why we should consider certain non-human animals persons. I agree that there are non-human animals that do exhibit person-like traits. This is very evident in domestic animals, right? Think about your dog. People have relationships, obvious not like they would have with people, but dogs recognize us. They say it’s man’s best friend for a reason.
Trent Horn:
And a lot of that is because they’re domesticated. They copy our traits kind of. CS Lewis even thought about this. And he made an argument for animals being in heaven. And he said that the argument would be much stronger for domesticated animals than for wild animals, because domesticated animals would imitate humans in different ways.
Trent Horn:
But he says each creature from the tick to the human has a relative experience of the world and meaning making, I don’t think ticks make meaning of anything. Sorry, I’m not going to be able to go that far. So, he goes on and I’m just reading through, trying to find okay, well what’s your definition of a person? Like what is a person? How should we understand this?
Trent Horn:
And typical with this kind of writing, we don’t get that. He says, “We would do well to acknowledge our interdependence with an inextricable connectedness to the rest of creation. We are creatures too even if we would like to pretend otherwise.”
Trent Horn:
Well yeah, nobody argues with that. The problem is that you take … Let me move this here, get the screen up. I’m here, let’s bring this up. There we go. Yes.
Trent Horn:
Well, let’s go to the catechism, which when you’re talking about animals and persons and respect, why doesn’t he quote from the catechism on this to give us some insight here? There’s actually some pretty good stuff here, you know?
Trent Horn:
And for this, I would look to paragraphs 2415 through 2418 of the catechism. The section is respect for the integrity of creation. And so it’s talking about the seventh commandment, so you shouldn’t steal, right? Don’t steal from others. And that includes if you destroy the environment you steal from future generations, for example, it’s kind of theft.
Trent Horn:
It says animals like plants and inanimate beings are by nature destined for the common good of past, present, and future humanity. It says use of these resources can’t be divorced from respect for moral imperatives.
Trent Horn:
Man’s dominion over inanimate and other living beings granted by the creator is not absolute. It’s limited by concern for the quality of life of his neighbor, including generations to come and respect for the integrity of creation. So 2416 it says, “Animals are God’s creatures. By their mere existence they bless him and give him glory. Thus men owe them kindness.”
Trent Horn:
So, the reason we show kindness to animals is because God made animals. They exist to bless him. They are good in it of themselves. And so we care for them as their stewards. And to mention St. Francis, St. Philip, Mary and how kind they were to animals. By the way, St. Francis of Assisi, read my book, What the Saints Never Said. If you do, you’ll be the 12th person who’s ever read it.
Trent Horn:
And in there I talk about the misquotes from St. Francis. People think St. Francis just talked to animals all day. He had a kindness for animals but he also preached about all different kinds of people who would go to hell. So, will the real St. Francis of Assisi please stand up.
Trent Horn:
So it says that with animals, that medical and scientific experiments … We can use animals. We have stewardship over animals. God entrusted animals the stewardship of those whom he created in his own image. That means animals are not made in God’s image. We can … We’re stewards of them.
Trent Horn:
So, it’s legitimate to use animals for food and clothing, to domesticate them, to use them for medical and scientific experimentation within reasonable limits. But yeah, you just shouldn’t be cruel to animals.
Trent Horn:
Here’s the interesting one, paragraph 2418. Very important in the modern world nowadays. “It is contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly.” Correct. Don’t torture animals. “It is likewise unworthy to spend money on them, on non-human animals, that should as a priority go to the relief of human misery. One can love animals. One should not direct to them the affection due only to persons.”
Trent Horn:
So, of course Father Dan Horan if the catechism says we shouldn’t treat animals like persons, doesn’t that make us question his thesis that non-human animals are persons? Why should we believe that some might have very strong person-like behaviors, but they don’t have moral agency. They don’t have any capacity for moral agency like us by the nature of their kind. They’re not persons.
Trent Horn:
It said we’re just muddying the waters. If we understand that we are persons made in the image and likeness of God, then we must treat animals in a unique way. We don’t … We are not indifferent to their suffering like other non-human animals are indifferent to suffering. But we also are not the exact same as non-human animals, because we have an immortal soul, we’re made in the image and likeness of God.
Trent Horn:
You should, and I love this, “One should not direct to animals the affection due only to persons.” So keep that in mind if you know people that are a bit too obsessed over their pets and have got them on their third kidney transplant or something like that. That would be beyond the bounds. That’s affection that’s due only to persons.
Trent Horn:
All right and then let’s go to the other one. Preferred gender pronouns and names. So, what’s Father Horan’s argument here. Why should we use preferred gender pronouns and names? He starts, “Names play an important role in the Catholic tradition. Celebration of baptism, first question is what name do you give this child? Religious congregations will adopt a new name for their religious professions. You’ll have Appalachians like Father, Sister, Brother, and Bishop. Names are significant.” Correct.
Trent Horn:
It doesn’t mean though that I have to go with every name someone says, and I especially don’t need to use the incorrect pronoun. And then he tries, I guess he tries to argue that you should respect someone’s new name because Abram became Abraham, Serai became Sarah. In the gospels, the change from Saul to Paul in the Acts of the Apostles.
Trent Horn:
Saul did not change his name to Paul. That was his double name. In the ancient world it was very common to have a Hebrew name and a Latin equivalent. Like you have John mark for example. So Saul was this gentile, was the apostle from Tarsus Saul was his Hebrew name, Paul was his Roman, his Latin name. And that’s made clear in Acts.
Trent Horn:
He didn’t change his name from Saul to Paul because he converted. It’s a common misunderstanding. But even here in these cases, you look at Abram and Abraham, who does the name change? God. That doesn’t mean then that I should always …
Trent Horn:
Now when other people just change their names, that’s fine most of the time. For example, my legal name is Trenton. I stopped going by Trenton in the ninth grade, freshman year of high school, probably 10th grade. I just stopped going by Trenton. I didn’t prefer it. I liked Trent.
Trent Horn:
And Father Daniel Horan I think he says somewhere else that he likes to go by Dan. Okay, fine. And there that’s a courtesy, right? So he goes on to say calling individuals, he’s like, “Why are people so resistant? Why do they not support LGBTQ by preferred names and pronouns.
Trent Horn:
He says, “Calling individuals by the names and pronouns they prefer is not decent and respectful. It follows from the golden rule of doing unto others what you would like others to do unto you.” The problem here though, is that the golden rule isn’t infallible. The idea is treat others how you would want to be treated.
Trent Horn:
Okay, well then I could put it this way. Actually I can do this within the golden rule. I would want people to not partake in my delusion. So, if I ended up in a state where I had an identity disorder, and I think many people identify as transgender, if they had another identity disorder, they would not want people to go along with it.
Trent Horn:
Like if they thought that their legs needed to be amputated, because they mistakenly think that they’re paralyzed. Or if you think that you are morbidly obese, even though you’re dangerously underweight. People should not tell you are overweight or obese because you are not, even if that’s what you think that you are.
Trent Horn:
And in some cases a person … Now names and pronouns, I will say … So, let me go down here a little bit more and we’ll and hear what he says here. “I go by Dan, not Daniel,” but this is not that at all. Now they just shortening a name. It’s not even just getting a new name or a new religious name. It is, the problem is that the name is tied into a false identity.
Trent Horn:
Now I am a lot more tolerant of using someone’s new name instead of a new pronoun, because the name, there’s all kinds of names out there. You know? There’s so many new names that come out I can’t even keep track of them. You know, “This is my child. His name is Bran.” “You mean Brian?” “No Bran.” “You mean Brandon?” “His name is Bran.” “Like raisin bran?” “It means life.”
Trent Horn:
I don’t know. But does that happen to you? You hear a name you’ve never heard before and you’re like, “Just go with saints and apostles. That’s what we’ve done. It’s worked out just fine. Remember your kid’s going to have that name the rest of his life.”
Trent Horn:
I was reading a news story recently about … It said, “Parent embarrassed that a flight attendant made fun of her child’s name.” What was her child’s name? The child’s name on the boarding pass was spelled A-B-C-D-E. How do you … This is a real story, ABC.
Trent Horn:
Let’s see. Yeah, there we go. Traci Redford. Totally. Her father’s name is A-B-C-D-E, which is pronounced AB-si-dee. If you saw A-B-C-D-E, how would you pronounce that? AB-si-dee of course. Have you never used Hooked on Phonics? This is in some countries there’s only, there’s a list of approved names you’re allowed to use. I think we should do that here.
Trent Horn:
Put a thousand names in it, but not Abcde. I’ll even take AB-si-dee spelled like this, A-B-S-I-D-E-E, but not A-B-C-D-E. Come on. So yeah, names, come on. Don’t don’t sell your … But if somebody has a name like Lord Satan and they’re purposely trying to get a rise on me as a Christian, I’m not going to call them that. I’m not going to distort reality.
Trent Horn:
That’s why also I don’t call people who have PhDs from diploma mills, doctor, because they’re not a doctor. They have not gone through the proper accreditation process. And so the word doctor loses, meaning, I’m not going to call them that.
Trent Horn:
But he says here that refusing to call someone by their preferred name or gender is unChristian and sinful to not use a person’s preferred pronoun or preferred name. Now I would ask here for Father Horan, where does the church teach this, that it’s sinful? And he can’t do that.
Trent Horn:
Instead he just says that Muslims in China and kidnapped slaves aren’t allowed to use their names. What does that have to do with what we’re talking about? That’s called a red herring. It’s just an emotional distraction that doesn’t talk about what we’re confronted with here.
Trent Horn:
And even the way it goes, fine, I’m willing to let people have. If you want to have a name, especially that there can be gender neutral names like Pat or Terry, right? Whatever. Pronouns I’m not going to do, that’s a lie. I’m not going to lie about people.
Trent Horn:
And so he goes down here and here’s where it gets interesting. He says, “Perhaps some kind of non-violent civil, or maybe better put, ecclesial disobedience might help our fellow Christians.” Like he really thinks it’s bad if you … So, let’s stick to preferred pronouns.
Trent Horn:
Like if you, a biological male who identifies as a woman to refer to this person as he, he calls that sinful. No evidence from scripture or tradition, the catechism, it’s just Father Horan’s opinion. Why is lying, why has not even that it’s okay to lie about these things, but he’s saying that it’s a sin if you refuse to lie about a person’s pronouns to refer whether they’re a man or a woman.
Trent Horn:
And I’m sorry no, him or her doesn’t refer to gender, which only exists in the mind. It refers to the objective reality of sex that exists in the real world that we can determine whether you are a man or a woman, not your sense of male or female.
Trent Horn:
And so perhaps some kind of non-violent civil or ecclesial disobedience might help. What? He wants to make sure those in political, in positions of leadership and authority in the church get a taste of their own medicine. Oh no, you’re going to get us, oh no. And so what does he recommend?
Trent Horn:
He says here, “I do wonder what it might mean for the bishops who have discouraged the faithful from using preferred names and pronouns if people did that to him. I suppose the same Bishop wouldn’t mind if we called him her or Sister Mary instead of Bishop so and so. That’s going to show. This is very humorous. This idea that he thinks like imagine if we called the Bishop sister, oh, he’s going to totally lose it.
Trent Horn:
People do this to me online sometimes when I talk about how I’m not going to lie when it comes to gender ideology and use incorrect pronouns. And people on social media will say, “What do you think about that Mrs. Horn?” As if that makes me upset. It doesn’t, because I’m a man and I know that. And I don’t demand.
Trent Horn:
And my sense of being male or female does not depend on me demanding that other people recognize that because while I’m a human being, I’ve got my own wounds in different areas. My wife has introduced me to a podcast called Restore The Glory and we all have psychological, social, spiritual wounds to deal with.
Trent Horn:
My wife and I always joke, if something comes up and it’s our past haunts us wounds, it’s wounds, but I’m not wounded when it comes to my masculinity. So, you can call me Mrs. Horn all you want. I find amusing.
Trent Horn:
Other people, you call them he when they identify as she they’re upset because they’re living, they have a sexual identity disorder and that’s why they get so upset by it because it reminds them of the identity disorder they have.
Trent Horn:
And while I’m being laughing a little bit here, I’m not laughing at someone who struggles with gender dysphoria or a sexual identity disorder. That’s sad. We should be empathetic. So, when I talk to someone who struggles with these things, I’ll compromise with them.
Trent Horn:
I might use their new name or at least a variation of it that’s gender neutral. And I’ll use a gender neutral pronoun like they, “Here’s what they said,” because that can be used singular. That could be singular they, and I’m willing to meet them. I’m willing to meet them because they have an identity disorder and there could be a lot of pain and hurt there.
Trent Horn:
And so I feel compassion for them, but I’m not going to lie. I want to help them out of that. I laugh at Father Horan’s arguments, because he puts himself out there in defending these views. They’re nonsensical. They don’t make sense. And I’m going to critique that. If he wants to dialogue with me about any of these things, more than welcome to.
Trent Horn:
But since the views are out in public, they’re fair game to publicly criticize. Now if he wants to have a dialogue with me, more than welcome to do that. But here’s the thing with the Bishop also, it totally backfires. You don’t call a Bishop, Sister because a Bishop’s title is objective, because he objectively received the episcopate from other bishops.
Trent Horn:
Even if I was, let’s say I was in the army and I was arranging a peace deal with another army and I really hate those guys, we’re at war, right? I would still refer to the other guys as general even though I hate them because they objectively are generals. That’s their rank in their respective militaries.
Trent Horn:
A bishop that is his objective title. And we know he’s a Bishop because we saw in the space time universe, three other bishops lay their hands on this guy and make him a Bishop. Calling me a woman is silly because I satisfy the objective tests for being a biological male.
Trent Horn:
I think I definitely satisfy them because I have three children. How’d I do that if I … And I’m married to a woman who gave birth to these children. I’m pretty sure that’s enough to show I am biologically male and she’s biologically female. That’s objective. That’s indisputable.
Trent Horn:
Any people on Twitter who think they can make fun of me to get under my skin not withstanding, that’s not going to prove anything at all. So yeah, basically his argument is that it hurts people’s feelings so we shouldn’t do that.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. And we shouldn’t unnecessarily hurt people’s feelings. But when we want to help people out of a disorder, when we want to help them to flee from what’s disordered or what’s sinful, they will rebel against that. And it can be very painful to do that.
Trent Horn:
Sometimes to help people, there’s going to be hurt that’s involved. We should never intentionally hurt people. But as we overcome … It’s just like you take someone who is addicted to pornography and you tell them that pornography hurts them, that they are hurting by looking at pornography, they are hurting, participating in the abuse of women in the pornography industry. That’s going to make them feel like dang. You say, “You’re hurting these women when you do this.”
Trent Horn:
But if it helps them break free of their sin, their use of pornography, then that’s a good thing. So, we should never unnecessarily hurt people. But sometimes in helping people to move towards the truth and away from sin and disorder, it may be unpleasant in that process. And we should always be as charitable as we can, but it’s not charitable to just try to make people happy, because that’s the happy march to hell, wide and broad is the narrow path.
Trent Horn:
I’m not saying someone who merely has gender dysphoria will go to hell, what I am saying though is that if we only care about making people happy in this life, then we have neglected our duty when it comes to leading them to their ultimate happiness in the next life. And really we can’t.
Trent Horn:
When you look at the statistics, you look at statistics for LGBTQ teens from 2015 to 2022, depression among LGBTQ teens has dramatically increased. But acceptance of these ideologies has definitely, think about from the year 2012 or 2000 till now, cultural acceptance of this ideology is much more widespread. Yet depression and mental illness is even higher.
Trent Horn:
Maybe it’s because then they would say, well it’s the anti, it’s the homophobia, transphobia that causes the depression. What do you do though in other countries like Netherlands or the Nordic countries that are very accepting? Still have high rates of mental illness.
Trent Horn:
Well, everybody’s homophobic. Okay. That’s an unfalsifiable hypothesis that you’re not even willing to consider maybe these lifestyles and disordered identities are not good for the human person. So yeah, so that’s what he ends up saying here.
Trent Horn:
“The Catholic tradition which values the importance and powers of names and naming is firmly committed to the inherent dignity and value of all persons, is continued disgrace to reject and erase the self identities of our brothers to sisters in Christ.”
Trent Horn:
No we’re not rejecting identities. We firmly recognize this person is a man or a woman created in the image and likeness of God who is deeply wounded, and we should care for them, but we shouldn’t lie to them. And what, I would ask Father Horan, what is wrong with that?
Trent Horn:
Now in his more academic works, he claims that the male female is a binary that comes from Aristotle and Aquinas and has no place today, which I think his arguments aren’t very persuasive. Maybe we can go to that in a future episode.
Trent Horn:
But I hope that was helpful for you guys. I’m really excited to do more work on this subject to publish it and to engage these arguments because I worry that much of the teaching of the church, what’s undermining it are people who identify as Catholic, who confuse people on essential teachings related to sexuality, to life, and that’s very disheartening to see.
Trent Horn:
But the truth always finds a way. Truth is like life in Jurassic park. Jeff Goldblum life finds a way, truth finds a way, even in the darkest of eras, the truth will find a way. I hope that you will share the truth in a gentle yet assertive way with others. But thank you guys so much. And I hope you have a very blessed day.
Speaker 1:
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