Food for Thought! Toronto Pastor Preaches "Veganism" From Pulpit – Says We Have A: "Vegan-God!"

Obviously, he must not believe in transubstantiation if he's a vegan!

From Vox Cantoris

 

The Pastor at St. Ambrose Parish in Toronto's Alderwood neighbourhood is featured in Cardinal Collins' Catholic Register promoting veganism. Reverend Donatello Iocco had a traumatic experience watching a Netflix film. "It just moved me so much seeing animals suffer and being so scared of the human hand," said Iocco in the diocesan-owned Catholic Register.

I am sure that Father feels the same about the slaughtering of the innocent in the womb and the quote could have read, "It just moved me so much seeing babies suffer and being so scared of the human hand."

"Eden was vegan," says the vegan priest. (Yes, before the "Fall" as our erudite commenters have noted - which according to Blessed Anne Katherine Emmerich happened on the first day!) What does Holy Scripture actually say? Shall we look first at Genesis 1:28:

"And God blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and all living creatures that move upon the earth."

Further on we read Genesis 9:1-4:

"And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. 2 The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every bird of the air, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea; into your hand they are delivered. 3 Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. 4 Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood."

Note that God says that "Every moving that that lives shall be food for you." The only restriction he puts on it us is that we don't eat an animal that is alive or slaughtered and not drained of its blood. That is what it says. As an animal lover and someone who loves a good tenderloin or lingcod, there is no contradiction. We must love God's creation and treat it with respect. We are educated, civilized and cultured and caring people and advanced societies. Our animals should be slaughtered with humane considerations - the unnecessary suffering of an animal is never acceptable. On this, we would have no argument. Even our native ancestors in North America understood that and revered the animals they slaughtered for food and clothing even thanking God for it, in their own way.

The Catholic Register of this Archdiocese reports that Iocco has been not so subtle with his parishioners - actually lecturing them from the pulpit - a place reserved for the Good News of Salvation, not politically or ideologically inspired messages of a personal nature:

"As an impassioned new convert to the plant-based lifestyle, Iocco soon began preaching to his congregation about the virtues of compassionate eating, presenting statistics where possible, but admits he did receive some pushback. Some congregants were not ready for that message, even quoting the Old Testament and Paul in the New Testament to show eating meat is biblically permitted."

This is a totally inappropriate use of the pulpit. How does this not result in a rebuke from his bishop rather than publicity in the diocesan press?

UPDATED:

At the parish website, Father promotes fishless Fridays by suggesting that we choose "plant-based" fishless fillets. Poisson Poison! Fabricated food that this priest suggests we put in our bodies. He even has the temerity to advertise a product and retail outlet. 

In the parish bulletin, he promotes recipes and web pages on veganism as an ideology.

Veganism appears to be Father Locco Iocco's new religion. Perhaps he needs to discern his vocation - he should have been a holistic nutritionist! But then, he would figure out that these plant-based food products are nothing more than laboratory chemicals and highly processed poisons.

By the way Father. The altar cloths are to be white!

304. Out of reverence for the celebration of the memorial of the Lord and for the banquet in which the Body and Blood of the Lord are offered, there should be, on an altar where this is celebrated, at least one cloth, white in color, whose shape, size, and decoration are in keeping with the altar’s structure. When, in the Dioceses of the United States of America,  (IDENTICAL IN CANADIAN EDITION OF THE MISSAL AND GIRM PRINTED IN THE FRONT - no longer online) other cloths are used in addition to the altar cloth, then those cloths may be of other colors possessing Christian honorific or festive significance according to longstanding local usage, provided that the uppermost cloth covering the mensa (i.e., the altar cloth itself) is always white in color. General Instruction on the Roman Missal, (GIRM)

Father was trained at St. Augustine's Seminary in Homiletics, no doubt. Has he forgotten what was taught or was he taught there that this is suitable? Not only is it inappropriate, but I would also argue that it is objectively sinful and abusive - he has people hostage and he chooses to push an agenda that is not about Christ, not about doctrine or morals and has no basis in Holy Scripture. In fact, if he is telling his flock from the pulpit what he says in the video below or in the article, he is outright misleading and lying. 

In June 2019, Father appeared on a YouTube video by a group called In Defense of Animals. Sadly, the poor priest displays a gross ignorance of Scripture and history.

The best starts at 52 minutes.

"God has never commanded us to eat meat," says Father. But what of this given which is very relevant to our season of Lent? As well-formed Christians, we know that the Lamb of the Passover was a precursor to the real Lamb of God, Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Paschal Lamb Itself, slaughtered and sacrificed for our sins and eaten by the priests and the people. Below is the first Passover. It sounds like a command to me.

“3 Speak ye to the whole assembly of the children of Israel, and say to them: On the tenth day of this month let every man take a lamb by their families and houses. 4 But if the number be less than may suffice to eat the lamb, he shall take unto him his neighbour that joineth to his house, according to the number of souls which may be enough to eat the lamb. 5 And it shall be a lamb without blemish, a male, of one year: according to which rite also you shall take a kid. 6 And you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month: and the whole multitude of the children of Israel shall sacrifice it in the evening. 7 And they shall take of the blood thereof, and put it upon both the side posts, and on the upper door posts of the houses, wherein they shall eat it. 8 And they shall eat the flesh that night roasted at the fire, and unleavened bread with wild lettuce.”

He continues that "God has given us a vegan diet, he commands that. That's his will. God's will is for us to eat a vegan diet."

3 Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. 4 Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood."

Father's ignorance of scripture and history is astounding and the blame for this must fall on his formation at St. Augustine's Seminary in Toronto. How can any priest make a statement such as, "God does not want (blood) sacrificial offerings" and link "the blood of lambs and goats" to eating meat? He continues that "Jesus said himself, I want kindness and not animal sacrifices." He suggests we Google, "Jesus as a vegetarian." He goes so far as to state that Holy Scripture is only affected by history and culture. He continues that we only eat meat because "after the flood, there was no vegetation to eat?" If that were true, how did the dove find the olive branch? He blames it all on the poor translation of Greek, Hebrew and Latin. 

Yet, we know that this is simply untrue. Father is either suffering from a delusion or is intentionally misleading. We know that Jesus ate the Passover meal which must include meat - specifically, lamb. We know that he ate fish as evident when he appeared to the apostles after the resurrection.

"We have a vegan God," according to Reverend Iocco. Such blasphemy.

Look, I'm sure Father Iocco is a nice guy, probably a very kind man. This reflects more on his formation and the abandonment of parish priests by their bishops. It speaks of a priest with too much time on his hands to watch Netflix. It speaks of a system that leaves pastors alone and on their own. No community. It speaks of a man who would preach from the pulpit a political agenda filled with manipulation and a made-up interpretation of scripture. The pulpit is no place for this kind of propaganda.

This is an indictment of the leadership of the Cardinal and his recent predecessors, his Auxiliary Bishops, his Seminary leadership and the entire clericalist structure of the Church in Toronto that has allowed such ideas to be foisted upon the faithful. The faithful that suffers for solid preaching of the Good News of Salvation, the efficaciousness of redemptive suffering, the cause of life and freedom of religion and trust in God, especially at this time. They have a right to sound homiletics, not political and ideological leftist bile from the pulpit.

Father has a right to be a vegan. He does not have the right to foist his views on the people in his parish in a Mass, nor does he have a right to his own private and quite incorrect interpretation of scripture as a Catholic priest and then to preach it publicly.