New Mexico Bishops Oppose Cockfighting

Courtesy of Gabe, rumblings among the bishops:

... consider a January 18 declaration from the New Mexico Conference of Catholic Bishops, issued to State Senator Mary Jane Garcia, in support of her bill to ban cockfighting. It’s the first time a Catholic body has ever taken an official position on the subject.

The conference is composed of New Mexico’s three bishops – Archbishop Michael Sheehan of Santa Fe, Bishop Ricardo Ramirez of Las Cruces, and Bishop Donald Pelotte of Gallup.

Allen Sanchez, executive director of the conference, said in a prepared statement: “The church teaches that we are called to a stewardship of God’s creatures, and there are principles in how to care for animals. … The bishops recognize that cockfighting is abusive of God’s good creation … Cockfighting promotes violence.”

Interesting. I hadn't considered the Church's position on the matter, maybe because the debate seemed a little too temporal in nature. Cockfighting is also quite popular in some quarters, which is probably why the Church had to mull it over for a few hundred years, or so.