Geroge Plagenz /Saints and Sinners

I am like the old country parson who preached the same sermon for three or four Sundays in a row. Finally someone in the congregation called this to his attention. The pastor replied, "When you do what I tell you in this sermon, I will preach you another."

I also like something Gertrude Behanna said once. This daughter of Andrew Carnegie, who sank into the depths of alcoholism before God came into her life, devoted practically all of her time after age 54 to giving talks about her recovery.

"My speeches always sound the same," she said, "but then so do Matthew, Mark, Luke and John."

So what you are about to read here you have heard me say before. Every hunting season for the past 30 years - whether I have been in the pulpit, on the radio or writing for a newspaper - I have made it a practice to put in a good word for the animals. It is always the same word.

I have no illusions that I have ever persuaded even one hunter to put down his gun. While I have received many letters of appreciation from animal lovers, I have never received one from a hunter saying that, after listening to me, he had thought it over and decided never to hunt again.

Nevertheless, you will never find me at the blessing of the hounds or congratulating the hunter home from the kill.

Oh, I know the argument that hunting is really "humane" for otherwise the animals would starve. Hunters also have said to me, "You eat steak, don't you? Somebody had to kill the steer."

To me that is a different thing altogether.

I remember a scene in the 1966 movie, "The Singing Nun," in which a young nun is enthusiastically berating a woman for some sin she has committed. The berating is overheard by the Mother Superior who takes the young sister aside and reprimands her.

"But Mother," pleads the nun, "aren't we supposed to condemn sin?"

"Yes, sister," answers the Mother Superior, "but we are not supposed to enjoy doing it."

That is what is wrong with hunting. Perhaps we are supposed to spare these animals the agony of death by starvation. And maybe we need meat to feed the world's billions - although I don't know if that has been proven.

But it is the enjoyment we get out of it and the sport we make of it that certainly makes it wrong to hunt a creature as beautiful as a pheasant or as a graceful as a deer.

I suppose what bothers me as much as anything about hunting is that many ministers hunt. This disturbs other people besides me.

While I was flying home once from the West Coast, a member of our party got into a conversation with Marv, the co-pilot, about church and religion.

Marv said he didn't go to church.

He told the story of a minister friend of his who tried to get him to join his church. Marv told the clergyman he would "convert" and come to church if the pastor would "convert" and give up hunting.

"He didn't - and I didn't," said Marv, who felt that for a minister to spout about God's love for all his creation (and weren't the animals part of God's creation?) and then go out and kill animals amounted to a serious breach of integrity.

I once did a story about a Lutheran clergyman who was a hunter and who defended his love of the sport.

"Ever since my ordination," he said, "some misinformed people have been quick to remind me of the commandment not to kill. I tell them this is a direction from God concerning our relations with our fellow human beings. It hasn't the slightest reference to animals."

He blamed Walt Disney for "sentimentalizing the harsh realities of the real world of nature."

He said "this 'poor Bambi' approach has been used by people in our urban-oriented society who know little of the rigors of life in the animal world."

What is overlooked, he said, is the fact that conservation efforts, enabling many species of wildlife on the brink of extinction to "make marvelous reversals," have been "largely funded by hunting license fees."

He said he had taught his son to hunt.

"We have spent many enjoyable hours together - camping, hunting, hiking, learning and watching the wonderful complexities of God's creation," he said. "The occasional killing of bird or beast is only one small item in this total experience."

"Most people," he said, "have someone else do their killing to obtain everything from hot dogs to steaks. The only difference with me is that occasionally I kill my own meat."

Well, one man's meat, in this case, is another man's poison. My prayer in hunting season shall continue to be, "Remember, O Lord, the animals."