It is nearly as bad as what President Trump did yesterday. He referred to Catholic Priests as 'animals'. Can you believe that? He called Catholic Priests animals! That is absolutely unacceptable. Doesn't he know they are human beings? Regardless of what they have done? Oh, wait. Sorry; that was Pope Francis that referred to priests as animals. Excerpt:
During a Q&A session towards the end of the meeting, Francis spoke of a “pastoral cruelty,” such as priests who refuse to baptize the children of young single mothers.
“They’re animals,” he said. “This is individualism.”
[It’s] “an individualism which doesn’t affect only priests, but society as a whole, that looks for pleasure, that is hedonist, searching for that ‘damned’ well-being which has hurt us so much,” he said.
Should the Pope have called these priests who refuse baptism due to lack of paternal parentage "animals"? Hmmm... You know what? Yawn. No one cares. Maybe he should have been a little more specific and called them a "brood of vipers." That's a classic, I always thought. I mean, it is a rhetorical device, is it not? Whether it is Christ, or the Pope, or Eric Burdon or Trump talking this way.
("Hey, Jesus, you said 'Let he who is without sin throw the first stone.' So can I throw a tire-iron?" Ha, ha. Grow up.)
Speaking of the Pope and Trump, I got myself in trouble once when I said "The Pope and Trump are a lot alike." "How so?" shot back an indignant liberal Catholic dude I know who likes the Pope and despises Trump. "Well," I replied, "they both speak off the cuff continually, and get themselves in trouble all the time that way with detractors, but neither seems to care very much." He had no response to this observation.
Do you know what the motto of Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) is? It's really simple to remember, boys and girls: "Rape, Control, Kill." They are really into facial tattoos, so maybe they want to look like animals. However that wouldn't be justification to call them animals so much as the fact that they are big into underage prostitution. There is tons of money in that industry, or so I have heard.
So if in a scientific or theological or metaphysical sense it is incorrect, inaccurate or insensitive to call the members of the MS-13 gang "animals", I would argue that it is not for lack of trying on their part. And if you think President Trump is saying something racist about Latinos by calling these nasty people "animals" then you are misunderstanding him on purpose.
Update: This is pretty hilarious.