Animals and Afterlife
The deadly consequences of believing that dogs go to heaven.

(Dec. 26, 2014)
When I was a kid I had a cat named Henry. A remarkably mellow tabby, Henry was afraid of nothing and no one. He would sleep on our toy train layout, stretch his paw across the track and continue sleeping when I ran a train into his extended limb. The engine's wheels would just spin in place as Henry continued his undisturbed nap.

Henry also had remarkable homing and bonding instincts. We could take him to an unfamiliar place, a vacation house, or leave him with strangers. He would be put out -- My paternal grandmother had no conception of litter boxes -- and he would always be waiting to come in the next morning. No one thought of spaying or neutering back then. Sometimes Henry would disappear for a couple days.

Unfortunately Henry lived to be only five years old. He contracted feline peritonitis for which there is now a vaccine. After he panted for several days, we took him to the vet thinking that he would be home shortly. I still remember the blow I felt when my Dad hung up the phone and said, "Henry's going to die."

To this day I have fond memories of Henry, mainly because of the carefree childhood (outside school; no regimented play) he was part of. I truly hope that, due to lack of neutering, his descendants are showing humans that, in Herminie Templeton Kavanagh's words (more or less): There is nothing more contented than a contented cat.

But do I expect to be reunited with Henry in heaven? That question assumes that I will get to Heaven. People who are currently gleeful that it has been supposedly pronounced by pope Francis that dogs go to heaven should be asking if they themselves will go to heaven. The belief that pets will go to heaven seems to clasp hands tightly with the belief that there is no hell. No, I don't expect to meet Henry in heaven any more than I expect to run trains there.

First of all, even when Henry was alive, my maternal grandmother who lived with us and I had a conversation about who and what goes to heaven (and also hell). My grandmother and I talked about such things as death. Death is the last thing (pun intended) that modern adults want to talk about with children.

Maybe the quality of conversations we have are a determinant in whether or not the differences between people and animals are obvious to us. And the differences among people. Conversations with others, particularly when we reflect upon our human condition, are what make humans unique among living things. An animal activist who recently declared that "animals have no voice" was making a very good point for my side. Another thing is that humans are built to walk upright on two legs.

Nana told me that animals do not go to heaven. They do not have the souls for it. Where did she, with her 8th-grade, public-school education, learn this conviction? Likely from the pastor of her youth, Fr. Franciscek Kasaczun.(1) This Polish priest, like all priests of a century ago, studied, at the behest of Pope Leo XIII, the truths about God and souls that human reason can discover. Instead of delivering only the good vibrations of Catholicism in their homilies as priests are now forced to do, the pastors of the late counter-reformation talked about truths and right and wrong.

My upset that Henry had totally ceased to exist didn't last long. For one thing, even as a child, moreover a child whose aforementioned carefree life was partially clouded by loneliness, I knew that a cat qua companion has limitations.

Nana and I also discussed cats' maximum life spans, about 15-20 years. Henry had not come close to living that long. Domestic pets' lives are not long enough to plan on celebrating golden or even silver anniversaries. I never saw Henry as a lifetime "family member," a substitute for human companionship as many people see their pets.

The second thing was: two days after Henry's death we got a new kitten. Because we had kept Henry in proper perspective, he was, despite his rare feline fearlessness and translation to fond memory, easily replaced.

Whereas my maternal grandmother heard secondhand what a philosopher, St. Thomas Aquinas, had taught about souls and heaven, I studied Aquinas firsthand. The Catholic schools I went to -- or I should say, a few teachers that I had in prep school and college -- opened the doors of Catholic wisdom for me.

Aquinas taught that all living things (plants, animals, humans) have a "soul," a life-principle. However it must be understood that there is not one type of soul for all three. The "soul" (Latin: anima) which animates plants and animals is a material soul. It's a life-principle passed on biologically from the origin of vegetable and animal life on earth. It endures only as long as the plant or animal endures. When plants or animals die, their souls do not separate from the body and go to an afterlife. Their souls cease to exist.

The souls of human beings are made individually by God, in His image, and are held in being by God. Human souls are spiritual souls, not the material souls of animals. They do not cease to exist after the body dies. They go to heaven with, likely for most heavenbound, a stopover in purgatory. Or they go to hell, the Gehenna, the "unquenchable fire" mentioned by Jesus, Himself in the Gospel of Matthew.

Human souls are also made in the image of God because among other things, like God, they know and love.

As there is with conversation, there's an existential factor to understanding what "know" and "love" mean. Many people have fallen into thinking that animals "know" and "love" as humans do. I know pet owners who are convinced that their pets understand their conversations. That signifies a poor, very limited understanding of knowing and loving. Is there so little, genuine human love in the world?

Perhaps. I also think that selfishness plays a role. Some people are too selfish to work at, to give true love, to make themselves lovable (Yes, you have to do that.), so they pretend that the "love" of pets, which appears to be unconditional, is genuine and even preferable to human love.

If those unconditionally loving pets only really knew what they're loving. Yes, higher animals fear. They get excited at the prospect of food. They have some memory and are able to know. A dog recognizes other dogs, probably through smell. Dogs and cats can tell the difference between male and female, again probably through the olfactory sense. While there may be the occasional act, there is, by the way, no homosexuality among animals.

A dog recognizes other dogs by sense, but it doesn't know that it's a dog. It sees all the varieties of dogs in the dog park, but its mind doesn't abstract the universal idea of "dog" from seeing or smelling them all. Despite the imaginings of poets and writers such as Paul Gallico, dogs and cats don't reflect on being dogs and cats. Dogs and cats communicate a couple things --submission, territorial assertion -- to their fellows. Cats only meow at people. Again, unlike humans, animals don't have conversations.

The above two paragraphs are a gloss over a subject that requires genuine intellectual weightlifting to tackle. The nature of the soul is addressed in the three books recommended in the sidebar, Sources For Further Reading, particularly Frank Sheed's Theology and Sanity. This really is about sanity. The references to Thomas Aquinas in this essay make use of Msgr. Glenn's A Tour of The Summa.

Scripture

Those who assert the salvation of animals quote one Bible passage, Isaiah 11:6 about the wolf dwelling with the lamb, the lion lying down with the kid. Some misquote the passage and have the lion lying down with the lamb. The animals in the Isaiah passage represent different types of people, different personalities who will all get along after the coming of the Messiah. Elsewhere in scripture, the lion and lamb represent Jesus Christ. In Jonah, Chapter 3, the repentant king of Ninevah orders that the "beasts," cattle, sheep not eat or drink and that they be covered with sackcloth and ashes as the people are. This is to show God that the Ninevites are stone cold about turning away from sin.

Read the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, the two that mention Jesus' nativity. He was laid in a manger, a feeding trough for animals, because there was no room at the inn. However nowhere in these nativity passages is there any mention of animals other than "flocks" that shepherds left, no riding on a donkey to Bethlehem, no oxen, no asses gathered around the feeding crib. Animals enter into the Christmas story from extra-biblical sources, the nativity scene that St. Francis supposedly invented or from The Little Drummer Boy.

In the Bible, dogs and pigs are held in contempt, as they are in Middle Eastern cultures today. Fatted calves and rams are slaughtered. Jesus ate a cute little lamb at The Last Supper.

In Genesis, God's creation of animals and humans are two separate acts, with Man being the one created in God's image and likeness (spirit, knowing, loving) and with Man being given dominion for his use over all the animals. There is no equality of dignity among men and animals in the ingenius book of Genesis.

Heaven and New Earth

The brilliant Prof. Anthony Esolen, in his introduction to his translation of Dante's Paradise (2) writes, "...men's vain imaginations invent for themselves another world. They project into that world what little they know of this one, imagining a God like a great and kindly old man, who forgives their failings unconditionally and allows them to continue in their present passtimes: to fish, to hunt, to gossip with friends, to lounge in the sun at the side of the lake [presumably with a cat in the lap or a dog dozing by the chaise].

There are Christian thinkers who think there's a possibility that animals will go to heaven. The generic disciple C.S. Lewis thought that pets, not all animals, might be in heaven because their owners were. Not having spiritual souls, they would not merit heaven or the new earth. Peter Kreeft asks "Why not?" However Kreeft's book about heaven, among other things, also attempts to jibe full communion with God with a belief in ghosts.(3)

Now God can do anything He wants. If God wants animals to be in heaven and the new earth, they'll be in heaven and the new earth. However God has also made rules making it possible for us to exercise our God-given reason and free will (out of love for us, I believe). Made in God's image, we are built to know.

Except for the occasional violations of His rules, called miracles, God follows His own rules to the letter. His rules and His Word indicate that human beings are exceptional creatures that endure after death because of their spiritual souls. Aquinas taught that there would be no plants and animals in the new world; only living things that are deathless (people with immortal souls) will be there.

The important thing to know about heaven and whatever new earth is created after is the privilege of the beatific vision, direct experience of God. Despite Kreeft's questioning in his book, there will be no sorrow, no boredom, no sin, no worry. The souls of our departed relatives and friends who stand before God in person watch us and pray for us out of love.

Souls in heaven can, according to Aquinas' reasoning, also see the damned in hell. However because there is only joy and no sorrow in the face of God, they will feel no pity. Indeed they will rejoice that God's justice has been accomplished. Before the beatific vision, there is no missing anyone or anything, including absent pets.

The Deadly Consequences

Catholic priests should know all the above. Whenever the Sunday readings open the door a little crack, homilists should fling it wide and be courageous about preaching that humans have far more dignity than animals. Unfortunately, as with other subjects (i.e., sexual matters) priests fear that half their congregations will walk out the door forever if they hear that their pets aren't going to heaven.

Thus, the equalization of humans and animals is another serious problem that The Catholic Church is not dealing with. Beyond the good turnouts on blessing-of-the-animals day in October, the bestowal on animals' of a false dignity has deadly consequences. Because ideas have consequences. It is not so much about upgrading animals as it is about degrading humans. That has long been the aim of the eager effort to prove that intellectual powers of chimps and gorillas are close to those of people.

A majority of the public now believes that suffering human beings should be put out of their misery, as animals are put out of their misery, through assisted suicide and euthanasia. Abortionists cooperating with abortive parents cull deformed human beings like rabbit peanuts (but in the womb), conducting a holocaust of children with Downs Syndrome and other disabilities. The selective breeding of humans, an ancient practice upon animals, is becoming more common, especially in the surrogate parent industry.

The Catholic Church talks about pornography, but it doesn't talk about childless couples with pitbulls and dobermans or women who prefer being "pet mommies" to marrying men and having human children.

A couple of weeks in 2014 before Pope Francis I was reported to have allegedly said that animals will go to heaven, (He did not; see Epilogue below) there passed from this life a novelist of brilliant insight, Baroness Phyllis Dorothy (P.D.) James. Set in 2020, James' 1993 novel The Children of Men depicts a world in which widespread contraception has created a general inability to have children at all. In this dark story of an aging world now desperate to resume breeding, one of the funnier passages describes the baptizing of kittens. As Brave New World is a novel of the 20th and 21st Centuries, The Children of Men is a novel of the 21st. I hope that it will not be a novel of the 22nd.

Animals can go neither to heaven nor to hell, but priests, popes and journalists who do not insist on the truth can.

Epilogue: Dogs in Heaven, "The Second Letter of Peter to The Apocalypse:" Italian, Brit and American journalists vie to be the most incompetent.

In mid-December 2014 came tidings, glad for many, that Pope Francis I had declared heaven an open town for animals. Why not? The teachings of The Catholic church are platform planks and policy that any pontiff can rewrite at will. And this pope is really bringing the church up to date, isn't he? After all, he abandoned the popemoble.

On November 26, Pope Francis, read a text to a general audience (Note to religion reporters: the general audience is not an audience just for generals. Admirals are welcome, too.). In this text, the pope spoke of heaven and the new earth.(5) He quoted Paul's Letter to The Romans, Peter's second letter and Revelation. He said nothing about animals. He said nothing, except for one careless thing I'll discuss below, that has not been church teaching about the afterlife for centuries.

The misinformation began with an Italian journalist. No surprise. One Italian journalist is considered to be a real bravissimo because he doesn't bother to take notes at interviews and reports quotes from memory.

The journalist who reported on the pope's Nov. 26 audience wrote of how the pope quoted the "Letter of Peter to the Apocalypse." In an apparent attempt to show that doctrine about animals (and the environment) has been evolving historically, the scribe threw in a paragraph that recounted an unsubstantiated legend that Pope Paul VI once comforted a crying boy who had suffered the death of a dog with “One day we will see our animals in the eternity of Christ.”

The journo added a John Paul II quote that is likely either false, mistranslated or taken out of context (See sidebar). Lastly he quoted a "great theologian" Italian archbishop.

Without verifying what the pope actually said (His speeches are available on the Vatican web site) the New York Times ran a lengthy article (6) building up the misquote and what welcome news it was to animal advocates. Time repeated the story. Both ran corrections after they discovered what the pope actually said.

By the time it was U.K. Daily Mail's turn in the telephone game, the quote from Paul VI had been reassigned to Saint Paul (the bloke that cathedral in London's named for i'n'it?). (7) The article also mentions that Pope Bendict XVI "claimed that donkeys were not part of the Nativity." See the mainbar above, or better yet, see the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, that prove Benedict correct.

In the reporting of a quote about animals that Francis did not actually say, and in the debunking of that report, the reporters and debunkers missed something that Francis did actually say which, taken out of context, is as bad as declaring that animals will go to heaven.

Francis said, "We will all be heaven." He was speaking to an audience of believers and it is clear from the context that he was expressing their hope, as believers, to be in heaven . Francis speaks frequently about Satan, so he certainly believes in hell and is (likely) not one of those Catholics who want to out-mercy God by contradicting God's son on unquenchable fire.

So far, the media have not ripped "We will all be in heaven," from its circumstances. One less thing that catechists, riddled with friendly fire, trying to hold the renewal together and beleaguered by "Who am I to judge?" have to worry about.

(1) See my web page, Rev. Franciszek Kasaczun: a Polish Priest's Legacy.

(2) Dante, (Anthony Esolen, editor & translator), Paradise, The Modern Library (Random House), New York, 2007.

(3) Kreeft, Peter, Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Heaven But Never Thought Of Asking, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1990.

(4) James, P.D., The Children of Men, A.A. Knopf, New York, 1993.

(5) Christopher S. Morrissey, "Did Pope Francis really say all dogs go to heaven?" Catholic World Report, Dec. 12, 2014.

(6) Rick Gladstone, "Dogs in Heaven? Pope Francis Leaves Pearly Gates Open," New York Times, Dec. 11, 2014.

(7) Hannah Roberts, "Pope's penchant for DONKEY milk: Francis admits he drank it as a baby – after being presented with two of the animals for Christmas," DailyMail.com, Dec. 5, 2014.

(8) St. John Paul The Great, Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life).