Sorry,I couldn’t help myself,…
St Thomas Aquinas’ philosophical writings about the nature of animals, and the example set by Francis’ relationship with them, can both enlighten and inspire us today. These Catholic thinkers clearly illustrate the meaning of ‘catholic’ as ‘universal’ and ‘all-inclusive’. Yet not all Catholics treat animals in a way consistent with their veneration of these saints. Why is this? After presenting an address of Pope John Paul II regarding animals, I will explain the background of his claim that animals have a soul. The best source of this explanation is Aquinas, who also sets the stage for understanding how Francis can treat animals in a brotherly way. By recounting anecdotes from Francis’ life, I hope to show that he was an exemplary precursor of the modern animal rights activist. Having viewed the attitude towards animals of such spiritual Catholics, I will suggest a reason why more people don’t follow their lead.
In 1990, Pope John Paul II proclaimed [in a general audience] that ‘the animals possess a soul and men must love and feel solidarity with our smaller brethren’. He added that all animals are ‘fruit of the creative action of the Holy Spirit and merit respect’ and that they are ‘as near to God as men are’. The Pope emphasized that ‘animals possess the divine spark of life – the living quality that is the soul’.
The Pope was not advancing a new notion. This concept is rooted in the teachings of St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), who acknowledged the fact that animals possess a soul. Aquinas’ argument begins by observing that some things [e.g. rocks, minerals] are inert, while others are capable of movement, perception, thought, and desire. We call the former ‘non-living’ and the latter ‘living’. If some bodies are living and others aren’t, life can’t be explained by the mere fact that a thing is a body. So what is the source of life in a body? The source can’t bephysical, because if it were, then any material thing would be living, which is absurd. Aquinas reasons that a body is alive not merely because it’s a physical thing but because of a cause which isn’t bodily or material. Without an immaterial substance or soul, a body would simply be a corpse. So it’s the presence of a soul that distinguishes animate beings from inanimate beings.
An alternative explanation is that a physical organ, such as the brain, heart, or lungs is what makes someone live, rather than a soul. But this alternative fails to consider that the brain, heart and lungs are each a living organ. So what is it that makes each of these organs live? According to Aquinas, only something essentially different from a bodily organ can make these organs perform the activities of life. This essentially different substance is the soul, which organizes all the bodily organs so that they can function as a living unity.
For Aquinas, an essential difference in activity indicates an essential difference in an organism. The vegetative soul is the seat of a plant’s ability to absorb nutrition and grow by cell multiplication. Animal life reveals itself, not only in acts of nutrition, reproduction and growth, but also in sensation, motion, consciousness and self-direction. Since animals have a wider range of activities than the vegetative soul, Aquinas attributes to them a ‘sensitive soul’. Human life encompasses all the previously mentioned activities but is distinguished from other life forms by reasoning and choosing freely. The human soul, accordingly, is called the ‘rational soul’.
Embedded in substance
Besides making things live, the soul is the substance which underlies mental activities. No activity exists separately from a substance. Try to think of the activity of running without someone running. It can’t be done. Nor can colour, pleasure, or weight subsist in themselves. They are always found to inhere in a substance. In the same way, mental activities require a substance in which they are embedded. The activities of perception, thought, and desire presuppose the existence of the soul or a substance which unifies the various mental states of an animal. Because she has a soul, a cat knows that the sound of the can-opener is connected to the food she sees and tastes, which is what she desires. Her soul unifies her perceptions.
According to Aquinas, human and the ‘higher’ non-human animals possess the senses, desire, memory, and imagination. Inferring emotions from the behaviour of animals, Aquinas notes that they feel joy, sorrow, pain, pleasure, fear, anger, and love. He knew that animals respond emotionally to what they remember, as well as to present events. In regard to future events, he writes that animals show the emotion of hope. ‘If a hawk spies a bird that is too far away it does not go after it, as though it had no hope of catching it. But if the prey be nearby it makes a try for it, as though it hoped to capture it.’ Aquinas argues that animals also possess an estimative sense, which is responsible for the continuity between non-human and human intelligence. By means of this sense an animal is able to synthesize and organise the images stored in the memory in order to act suitably in a given situation.
all-creatures.org/ca/ark-210-1.html
People are only bludgeoning these critters to death so they can decorate themselves?
