Can animals get into Heaven?

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Keep in mind that Jesus enjoyed animals and referred to them often in parables and teachings. Sheep and Lambs were usually the prime animals. I remember shortly after my ordination, a retired LPN from Brooklyn approached me before Mass as I was greeting the attendees. She was a cat lover and had several. “Father, will my cats (babies) go to Heaven when they die?” I answered “No” because as several of my comrades on this website pointed out, animals have no souls. I should have said YES they do. I didn’t. However, the battle for and against the cats grew more intense as she produced a cartoon from the local paper. In it, there were clouds and animals of all types with wings flying around Heaven. I was hysterical laughing and told her she had won. I do believe animals are in Heaven as well as here on Earth. How God does this is His business. I suppose the only way we will know for certain is when we get there (please God). BTW, I had Goldfish in a large aquarium. + Lawrence
 
Metroform said:
animals have no souls
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That’s not Catholic teaching, is it? I thought Catholics recognize that all living things have souls, it’s what makes them alive. It “animates” them. The argument is whether they have souls that outlive their bodies.

My personal thoughts on this is that all living things have souls that are commensurate with the complexity of the type of life-form they are. And the afterlives they have are commensurate with their particular type of soul. Humans are the most complex, and have the most complex souls, and the most complex afterlife. Other animals and plants have their own afterlife in their respective dimensions that usually don’t intersect with our dimension, except as God wills it. Sometimes pets are allowed to come back to say goodbye before they go to the great fire hydrant or litterbox in the sky. 😄
 
It’s Catholic teaching that animals do not have souls as humans do.
If they did, then they would have free will, they could sin, they would need redemption, their soul could go to Hell, etc.

Animals don’t have free will, they act according to instinct and don’t sin regardless of what they do.

To the extent they have some kind of a “soul” it’s qualitatively different from a human soul, and most Catholic writers don’t use that word because it creates confusion.
 
If animals are in heaven, aren’t those we ate going to be a little, um, perturbed over the whole situation?
 
Your pet will be in heaven if you want it. (But only if you’re there too.)
 
anna said:
my answer would be why not
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Because my neighbor has these vicious killer attack dogs who are growling and ready to attack and bite you at any moment.I can’t walk to my back door without their jumping on the fence and showing their sharp teeth and barking horrifically. I would like to get some sleep at night, but their constant loud and vicious barking is keeping me awake and my health is going down. Further, I have to forget completely about riding a bicycle in the neighborhood as dogs come barking and biting my leg and tearing my new pants. I would hate to be in a heaven with these killer attack dogs anywhere nearby. I am scared to death of them. I have to take blood pressure medication to keep calm and bring down the high levels of pressure caused by the fright of these vicious killer dogs.
 
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Will I love and pet that Chicken that was so delicious in my Chik Fil A meal yesterday? I mean if I can’t have that chicken in heaven I don’t know what heaven will be like!

And I’d also like to say moo to that cow that is sitting in my fridge waiting for Saturday in lent… Just chillin…
 
po18guy said:
Well, as I depart, I will say that only God could feed the allosaurs and T-rexes in heaven.
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Yeah, right… Come one. There are no T Rexs in heaven! I mean there were no T rexs on this 6000 year old earth right?
 
The answer is we don’t know. What we do know is God created the animals, and he does indeed take care of them. Our Lord even said so in the Gospel of Matthew.

“Look at the birds of the air: they do not sow, or reap, or gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you of much more value than they?” Matthew 6:26, Confraternity Edition.

While we are much more important, God loves the animals too, So maybe, just maybe they are in the Kingdom of Heaven giving glory to Him in their own way. I for one like this question is a mystery to us rather than concrete and answered.
 
God is God and He can do anything. It is certainly within His power to have animals present in heaven, but our faith focuses on whether our souls attain heaven.

That being said, dogs, being the one animal on earth which has developed in tandem with Mankind, are the likeliest to be present in heaven!😉
 
I am truly sorry that you are in this kind of situation I would think the dogs were trained by their owners to act such a way. When you raise a dog from a pup if they are in a loving environment and treated with kindness they react with love. We have domesticated a variety of animals , dogs being number 1. When I answered the question asked by Lisa, I was going with my own experience with animals.God’s creatures are not meant to be tortured, it sounds as if your neighbors have done exactly that.
 
po18guy said:
If animals are in heaven, aren’t those we ate going to be a little, um, perturbed over the whole situation?
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“Oh, no! Not again!”

🤣:crazy_face:🤯
AlNg said:
Because my neighbor has these vicious killer attack dogs who are growling and ready to attack and bite you at any moment.I can’t walk to my back door without their jumping on the fence and showing their sharp teeth and barking horrifically. I w
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My neighbor’s pit bull used to snarl, bark, and try to leap over the fence a time when I first moved in here decades ago.

I started snarly back. He eventually deferred when I came out . . . OK, so he was barking out of his league; he’s just a pit bull, while I’m a Las Vegas lawyer . . .

hawk
 
anna said:
it sounds as if your neighbors have done exactly that.
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Yes. I guess you are right. Perhaps they don’t feed them properly or enough, i don’t know. There are a lot of people who have dogs. I guess they are using them as watchdogs. Anyway, my new pants have been ripped a few times by a dog chasing me and chewing at my leg as I am riding a bicycle.
I agree that there are many wonderful cats and dogs that make great pets and I have nothing against that. Good luck.
dochawk said:
My neighbor’s pit bull used to snarl, bark, and try to leap over the fence
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I don’t know how stable these pit bulls are. One moment they are calm, peaceful and loving. And the next moment they are snarling and attacking small children.
I know people love their pets and want them in heaven. So be it. The Bible does mention that horses are in heaven. In that case, if all these pets are in heaven, including the dogs, I wonder if they would allow a good person to enter into a limbo with no animals instead of heaven which is supposedly populated by animals, at least according to some of the Roman Catholic posters here. Perhaps in a limbo with no vicious dogs, a person might get some peace and quiet.
 
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AlNg said:
I don’t know how stable these pit bulls are. One moment they are calm, peaceful and loving. And the next moment they are snarling and attacking small children.
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It probably varies widely by the animals.

I understand that many are sweet, and protective of children. On the other hand, I know folks who have seen them over protective . . .

The sad fact of the matter is that many people have bred this breed to select for those who will respond to abuse by becoming vicious. It’s now in their genes–or at least a large percentage of them.

This one breed accounts for a strong majority of all of the dog attacks on own family in the US. It needs to have breeding taken away and controlled to breed this trait back out, or eliminated.

My daughters found a pit bull puppy a couple of years ago, tied at the school across the street without water, and suffering. They brought it back to the house to give it shade and water, and it was quite affectionate with them.

But then my son and law and I came around, separately.

It’s immediate reaction to a male was to snarl and stand its ground . . . (I think we checked with a neighbor, too).

We made sure that we didn’t find the owners, and found it a place that it cold live without further abuse . . .
 
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off topic but I like to think heaven is where I’ll cuddle the puppies and cute creatures forever are and hell is where I’ll be forced to hold spiders over and over again for all eternity
 
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