Borrowed from someone else:
… But my memory tells me that my Catholic upbringing did in fact mention that animals did NOT have souls and that we could therefore do what we liked to them and with them. There was never any mention of looking after them, unless it was for our own self-interest. Thus, I have to ask again, are you sure that the Vatican agrees with you that “All living things must have souls”? If they do, then the church has certainly changed its position on the subject over the last 60 years, but I doubt that they could do so on such an important concept as The Soul. It would be like doing away or upgrading Genesis or the Old Testament itself.
The quote that I took from Genesis mentions Man being made in the image of God. There is no mention of doing the same with other animals. It only mentions animals to say that Man may have control over them. That does not sound to me as though Genesis means you to understand that animals also have a soul.
So, whether from the Church or somewhere else in the Bible, you can show me where it is stated, that “animals have souls”, I have to infer, for the time being, that the problem of us Human beings finding ourselves 95% subordinate to an animal does not square up with the concept that we are special and made in the image of God.
There is no need for it to be interpreted by others.
The Realistic Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas is based on concepts first described by Aristotle (died c. 350 BC) on his Realism Philsophy, but all his books, except 3 or 4, were lost from the time of his death until the 9th Century when they surfaced in a Nestorian Monastery (yes, the heretic! It is of value to note that God uses imperfect beings for good purposes, such as Nestorian Monks that kept and copied Aristotelian books that were the basis of Scholasticism that kept and keeps Catholicism free of philosophical errors) in the 8th Century, in time to lead to the formation of Scholasticism, its prime members in the Middle Ages were St. Albert the Great and his student, St. Thomas Aquinas, who had access to the philosophical writings of Muslim and Jewish philosophers in Muslim Sicily. His five proofs of the Existence of God were based on the writings of Jewish Moses Maimonides.
The Logic of Aristotle is the basis of all sciences, that are true sciences that follow the Rules of Logic discovered and defined by pagan Aristotle.
It may be of interest that the teacher of Aristotle, Plato, believed in an Idealistic Nature, which was followed by St. Augustine and some Protestant Churches still follow, they broke away from Christianity before St. Thomas Aquinas lived, and remain stuck in the Idealism of Plato, to them all beings are eternal.
The implication that beings go to their final reward includes the essential need of a Free Will that leads them to Good or Evil, but there is no evidence or basis to believe that animals have a Free Will…
The basic Aristotelian concept of the essence of all beings is Form and Matter.
In humans, we call them Soul and Body. In this sense, we can all say that ALL beings have a Form, which in humans is called “Soul” and ALL beings have Matter, which in humans is called “Body”. There is no proof that Souls are eternal except that all that is “spiritual” does not decay, like human souls, Angels and God. Since we know of no Eternal aspects in animals, we have no basis to believe they are eternal.
Aristotle said all beings, be they animals, plants and minerals have a Form which ends when their Matter is transformed into another nature, like a tree that dies and becomes wood. After we die, we will see real Truth, Beauty, etc., and our need for animals may not exist. It all depends on the description of Heaven, a part of Thomism, among others, that I am unfamiliar.
One of the highest emitters of CO2 is the growing of rice - not counting harvesting - storage - processing - marketing - delivery.