Do animals go to Heaven?

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Yes, animals go to heaven. First reason is that God loves them more than I. Second reason is that we,humans, are responsible for the fall to put animals in the curse that they are in. Third, the Bible speaks of animals in heaven.
 
Okay, I hear this question a lot as a vet tech, especially when a beloved pet must be euthanized due to an incurable illness that has progressed to the point where the animal can no longer be relieved of suffering through medical means.

My answer to the client is as follows, “I believe that Heaven is a place of absolute joy, and God wants us to be happy in Heaven. Therefore, I believe that God, in His infinite Mercy and Love, will do whatever it takes to ensure that we are happy. If He knows that having a beloved pet in Heaven is what it will take to make one of His children happy in Heaven, then that pet will be there.” And I leave it at that. Most every client seems to be comforted with that reply. Because we have clients of many denominations (or of no particular denomination but simply ‘believers’), I keep it very general.

I do believe that animals go to Heaven-- but not sure “where” in Heaven, if there’s a special place where animals go, or anything like that, because I don’t know what Heaven is really like since I haven’t been there yet. My pastor explained that an animal’s soul isn’t the same as a human’s. They have a temporal soul, but it doesn’t live on after physical death the way a human’s does. But his belief, and HIS PERSONAL belief only (not official Catholic teaching), is that they might possess a different sort of ‘spirit’ created by God and that only God knows, which returns to heaven, But it’s not a permanent soul like that of humans-- but perhaps a sort of ‘energy’ that returns to its source once the bodily host dies. Because God is all-powerful, He can restore the body in a form that we will recognize once we return to Him in Heaven after we die, and the ‘energy’ is then instilled into the ‘heavenly body’ of that beloved pet. After all, God created the pet on Earth; why could He not recreate that pet in Heaven?

Pope John Paul II taught love for animals more than any other pope in recent memory.

In 1990, His Holiness proclaimed that “the animals possess a soul and men must love and feel solidarity with our smaller brethren.” He went on to say 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.” (referenced here… thecatholicpriest.com/Popes_on_Pets.html). That doesn’t mean that the yhave the same KIND of soul as a human, but they do have a soul nonetheless.

As for purgatory, since animals really don’t have a concept of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ or ‘reason’, they can’t sin. So, IMO and understanding of the matter, they wouldn’t have a need to go to purgatory or Hell (well… except maybe fire ants! :rolleyes:).

In short, if God wants His animal creations to be in Heaven, then they will be there. And since animals bring so many people joy, and since God wants us to be happy in Heaven, then by that logic, it would stand to reason that animals would go to Heaven.

~In Christ,
Spoken4
 
 
To paraphrase CS Lewis, a heaven for fire ants, and a human hell could easily be combined:shrug:

ICXC NIKA
 
If animals would get into heaven…
Then God hardly would have said in Acts 11.7:
‘Rise, Peter; kill and eat.’
nor hardly Jesus would have eathen the Lamb on Passover Eve (Last Supper)

I never in my life had no dog (until now in old age). I always had animals and I loved them. I’d however never expect any of them to meet them in heaven.

Yours
Bruno
 
BrunoMaria said:
If animals would get into heaven…
Then God hardly would have said in Acts 11.7:
‘Rise, Peter; kill and eat.’
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nor hardly Jesus would have eathen the Lamb on Passover Eve (Last Supper)

I never in my life had no dog (until now in old age). I always had animals and I loved them. I’d however never expect any of them to meet them in heaven.

Yours
Bruno

But **maybe **God directed certain animals in our lives, whether a cat, dog, cow, horse, pig, etc., *to love *and some animals were destined to nourish us. Like how he put Pharaoh on this earth as a vessel of wrath - and the same with Jacob and Esau - one of them was doomed. God is a potter and creates certain vessels for different reasons and we are not to question Him. It’s in the bible. This was a teaching I found hard to understand…how some are put on this earth with no hope…they were purposely put here to show God’s glory. Read Romans 9:22 - What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath–prepared for destruction? If anyone thinks I am mistaken, please feel free to explain.

And what do you think about my previous post???
 
Zhenia said:
A friend of mine was told as a child that it didn’t matter what you did to an animal, because it doesn’t have a soul.

She left the Church because of that, and never looked back.
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The mature thing to do as an adult would be to verify that her childhood interpretation of something she thinks someone said about Church teaching was accurate before leaving the Church. These silly things that people claim caused them to leave the Church sometimes leave me incredulous. Amazing how frivolous some people are.
 
Scripture says there will be no crying in heaven, and I know a few people who would be heartbroken without thier pets. So either there are animals in heaven or we will have no memory of our earthly existence.
The prophet Isaiah writting a message he received from God told of animals in heaven.
Isaiah 65:25 Wolves and lambs will graze together; lions and oxen will feed on straw. Snakes will eat only dirt! They won’t bite or harm anyone on my holy mountain. I, the LORD, have spoken!
 
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Zhenia:
A friend of mine was told as a child that it didn’t matter what you did to an animal, because it doesn’t have a soul. She left the Church because of that, and never looked back.
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Why did she leave church when some idiot told her something as stupid as this? Was it a priest who told her such rubbish? Even when it was a priest…
Priest too fail. What has this to do with the Church?! If I added *** the rubbish I heard and experienced of priests who where appointed but more likely than not had not been chosen by God, then I had left Church 70 years ago. We are not judged by our reaction to others silly talks - even if it might be a Bishop, but on our own connection to God. It’s really on us to differ. The gauge (I hope I hit the right word) - the gauge of all things concerning us, are never others, but our very personal relation to God.
I wonder who really would think: God would let it be, if our excuse is: Well - I left you, because this priest told me; “that it didn’t matter what you did to an animal”.
This statement is so damn stupid, that every single one could easily refute it. And besides: To do anything painful to any animal be it a worm or a dog, hors, pig or whatever, is a sin against God’s creation!
DeoSalvatoreMeo said:
The mature thing to do as an adult would be to verify that her childhood interpretation of something she thinks someone said about Church teaching was accurate before leaving the Church. These silly things that people claim caused them to leave the Church sometimes leave me incredulous. Amazing how frivolous some people are.
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Exactly. One would tend to the suspicion, that this was simply a pretense to leave Church. I only one of these days said to a guy who left the Church, that I NEVER NEVER NEVER would even dare to leave the Church, for it’s Jesus own foundation. Whoever leaves Church - leaves Jesus! A bloody dangerous thing to do!

But back to the core of the topic. I still don’t think, that animals go to heaven. It takes a lot to get into heaven. Still; - it might be that some animals do go to heaven, - if they had close connection to humans. We however can’t tell and it really would be terribly careless to say as Bismarck said: “I can’t think of a heaven without my dogs and horses”. This narrow minded person, however great he might have been in his social and political ideas, did not think of God first in terms of HEAVEN. Else he wouldn’t have thought twice about such subsidiary question. It’s not even a question but it’s an astray way of thinking about God.
Heaven is unthinkable more than this very narrow minded thought.

Yours
Bruno
hopefully this time with less spelling-sistakes than last time 😉
but I’m a bloody foreigner speaking some native tribes language 😃
 
As Saint Paul said (1 Corinthians 13:12):
“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.”

Between the seeing divine things dimly - and then face to face, there lays however a long and burdensome way of leaning and conciving the learned.
Now, all these heavenly expectations are easy to kids to grasp, as they don’t desire to think further than what they can grip right now. They simply accept it as fact and don’t ponder any further. An advise Jesus gave us to do alike.

We however do ponder. Ok, we even are to. But this pondering might indeed lead to the very contrary than to what we originally intended to find. That’s surely the case, if we in our private research (of course) go astray, because we match heaven with earthly things. The very Relativism the Pope so often warned about. But heaven is nothing like whatsoever earthly. Even we ourselves won’t be anything like we are now, even though it’s still the very “WE” and downright “I”.

Here comes in the old question: “Are we body having a soul?” No! It’s the other way round: We are soul and have a body. A body like a diving suit, to get along in this world of matter. Otherwise we wouldn’t need this body; though we get it back after doomsday - “where from so ever” as the German Catholic Encyclopedia for Theology and Church (LThK) tells. Holy Mary is in haven with her Body and so is Jesus Christ. According to 2Kings 2,11 even Elijah is.

We often in our life see or saw things so overwhelming, that in this moment we forgot all. Now, what is the greatest sight on earth or universe, compared to the beatific view of God in the knowledge, that from now on we will be with God in eternity. None ever then would ever would have any room in his mind to reflect on such thing as: “is my pet here too?” Just unthinkable, and we really should forget the whole idea, for if we ponders about such thing, we prove absolute incomprehension of the plainest key aspects of the Bible; of God. We really rather should worry and pray for others to get into heaven, and leave the rest to God.

Now, some might say - since Elijah was taken to heaven in a chariot with “horses” - why shouldn’t there be other animals there too.
But lo - FIREY HORSES some think to have seen at that event, doesn’t mean real horses in any case. If at the time they had seen a two-wheel-tractor, they had described it as “a wonderous horse of most inexplicable shape and form”. But seriously: If something most unusual happens and 100 people watch it, you get 100 different descriptions of side-effects. In the case of Eliah is absolute fact; - he was taken up to heaven and others saw it. Details are secundary and depend on the witness’ perception.

Yours
Bruno
 
I was listening to one of Peter Kreeft’s lectures on C.S. Lewis, and he said “The Problem of Pain” includes an appendix on the problem of animal suffering which also addresses this issue - which is a big issue now but wasn’t back when Lewis was writing. I should probably re-read it, I remember the book being very good but don’t remember the chapter on animals and heaven.
 
CS Lewis said something about how although animals don’t have immortal souls, God can “re-create” them in the Resurrection, or alternatively in Heaven… we don’t know about that part.
 
Monica4316 said:
CS Lewis said something about how although animals don’t have immortal souls, God can “re-create” them in the Resurrection, or alternatively in Heaven… we don’t know about that part.
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Animals souls cease to exist when the animal dies. If an animal is subsequently re-created that means a) it did not go to Heaven and b) its not the same animal!
 
thistle said:
Animals souls cease to exist when the animal dies. If an animal is subsequently re-created that means a) it did not go to Heaven and b) its not the same animal!
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But it could be made as the same…nothing is impossible for God.

I seriously think on this issue, we as humans should admit we just don’t know!
 
The first question that has to be answered is whether animals have free will or not. To be able to love someone you have to have free will. If we agree that animals don’t have free will, it makes no sense to talk about whether they love or don’t love God. God has made a promise to humanity of eternal life and that is all we have to go by. I see as either one of two options though as far as animals are concerned:
  1. Animals do not have eternal souls and therefore it makes no sense to talk about whether they would go to Heaven or Hell.
  2. Animals have eternal souls and by virtue of not having free will there is zero reason to believe their souls could possibly be in a condition that would not allow them to be in the presence of God when they die.
Either way God has given us dominion over them and by virtue of them being gifts from God we should take care to be wise stewards over them.
 
Nate13 said:
The first question that has to be answered is whether animals have free will or not. To be able to love someone you have to have free will. If we agree that animals don’t have free will, it makes no sense to talk about whether they love or don’t love God. God has made a promise to humanity of eternal life and that is all we have to go by. I see as either one of two options though as far as animals are concerned:
  1. Animals do not have eternal souls and therefore it makes no sense to talk about whether they would go to Heaven or Hell.
  2. Animals have eternal souls and by virtue of not having free will there is zero reason to believe their souls could possibly be in a condition that would not allow them to be in the presence of God when they die.
Either way God has given us dominion over them and by virtue of them being gifts from God we should take care to be wise stewards over them.
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That is correct.
The Church teaches that only humans have immortal souls.
 
Animals do not go to heaven at their point of death, at least that I know of. But and that’s a big BUT I do believe that the 2nd comming of Christ will give life to that which had life in the past, this would include plant, animal, or what ever. As you know Christ states He makes All things new. Wether we like it or not we are all one in the sence that we come from the same source, God the father. Yes we are greater then the animal species and the plants, but we are all created from the same source. What God creates is good and loves with a great amount.

Animals are after all sinless and pretty much fufill their purpose on earth through instinct. I feel God does have a special place for his other creation which has remaines sinless since the begning. He did not destroy the bad angels nor humanity, which are found with sin, so why then would he destroy his presciouce creation?
 
Something i forgot to mention. Our complete happiness is to be before God and one with him. This fufills our hunger our hearts have to be with him. This brings us eternal bliss of joy. But God is so loving that we just don’t know that he might have other gifts waiting for us as “extras.” We must always remember that God is not bound to anything.
 
archangel04 said:
Something i forgot to mention. Our complete happiness is to be before God and one with him. This fufills our hunger our hearts have to be with him. This brings us eternal bliss of joy. But God is so loving that we just don’t know that he might have other gifts waiting for us as “extras.” We must always remember that God is not bound to anything.
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I agree with you but if you read the comments of the people who are fantatical pet lovers it often appears that being in the sight of God is not sufficient for them and they want their animals to make them complete. Yes I know that’s silly but reading the comments in the many threads on this topic it appears many feel that way.
 
God creates in the name of perfection. People who decide to turn away from God ,is not God’s fault obviously. Animals are created in God’s perfection and don’t have the ability to turn away from God. When I say perfection, I mean all the fullness of it including creating for the purpose of forever or eternity, absolutely NO death. God doesn’t have the ability to create without perfection, therefore God creates animals for the purpose for forever. Humans messed up the perfection part of that plan, not animals. Another way to look at it, animals are the victims of our nasty and destructive ways upon God’s plan of perfection. Jesus WILL make all things new. When I say ALL, I mean the fullness of all things,including animals who died because of our sin nature.Our sin really made all of God’s creation suffer, not only to ourselves.
 
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