Do animals like cat's and dog's have souls?

[Neoplatonist]

Interesting points.

So it seems true that y being lower than x does not preclude having a soul.

I like your point about being aware of their choices, but, again, the other examples I gave are similarly incapable of being aware of their choices. Let’s consider a weird case - not to be weird, but because it helps us isolate variables and clarify. What if a child were born into a coma state, or with a deformation of the cortex or something that impaired choice or advancement. In what sense is that soul yet capable of rationality that is just occluded?

How does the reading of the rational soul of an infant reconcile with the idea that children have not yet reached the age of ‘reason’? Having converted later in life, I’m not very strong on that doctrine. Maybe ?] you are more familiar.

 

[Neoplatonist]

I have not thought it all out, but the reason you are talking about, I would understand as a manifestation of our being physical creatures. These words could disappear from my mind in an instance, with a simple occlusion of an artery. It would make me no less human, just unable to express who I am in this world. The reason my soul possesses would remain.
Animals are of another order as you state, as far below us in terms of reason as we are to the angels. However, we may be said to be higher to angels, not only because the Word chose to become one of us, but because we also feel.
IMHO, loyal Fido would deserve our praise for his faithfulness, but he would be unable to understand his actions. I would guess that he likely might feel relief that his master is saved and happy at the attention and praise.

But animals, too, have been shown to feel, so would that not mean they, too, are higher than angels in a sense?

Can we not allow the possibility that animals are higher than us in a sense, because they never fell into disobedience and original sin? (Is there a way to do that without just assuming the conclusion that they don’t have souls so they can’t have sinned?)

 

[undeserving]

I don’t think there are animals in Heaven but I think some people may be missing something. Only people’s souls are in Heaven. Ultimately people are to be reunited with their resurrected bodies when there is a new Heaven and a new Earth. Why would there not be animals and plants on this new Earth? It seems it would be pretty barren without them. The physical world is a fallen world but not because it is physical.God created the physical world including animals and plants because they were good. Why would He allow them to be destroyed forever because of the fall of the angels?

Thats just what i think. What about the Lion lying down with the lamb? where and when does this occur?I cannot imagine a great and generous God pushing into oblivion his beautiful creations, if there are going to be plants and trees in heaven surely there will be friendly tigers and happy dogs.

 

[undeserving]

Its the wolf not the Lion!

The actual verses are-Isaiah 11:6
The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them.

Isaiah 65:25
The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, but dust will be the serpent’s food. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain," says the LORD.​

Anyone? where and when will this happen,?

 

[GuyNextDoor]

But animals, too, have been shown to feel, so would that not mean they, too, are higher than angels in a sense?

Can we not allow the possibility that animals are higher than us in a sense, because they never fell into disobedience and original sin? (Is there a way to do that without just assuming the conclusion that they don’t have souls so they can’t have sinned?)

I doubt that angels have no emotions since angels & saints are known to rejoice over each person who repents.

Even if animals do not know sin & never fell into disobedience, the fact that they do not know God still remains. One of the reasons why we are able to attain salvation despite Adam & Eve’s disobedience and falling into sin, is because we are able to be saved through Christ & strive for heaven with our diligence.

The easiest way to answer these without going against the explanations of the Church that animals do have souls, is to simply ask ourselves whether we have seen any animals or plants ever being in communion with God; praying, worshipping, adoration, etc. What animals lack is the spirit for such as these.

God Bless,
GuyNextDoor

 

[Aloysium]

But animals, too, have been shown to feel, so would that not mean they, too, are higher than angels in a sense?

Can we not allow the possibility that animals are higher than us in a sense, because they never fell into disobedience and original sin? (Is there a way to do that without just assuming the conclusion that they don’t have souls so they can’t have sinned?)

They feel but they cannot reason. Animals cannot make a moral choice. They are not eternal, existing solely in time; if we are compared to stars, they are shooting stars.
Are there animals in heaven? It seems the New Jerusalem would be a pretty paltry place without them, or vegetation for that matter. We will find out.

 

[meltzerboy]

But animals, too, have been shown to feel, so would that not mean they, too, are higher than angels in a sense?

Can we not allow the possibility that animals are higher than us in a sense, because they never fell into disobedience and original sin? (Is there a way to do that without just assuming the conclusion that they don’t have souls so they can’t have sinned?)

Doesn’t this discussion about the meaning of rationality and having a rational soul mean that we humans as a species have free will, which, we assume, animals do not have? Animals are not thought of as sinning because of their lack of free will. Rather, they behave largely in terms of instinct rather than deciding what is good or bad in a moral sense. I think that is the crux of the distinction and the reason why only humans, who choose their moral or immoral behavior, have a spiritual and immortal soul.

 

[balto]

I’m hard-pressed to construct a definition of rationality such that a 6-month-old child or a person in a vegetative coma possesses it but a dolphin or a dog does not. The same is true of an awareness of truth or beauty.

You seem to be making a very common modern error here by confusing the power of rationality with the actual exercise of the power of rationality. What is only needed for the definition of human being as rational is that the human possess the power of rationality. That a human is unable to exercise this power due to immaturity or brain-damage is irrelevant to the question of whether they are rational. Allow for the natural development of the 6 month old, or restore the lost functions of the brain damaged patient, and rationality will be exercised. You can do all the restoring or waiting you want with a dog, but it will never exercise rationality (if you were able to accomplish that you will have succeeded in substantially changing the dog to some other substance). Denying this leads to all kinds of absurdities since we are not constantly exercising our rational capabilities, so we would be constantly changing between being a rational and irrational animal. Basically you would regress approximately 2,600 years to debate between Aristotle, Heraclitus, and Parmenides over the nature of change and permanence. It seems to me that most of modern philosophy’s “original sin” can be attributed to its failure to recognize the distinction between actuality and potentiality.

Even then, though, can we not allow that they could have such things to a lesser degree, in the same way we have those things to far lesser degree than the angels?

As you stated it, no I don’t think you can admit that, because the difference between a merely sentient animal and a human is not a difference in degree but a difference in kind. It’s not that animals are less rational than humans, but that they are not rational at all. What you could admit, however, is that sensation/imagination allows animals to behave analogously to humans in terms of recognizing truth or beauty, but what they are doing is not the same as what we are doing when we recognize such things.

 

[Jack007]

I think you have already got the answer.

 

[yppop]

Regarding what will be in Heaven, I’ve used the following reflection that appeared in two previous posts without a firestorm of disagreement, in fact, it generated scant comment. It may, however, provide some solace to those with fear or incertitude of the future:

• I am 81 years old and more and more, each day, heaven becomes a very important object of contemplation. I’ve decided that since I have never seen a description of Heaven that is both imaginable and plausible and also accounts for that other possibility we call Hell, I stopped guessing what Heaven and Hell are like and began to imagine what I would liked them to be. It is easier to describe my Heaven than my Hell because fortunately this lifetime was closer to a Heaven than to a Hell. So here’s what I would like Heaven to be like:

My mother, father will be in the same age-relationship with me as they were this time around. They won’t be teenagers and they won’t be ageless, they will be my mother and father. So too will my brothers and sisters, my children, their children and all the people I have known in this life time will be there just as they are or were in this lifetime. Yes, there will be the same animals, flowers, oceans, stars, rocks and all the things I’ve experienced in this lifetime.

I will fall in love again with the same beautiful woman and live an entire married life immersed in romance, good humor, and friendship. My Heavenly life will be filled with the same or more of the laughter, wonder, love, joy, fun, peace, nostalgia, and piety that has filled this life. I will hit a baseball again; I will hear La Boheme for the first time again; I will sing babies to sleep in the middle of a quiet night again. I will eat peanuts, smell roses, hear a whippoorwill, see the ocean for the first time; see Broadway musicals, watch my children graduate, marry the same persons, and have the same children again. You get the idea.

On the Hell side, there will be diseases, earthquakes, plaques, floods, and all sorts of physical evil. But that stuff will be diminished just as social evil such as wars, bigotry, injustice, tyranny, and poverty also will diminish next time around. Since I have had a minimum of disappointments in this life, I can’t describe a vision of a personal Hell but it would consist of far too many regrets and sins, none of which I care to share. But if I have confessed those sins, transgressions, and regrets, then they won’t happen in the Heaven that is my next lifetime because I will enter into it with a more effective conscience.

So my Heaven and Hell would look a lot like my present life except there would be fewer regrets and sins committed. In other words it would be palpably better. Kind of like the movie “Ground Hog Day” in which Bill Murray repeatedly wakes up on the same day, but each new repeat, he alters his behavior for the better, and experiences more and more joy. Each new life would be closer to Heaven and farther from Hell until I and all the rest of humanity achieved that goal and we reach the fullness of the Mystical Body of Christ.

I am not saying with certainty that this is a theological view of Heaven in accordance with scripture and the “defined dogma” of the Catholic Church, it is merely what I want Heaven to be like. On the other hand, it describes how those that have been derived of a full lifetime of wonder, peace, and joy, like a young teen age girl with a fine mind and a body wracked with Spina Bifida can have a clear vision of hope. It also allows those now suffering in a life that seems like Hell to eventually escape, so that all souls are saved.

In the meantime, we are making our way through our personnel purgatories in which we too often make the wrong choices by failing to respond to God’s grace. Eventually we will all escape our personal Hell’s and arrive at that perfect world we call Heaven.
*
And how would this sort of Heaven/Hell come about. Well there does happen to be a scientific solution for my hope. It is called the Many World Interpretation of the Schroedinger wave equation. Before any of you puritanical Catholics accuse me the heresy of reincarnation, google the Many World Interpretation and ask yourself whether living a parallel life as yourself is reincarnation. I don’t think it is. And if the MWI is real, consider what that would mean if not successive lifetimes.

I find theological support for my view in the following excerpt from the Vatican’s 2004 International Theological Commissions report on “Human Persons Created in the Image of God” where it states in step 29:

1. “The central dogmas of the Christian faith imply that the body is an intrinsic part of the human person and thus participates in his being created in the image of God. … The effects of the sacraments, though in themselves primarily spiritual, are accomplished by means of perceptible material signs, which can only be received in and through the body. This shows that not only man’s mind but also his body is redeemed. The body becomes a temple of the Holy Spirit. Finally, that the body belongs essentially to the human person is inherent to the doctrine of the resurrection of the body at the end of time, which implies that man exists in eternity as a complete physical and spiritual person.”

From this I infer that since our bodies are resurrected at the end of time to exist eternally as a complete physical and spiritual person, and since in this present state the body and soul are imperfect, and since it is through grace and the application of our free will that we are justified, it seems plausible to me that there be interim states in which the process of justification is brought to fruition. Hence parallel worlds.

Yppop