Question about Animals.

[boomerang]

Because plants and animals have material souls they don’t go anywhere. When the plant or animal dies these souls cease to exist.

Here is also a good Catholic Answers response.
catholic.com/quickquestions/do-animals-have-souls-like-human-beings

It’s all speculation.

 

[Lochias]

The Church teaches that humans are ordered to a supernatural life. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realise that means humans have been singled out by God. If it applied to animals the Church would have said so. By default it means it is not the case.

And it also teaches that all creation awaits the end of time, not just us.

So, your logic is inconsistent.

 

[Lochias]

Because plants and animals have material souls they don’t go anywhere. When the plant or animal dies these souls cease to exist.

Here is also a good Catholic Answers response.
catholic.com/quickquestions/do-animals-have-souls-like-human-beings

You’re stating it as though the Church has decreed it, when the Church has chosen not to decree on the matter at all.

I ask again: If it’s good enough for the Church to realize we don’t know enough about it to say one way or the other, why are you trying to fool Catholics into thinking that the Church is saying something it doesn’t teach?

 

[thistle]

Some of you seem to be confusing what I am saying.
I am not talking about whether there will be animals in Heaven at the end of time. God can create whatever he wants, even clones of our pets.
That is a separate issue from saying animals go to Heaven when they die.They don’t. They have material souls which cease to exist.
You say that is speculation but the Church does not teach that animals have immortal souls and go to Heaven when they die. Likewise the Church Fathers did not write that animals have immortal souls and go to Heaven, and I am not aware of any credible Catholic theologians that say animals have immortal souls and go to Heaven when they die.
In my view the weight of that outweighs somebody simply saying but the Church, Church Fathers, and Catholic theologians did not say they did not go to Heaven so who knows??!!

 

[Sky_River]

Here’s something interesting I had just thought of.

Animals have souls just as much as we do and the concept of a heaven for animals has been proposed over the years but Animals sin just as much as we do right? You have homosexual animals, animals that copulate with other animals, even animals that copulate with humans for god sake! Do animals get a “free ride” into heaven? I mean they would obviously be completely oblivious to god or the concept of god or the glory of Jesus.

If it’s true that there is no heaven or anything for animals and their deaths are eternal oblivion what happens to their souls? Then another question arises, why is the human race superior to animals? I realize only god can answer these questions and he may, never tell me/us but it seems so unfair! That we’re on top of all of god’s creations!

He created mars and there WAS life on there at one point. It’s scientifically proven, we’re superior to them? You also can’t convince me that we’re alone in the universe. God has created other beings and perhaps other humans. What makes us superior to them? We’ll never know but it’s interesting to speculate. If this is in the wrong section, I apologize.

The Bible never says that there’s life on other planets.

 

[TK421]

Some of you seem to be confusing what I am saying.
I am not talking about whether there will be animals in Heaven at the end of time. God can create whatever he wants, even clones of our pets.
That is a separate issue from saying animals go to Heaven when they die.They don’t. They have material souls which cease to exist.
You say that is speculation but the Church does not teach that animals have immortal souls and go to Heaven when they die. Likewise the Church Fathers did not write that animals have immortal souls and go to Heaven, and I am not aware of any credible Catholic theologians that say animals have immortal souls and go to Heaven when they die.
In my view the weight of that outweighs somebody simply saying but the Church, Church Fathers, and Catholic theologians did not say they did not go to Heaven so who knows??!!

There is no weight against it because it has not been definitively spoken.

An absence of a statement does not mean that the answer is a negative or an almost-certain negative. That is not the way the faith operates. Believe it or not, as strange as it would seem to us, there was a lot of doubt after the American continents were discovered because they were not something that were explicitly revealed to us. What were these lands, and who were these people that lived on them? Were they man or beast? Spain had to have a big debate over whether or not these people were human beings or animals, because depending on the answer to that question, they were either under the care of the Church or under the care of the military.

On all things essential there is unity under pain of the law, and on all things non-essential and unspoken there is liberty. Catholic theologians don’t go around saying in the affirmative that animals go to Heaven because they have no authority to say such things, and the wider breadth of God’s plans are not pertinent to our salvation and upcoming glorification. Really, the amount of revelation given to us is probably unfathomably infinitesimal.

 

[meltzerboy]

The Church teaches that humans are ordered to a supernatural life. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realise that means humans have been singled out by God. If it applied to animals the Church would have said so. By default it means it is not the case.

That logic doesn’t seem to follow. I interpret the statement as meaning that we know humans are ordered to survive after physical death but we are not given any or enough information, one way or the other, about animals to know for sure. If the Church teaches that ONLY humans are “ordered to a supernatural life,” then we might conclude animals are not.

 

[thistle]

That logic doesn’t seem to follow. I interpret the statement as meaning that we know humans are ordered to survive after physical death but we are not given any or enough information, one way or the other, about animals to know for sure. If the Church teaches that ONLY humans are “ordered to a supernatural life,” then we might conclude animals are not.

I don’t agree. If animals and plants had immortal souls the Church would have stated that.

 

[Geeksftw]

Okay, if plants and Animals didn’t have immortal souls and join us in heaven, WHY do we sometimes see them after we die? Why do their “ghosts” if you will come back to us? Why do we have near death experiances of faithful Christians who see their pets in the afterlife when givin the chance to look into heaven?

I realize nobody knows for sure, but to single out animals if god has created many things and to single out the human race as the sole favored creation is just ignorance and delusional! Thanks to science, we know that there are other planets that god created for us it wasn’t and isn’t JUST the earth and the human race! You cannot convince me that god made all of these planets and stars just because they’re “pretty to look at”. They’ve discovered water and fossils on mars! That means that mars was another planet with life on it and just proves that god has made other creations besides us and the animals that live here and there may be some other creations somewhere else in this universe! God just doesn’t want us to know these things for whatever reason and only had whatever he thought was relevant into the bible! But he allowed man to create spaceships and travel into space so it must be that it was in our plans to eventually let us know these things to speculate about them amongst ourselves.

You have to take all of these into consideration! There are good spirits and bad spirits walking among this planet! My sister has seen some of them! I know she is not lying because how the heck would she know what our great grandmother looked like when she died long before we were even thought of? We’ve never seen a picture of her. There are many people who have had ghost sittings both good and bad throughout the world! We can probably dismiss the idea that souls walk amongst the earth freely. But personally, I think these are souls from heaven allowed to temporarily to help the living! As for bad ghosts and souls, I don’t know. It’s possible that they are from hell and are allowed temporarily by Satan to torture the living and try to recruit them his world. But something just isn’t right here, people wouldn’t just make up all of these stories and then claim they were true. I’m sorry, I don’t believe the churches views on this. Even the church can be and has been wrong over the years and the church doesn’t 100% dismiss any of these ideas globally.

 

[meltzerboy]

Are you talking about intelligent life on Mars, and are you certain scientists discovered fossils? I did hear about water, or I think dried-up streams, but not fossils. The latter would be quite a find.

 

[Geeksftw]

Are you talking about intelligent life on Mars, and are you certain scientists discovered fossils? I did hear about water, or I think dried-up streams, but not fossils. The latter would be quite a find.

I could have sworn that they had found plant fossils on mars during one of their rover runs around 2005. I remember reading a news article on it on yahoo news so that’s why I stated it as fact. I can confirm that rovers were sent in 2004 with the intention of uncovering plant fossils here:

cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/03/17/creature.features/index.html

But my google search did not confirm on a definitive news site that fossils were in fact uncovered that year. It could be that NASA had discovered what they thought were plant fossils and yahoo reported the news as fact and they later found out that they weren’t in fact plant fossils so they were forced to take down the article.

The water is 100% confirmed though. There were rivers at one point on mars I think that’s why every 5-10 years Nasa keeps trying to uncover fossils to prove it’s theory. Right now, it’s just a theory but to me water = life. Just because there is no visible life today and no oxygen today, and the soil on mars cannot support plant life today doesn’t mean that at one point oxygen and plant life didn’t exist at one point. What happened to mars may be what will happen to our planet someday when the end times finally do happen. And then when the end times do happen, who’s to say that god will not decide to use other planets that we haven’t discovered yet to make other life?

As for intelligent life, I have no idea, I wasn’t talking much about intelligent life. It’s possible but if NASA can confirm someday that plant life did in fact exist on mars at one point, we can GUESS that god made some other intelligent species on mars. That’s mostly what I was talking about. Or perhaps he wanted us to live on mars and then abandoned his plans and went with the planet earth instead. Nobody knows we can only speculate.

I know the bible states human beings and animals as the only intelligent life that god has ever created. I know that the bible is god’s word. However, there are things that god does not want man to know and wants us to speculate for themselves and it’s also possible that we will never know and that it’s “none of our business”. Also, don’t forget that the bible was not made by god, the bible was made by what god and Jesus have told man which means that the entire contents of the bible are what god wants us to know in the living world. The rest are what god wants us to speculate amongst ourselves.

Anyway… we’re going off topic we’re talking about the souls of Animals and whether or not they get “free rides” into heaven or not. I personally do believe that they join us in heaven, and like I stated previously are allowed to temporarily help the living. However, animals commit just as many sins as humans, so there has to be some way for them to get their souls cleansed of all sin.

 

[1ke]

Okay, if plants and Animals didn’t have immortal souls and join us in heaven, WHY do we sometimes see them after we die? Why do their “ghosts” if you will come back to us? Why do we have near death experiances of faithful Christians who see their pets in the afterlife when givin the chance to look into heaven?

You have made a huge assumption-- assuming that they do in fact ‘come back’ or appear as ‘ghosts’. There is no proof of such, beside anecdotal stories. People are highly susceptible to suggestion, and our mind plays tricks on us. The more likely explanation is that people imagine such things and believe them to be true.

Animals have material souls, and they do not continue to exist past death. Therefore we cannot see their ghosts, etc.

I realize nobody knows for sure, but to single out animals if god has created many things and to single out the human race as the sole favored creation is just ignorance and delusional!

Well, then, God is ignorant and delusional for he tells us in Scripture that man alone is made in his image and likeneess. You can dislike this fact all you want, it does not change the truth of the matter.

Thanks to science, we know that there are other planets that god created for us it wasn’t and isn’t JUST the earth and the human race! You cannot convince me that god made all of these planets and stars just because they’re “pretty to look at”.

That’s a pretty big leap of logic. Scripture tells us the opposite, that God did indeed create all of creation for man.

They’ve discovered water and fossils on mars!

You are mistaken.

That means that mars was another planet with life on it and just proves that god has made other creations besides us and the animals that live here and there may be some other creations somewhere else in this universe! God just doesn’t want us to know these things for whatever reason and only had whatever he thought was relevant into the bible! But he allowed man to create spaceships and travel into space so it must be that it was in our plans to eventually let us know these things to speculate about them amongst ourselves.

There may in fact be some form of life elsewhere. Life made in the image and likeness of God, however, would contract what God has told us.

You have to take all of these into consideration! There are good spirits and bad spirits walking among this planet! My sister has seen some of them! I know she is not lying because how the heck would she know what our great grandmother looked like when she died long before we were even thought of? We’ve never seen a picture of her. There are many people who have had ghost sittings both good and bad throughout the world! We can probably dismiss the idea that souls walk amongst the earth freely. But personally, I think these are souls from heaven allowed to temporarily to help the living! As for bad ghosts and souls, I don’t know. It’s possible that they are from hell and are allowed temporarily by Satan to torture the living and try to recruit them his world. But something just isn’t right here, people wouldn’t just make up all of these stories and then claim they were true. I’m sorry, I don’t believe the churches views on this.

Yes, lots of people can be deceived and see things.

Even the church can be and has been wrong over the years and the church doesn’t 100% dismiss any of these ideas globally.

Again, this is incorrect. The Magesterium is infallible as is the Pope regarding faith and morals. The Church does not teach incorrectly.

I sincerely hope you will drop this quest directed at fringe theories and instead pick up a quest to learn actual Church teaching, which seems to be lacking.

 

[1ke]

“At the centre of the whole of creation, He placed us, human beings, with our inalienable human dignity. Although we share many features with the rest of the living beings, Almighty God went further with us and gave us an immortal soul, the source of self-awareness and freedom, endowments that make us in His image and likeness (cf. Gen 1:26-31; 2:7).”

—from Common Declaration on Environmental Ethics, Common Declaration of John Paul II and the Ecumenical Patriarch His Holiness Bartholomew I, Monday 10 June 2002

“Of all visible creatures only man is ‘able to know and love his creator’. He is ‘the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake’, and he alone is called to share, by knowledge and love, in God’s own life. It was for this end that he was created, and this is the fundamental reason for his dignity.”

—from Catechism of the Catholic Church, Part One, Section Two, Chapter One, Article 1, Paragraph 6, 1:356

“God entrusted animals to the stewardship of those whom he created in his own image. Hence it is legitimate to use animals for food and clothing. They may be domesticated to help man in his work and leisure. Medical and scientific experimentation on animals is a morally acceptable practice if it remains within reasonable limits and contributes to caring for or saving human lives.”

—from Catechism of the Catholic Church, Part Three, Section Two, Chapter Two, Article 7, 2:2417

“Employing royal imagery, it is said that human beings are called to rule in the sense of holding an ascendancy over the whole of visible creation, in the manner of a king. But the inner meaning of this kingship is, as Jesus reminds his disciples, one of service: only by willingly suffering as a sacrificial victim does Christ become the king of the universe, with the Cross as his throne.”

—fromInternationalTheologicalCommission,CommunionandStewardship: HumanPersons Created in the Image of God, Chapter 3, 59

 

[Lochias]

Those who strive to crush the hopes of others are those who need to take very, very large beams out of their own eyes. Charity prevents me from further describing where exactly they can shove their ludicrous and un-loving views.

Further, the Church has declined to say one way or another about what happens to animals after death, so we simply can’t say for sure.

Period.