Will my dog be in Heaven?

[PaladinSword]

Lol.

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[ConstantLearner]

So I would agree with you and with the others who believe that there will be an afterlife for animals as well. But I don’t think that anyone knows for sure. For this question I think the scripture itself is appropriate: Ecclesiastes 3:21 – “Who knows that the breath of man ascends upward and the breath of the beast descends downward to the earth?” I don’t think this has been specifically revealed to mankind.

Wonderful post, Autumn! Comforting and wise words! Thank you!

 

[Talitha712]

Thank you for explaining all this, Father. I imagine “do our pets go to Heaven” is not a question priests enjoy getting.

 

[PaladinSword]

Part of what I think is lost in some of this teaching is the notion that only human nature was corrupted due to the fall. It affected everything. So all things can be redeemed in Christ. There are pious legends of saints preaching the gospel to and affecting non human members of the circle of life. Wolves, fish, even dragons… so… what is the point if any of them are excluded from redemption? Regardless of Aquinian ideas of various types of soul… God sustains everything through his love soo… anything that is alive has a soul…

There is a military phrase “dumb as a rock.”

Well Christ said even the rocks would cry out.

Edit:
It might not be explicit dogma… but doesn’t rule out the realm of possibility.

Edit: and if that dog doesn’t know what guilt is… I don’t want to go to heaven.

 

[buffalo]

Excellent book.

 

[ConstantLearner]

Thank you. I found it extremely interesting and thought-provoking.

 

[BlackFriar]

Part of what I think is lost in some of this teaching is the notion that only human nature was corrupted due to the fall. It affected everything.

Yes this is a very valid observation I think.

There is much in the Bible that sees nature reflecting the moral state of the sons and daughters of men as a whole. As if there is some hidden connection between the state of Man and the state of nature.

Therefore when Original Justice is fully restored (man’s soul is fully and harmoniously subjected to God, man’s body is fully subjected to the soul) then there seems no reason why the new earth cannot be fully and harmoniously subjected to redeemed human nature in some glorious way.

The glorious property of “subtility” may even allow us, with God’s assistance, to truly recreate our favourite animals.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12792a.htm

Who knows, but there seem to be many valid Catholic possibilities.

 

[Autumn-Smoke]

If animals went to heaven, we’d all have to be vegetarians. So much for Christ allowing the fishermen to catch and kill (and even EAT) all those fish.

Hi.

With all due respect, didn’t Jesus say, “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing”? (John 6:63) All flesh dies. It is the soul that lives eternally. So if we were to eat the flesh of an animal, the soul is separate from the body. The soul separates from the body at death. The soul is sacred, the body is not. This wouldn’t necessarily mean that animals wouldn’t be in heaven. All creatures belong to God, and God knows the eternal destiny of all his creatures. It is the soul that is important, not the body. The same God who allowed animals to be killed for food, also knows the outcome of their souls.

Yes, we are worth more than thousands of sparrows. And even an animal who took the life of a human was put to death in Old Testament times. We are made in God’s Image. The animals are not. But all of this ‘reasoning’, at least to my thinking, doesn’t ‘prove’ that animals don’t have an afterlife.

 

[PJM]

My dear friend in Christ;

The bible speaks many languages; and uses various tools of authorship. These can be found throuhout the bible; for example:

“And if thy eye scandalize thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee. It is better for thee having one eye to enter into life, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.”
[Matthew 18:9]

Obviously God is not telling us literally to pluck our eye out. Rather the Lesson here is to trian oneself to look away and thus avoid sin.

No book in the bible is more metaphorically loaded than Revelations; as John wrote this is a sort of homemade morris-code; due to the severe persecution the Church was under. It’s written almost as a fable.

The white horse represents “Perfect purity”; and perfect in every way: verse 11 and Christ; verse 14 and the good Angels.

GREAT care is to be taken when reading the bible.

In Order to enter heaven it has to ne merited; to be merited requires in an absolute sense the ability to be RATIONAL. In the entire Created Universe only Humanity is RATIONAL; hence only humanity can choose for themselves eternal hell or heaven.

May the Holy Spirit guide your path,
Patrick

 

[AlNg]

The white horse represents “Perfect purity”

Is that an infallible teaching or is it possible to disagree?
BTW, it is also mentioned that there are birds in the afterlife.

 

[FrDavid96]

Thank you for explaining all this, Father. I imagine “do our pets go to Heaven” is not a question priests enjoy getting.

No, it’s a very much dreaded question.

It usually means that some child’s pet just died.

 

[FrDavid96]

Hi.

With all due respect, didn’t Jesus say, “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing”? (John 6:63) All flesh dies. It is the soul that lives eternally. So if we were to eat the flesh of an animal, the soul is separate from the body. The soul separates from the body at death. The soul is sacred, the body is not. This wouldn’t necessarily mean that animals wouldn’t be in heaven. All creatures belong to God, and God knows the eternal destiny of all his creatures. It is the soul that is important, not the body. The same God who allowed animals to be killed for food, also knows the outcome of their souls.

Yes, we are worth more than thousands of sparrows. And even an animal who took the life of a human was put to death in Old Testament times. We are made in God’s Image. The animals are not. But all of this ‘reasoning’, at least to my thinking, doesn’t ‘prove’ that animals don’t have an afterlife.

No. No. No…

The body, the human body, is very much sacred. The human person is made of both body and soul, and the entire human person is sacred.

And it doesn’t matter what ones emotions might say or what anyone just happens to “think things might be.” This question was settled long ago. We do know the answer. Not liking it doesn’t change the answer.

 

[FrDavid96]

Is that an infallible teaching or is it possible to disagree?
BTW, it is also mentioned that there are birds in the afterlife.

It is certainly an infallible teaching that only human nature was assumed at the Incarnation.

 

[PaladinSword]

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[ConstantLearner]

You are right. And in some cultures, mostly past cultures, but some still extant, it’s considered perfectly fine to eat the flesh of a dead human.

 

[ConstantLearner]

And it doesn’t matter what ones emotions might say or what anyone just happens to “think things might be.” This question was settled long ago. We do know the answer. Not liking it doesn’t change the answer.

With all due respect, a priest told my grandmother the same thing, in almost the same words (as my grandmother related it to me) about limbo. An unbaptized baby in the town where she lived had died, and it was not allowed to be buried in consecrated ground, which distressed my grandmother greatly even though she was not related to the child. A priest told her she was being overly-emotional, and the question was settled: all unbaptized babies go to limbo. The Church has now reversed itself on this thinking.

 

[Arkansan]

FWIW most of the arguments against limbo are also emotionally driven.

But it’s still not a valid comparison. God saving unbaptized infants is a rationally coherent idea, even if there’s no reason to believe it will actually happen.

 

[ErJ]

No one knows that. But I believe God takes care of his all creations. Maybe there is a different place for animals, angels etc.

 

[PaladinSword]

It is not strictly Catholic as far as I know… may be after Christianity came about but there are some religious ideas about multiple heavens and they have different functions… though i think this is Kabbalistic or Jewish and not explicitly what Catholics believe I thought It was interesting when I was young.

God is transcendent so whatever his kingdom is like is going to be like him… which is still probably far beyond anything we can comprehend other than what has been revealed to us.

Public revelation is over sure at least in our tradition we consider that penultimate…

But things do still develop in understanding over time…

And as I’ve gotten older I’ve realized forever and eternity as well as fact and truth are often different things.

 

[Autumn-Smoke]

The body, the human body, is very much sacred. The human person is made of both body and soul, and the entire human person is sacred.

Thank you for your reply.

I was lucky enough to have visited Israel a few months ago and went to the Archaeological museum in Jerusalem. They had several bone ossuaries on display and went on to describe the burial customs of people in early biblical times. They practiced a form of burial called Excamation in which the body was left out in the elements for the birds and wild animals to eat. Then, after the bones were void of flesh, and the bones were bleached and dried by the sun, the bones were buried.
This would help explain Joseph’s words in Genesis 50:25 "And Joseph made the Israelites swear an oath and said, “God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry my bones up from this place.

I don’t know of any law in the Torah which forbade this practice, or of any place where God gave them specific burial instructions. I understand what you’re saying, but the body is separate from the soul, and the flesh itself “is of no account” as Jesus said. It is our soul which rises to God and is very precious to him.

But thank you for taking the time to read everyone’s comments and taking all your time to reply.

Respectfully, I’ll always believe that animals have an afterlife. And you’re right, my belief doesn’t make it so. And I rarely get into discussions in the forums because I don’t like to argue, but I have a very strong belief about this because I have had, and know others who have, and have read many accounts about lots of people who have had experiences with their pets after their deaths. And I know another person, quite well, actually, who at the death of an animal, saw its spirit form rise from its body. And I’ve read about others who have seen the same. And so, just as in “personal revelation”, we’re not obliged to believe these things, neither can I disregard All of these Many testimonies. So, actually, no amount of ‘human reasoning’ could convince me otherwise.