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Do Animals Have Souls?; If they can go to heaven - can they be damned?
Topic Started: Wednesday, 2. December 2009, 19:57 (1,802 Views)
Deacon Robert
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The other day I posted an article from spirit daily only as a point of interest nothing more. Not as a teaching or point of doctrine or meant to influence anyone in opposition to church teachings. many people hope that they will be united with their loved ones and that includes their pets. Whether they will or not is not dependent on our opinions or on any discussion on this Forum or on EWTN. It will in the end not matter in the end what anyone of us thinks. It is totally dependent on what GOD wants. If he wants animals there they will be if not they won't.

I am done with this discussion
The burden of life is from ourselves, its lightness from the grace of Christ and the love of God. - William Bernard Ullanthorne

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PJD

" It's worth bearing in mind that if Adam and Eve hadn't fallen they would have lived indefinitely with the whole of the rest of creation in the paradise that was Eden."

In my opinion OsB what you say above is not quite correct. Eden was not Heaven in the sense of being man's final destiny; in just the same way as the heaven the Angels occupied before the fall of Lucifer was not the same as the heaven the victorious Angels occupied after the falls of those Angels who followed Lucifer.

PJD
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OsullivanB

PJD
 
Eden was not Heaven in the sense of being man's final destiny
What is your evidence for this? You may be right. I've just never heard this before.
"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation." Herbert Spencer
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Powerofone

Deacon Robert
Friday, 4. December 2009, 14:34
ecclesiates 3: 17-21 does not show one way or the other, but it shows doubt as to the final disposition of both man and beasts.... Who knows if the life-breath of the children of men goes upward and the life-breath of beasts goes earthward?
You have hit upon the perfect verses Deacon.
Those verses has long troubled me.
On the one hand, they seem to suggest that beasts are indistinguishable from men in that both have the same life-breath.
On the other hand they cast doubt on the directionality, if any, of that life-breath after death.
And congratulations too Deacon on your choice of translation - most translations would have rendered the Hebrew as "spirit", not "life-breath", which I'm sure you'll agree is more faithful to the intent as well as opening up new avenues of exploration.

But out of deference to Emee's sensibilities, I'll not spoil this thread with these musings any more.
Edited by Powerofone, Friday, 4. December 2009, 22:36.
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PJD

OsullivanB
Friday, 4. December 2009, 21:42
PJD
 
Eden was not Heaven in the sense of being man's final destiny
What is your evidence for this? You may be right. I've just never heard this before.
Oh dear OSB - you ask what your evidence is - and you ask a lot my friend; more than 6".

Instead for simplicity look to the same principle I posted in regard to the Angels. And think of the beatific vision. Once a soul has received the beatific vision it is quite impossible for such a soul 'to go' - in a manner of speaking - any higher. Therefore it would have been quite impossible for Lucifer to fall.

Is that sufficient for you to muse upon?

PJD
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Powerofone

Deacon Robert
Friday, 4. December 2009, 20:00
The trees and grasses in eden produced fruit and seed. What is the reason for these plants to produce seed and fruit.
"The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind; and God saw that it was good." (Gen 1: 12)

What is the purpose of seed and fruit? To produce new life, or to perpetuate the life-force within it.
How does the seed and fruit do this? By dying.

""Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." (Jhn 12: 24)

So the purpose of the trees in Eden was to produce seeds that might fall to the ground, die, and then produce new life. So death was present and functionally built into Eden.
The animals too are told to be, metaphorically, fruitful. Therefore they too must suffer the fate of fruit - to fall and die.
So then, was man, alone of all creatution, into which the life-breath had been breathed, not to suffer death?
Edited by Powerofone, Friday, 4. December 2009, 23:11.
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Rose of York
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Powerofone
Friday, 4. December 2009, 23:09
So then, was man, alone of all creatution, into which the life-breath had been breathed, not to suffer death?
Deacon started quite a debate here!

Never before had it struck me that if The Fall had not happened, and the first humans had produced children, increase and multiplication would have led to more and more being born, destined to live, in physical bodies, for ever (unless some of them sinned). But, if God wanted he could make as many physical places as he wanted to make, to hold all the people.

Why was it necessary for plants and animals to physically die? If God had made them in such a way that they lived for ever, there would have been no need for any of them to increase and multiply.

God had his reasons!
Keep the Faith!

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pete

Quote:
 
Patrick said:-
To think that animals can end up in Heaven rather poo-poos the requirement of Sanctifying Grace, don't you think?

I know this might sound similar to a Jimc posting but I’m perfectly serious. An Astronomer in the Vatican recently said, intelligent life might exist in our galaxy solar system. I’ve not yet managed to hack into the U.S. defence organization to confirm this, for fear of being deported and locked up for the rest of my life.
If indeed it’s discovered that intelligent intellectuals do exist out there, would they too be doomed like Fido and Tiddles? Or could it be that they are already experiencing eternal life, because their Eve refused to eat of the forbidden tree.
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Deleted User
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I was told when young that Church teaching was exactly as Patrick's priest friend described it ie animals had souls of a kind but that these were not immortal like ours. Later, a priest suggested to my class at school ( what a memory I have!) that misunderstanding of this teaching had contributed to some cruel treatment of animals in certain Catholic countries --he was thinking particulalry of some "religious" festivals in Spain where animals and birds are cruelly mistreated.


John
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defendingthefaith

This has to be one of the most pointless discussions on a Catholic forum.
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Rose of York
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John Sweeney
Saturday, 5. December 2009, 00:12
I was told when young that Church teaching was exactly as Patrick's priest friend described it ie animals had souls of a kind but that these were not immortal like ours.
I learned the same thing at school and I never grasped the idea of animals having a soul but it is not immortal. Isn't it the human soul that makes people immortal?
Keep the Faith!

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pete

Quote:
 
This has to be one of the most pointless discussions on a Catholic forum.

You can’t be serious; this is one of the better one’s
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Angus Toanimo
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defendingthefaith
Saturday, 5. December 2009, 00:15
This has to be one of the most pointless discussions on a Catholic forum.
Pointless?

Why?
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OsullivanB

PJD
Friday, 4. December 2009, 22:54
OsullivanB
Friday, 4. December 2009, 21:42
PJD
 
Eden was not Heaven in the sense of being man's final destiny
What is your evidence for this? You may be right. I've just never heard this before.
Oh dear OSB - you ask what your evidence is - and you ask a lot my friend; more than 6".

Instead for simplicity look to the same principle I posted in regard to the Angels. And think of the beatific vision. Once a soul has received the beatific vision it is quite impossible for such a soul 'to go' - in a manner of speaking - any higher. Therefore it would have been quite impossible for Lucifer to fall.

Is that sufficient for you to muse upon?

PJD
No - it's nothing. But thanks.
"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation." Herbert Spencer
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Colin2000

Deacon Robert
Wednesday, 2. December 2009, 22:35
Rose are you winding me up? :nono:

If we go to Bishop Fulton Sheen, all things have a soul, animals and plants have natural souls. Do we commit sin when we eat a Brussel sprout :harp:
Hi All,

Yes if you don't give them the last rights first?

You can not eat meat, you can not eat Vegetables?

No hope here folks, better get ourselves right with God for tomorrow we die!

Ah what it is to eat, food what is that?

Slugs have souls, murder to the left of us murder to the right of us, all is lost and the French eat snails!

Yours in Christ,

Colin.

By the way what sin do we commit when we eat The Bread and the Wine, animal vegetable or mineral?
JESUS IS LORD


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