Masonic Attacks & Animals in Heaven

Dear TIA,

The Tablet reports that a government office ordered the western town of La Roche-sur-Yon, in the traditionally Catholic Vendée region, to take down the Christmas crib it set up in its lobby as usual this Advent.

The court acted on a complaint from the atheist Freethinkers Federation, which said the crib violated the 1905 laïcité law separating Church and state. A Federation official said the group pressed the issue in reaction to Catholic Church support for the mass demonstrations last year against the legalization of same-sex marriage.

Town residents are appealing the order, but the fact that this happened does not speak well for Catholic France.

     J.D.

Hello TIA,

What is your position on the below article?

Do pets go to heaven or not? Does the Church have any teaching on the topic? It seems two recent Popes disagree on this.

     Thanks,

     M.V.
Pope Declares Animals Will Be in Heaven
December 9, 2014, Michele Pekarsky - Pope Francis has once again made people smile and received many “likes” when he declared last week in St. Peter’s Square that all animals go to heaven. Animal lovers who have lost a beloved pet have been consoled and appreciative. The Pope made the remarks after he received two donkeys as early Christmas presents. In making his remarks, the Pope said “Paradise is open to all God’s creatures.”

It’s a point of debate in religious doctrine and within people’s own hearts and minds.

According to Express, Pope Francis’ beliefs are contradictory to Pope Benedict XVI’s beliefs, who reportedly said animals “are not called to the eternal life.” (Original here)



TIA responds:

Hello M.V.,

There are three types of life: the vegetative life, the animal life and the rational or spiritual life.

Plants have vegetative life, they can grow and feel, but they cannot move by themselves. Their life is extinguished when they die.

Animals have vegetative life plus another type of life which propels them to move by themselves according to their instinct, looking for food, reproduction and shelter. For this reason, they are also defined as self-moved beings.

However, they do neither think nor talk, even though sometimes their instinct leads them to act as if they knew what they are doing and their sounds send alarms to other members of their species to prevent them from falling into danger, giving the impression they have a language like ours. These reactions, which are directly linked to their instinct of conservation, do not constitute the life of thought or the communication of ideas. When animals die, the principle that made them move by themselves dies with them.

Man has the two previous types of life plus the rational life, a higher life than the animal life, which allows man to think and transmit the fruit of his thinking to others. Because he is able to think, he can understand and govern the reality around him as well as all creation. He can, therefore, understand God, who created him, and love and serve Him.

Since he can do this, man has a life that can share the eternal life of God. He somehow shares it already in this life and longs to participate eternally in God's happiness. This happens because the human soul – the principle that animates him to think and discover God – is eternal: that is, it has a beginning and will not have an end. When man dies, the vegetative and the animal lives die with him, but his rational soul continues to live eternally either in Heaven, Purgatory or Hell.

Now then, neither vegetal beings nor animals have a rational soul, which makes them unable to know, love and serve God. Therefore, they cannot be in Heaven and share God’s happiness, since Heaven is primordially a spiritual reality, which animals and vegetal beings cannot share.

This does not mean that in the Earthly Paradise, which continues to exist and is different from the spiritual Heaven, animals and plants cannot exist. On the contrary, when the Scripture speaks on this place of our first parents, it mentions both animals and plants. So, in this place they exist. Not, however, as resurrected animals or plants that had already lived on earth, but as beings created by God there, obeying a similar cycle of life as their earthly counterparts.

With these presuppositions, we can answer your question:

When he said animals "can go to God's Paradise," if Pope Bergoglio indeed intended to say that animals can go to Heaven, the spiritual Heaven, then he should bring forth one of his two donkeys, a parrot or a monkey that could give us a dissertation about God, how to love Him and what is the best way to serve Him. These animals should also be able to answer questions men would ask them. If Pope Francis would present these animals to the public, we would agree with him that these beings can have eternal life and merit Heaven. If not, his affirmation is just another joke in his large collection of laughable sayings. It cannot be taken seriously.

If Francis intended to say that animals could go, not to the spiritual Heaven, but to the Earthly Paradise, then he is also blatantly wrong, because the principle that propels animals to move cannot be resurrected after their death.

     Cordially,

     TIA correspondence desk

TIA,

I was happy to see your article on St. Simeon Stylites and the wonderful commentary by Prof. Plinio.

Most people do not know about the second most renowned stylites who was St. Daniel. He died at age 84 atop his pillar just outside Constantinople, after occupying it for 33 years, and December 11 is his feast day that is commemorated in Russia, my home country, especially.

Such eccentric behavior in the name of religion seems bizarre to us today. We joke about these "ecclesiastical flagpole sitters" and tend to think of them as show-offs. But we miss the point. For some, spiritual perfection comes through withdrawal from the ordinary stream of life and through endurance of inconvenience, discomfort or even pain. And so the most devoted men of that age deliberately sought the lonely discipline - some in caves, some in the desert, some at the tops of pillars - that would set their hearts on the joys that are not of this world.

We make a great mistake if the unfamiliar pattern causes us to assume these men were not men of real and deep piety. Exhibitionists may attract curious people for a while, but in the end the world never calls them saints. Crowds flocked to Daniel, gathering at the foot of his pillar to be healed of illnesses or to listen as he spoke to them quietly about the love of God. Kings and princes came to him for advice on matters that dealt with the world he had renounced. Perhaps one sees the "world" most clearly from a pillar apart from it. Disciples organized themselves around St. Daniel, who neither encouraged nor rejected them. They built a monastery nearby and profited by living in the great man's shadow.

Daniel's life had been dedicated to the Lord even before his birth. At age 12 he was put into a monastery and soon afterward he was taken by his abbot to see the great Simon Stylites, who permitted the boy to climb up to him, gave him his blessing, and foretold that he would suffer much for Christ. From that time on, Daniel knew what he would do. Simon was his model. When Simon died, Daniel inherited his mantle, and followed that special vocation. Daniel died in 493, and was buried at the foot of his pillar.

Please let your readers know about St. Daniel Stylites also. Everything in Prof. Pinio’s commentary also applies to him.

     A.S.

TIA,

It was a leap of joy to read your response on TIA's website why you don't publish your books online.

Thanks for tossing out Facebook, Twitter, Amazon...

     L.S.

Dear TIA,

Re: Pope St. Pius X Condemns Pope Francis

Sometimes when I read this type of thing, I gasp in fear and wonderment of how soon the chastisement may come, and then I remember who will really win this awful war. Thank you for sharing this with us!

     E.S., Ph.D.

Hello,

First, I write not looking to pick a fight with several of my questions.

Second, I wish to know are you folks with SSPX? I see no direct evidence of this.

Third, of your literature, you have several that bespeak of issues with the papacy... Of this literature, which do you think would be a good primer of the concerns brought to the table? I will purchase it.

I have enjoyed many of your works... particularly that of Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres. What an utter joy. I lost my copy recently and just now bought it again.

A priest who prays he is an orthodox priest.

God bless you; Merry Christmas.

     Fr. T. Henderson.

     Laudetur Iesus Christus; semper laudetur



TIA responds:

Rev. Fr. T. Henderson,

1. Even if you were writing to debate some points with us, your comments would be welcome.
   
   
2. We are not associated with the Society of St. Pius X.
   
   
3. Depending on your perspective, the better choice to start would either be the book We Resist You to the Face – an open letter to John Paul II that gives an overview on the Vatican policy in the post-conciliar period – or In the Murky Waters of Vatican II – the first volume of a collection on Vatican II, which establishes the historical and theological presuppositions to evaluate the present day crisis in the Church.

We thank you for your friendly words regarding some of our works.

Asking your prayers, we wish you a Holy Christmas and a Blessed New Year.

     Cordially,

     TIA correspondence desk