Heaven for animals

The St. Bernard or Saint Bernard is a breed of very large working dog from the Western Alps in Italy and Switzerland. They were originally bred for rescue work by the hospice of the Great St Bernard Pass on the Italian-Swiss border. The hospice, built by and named after the Alpine monk Saint Bernard of Menthon, acquired its first dogs between 1660 and 1670. The breed has become famous through tales of Alpine rescues, as well as for its large size, and gentle temperament.

Le saint-bernard est une race de grand chien de montagne, souvent dressé comme chien de recherche en avalanche. L'imaginaire populaire les affuble d'un tonnelet de schnaps accroché au cou qui serait destiné à revigorer les victimes du froid. Cette pratique a été utilisée surtout à la fin du xixe siècle dans la recherche de personnes perdues dans les montagnes ou victimes d'une avalanche.

La devise du saint-bernard est : « Noblesse, dévouement et sacrifice.» Il a pour réputation d'être un chien intelligent, apte à recevoir une formation de sauveteur.

Le nom renvoie aux hospices du Grand-Saint-Bernard et du petit Saint-Bernard, situés au col homonyme et du col du Petit-Saint-Bernard, dans les Alpes aux frontières italo-suisse et franco-italienne, où ces chiens étaient utilisés par les chanoines d'abord pour la garde et la défense puis pour la recherche des voyageurs en hiver. « Ruitor », fidèle ami du recteur Pierre Chanoux à l’hospice du Petit-Saint-Bernard, fut baptisé ainsi en l'honneur du sommet et du glacier sur les hauteurs du Petit-Saint-Bernard. 

Saint Guinefort 

Guinefort, ou saint Guinefort, est le nom associé à un lévrier qui selon une légende rapportée notamment par le dominicain Étienne de Bourbon vers 1250, possédait le pouvoir posthume de guérir des enfants.

Selon cette légende, le chien s'était attaqué à un serpent qui voulait mordre l'enfant de ses maîtres, châtelains de Villars-les-Dombes. Son maître le passe au fil de l'épée en voyant l'enfant ensanglanté gisant à terre, car imputant d'abord à son chien les blessures apparentes du nourrisson.

En voyant le serpent déchiqueté près du berceau et lorsque son enfant sain se réveille, il comprend sa méprise. Par la suite, ayant enterré son valeureux chien, il plante un buisson pour marquer l'emplacement de la dépouille. Les gens du lieu, puis d'autres, attribuent bientôt au lévrier martyr des pouvoirs miraculeux, notamment ceux de guérir des enfants et se rendent au sanctuaire pour le vénérer1.

Face à l'ampleur de la dévotion, Étienne de Bourbon fera exhumer les restes du chien pour les brûler ainsi que l'arbuste et en fera état dans son ouvrage De Supersticione. Une loi est votée pour interdire aux habitants de se rendre sur les lieux, sous peine de saisie de l'ensemble de leurs biens.

Pourtant, le culte de ce saint Lévrier persiste pendant plusieurs siècles, jusqu'aux années 1930, et ce malgré les interdictions répétées de l'Église catholique romaine.

Saint Guinefort was a legendary 13th-century French greyhound that received local veneration as a folk saint. 

Guinefort's story is a variation on the well-travelled "faithful hound" motif, similar to the Welsh story of the dog Gelert, or the Indian story of the Brahmin and the Mongoose.

In one of the earliest versions of the story, described by Dominican friar Stephen of Bourbon in 1250, Guinefort the greyhound belonged to a knight who lived in a castle near Lyon. One day, the knight went hunting, leaving his infant son in the care of Guinefort. When he returned, he found the nursery in chaos – the cradle overturned, the child nowhere to be seen and Guinefort greeted his master with bloody jaws. Believing Guinefort to have devoured his son, the knight slew the dog. He then heard a child crying; he turned over the cradle and found his son lying there, safe and sound, along with the body of a viper bloody from dog bites. Guinefort had killed the snake and saved the child. On realizing the mistake the family dropped the dog down a well, covered it with stones and planted trees around it, setting up a shrine for Guinefort. Upon learning of the dog's martyrdom, the locals venerated the dog as a saint and visited his shrine of trees when they were in need, especially mothers with sick children.

The local peasants hearing of the dog's noble deed and innocent death, began to visit the place and honor the dog as a martyr in quest of help for their sicknesses and other needs.

Stephen of Bourbon (d. 1262): De Supersticione: On St. Guinefort.

The custom was regarded as harmful and superstitious by the church, which made efforts to eradicate it. As Protestant churches emerged in the 16th century, they "criticized the cult of Guinefort seeing in it an example of the abuses and errors of the Catholic Church." The Catholic hierarchy adopted the critique, and sought to suppress Guinefort belief and practices, and ostracize practitioners.[5] A fine for the practice was implemented. "Despite this early attempt to ridicule and dismiss the cult of Saint Guinefort, the local tradition continued." The cult of this dog saint persisted for several centuries, despite the repeated prohibitions of the Catholic Church. Community memory of the practices was still present in the 1970s, with the last known visit by someone to Saint Guinefort Wood to effect a cure for a sick child occurring around the 1940s.

Mrs. Morris and the Wombat

An aureoled Mrs. Morris is leading a wombat by a ribbon across the cloudy floor of heaven. 1869 

The Great Basilica is a monumental building with a room of open porch colonnades, a room of egzonarteks, one of narteks, two north annexes, and a room of three south annexes. The floors of these rooms are mosaic with geometric and floral designs. The mosaic in the narthex is of early Byzantine art, a significant composition at a size of 100 m2 (328 ft). There are birds, trees, bushes, a red dog, a symbol of paradise, and animal beasts as a domain of the earth. This mosaic dates from the end of the 6th century. The Great Basilica is built on top of another one and was made sometime between the 4th to 6th centuries.

The Great Basilica's mosaic floor is depicted on the reverse of the Macedonian 5000 Denars banknote, issued in 1996.

Source Early Byzantine (6th century) mosaic floor in the Great Basilica, conceived as a single field representing the Heavens (paradeisos), Heraclea Lyncestis, Republic of Macedonia.

Author Carole Raddato from FRANKFURT, Germany

St. Francis of Assisi and the wolf

in Gubbio.

<<<   Author: Wikiarius 

Saint Blaise and animals 

Saint Francis of Assis 

preaches to the animals 

Paradise landscape with a skewbald, cows, stags, a lion, dog, goats, parrots and other animals, the Conversion of Saint Hubert beyond  

Saint Giles and the Hind

Peter's vision of the sheet with animals from Acts 10

Saint Anthony Abbot Blessing the Animals, 

the Poor and the Sick  

Do your animals go to heaven?


The Soul, according to the teaching of Christogenesis

The structure of the souls of plants, animals, and humans, according to Aristotle.

Aristotle proposed a three-part structure for the souls of plants, animals, and humans, making humans unique in having all three types of souls. (322 BCE)

Author: Ian Alexander 

Thomas Aquinas wrote several critical commentaries on Aristotle's works, including On the Soul, On Interpretation, Nicomachean Ethics, Physics and Metaphysics. His work is associated with William of Moerbeke's translations of Aristotle from Greek into Latin. 

Thomas Aquinas maintains that a human is a single material substance. He understands the soul as the form of the body, which makes a human being the composite of the two. Thus, only living, form-matter composites can be called human; dead bodies are "human" only analogously. One existing substance comes from the body and soul. A human is a single material substance but should still be understood as having an immaterial soul, which continues after bodily death.

In his Summa Theologiae, Thomas clearly states his position on the nature of the soul,  defining it as "the first principle of life". The soul is not human or a body; it is the act of a body. Because the intellect is incorporeal, it does not use bodily organs, as "the operation of anything follows the mode of its being."

According to Thomas, the soul is not matter, incorporeal or spiritual matter. If it were, it would not be able to understand immaterial universals. A receiver receives things according to the receiver's nature, so for the soul (receiver) to understand (receive) universals, it must have the same nature as universals. Yet, any substance that understands universals may be something other than a matter-form composite. So, humans have rational souls, which are abstract forms independent of the body. But a human being is one existing, single material substance that comes from body and soul: that is what Thomas means when he writes that "something one in nature can be formed from an intellectual substance and a body" and "a thing one in nature does not result from two permanent entities unless one has the character of substantial form and the other of matter."

Thomas was receptive to and influenced by Avicenna's Proof of the Truthful. Concerning the nature of God, Thomas, like Avicenna, felt the best approach, commonly called the via negativa, was to consider what God is not. This led him to propose five statements about the divine qualities:

According to many religious and philosophical traditions, the soul is the spiritual essence of a person, which includes one's identity, personality, and memories, an immaterial aspect or essence of a living being that is believed to survive physical death. The concept of the soul is generally applied to humans, though it can also be applied to other living or even non-living entities, as in animism.

In Judaism and some Christian denominations, only human beings have immortal souls (although immortality is disputed within Judaism, and Plato most likely influenced the concept of immortality). For example, Thomas Aquinas, borrowing directly from Aristotle's On the Soul, attributed "soul" (anima) to all organisms but argued that only human souls are immortal. Other religions (most notably Hinduism and Jainism) believe that all living things, from the smallest bacterium to the largest of mammals, are the souls themselves (Atman, jiva) and have their physical representative (the body) in the world. The actual self is the soul, while the body is only a mechanism to experience the karma of that life. Thus, if one sees a tiger, there is a self-conscious identity (the soul) and a physical representative (the whole body of the tiger, which is observable) in the world. Some teach that even non-biological entities (such as rivers and mountains) possess souls. This belief is called animism.

According to some Christian eschatology, when people die, their souls will be judged by God and determined to go to Heaven or to Hades awaiting a resurrection. The oldest existing branches of Christianity, the Catholic Church and the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches, adhere to this view, as well as many Protestant denominations. Some Protestant Christians understand the soul as "life," and believe that the dead have no conscious existence until after the resurrection (Christian conditionalism). Some Protestant Christians believe that the souls and bodies of the unrighteous will be destroyed in Hell rather than suffering eternally (annihilationism). Believers will inherit eternal life either in Heaven, or in a Kingdom of God on earth, and enjoy eternal fellowship with God. Other Christians reject the punishment of the soul.

Paul the Apostle used ψυχή (psychē) and πνεῦμα (pneuma) specifically to distinguish between the Jewish notions of נפש (nephesh) and רוח ruah (spirit) (also in the Septuagint, e.g. Genesis 1:2 רוּחַ אֱלֹהִים = πνεῦμα θεοῦ = spiritus Dei = "the Spirit of God").

Christians generally believe in the existence and eternal, infinite nature of the soul.

Origin of the soul

The "origin of the soul" has provided a vexing question in Christianity. The major theories put forward include soul creationism, traducianism, and pre-existence. According to soul creationism, God creates each individual soul directly, either at the moment of conception or some later time. According to traducianism, the soul comes from the parents by natural generation. According to the preexistence theory, the soul exists before the moment of conception. There have been differing thoughts regarding whether human embryos have souls from conception, or whether there is a point between conception and birth where the fetus acquires a soul, consciousness, and/or personhood. Stances in this question might play a role in judgements on the morality of abortion.

Trichotomy of the soul

Augustine (354-430), one of western Christianity's most influential early Christian thinkers, described the soul as "a special substance, endowed with reason, adapted to rule the body". Some Christians espouse a trichotomic view of humans, which characterizes humans as consisting of a body (soma), soul (psyche), and spirit (pneuma). However, the majority of modern Bible scholars point out how the concepts of "spirit" and of "soul" are used interchangeably in many biblical passages, and so hold to dichotomy: the view that each human comprises a body and a soul. Paul said that the "body wars against" the soul, "For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit" (Heb 4:12 NASB), and that "I buffet my body", to keep it under control.


Views of various denominations

Roman Catholicism

The present Catechism of the Catholic Church states that the term soul

"refers to the innermost aspect of persons, that which is of greatest value in them, that by which they are most especially in God's image: ‘soul’ signifies the spiritual principle in humanity".

All souls living and dead will be judged by Jesus Christ when he comes back to earth. The Catholic Church teaches that the existence of each individual soul is dependent wholly upon God:

"The doctrine of the faith affirms that the spiritual and immortal soul is created immediately by God."

Depiction of the soul on a 17th century tombstone at the cemetery of the Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow


Protestantism

Protestants generally believe in the soul's existence and immortality, but fall into two major camps about what this means in terms of an afterlife. Some, following John Calvin, believe that the soul persists as consciousness after death. Others, following Martin Luther, believe that the soul dies with the body, and is unconscious ("sleeps") until the resurrection of the dead.

In Class

We will learn the modern view of the soul, explain it and study the circle from newborn to the resurrection at the end of time.

Following Aristotle (whom he referred to as "the Philosopher") and Avicenna, Thomas Aquinas (1225–74) understood the soul to be the first actuality of the living body. Consequently, he distinguished three orders of life: plants, which feed and grow; animals, which add sensation to the operations of plants; and humans, which add intellect to the operations of animals.

Concerning the human soul, his epistemological theory required that, since the knower becomes what he knows, the soul is not human; if it is corporeal when it knows what some corporeal thing is, that thing will come to be within it. Therefore, the soul has an operation that does not rely on a body organ; therefore, the soul can exist without a body. Furthermore, since the rational soul of human beings is a subsistent form and not something made of matter and form, it cannot be destroyed in any natural process. The whole argument for the soul's immortality and Aquinas' elaboration of Aristotelian theory is found in Question 75 of the First Part of the Summa Theologica.

Aquinas affirmed the doctrine of the divine effusion of the soul, the particular judgement of the soul after the separation from a dead body, and the final Resurrection of the flesh. He recalled two canons of the 4th-century De Ecclesiasticis Dogmatibus for which "the rational soul is not engendered by coition" (canon XIV) and "is the same soul in man that both gives life to the body by being united to it and orders itself by its reasoning." Moreover, he believed in a unique and tripartite soul, within which a nutritive, sensitive and intellectual soul is distinctively present. The latter is created by God and taken solely by human beings, including the other two types of soul, making the sensitive soul incorruptible.