"One day we will see our pets in the eternity of Christ," said Pope Paul the VI (died 1978) to a disconsolate boy who had lost his pet recently. Since then we have had several theological opinions which were contrary to each other, as to what happens to our pets when they die, so it is far from a clear issue. Some, as St Pope John Paul II, seem to agree with Paul VI, while others agree that only humans may ever enter heaven. Not an easy question to solve. What I believe is that the world and sections of the Church are here missing out on an essential aspect of creation. The centrality of creation is the man Christ, not man as such, the cosmic Christ who has created the physical, chemical and biological environment to receive man and ultimately Christ, the cosmic Christ.

I believe that the Catholic Church has had its prophets of this type of cosmic environmentalism but has consciously or unconsciously not given them due importance. We like to say that in humans there is no explanation of the issue of suffering without God and I agree. Man is the only creature able to self-reflect and exhibit self-consciousness. But creation is endowed with increasing levels of consciousness from the simple atoms and minerals to all plants and animals leading to man himself. Definitely there is an increasing order of consciousness from the simple inanimate to the increasingly ascending levels of so-called animacy. Man is indeed self-conscious but many other animals imbued with a nervous system like ourselves, exhibit themselves like us, a high level of sensation and therefore may incur like we do, physical and emotional suffering. Suffering as we said only makes sense if understood in the context of God for humans so why not for animals and the general environment as well?

The great Jesuit scientist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, was one of the first to put forward his theory of increasing complexity/consciousness in the created world. For him God was present in the consciousness of the least inanimate of matter to the most complex of animate matter such as man. This is never to say that God and matter are one and the same thing; God is much more than that, but he believed His spirit was present in all types of created matter. Did the acquiring of self-consciousness in man happen in one sudden instant stroke or is there an evolutionary step by step ascendance to the self-conscious levels that we have acquired as a species? Both are compatible with Christian doctrine. The fact is that if the attainment of self-consciousness has been a gradual process as Chardin says, then we have been underestimating the rest of the importance of the environment too, which would also have a part to play in the renewed world at the end of time. We have been kicking the general environment and its issues around in a way where we have not paid sufficient attention to it at all. One knows that dogs and cats and birds (and unborn children) do not vote, so politicians often stop there and pay little attention to them! It is incumbent upon us and the Church in particular to build a new environmental ethic that respects the creation of God and the environment we actually grow up in and breath in. Scientists like Chardin have to be rehabilitated if we are to move forward with a real environmental ethic.

Much of our concept of creation depends on our now rigid conception of the soul in man, animals and inanimate (sic) creatures. However, all this is based on the Platonic concept of the soul being different from the matter it occupies and very dualist in nature. Meaning there is matter and then there is the soul. The soul enters the dichotomous matter and vivifies it and then the soul leaves the matter which dies and we see it left behind. Maybe this is old fare. Maybe Aristotelian philosophy is better suited to understand animation and here any dualism is definitely excluded. The soul for Aristotle is the self-moving principle in matter. It is what makes matter move and gives it its consciousness. Once vivified it remains so in the realms of eternity. From the simple atom to the more complex trees and animals and finally man. Is it possible that when any of created matter dies, it simply goes on living in another way that we do not understand? Is it possible that what we see is what remains of dead matter in our very own limited space-time interval but possible that eternity with Christ may occupy other components of space-time which we are not aware or cognizant of? If time is ultimately annihilated then in the realms of infinity with Christ? Is it possible that once all animated matter is created, its consciousness survives forever in the cosmic Christ?

St Paul writes in Chapter 8 of his letter to the Romans that, "We know that the whole of creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies". There is a separation in this sentence between the creation and ourselves, both groaning and waiting for redemption!

So there are two thoughts which will accompany me into the New Year. The first being that the environmental ethics that we espouse politically are grossly deficient as they make man the ultimate master rather than the steward. We need to rethink our approach to the environment big-time. The second thought is that yes I hope to meet the pets and dear family members I have had here, in the afterlife, if I make it there myself that is!