We feed our dogs “high end” food because we want them to be as healthy as possible and looking at them we can visualize the results of excellent nutrition.
It’s a damn shame there are unwanted children not getting excellent care. You’d think the pope guy would be supporting abortion as an option to help!
Really? People spend their money are all sorts of expensive nonsense - cars, boats, guns, designer clothes, expensive holidays, collecting old stamps - and you think spending en extra few quid on pet food is the problem?
You know, caring about the health and well-being of pets is pretty low down the list of unethical things in my universe.
Excellent point.
Also, isn’t organized religion about helping the downtrodden? Why isn’t he out feeding those starving children and leave us atheist dog lovers alone? 
As someone with neither kids nor pets, prioritizing your dog over a person seems all kinds of fucked up to me.
I never said those things were ideal either. In fact, I’m not sure where that line should be drawn; I think it’s pretty commonly agreed that nobody is expected to live like a hermit until everyone is provided for, but nor should people be buying extravagant nonsense either when they could do a lot of good with it either. I struggle with that personally. And I think a lot of it with pets goes to how much you value pets, and whether or not that’s reasonable. I mean, I’ve heard crazy stories of people going into serious debt paying for veterinary care for a old cat. If that’s not misplaced priorities, I don’t know what is.
And someone will probably tell me some story about how their pets are their family or something, which is exactly the point the Pope is trying to make.
Of course it’s their privilege to do that if they so choose, but I don’t have to think it’s right or normal.
What if the person was Hitler? 
Hey, it’s my life I’m putting at risk here. I wouldn’t think twice to do that for one of our dogs or for family/friends.
It’s odd that paying for expensive pet food is “damn near criminal” but a half million dollar second home you occasionally use is just not ideal. 
ISTM that the concept of my vs. your is probably more controlling in this situation than pet vs. child.
F’rinstance: if I saw a stranger’s child and dog simultaneously fall through the ice and I was sure that I could rescue one (and only one), I’d rescue the child.
But my dog vs. your child ?
I can’t say I’m sure what I’d do.
People aren’t automatically saying that their pet is inherently as important as somebody else’s child in order to maintain that they feel a very strong bond with their pet – maybe the closest thing that they feel to the bond a parent feels to a child.
Heck, you don’t have to go all the way to Hitler. I wouldn’t risk my life to save Putin if he fell through the ice, even without a dog to save beside him. But random stranger over a pet seems like a no-brainer, and choosing the pet over the stranger does seem selfish to me.
Fortunately we rarely find ourselves in these sorts of situations!
Making announcements like this is how this guy makes a living?
I wanted to raise children, but Child Protection Services objected to my keeping them on leashes and feeding them from bowls on the floor.
They also object if you chain them up in the back yard.
On the other hand, children can be trained to pick up their own poop.
Well, I had two kids but could have supported more. Was it immoral that I didn’t adopt any kids when I could have? Especially since I later got a dog?
Yep. Go throw 10 successful Hail Marys as penance.
Not so much the homeless but the local people who get priced out of their villages.
A half-million dollar second house falls under “extravagant nonsense” in the post you replied to.
It’s a hard thing to figure out- probably a good subject for another super-long thread.
Didn’t the Catholics have someone else named Francis who really liked animals?
I doubt this, from first hand experience.
My children won’t even pick up their own clothes. Their own clean clothes which they yanked out of their dressers or closets in their picky search for today’s outfit. The “not this, not this, not this” clothes.
Even looking at poop would be way beyond the pale.
My “fur baby” doesn’t put his chew toys back in the basket either! Just like children! 