Really? The pet is unlikely to be able to do anything to save itself, unlike the human. The pet is present entirely due to our own agency (taking it out on the ice) while the human is their on their own initiative. The pet is blameless, the other human is responsible for it’s own actions. The pet owner has a duty to the pet, but not technically (perhaps ethically) to the other human.
He didn’t say he WOULDN’T save the other human given a chance, but saving the pet first is perfectly valid.
I think the Pope is missing the point that “people” are not a monolith of needs, wants, and desires. Wanting children is not a guarantee. Many people want children. Many people convince themselves they want children. Many people just do not want them.
I do not have one fiber in my being that compels me to procreate. Or adopt. Or even spend time with children. So what? There IS within me the desire to have pets. Being that there are people who have children and pets, people who have pets but no children, and people who have no children and no pets, I would say the two aren’t mutually exclusive. You can mix and match these feelings however you want. EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT.
And in regards to how YOU feel about YOUR children and how I feel about MY pets…I mean, what? You go on loving your children with your whole heart and giving them everything they could possibly need to thrive, and I’ll go on loving my dogs with my whole heart and giving them everything they could possibly need to thrive, and we can totally live in harmony.
I assure you the amount of love and affection and money I give my dogs does not detract from the amount of love and affection and money I am willing and about to give to the world. How about you?
The Vatican is directly responsible for much of the poverty in this world because of their incessant drive to populate the world with more Catholics. And yet they decry the hopelessness and helplessness of the poor that they have created. The hypocrisy burns. My ex-wife was so immersed in their bullshit that she wouldn’t take communion when she was on the pill because she had “sinned”. And when she finally quit “sinning”, she got pregnant again, which we needed like a sack full of assholes.
I wonder what His Holiness would say about a man so impoverished he only had a single “wool baby”, a pet lamb who he hand-reared and fed from his own table.
Of course, this poor dude had children, so mebbe he had already “done his duty”. Although treating the lamb as one of the kids (no goat pun intended) might oughta raise some papal eyebrows.
Does a bear shit in the woods?
Not sure about that, but I know the Pope does.
But seriously, as was said above, this is standard Catholic dogma (catma? furbabyma?). The pope will never not be Catholic, yet, every time he does or says what feels like progressive things, people seem really eager to latch onto an emotional idea that this old white religiously conservative man is really with it, daddy-o!
However, it’s kind of a ridiculous non-sequitur for him to rant about pet ownership. Does he truly believe that there are meaningful numbers of people out there who, if not for their pets, would be having large families? Pets aren’t the cause (or even a cause) of adults choosing to not have children.
I was just going to post something like this, almost word for word.
I love animals. People I tolerate.
Back in 2010, we had a thread in Great Debates about this scenario, and it was very interesting.
Here’s what I posted. This list is very dated. And LeBron James would not be dead last today:
Okay, I’m late to the party, but here is my list of people to save from drowning in order of preference:
1 My Mom.
2 My cat Shuppy.
3 My Brother from Macon, Georgia.
4 My Brother’s Wife.
5 My Brother’s daughter.
6 My Brother’s son.
7 My Brother’s cat Winston.
8 My one friend from my Writer’s Circle.
9 My other friend from my Writer’s Circle.
10 My ex-coworker who I went to Florida with once.
11 My ex-best friend who went nuts on me and I no longer speak to.
12 My ex-best friend who wasn’t nuts but dumped me for a boyfriend.
13 Tom Baker, the Fourth Doctor.
14 That nice lady who drives my Mom to the Kingdom Hall when I can’t.
15 That other guy from my Writer’s Circle who’s an okay guy, but never turns anything in to read.
16 That Starbuck’s barista who gave me a free mocha last week.
17 - 21 The four members of the Tuvan throat-singing group Huun-Huur-Tu.
22 My German cousin Gudrun.
23 Bill Bryson. Damn, he should’ve come earlier. Too late now.
24 Barack Obama.
25 Strangers
26 My neighbor’s cat Loma.
27 Hollywood Celebrities I don’t actually dislike.
28 The Boss who laid me off in November.
29 Cats or Dogs I don’t know.
30 Mayor Daley
31-32 The guys who make “South Park”.
33 Spacemen
34 Red Indians
35 Flemish Merchants, tassels and all.
36 Neo-classical versions of the complete Renaissance Man.
37 Livestock.
38 Politicians
39 Illinois Politicians
40 Hollywood Celebrities I actively loathe.
41 Rod Blagojevich
etc. etc. etc…
…1075 Any loose shipboard furniture still worth a few bucks.
1076 Sarah Palin.
Aaaannnd 1077 - Lebron James.
I hope this clears things up.
Now that we’ve established an owner’s ethical responsibility to their pets, I’m actually going to comment on the OP.
Speaking as a secular Jew (to make my own bias more clear), I still like Pope Francis, but with the understanding that he’s 1) Catholic and 2) the Pope. It’s like the one or two friends I still have that have fallen down the Trumpist rabbit hole. We agree that we will never agree about or convince the other about the facts of his personality and the election, but we still value our friendship enough to put those feelings aside and never speak of it.
As he’s Catholic and Pope, we’re never going to see eye-to-eye on a huge number of topics, but taking into account his heartfelt desires and beliefs, I’ll give him credit for being a ‘good’ person, even if I vehemently disagree with a large number of his policies (the one in the OP being one of them, if it wasn’t obvious). He’s about 100x more likeable than the majority of the Republican party that did a 180 on the CFSG when it became politically expedient.
But yes, his beliefs (and this one especially) is hundreds of years out of date at best, and at worst, willfully blind to the obligations he puts on roughly 4 billion women, many of whom he has zero religious or moral right to speak for. So F- on this particular overreach of his ethical duties. Still doesn’t mean he can’t earn an A in other subjects.
Not to mention the time you devote to the boards when you could be solving the problems of world hunger and strife. 
We have regularly donated money to local food banks, and while our beast does not get ultra–pricey organic dog food, a portion of his diet is derived from premium canned stuff.*
*although his mama may be thinking of putting him on Tractor Supply Byproducts Meal, after he got ahold of a pair of her leather gloves and somehow managed to remove and rip the linings of both of them to shreds.
My dog weighs 10 pounds. If she falls though the ice and so does a person, I’m saving her first. She’s light and it’ll be easy. If I save the person first, I might be too exhausted afterward to save my dog.
How about everyone just stop judging other people’s lifestyles, and stop telling other people what to do? Have ten dogs and feed them caviar, for all I care. Or have ten kids. So long as you aren’t forcing others to pay for it and you aren’t abusing the children or pets, I don’t care. It’s your money that you worked for, presumably.
The Catholic church has always wanted their rlock to have lots of children, Religions that don’t get outcompeted by the ones that do. Religions are in it for the long haul.
…said the conservative. With a straight face, too.
I try not to tell people what to do.
But man, we’re monkeys and monkeys judge. It’s how social hierarchy is created. I don’t bitch out my oxcontin-popping friend of a friend with his string of dysfunctional relationships and unwillingness to get vaccinated because he’s simply too lazy. But judge? Quietly and to myself? Yeah, I admit to doing that.
He’s speaking out against a delusion. The fact that others share that delusion doesn’t make that OK.
People aren’t choosing whether to have pets or to have children. People are choosing, as separate choices, whether or not to have children; and whether or not to have pets.
My parents had and raised three children; and a number of cats and dogs, who were treated as family members, clear back into the 1950’s and 60’s. They were not treated as humans. They were treated as family members. Those aren’t the same thing.
One of my sisters birthed two children and raised four; and she and her husband have had multiple cats and dogs who have been, again, treated as family members: but not as humans.
I’ve had the cats and dogs but not the children. However, the decisions not to have children had nothing to do with the decisions to adopt the cats and dogs; and the difference had to do precisely with the differences between non-human family members and human ones. Because those differences exist, I feel competent to provide for cats and dogs without the aid of a reliable long-term human partner. I didn’t feel competent to so provide for a human child, and didn’t find a partner to take on their share.
ETA: If I had found the partner, and had had the children, I’d still have adopted the cats and the dogs. I need cats. I like dogs. And I think it’s better for children to live in a world in which humans aren’t the only beings who need to be considered.
Do you go to the movies, or to any other entertainment that you have to pay for? Do you eat out, or do you live on rice and beans at home? Do you buy new clothes, and pay extra for ones that you like? Do you ever rent a place that isn’t available for affordable long-term housing because the owner can make more money on it as a short-term rental? Do you buy your water in bottles instead of drinking from the tap? Do you own any artwork? Do you have any jewelry? Do you ever take a vacation outside your own back yard?
I buy cat food. I pay vet. bills – including for aged dying cats. I almost never eat out, or go to any entertainment that needs to be paid for. If I take anything like a vacation it’s to stay with friends or family. I drink mostly tap water. I don’t buy jewelry. I buy some of my clothes used (I’d buy the rest of them used if I had any reasonable chance of finding what I need in usable condition and coming remotely near fitting me.) And I’d sure as hell rather keep a living creature who trusts me happy than to spend money on any of those things.
I don’t think you and I are ever going to agree on priorities.
I do think that the people paying for vet. care for an old cat are teaching their children – and/or their niblings, friends’ children, etc. – something highly useful about giving a shit about somebody who’s not like oneself.
Teaching humans that people should only care about humans is a large part of how we got ourselves into this environmental mess that is killing humans right now, and is likely to kill a lot more of us before we dig our way out of it.
That’s true.
I’m glad there isn’t currently a worse Pope.
I spent thousands on veterinary care for my dog, including a couple of thousand just for an extensive MRI. A good friend of mine spent $15,000 on an operation to save the life of her dog. Are we both “crazy”? If so, then so is virtually any responsible, loving pet owner. You sound like someone who’s never had a pet, or at least, never become attached to one.
If that’s the point he’s trying to make, then the Pope is an idiot, and lacking in basic empathy for “all creatures great and small”, especially the ones we are deeply attached to and which, provably and objectively, enhance our happiness and well-being and greatly enrich our lives.
I can’t tell you what to think, but “normal” is, by definition, defined by the perspective of the majority of pet owners, not by you.
I have kids and pets. Yes they are all family members but my dog is not my daughter.
Losing a pet is sad but it’s part of life. House pets generally don’t live long compared to humans. I’ve lost a number of them over the years. I love my pets but they’re not human so the grief isn’t nearly as sharp or long-lasting.
I’ve never lost a child (thank God!) and if I did, I’m honestly not sure if I’d cope. That’s the sort of thing that can affect you forever. They aren’t even close to the same thing.
There are people who act like their pets are their kids and are serious about it. They get angry when anyone suggests that they aren’t their kids; they figure if a person can adopt a child that isn’t biologically theirs, that the same principle can apply to an animal. They are indeed delusional.
Amy Bouzaglo, from the infamous Amy’s Baking Company, always comes to mind when I picture a delusional person who sincerely believes their pets are their children. She even swore she could talk to her cats.
I heartily applaud this rant, both the substance and style. Completely agree.