I agree that considering pets to be equivalent to people is delusional, but it is absolutely not wrong, delusional, or in any way misguided to place great value on a pet’s life and well-being. I quote here from a beautiful tribute that someone once wrote to their German Shepherd dog:
Charka was a pet, just a pet. I won’t write of her in human terms. To attribute to an animal the traits of a human being does a disservice to the uniqueness of humanity and, in many cases, to the animal.
Charka was special. Born with what the doctor termed “the worst case of hip dysplasia I’ve ever seen”, she struggled through her 10 years with a spirit and playfulness that confounded any resolve toward euthanasia.
Her immune system, compromised since birth, was in constant need of support. Outbreaks of resistant ulcers bedeviled her malformed legs and paws. She had undergone as broad a spectrum of medication as six dedicated veterinarians could devise.
Are you thinking: Just let her go; what’s the sense? You had to see this dog. The doctors saw her. We saw her. She never went off her feed, never went mean, never gave up. She insisted on life.
When Charka eventually had to be put down, he wrote the following:
Those eyes were the eyes of the ages, of evolution, of a species that doesn’t regard death in the intellectual subjective as do we. Those eyes said it was time. She put a paw on my wrist. And I was swept to a sad but privileged place.
…
Before I covered Charka with the cedar planks, I felt I should say something. But I am not good with such words. I reached down to peel off the sticker that said “HOLD”. Then I thought of something and changed my mind.
If there was any message I wanted to give to God about Charka, it was on that sticker. The arms of God must surely be wide and strong enough for such as she.
I’ve met several thousand pet owners, and I’ve never actually met anyone like that. To a small extent, I’ve met empty nesters who kinda see their pets as a replacement for the kids that have grown up and moved out, but even that’s a pretty insignificant number.
No, not unless you also don’t ever go out to eat at a nice restaurant, and only eat the cheapest nutrition you can put on your plate, and give the rest to those “real live human children who don’t eat half as much or half as well within your own community”.
If you do, then good for you, you get to play the self righteous card, if not, then you are just being hypocritical.
Well, that’s the reason people aren’t having kids. As a disabled person about to turn 40, I will probably never be able to afford to have a family-- and it’s not because I don’t want one.
What are you doing wasting time on a messageboard? You could be out patrolling frozen lakes instead. Someone could be drowning right now, but you have prioritized spending your time here rather than saving people.
I’ll believe that when I hear him issue an ex cathedra papal bull threatening excommunication to any Catholic business owner who does not pay their staff a thriving wage including benefits. Until then I’ll assume he’s sitting on his golden fucking throne in the middle of the priciest real estate on the planet, surrounded by incalculable wealth in art and treasures and will continue to think of him as just another shitheaded dragon with a big megaphone. Fuck the pope.
And the day it costs $267,000 to maintain a pet from birth to age 18, assuming they even make it that far, then I’ll concede that people are considering pets to be replacements for children. Millennials aren’t having kids because they can’t fucking afford them and no, the Catholic church is doing nothing to help with that. In fact, they demand offerings and tithes from even the poorest of their parishioners. Fuck the Catholic church, along with all the rest of the bloodsucking religion pushers.
This is the first I’ve heard of his comments. Not sure what context makes sense for the Pope to make a statement like this which even if intended to be a message of sanctity of human life, it comes across really brash in this manner.
Hot damn. It’s pretty clear half of you misunderstand what he said and the other half didn’t even read it. The topic was Saint Joseph, the most famous step father in history. The Pope said “How many children in the world are waiting for someone to take care of them,” and y’all are like “Oh, how come he doesn’t care about all the unwanted children?” The guy’s named after a saint known for advocating for the poor, and you guy go “how come he doesn’t say anything about spending on cars and boats?”
He didn’t say anything anti-pet. He said it’s a moral poverty for people who have the capacity to raise more children (as many pets is evidence of) but won’t. He’s imploring us to be like Saint Joseph and adopt a kid (among other things).
It’s one thing to object to the teachings of the Catholic Church. It’s another thing to not even bother to read what he actually said, then attack the thing he didn’t say, then to object by taking the stance that he actually originally put forth in the first place. I think my favorite so far is “isn’t organized religion about helping the downtrodden? Why isn’t he out feeding those starving children”. An SDMB instant classic.
And btw, anyone who’d rescue a damn animal before a human being is morally repugnant and should be institutionalized for society’s safety.
It’s okay to say that you should adopt children in need. Right on! But saying a person who has a pet instead of adopting a child is a person who lacks morals is being a shithead. You’re giving a pretty poor defense, probably because it’s indefensible.
Wow - way to ignore some of us who put out a nuanced description of why you have a moral responsibility to your pet before a random stranger to go straight to a morally questionable ‘high ground’ and declare any of us who thought so to be morally repugnant and locked up.
And you feel other people on the SDMB are jumping to conclusions. Something pithy comes to to mind, something about … oh yes.
“And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”
So, having found you to have zero grounds to make a moral judgement, I’ll just go to your level. You’ve proven my judgement that there are reasons that a pet should be saved before a human - you are a worthless piece of human crap that should be ignored under all circumstances, including when you risk your own life.
(I may, may consider risking mine to save your pet though . . . if it’s well behaved and cute, unlike you.)
Well, if you married Catholic you are supposed to have taken the sacrament of marriage. Taking the sacrament of marriage introduces the couple into an ecclesial order, meaning you are making a commitment not only to your spouse but also to the Church and to God. You have to make three promises:
that the marriage will be permanent
that you will remain faithful to your spouse
that you will be open to having children
The theological reason children is included is because procreation and education of children is the ultimate purpose of marriage:
“By their very nature, the institution of matrimony itself and conjugal love are ordained for the procreation and education of children, and find in them their ultimate crown.”
~Pope Paul VI, Gaudium et spes 48
~as quoted by the Catechism of the Catholic Church, The Sacrament of Matrimony: The Goods and Requirements of Conjugal Love, Chapter 3, Article 7, section V at 1652
IIRC the importance of child-bearing and marriage in Catholic teachings was originally a counter to some (medieval?) Gnostic sect that taught the God of the Old Testament who created the physical world was Satan, and to ascend to heaven one had to renounce all material pleasures, including sex, children, and before the last rites, the thing that I remember this because of, they would renounce food.
If you didn’t marry Catholic, and didn’t take the sacrament of marriage, the Pope isn’t talking about or otherwise criticizing you.
Yeah, the difference is at least an order of magnitude. At an average 15 year lifespan your pet cat might cost you anywhere from $5-25k (various variable estimates) to own over that 15 year span. Even if you rather unrealistically take the very highest estimate, you’d need to be one of those a crazy cat people that keeps 10+ very unluckily unhealthy cats alive for 15 years and lavishes them with the finest of vet care before you get close to even one adopted kid. One adopted kid that hasn’t started worrying about college expenses yet.
I’m not surprised at the Pope for being, y’know, Catholic about procreation. Catholic leader is gonna Catholic - as noted it is sorta expected. But it’s just not a great comparison.
You must be remarkably short-sighted, not to mention having distinctly odd beliefs.
Would you care to know why I say that? Why, in the very article that you linked to, there’s a link to a related story. The headline? " Pope Francis calls violence against women an ‘insult to God’ in New Year’s Day homily."
Odd – that really doesn’t sound like a “misogynistic scumbag” to me. But, of course, you can have your own opinions. Or are you saying that decrying violence against women is an outdated belief?
Right, because there’s only two states here: “completely, totally non-sexist,” and “physically beats women,” with absolutely no middle ground at all between the two.
Adopted kids are just as expensive and unaffordable as natural born kids. This is just another case of an organization with unlimited funds demanding the individual take on the burden that really needs a large solution that no individual has. Just like us being told to cut down on using plastics, when it’s the fishing industry that dumps the majority of plastic waste into the ocean. Just like being told to limit ourselves to five minute showers when aluminum processing uses so much water it dwarfs residential use–and then there’s Nestle, those fucks. Just like being told to drive less to reduce our carbon footprint when corporate sources produce the vast majority of greenhouse gases.
To wax biblical over this issue I’d say the pope needs to remove the beam from his own eye before complaining about the mote in anyone else’s. I’d also point out that the Catholic church has a lot of reparations to make for its previous attempts to care for children, given the unmarked graveyards around their schools and orphanages and the other wonderful abuses of the little ones the pope is, by virtue of his position as head of the Church, inextricably complicit in. So yeah, shut up there Francis, and clean your fucking house before you open your mouth again.