My Commentary on a Rumoured Headline from Aleteia: https://u24251644.ct.sendgrid.net/ss/c/0CDP-DnV2hfBml920apdXlpYrOHOCzsbibT_UxpQSTHzXN0X0BmhnV8_9RXv7e5Wkgv1ScOAsegRvupsm_3o9ruiQVNjE75-VsIQlsnkwI32iisWE4cPSbqafe4ofUuQOoiVkp7uBJ2okG759VbpwuFtnYqbdWMty_wIqi_75HJ3T3Qs4AHDEUw72YMamCFd8fRncHV6KdLbnADwmyvZPlTDSc0LgpXU4pcffARWoS164jxltHBipIm1AZ0K-XKtWCE263fAzf-dpUIVSZ9OjA/3ii/lMNGFMyvTcmAiPeuMnmAUQ/h30/VXy74rmv_EAsKBRXY-qQSnty6YFUjDWO_T3n6g0kYR8

To think that Pope Francis, the author of Laudato Si could have even said such a terrible thing is plainly unthinkable! It for one thing contradicts the entire premise of his famous 2015 encyclical that pleads for the heart of humanity to be converted to a real sense of compassionate responsibility for God’s entire handiwork and exhorts us to refrain from continuing to destroy our own lives and the life of this planet through falling to that disasterous temptation which provoked the rebellion of a third of the angels in heaven who decided to follow their reprobate leader Lucifer in refusing to accept that the Almighty could desire to incarnate into human form, something considered by the angelic company to be ‘lower’ than themselves.

The Fall of the Angels was enacted on the premise that Lucifer and his cohorts believed the proud-faced lie that God was diminishing Himself and the heavenly position of the angels by choosing to descend into humanity and become a co-sharer in the life of something perceived to be beneath that of the angelic realm. After humanity’s Fall from Grace at the beckonning suggestion of the devil in the Garden of Eden, the perception that humanity is ‘rightfully’ positioned to “lord it over” not only each other but also the precious animal life, both tame and wild, had come into play and with this a blatant disregard for the sanctity of all life began to emerge and in place of this sanctity, a humdrum of unbridled self-exaltation became the norm for humanity as it now saw itself through a lens of ostentacious unbridled mastery over creation steeped in a self-serving mentality stamped almost indelibly on the inner being as a result of succumbing to the luring of the Tempter instead of retaining a humble and gracious reliance on God coupled with a holy engagement in the harmonious interplay of divine love unified with the rest of creation. The ugly displacement of these original God-breathed interdependencies by the tragic sting of death that eclipsed the primordial purity of human nature is nothing short of humanity’s descent into the quogmire of the angelic rebellion although it does not have the permanence that the Fall of the Angels had due to the vast difference in scope between the respective cosmological makeups of humanity and the angels respectively.

The sacred authority given to man at the outset of his sojourn on this earth was just that – a sacred one – one that is a relational care-taking role instead of a plunderer, hoarder or pillager. The mis-shapen identity man has carved out for himself as a miserly and spiteful lord & master over everything including his own destiny is a tragic displacement of his God-given role as a dutiful curator and almoner who maintains a most loving and sensitive relationship with all whom are given unto his care. This tragic displacement is a bi-product also of the Fall from Grace instigated by our first parents Adam & Eve when they fell to the cunning seduction of Satan in the Garden of Eden.

Essentially what we see here in the statement that ‘pets instead of children diminishes us’  is an uncanny replica of the very sin committed by the devil himself against the Supremacy of God in His Act of Love for all Creation. Because Lucifer in his haughty pride defied the ultimate Right & Sovereignty of God to choose how He wants to lavish love onto the entire creation, he also tried (and succeeded) in tempting Adam and Eve to follow suit not only in the awful stint of the rebellion itself but contained therein was a motive that set itself up against the Supremacy of Love as conveyed through a sacred bonding of humility between the Giver of this Love and recipient. It was God’s simple selfless act of humble love for humanity and the entire creation as wrought through the ineffible mystery of the Incarnation that a third of the angels thought of as ‘comparatively worthless’ when seen in light of the perception of their own created ‘greatness’ which btw, engendered the gloatedness of Lucifer’s distorted sense of superiority to plummet him & his fell companions down from the heights they were used to. It shows that the elevation of one’s own status through a perveted sense of superiority called haughtiness had caused the devil and his demons to entice Adam and Eve into assuming a similar position to the one they themselves initially took when they balked incessantly at the radical choice Divine Love made via the Incarnation to enter yet more fully into the creative process, a mysterious something which only comes natural to God in His infinitely various and omnipotent way of showing Perfect Love and being Himself.

Because Lucifer looked down on the human creation and all animal life as being ‘lower’ than his angelic nature, he scoffed when God decided to overturn Lucifer’s notion of self-aggrandizement, through not only incarnating His Son Jesus into human likeness but also choosing a woman, the Virgin Mary (who is likened unto Eve but without sin) to bear Him, and since His adversary, Lucifer (who became the devil) had lost all sense of love and appreciation for the depth of purpose and wonderment God had set aside for all members of His creation and not just the angels, Lucifer had developed and unrepentantly maintained a completely distorted perception of his role in the Divine plan. Hence the emergence of Fallen Pride, which is the hallmark of the Original Sin. As humanity was tempted by the devil into following his footsteps through this Original Sin, humanity itself now has this tendancy to elevate its own position in relation to the rest of creation as ‘superior’ to the point of being a ravager and an abuser, following instead the path laid out by the devil which was essentially a reflection of his own rebellion of haughtiness.

Therefore, it is unsurprising that humanity has tragically on many levels not only lost the healthy “sense of sin”, i.e. conviction of conscience in regards to transgressing the moral laws of nature but has also acquiesced, sold-out to perceiving animals for example, as mere commodities to serve the furtherance of trade and commerce or scientific endeavour. The immensity of suffering undergone by countless animals on this planet which such an arrogant approach has inevitably led to is just beyond comprehension. To think that a great majority of us have lost sight of the sheer beauty and innocent love that animals willingly give us by virtue of Divine Decree is simply heartbreaking and none other than a grave distortion of not only our role in negotiating the stewardship of creation, but is simultaneously a grotesque distortion of our own image and likeness unto the Divine.

For someone like Pope Francis who had gone to great lengths to promote the restoration of love and compassion for animal life, recognizing through his encyclical Laudato Si, that all life is inherently sacred, this statement that ‘having pets instead of children diminishes us’ appears blatantly contradictory in this regard, and came as a blow to my esteemed view of his pontifical integrity.

It’s not that I believe children ought not to be desired because in all truth, they are to be desired, as they are the pinnacle of humanity’s regenerative responsibility in the sacred cycle of the ongoing creative process instigated at Genesis. But it is the negative comparitive implicitly made about humanity in relation to the animal kingdom that does not sit right in my conscience relative to what I previously understood and appreciated about Pope Francis, particularly in view of Laudato Si, and also, simply from a theological point of view in light of the issues fleshed out here concerning the nature of Satan’s rebellion and how it had influenced humanity in turn through Original Sin, this whole idea of excessive anthropocentrism does not sit right with me. It also concerns me how this way of making a negative comparative between children and pets may inadvertantly contribute to a further loss of a sense of tender and compassionate responsibility on the part of us humans towards our animal companions.

Instead of bringing pets into the equation from a standpoint of wrongly perceived negativity, why not simply exhort married couples to virtuously procreate, raise a spiritually healthy family which ought to include pets?? It just doesn’t make sense why Pope Francis would even try and drive a wedge between the notion of purposeful procreation and good & healthy stewardship of creation.

For there is far more wisdom to be gleaned from discouraging marrieds in going down the selfish path of refusing to raise a family as many seem to tend towards today, than there is from promoting a negative view that caring for companion animals is somehow of ‘less value’ than raising children. As though the act of caring for a pet could present somehow as a natural interferrence to that of raising a family! God never intended the former to interfere with the latter but rather for the two to be complementary. In the account of Adam requesting a help-mate in Genesis, we read of a certain harmony that existed between him and the animal life. At the same time, we learn too that Adam, in order to be as fully productive as humanly possible, in addition to his responsibility to the wider creation, he also needed the companionship of another like himself. We can deduce that if the animals could coexist with others like themselves then it figures that Adam also needed another of his own to help him make fuller sense of his own humanity. Hence Eve is fashioned by God from Adam’s own flesh and she shares the same kind of human experience as does Adam and so augmenting further the creative purpose for which God made the earth. And henceforth like the animals, God commanded that the humanity He made should go forth and multiply. Here we see a complementarity of harmony between the animal life and humanity. And so it figures too that this ribald criticism of companion animals supposedly attributed to Pope Francis, as though they are nothing more than an ‘interferrence’ in the ‘real purpose’ of married life presents an awfully distorted potrayal of humanity’s purpose, one that’s in direct conflict with that designed by God since God out of His desire to impute humility and grace as co-sharers in His creative purpose meant for humanity to lovingly co-operate with Him through caring generously for the animals and not merely seeing them from an exponentially exploitative vantage point as happens tragically after the Fall.

And so upon seeing in Aleteia such an uncharacteristic statement “supposedly” having been made by Pope Francis on a subject which is very close to my heart, I was stricken with grief to the core upon reading it as I was for quite a long time not only a fervent follower of Pope Francis’ pontificate, having been an ardent supporter of it right from the very beginning of his installation as Bishop of Rome but also have been a very avid and enthusiastic reader of the online Catholic news digest Aleteia. To read in this news digest of such an unthinkable and haughty attitude supposedly being touted by the Holy Father, I began to seriously wonder what this world is actually coming to and I couldn’t help but think of the video I saw on YouTube the other night* where there was an insight given through a certain message Blessed Mother in Medugorje was conveying concerning how the anti-Christ is trying to deceive even the elect, and where he is trying to sabbotage the Church on various levels in order to amplify this deception. Then I thought of what I read about 18 months ago where Pope Francis warned of “fake news”. This was a broadcast he gave on a special day the Vatican set aside to honour the efforts made at bringing the Gospel message and values to the world via the media. The Pope rightly condemned fake news and its production and dissemination. He warned that media outlets that concoct stories and reports which have no basis in reality and are literally fictitious are only adding insult to injury and as a cosequence are causing a great deal of harm to the world at large as they are profiteering off lies and untruths told about people and situations. It would not surprise me that such fake news even exists regarding the Church and even pertaining to Pope Francis himself. I would not be surprised if the Evil One in all his guile were to use media platforms, and even on the odd occasion those from Church sources such as Aleteia to promote such wicked schemes in dissemination of falsity and lies in an effort, for instance, to tarnish the reputation of our beloved Holy Father.

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Reference:
* https://youtu.be/zFIDrLcmlqM

Key Words: Laudato Si, Pope Francis, Genesis, Companion Animals, Stewardship & Responsibility, Original Sin, Fake News