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Summary
- Short prayers cover the first hours after a pet dies, thanks, guilt, putting a pet to sleep, an empty house, a grieving child, other pets, a burial, an anniversary, a new pet and a pet that is missing.
- Psalm 104 and the Benedicite canticle of Morning Prayer (“O all ye Beasts and Cattle, bless ye the Lord”) praise God for animals and can be prayed at a goodbye.
- Churches that pray for the dead write those prayers for human souls; Christians can still thank God for an animal and commit it to him, since Scripture says he “preservest man and beast” (Psalm 36:6).
- The Bible does not say whether pets go to heaven: Aquinas held animal souls cannot exist apart from the body, while Romans 8:21 and Laudato si’ 243 speak of all creation renewed.
- Saint Gertrude of Nivelles (died 659) is popularly called the patron of cats; the 1909 Catholic Encyclopedia records her as invoked “against fever, rats, and mice.”
Bibliography (Click to show)
- Scripture quotations are from the King James Version (1611), text of Project Gutenberg eBook no. 10 (Genesis 1:25; 9:10; 2 Samuel 12:3; Job 12:10; Psalm 34:18; 36:6; 104:24, 29–30; 145:9; Ecclesiastes 3:1, 21; Isaiah 11:6; Luke 12:6; Romans 8:21; James 1:17; Revelation 21:5). https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10
- The Book of Common Prayer (Protestant Episcopal Church in the U.S.A.), Standard Book of 1928. Morning Prayer, Benedicite, omnia opera Domini, p. 13. PDF facsimile: https://www.artisticdailyprayers.org/uploads/3/0/1/6/30164961/bcp1928std.pdf
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997. Paragraphs 2416–2418. https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P8B.HTM
- Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2005. Appendix, “Eternal Rest.” https://www.vatican.va/archive/compendium_ccc/documents/archive_2005_compendium-ccc_en.html
- Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologiae, First Part, question 75, article 3. Translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 1920. https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1075.htm
- Francis. Laudato si’, encyclical letter, 24 May 2015, paragraph 243. https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html
- Ott, Michael. “St. Gertrude of Nivelles.” The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 6. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06533c.htm
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