Was St. Francis of Assisi a vegetarian? He said, “All things of creation are children of the father and thus brothers of man.” There seems to be a growing sense that animals are people too. Well, the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi is October 6 this year, so the “Blessing of the Animals” at any number of congregations is nigh. But liturgical calendars are a metronome in the sea of change we have always been swimming in.
Seeing “Fur Baby On Board” and “I Love My Fur Grand Baby” on more and more cars dovetails with the annual onslaught of shivering, starving, abandoned animals needing your $13 a month to save them.
We are full of competing ads for pet food that is “Just like human food!” — and costs as much. Endless pet things are hyped on Amazon: vests, harnesses, ThunderShirts (that “comfort”). There are big-box pet stores. There are fully elaborated “Doggy Day Care” temples to animals that are treated just like the human offspring of working parents — including daily pictures and videos. I even saw a “Pet Urgent Care” veterinary facility, and friends have spent tens of thousands of dollars on medical interventions for their pets.
Mitt Romney was defamed when he put his dog in a cage on top of his car on a family vacation. Senator Kristi Noem shocked the country when she said, “I hated that dog” and shot him. “Comfort Animals” are now given broad rights on planes, restaurants, and churches.
I have heard people describe themselves as parents to their pets. And I know people who are crushed by the passing of an animal. Nothing new there — the movie Old Yeller made millions weep in 1957. But in our culture, there is a growing spiritual transference of our infinite love for our children to the optional embrace of our pets.
As our national birth rate plummets and fewer human babies are born, the status of the animals has risen to the veneration that St. Francis had for them. The spawn of we boomers are, at the very least, delaying having children and having fewer children, and many will not bring another human into a world that sees the imminent crushing of all humanity in the End Times of Climate Change.
But the boomers who wept at Old Yeller remember when pets in our lives were simply things that had a slightly elevated status over your favorite recliner. Chameleons and horned toads were purchased in boxes at traveling circuses and soon dead. Bunnies were living parts of Easter booty — then, what?
My wife and I have two grown children. Both have multiple degrees, successful careers, and one lives with a partner. Neither will have children — or at 33 and 35 that seems to be where they are headed. And both fully love the pets they live with to the point of devotion.
One is deeply Christian, the other agnostic if not atheist, but both have the devotion that comes only from the human capacity to love — a capacity that I believe is God-given. The irrationality of adoring a fully optional, purchased part of your life reflects the essence of a life lived as a holy agent of God’s creation.
Our political lives and much of popular culture has become based on hate. Anger and rage are often all that we can discern on the internet. Except pets. There are a bevy of cute pet videos on the internet streaming alongside the raging hate, the former compelling because the love between pet and owner is as unfettered as the rest of our culture seems overwrought in anger. As much as the birth rate has become a point of contention in the culture wars, few dare to suggest our entirely optional love of our fur babies is needless or optional.
Is this generation of animal love in reaction to this current culture of self-righteous outrage? Are we humanizing our pets because we are creating fewer humans? Is human love itself crippled by the siphoning of our humanity by the internet’s pervasive integration into our lives?
I think our growing sense of dehumanization, isolation, even futility create a culture where the animals we love are islands of safe devotion, places of unconditional love in a world of overwhelming conditional judgment and definition. The unquestioned control we have over the animals who love us is a novel reality in a time of relentless change that controls the culture we live in.
As a petless-by-choice human whose life does not allow for the devotion a pet deserves, I think that God is simply found in life — and love is his chosen medium. This Sunday might be the blessing of the animals, but we are equally blessed by them. The eyes of a dog reveal the love God has given us, reveals that some life beyond us can love too — not your fish or your roses or your tail-wagging companion, but a person whose devotion never fails.
