All dogs may go to heaven–even if the supposed Fun Pope promise was apocryphal–but what of cows and pigs and chickens?

I’ve mentioned before that free-range chicken doesn’t sound particularly ethical to me. If I were a chicken, my main objection to the slaughterhouse would not be the accommodations. And almost all those who eat poultry would jail others who organize cockfights, which isn’t sensible; both are done for enjoyment, not necessity. From Robert Pogue Harrison’s NYRB post “Our Animal Hell“:

“Whether or not one believes that the Judeo-Christian God exists, there is much to ponder in what Pope Francis reportedly told a distraught boy whose dog had died. According to The New York Times, Francis assured him that he would be reunited with his pet ‘in the eternity of Christ’ and—in the spirit of his papal namesake—declared that ‘Paradise is open to all of God’s creatures.’ Since we are a society that loves our dogs as much as we love God, the American media focused almost exclusively on the statement’s implications for canine pets; but a broader, far darker import lurks at the heart of the Pope’s words.

The Pope spoke not of dogs but of all of God’s creatures. Where does that leave humankind? To call us a species among others is both correct and misleading, for whether by divine design or nature’s random ways, Homo sapiens has extended its dominion over everything that walks, crawls, swims, or flies. This makes us a singular, unearthly kind of creature. From the extinctions we cause, to the alteration and destruction of animal habitats, to the daily mass slaughters that feed our collective Cerberus-like appetite for meat, poultry, and fish, our species terrorizes the animal world in ways that could only offend, if not outrage, a God who loves his creatures enough to open the prospect of heaven to them.

Whether intentionally or unintentionally, the Pope’s declaration reminds us of something that weighs heavily on humankind. Most of the time, we are adept at blocking out this ‘species guilt,’ as I would call it. Aren’t we more humane than our ancestors? Don’t we love animals? Don’t we have laws against animal cruelty? Yes, we do. But as Nicholas Kristof put it in a recent column in The New York Times: ‘Torture a single chicken and you risk arrest. Abuse hundreds of thousands of chickens for their entire lives? That’s agribusiness.’ I.e., that’s what stocks our supermarkets with happy ‘cage free’ chickens.

We like to think of ourselves as the stewards or even saviors of nature, yet the fact of the matter is, for the animal world at large, the human race represents nothing less than a natural disaster.”