Welcome back to the Word on Fire show. I'm Brandon Vott. I'm the host and the content director here at Word on Fire. Joining me is the founder of Word on Fire, auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, Bishop Robert Barron. Good to see you, Bishop.

Hey Brandon, always joy to see you. You and I both love books. We're bibliophiles. And so I always love asking you, what are you reading these days? What books do you have going on?

Let's see, you know, I'm in the car all the time in LA, these long trips. So I have audio books. I'm now listening to volume one of Churchill's history of the English speaking peoples. You know, I'm still trying to finish. I'm almost done with it. That massive biography of Churchill. I've been working on it for like months and months. I read it a little bit at the end of the day.

And that inspired me to get as an audible Churchill's history of the English speaking peoples. And then I'm also, I just finished Tracy Rollins book on Catholic theology, which is a really good survey of where Catholic theology kind of went in the 20th century. What the various camps are today.

So I just finished that. And I'm always reading different things to hear in there.

Well, I really enjoyed that Tracy Rollins book myself. It's, you read it creatively titled Catholic theology, but it's really helpful in clarifying if maybe you've heard a lot of these theologians and streams and camps and movements. She really positions them all into one easy to understand picture. So if you're trying to make sense of say the last century of Catholic theology and where we are today, super helpful.

Okay, well, today we're going to do one of our favorite types of shows is a listener Q&A where we get to hear from people all over the place. Sometimes we do a kids Q&A. Sometimes we do an international Q&A. Today's just general. So we're taking questions from anyone and everyone.

If you have a question, maybe you want to ask it for the next show. Go to ask bishop Baron dot com. You can record your question on any topic related to theology, philosophy, morality, God, the spiritual life, whatever you got. We'd love to hear it.

Today, we've got, I think maybe seven eight questions. So let's just jump right in. First one comes from a pair of women from New Mexico. And they're asking a question about animals and souls. Here's their question.

I'm Zia and I'm Sonora. I work from Albuquerque, New Mexico. And our question is if animals have distinct personalities and have been proven to feel emotions like humans. And why does the church teach they don't have souls?

Yeah, that's a good question. Then go back to Thomas Aquinas who would say that animals do have souls, but they have a particular type of soul. And what you're describing is they're like emotions and personality would be congruent with the soul at that level of complexity.

But the church talks about the immortal soul, so our soul, what it has to do with real cognition. And that means the capacity for truly abstract a thought that goes beyond the merely sensible or imaginative.

Now, accompany that with will because will emerges when the mind knows the good as good. So the soul that has minded will in that sense.

And we speak of properly as a spiritual soul is going beyond the material. So that's probably to the point of your question. But I would say animals do indeed have souls, but they wouldn't have immortal souls the way we do.

Bishop, you and I have remarked multiple times, especially after these Q and A episodes, how often we get questions about animals. There seems to be I would describe it as an increasing interest and animals and the relation to God and heaven and the spiritual life. Have you noticed that?

Yeah, I have. And you know, they're old questions too. I mean, Thomas Aquinas wrestles with that. And it was a somewhat diverse of opinion back in the day about animals and eternal life. And you know, read some of like John Polkinghorn, who's one of my go to people for religion and science issues.

And he talks about God preserving the form, you know, of a person and then reconstituting that form at a higher pitch. So under that rubric, he imagines, could there be certain animals whom God decides to reconstitute in this new higher world.

And he said, it's a highly speculative. Of course, but he says maybe some of them are included in the higher world. But again, I said it's very speculative definitely not alligators definitely.

Well, see, the bottom line, theologically is that the animals like everything else in creation show forth the splendor of God in some way. That's why they exist. So an alligator with all of its, you know, ferocity and strange beauty and everything would speak of something of God's manner of being.

And that's the beauty, I think of a spirituality of creation. Why is God so, you know, fecon and and and variegated in his creativity? Well, because his, the intensity of his being as such that even even the billions upon billions of creatures wouldn't begin to express the fullness of what's in God.

And then the face of a dog, you know, and finding delight there, well, that's there's something of God in that experience.

And that's a little separate from the issue of the nature of the soul, you know.

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