This week it was once again time for what has become a family tradition – lunch every month or two with my sister Rose, wherein she and I catch up on the news of our personal lives. It’s always her choice, and today she selected Muze, at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel on Maryland Avenue Southwest, over by the Jefferson Memorial and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. For her cocktail, Rose ordered a Thai coconut martini, a not-so-subtle allusion to our family name and our dear father, an engineer turned bartender, who re-invented the martini at a luxury hotel in New York City not unlike the Mandarin, although much more venerable. Her appetizer was complementary in the culinary sense – steamed mussels in basil, yuzu and shisito peppers. Mine was fried oysters with creamed leeks, bacon and wasabi. Taking her cue, I accompanied that with a Botanist Tom Collins, and when I ordered it, she smiled.
By virtue of having attended many such luncheons, I knew exactly what to expect, of course, and quite frankly, over the last couple of years I have grown somewhat weary of hearing the same litany of woe about her travails in the wilds of Fairfax County. So midway through our salads – hers a Bibb lettuce and persimmon with pearl onions, pumpkin seeds and Dijon vinaigrette, mine the baby spinach with soy-cured butternut squash, cashews, sesame and goat cheese – I pulled out a check for ten grand and gave it to her. “Merry Christmas,” I offered.
What followed was the expected sincere and enthusiastic thanks, featuring vivid descriptions of how happy her massive brood of children, and her brother-in-law Arthur’s likewise huge horde of progeny, would be, complete with detailed lists of all of the things for which they would be remembering me in their Christmas prayers. Rose left out feeding them for the holidays and keeping a roof over their heads, naturally, that goes without saying. The early administration of Balsam of Bucks had its desired effect, however, and I was spared the usual bitter tirade about her husband Hank running off with Arthur’s wife Shannon to become survivalist renegades in West Virginia where together they await the inevitable Apocalypse which they fervently believe the Antichrist, President Barack Hussein Obama, will surely precipitate.
A bottle of 2009 Marcassin Sonoma Coast chardonnay arrived with the soup course; I had the blue she-crab with tobiko, she the cauliflower with brioche, pickled mustard and dill. The conversation was refreshingly light and even jovial, until I inquired about how the numerous household pets were getting on.
“Animals!” Rose exclaimed. “I could just kick the Pope right in the behind for shooting his mouth off like that!”
“The Pope?” I wondered aloud. “Animals?”
“Yes,” she explained, “Didn’t you hear what the Pope said – that animals can go to Heaven?”
“Oh yes,” I answered, “it seems to me I heard that last Wednesday, Pope Francis saw a little boy crying because his dog had died, and the Pope told him not to worry, he would see his doggie in Heaven. Very sweet story. He’s such a nice guy.”
“Sweet story? Nice guy?” Rose shot back. “Are you kidding me?”
“But… but…” I objected.
“The Pope ought to try,” she cut me off, “explaining that remark to the rest of the children in the world!”
“You mean, you’ve had a… problem… with what the Pope said?” I ventured
“Tom,” she scolded. “You’re a Catholic, you know that isn’t true! Animals don’t have souls and therefore, they can’t go to Heaven!”
“Maybe that’s what Pope Pius IX said,” I began, “however…”
“The Pope,” she declared, “is infallible!”
“Okay,” I allowed, “Pope Pius IX was infallible in 1854 and Pope Francis the First is infallible in 2014. So now maybe it appears that they contradict each other. Who cares? Like Emerson said, consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.”
“There’s nothing small-minded about Catholic Church doctrine,” Rose righteously proclaimed, “and it’s official dogma that animals do not posses consciousness, as we do, and consequently have no souls.”
“These days,” I noted, “we know a lot more about animals now than we did in the nineteenth century. Animals have languages, they use tools, they have societies, they…”
“I doubt it,” Rose replied, “but even if that weird, unbelievable stuff you’re claiming were true, that wouldn’t mean they have souls! Do you have any idea the kind of questions I’ve been dealing with this week – not just from my kids, not just from Arthur’s, but in my elementary school class, too? Our children at home, the four, five and six year olds, they’ve been asking questions like ‘Will the lions in Heaven eat the sheep and cows?’ How am I supposed to answer that?”
“Okay,” I inquired, “how did you answer that, anyway?”
“Well, clearly, they have extrapolated what the Pope said about that child’s dog to include animals in general, which is appropriate for children that age,” Rose remarked. “But when they’re that young, you don’t want to get into mortal Catholic doctrinal issues, because that would confront them with the prospect of being separated from their own pets, risking a trauma that will alienate them. So I answered,” Rose revealed with a roll of her eyes, “that hunger doesn’t exist in Heaven, so the lions would never need to eat anything.”
“Their first experience with the concept of a moot point,” I observed. “Well done.”
“The seven-to-ten year olds are worse,” she complained. “I’m teaching fourth grade this year, and one of my students asked me if the class hamster needed to be baptized as a Catholic to get into Heaven. And my own kids that age want to know how the gold fish, the turtles, the ferrets, the canaries, the parakeets, the myna birds, the gerbils, the guinea pigs, the dogs and the cats are going to get there if they can’t talk and give their confessions to a priest.”
“Speaking of priests,” I asked, “have you spoken to the one at your parish about this issue?”
“Yes,” she sighed. “And he’s been about as useful as the nipples on a bull.”
“Nevertheless – what’s his take on it?” I pressed.
“Both Popes are infallible,” she replied, “but only, he says, ‘When, in the exercise of their office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of their supreme apostolic authority, a Pope defines a doctrine.’ And furthermore, he says, Pope Francis wasn’t doing that. What the Pope said last Wednesday about all good dogs going to Heaven was ‘a non-doctrinal remark made in the course of pastoral counseling,’ which isn’t the same thing and therefore doesn’t need to be an infallible statement.”
“Yeah, okay,” I conceded, “I see what you mean. That is pretty close to useless in your situation, because I don’t suppose you can tell that to a ten year old.”
“Not unless you like blank stares and a complete loss of confidence in you as an adult,” Rose asserted, and given her extensive experience with children, I found no reason to question it.
“So what did you tell the kids in the seven-to-ten year old group?” I wondered.
“I told them,” Rose slowly intoned between sips of wine as the entrées arrived (rainbow trout with radish, beech mushrooms, rice puffs and caper butter for her, grilled hanger steak and bok choy with mashed Yukon gold potatoes and bordelaise for me), “that animals don’t need to give confessions because only people know how to sin.”
“Not bad,” I acknowledged. “There isn’t a government agency in town with a consultant who can spin awkward questions any better. I don’t suppose the older kids are peppering you and Arthur with that sort of thing, though, are they?”
“Not the oldest ones,” Rose admitted with the characteristic shrug peculiar to a parent of high school students. “They’re too absorbed in themselves, clothes, video games, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and all that crap, as you’d expect. Only one of them brought it up and I told her that she ought to know better, just like I told you. But the tweens and middle schoolers are running rampant with it. One of Arthur’s kids asked me if an animal needs to be in a state of grace when they die in order to enter Heaven. I told him the blessing of the animals at the church every year should be adequate to convey a state of grace sufficient for entry into Heaven, and the little stinker said, ‘Oh yeah? Then what about the animals that don’t live a year, or the ones that live in the oceans or the woods and stuff? What about the animals that belong to atheists? Are they going to Hell just because their owners are?’ Then there are the sarcastic kind of questions you get from eighth and ninth graders, you know, like ‘So, are there head lice in Heaven?’ and ‘Does “all God’s creatures” include parameciums? How about euglenas and motile bacteria?’ and ‘Does the Pope mean that if a rattlesnake is a good snake, it can go to Heaven? Will its bite still be poisonous? And what makes a rattlesnake good, anyhow?’ and ‘The Pope didn’t say anything about plants. Are there plants in Heaven? How about furniture?’ and ‘My biology teacher says viruses are only alive when they’re inside a person or an animal’s body. So if one of our dogs gets distemper and dies, do the distemper viruses go to Heaven with it?’ and ‘If animals can go to Heaven, what could an animal do that would send it to Hell instead?’ and ‘Will I still be allergic to cats in Heaven?’ and ‘What happened to the fish we had for dinner last Friday? Did it go to Heaven before or after we ate it? What about the fish it ate – did they go to Heaven when it ate them or not?’ and ‘If animals go to Heaven, should we even be eating them at all?’ and… oh, Tom, it’s terrible, it’s ridiculous, it’s absurd… Pope Francis has opened a can of worms!”
“It certainly appears that way,” I agreed. “Do you suppose those worms are going to Heaven, too?”
“If Heaven has worms,” she declared, “and spiders and hornets and yellowjackets and and mosquitoes and flies and rats and chiggers and ticks and fleas and ants…” she paused for a breath and took another sip of wine. “Well, I just don’t know if I would want to go to a Heaven like that.”
“I don’t think we have much of a choice about it,” I mused. “Unless, of course, there are parts of Heaven where no animals are allowed. Maybe you could spend eternity in one of those, or at least go hang out there when the animals get on your nerves.”
“I did not,” Rose emphatically told me in no uncertain terms, “spend my entire life going to Mass, giving confessions, doing penance, and having absolutely no fun while behaving myself like a good Catholic so I could spend eternity with a bunch of animals!”
“There might be one way out of it,” I proposed.
“What’s that?” Rose implored.
“It says here,” I replied, perusing the Internet on my iPhone, “that the Pope was initially misquoted as saying, ‘One day, we will see our animals again in the eternity of Christ. Paradise is open to all of God’s creatures.’ It turns out that is, in fact, something Pope Paul VI said. What Pope Francis actually said to the little boy on Wednesday was, ‘The Holy Scripture teaches us that the fulfillment of this wonderful design also affects everything around us.’”
Rose eyed me with astonishment. “Huh?”
“Pope Francis,” I repeated, “said, ‘The Holy Scripture teaches us that the fulfillment of this wonderful design also affects everything around us.’”
“For God’s sake!” Rose exclaimed. “What in the world does that mean?”
“I’m not exactly sure,” I admitted. “But it hardly appears to be a definitive statement that any kind of animal is going to Heaven. Not only that, but it looks like the media are backpedaling on the story even as we speak. Here’s a retraction… and another one… and one more… yeah, it looks like the press jumped the gun on this one. Or should I say, they jumped the shark?”
“Those… those… those…” Rose fumed, staring down at the table, her fists clenched, “those…”
“Stupid, trouble-making bastards?” I suggested.
“The press!” Rose barked, her temper flaring. “’Pope makes elliptical remarks to little boy whose dog died.’ No news there! But ‘Pope says animals go to Heaven,‘ there’s a headline that can sell newspapers, get eyeballs glued to television sets and set everybody twittering and clicking like crazy! Those rotten scumbags, what do they care how much grief I get trying to explain their craven, mendacious lies? Damn them! Damn them to Hell, and I hope there are animals there – weasels to gnaw on them until the end of time!”
“Oh, come now,” I chided, “show the proper Christian charity. Nowadays, journalism is more of a dog-eat-dog business than ever. And hmmm… come to think of it, if animals do go to Heaven, then they should also go to Hell, otherwise Heaven would offer no particular reward. So if a dog eats another dog, and the dog that ate the other dog is going to Hell, what about the Resurrection of the dog that got eaten? How would God…”
“As soon as I finish this,” Rose interjected, pointing at her plate of trout, “I want you to get the dessert cart over here, pronto.”
“Like a nice glass of port with that?” I asked.
Rose shook her head. “No. Benedictine.”
“Very appropriate,” I commented.
“Also considerably stronger,” she growled. “And make it a double.”