Humans were created with rational souls that will live forever. These souls are separated from the body at death.
When Jesus comes again in glory, the bodies of the righteous will be resurrected and reunited with their souls in Heaven to worship God for eternity.
Heaven is beyond our imagination and seeing God face-to-face is the greatest joy possible.
Animals and plants are also part of God’s creation and, because they are alive, they also have souls.
But the souls of animals and plants are different from human souls. This is why animals do not receive the sacraments.
The Church has taken no formal position on whether animals go to Heaven and there is no definitive evidence from Sacred Scripture or Church doctrine.
The goal of Heaven is union with God:
Good things are not God:
The Church, to which we are all called in Christ Jesus, and in which we acquire sanctity through the grace of God, will attain its full perfection only in the glory of Heaven, when there will come the time of the restoration of all things. At that time the human race as well as the entire world, which is intimately related to man and attains to its end through him, will be perfectly reestablished in Christ.
Pope Paul VI, Lumen Gentium, November 21, 1964
How do you imagine Heaven?:
God must come first:
For the cosmos, Revelation affirms the profound common destiny of the material world and man: For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God . . . in hope because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay…. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1046
Animals are living parts of God’s creation:
Human souls are not from nature:
But according to his promise we await new heavens and a new Earth in which righteousness dwells.
2 Peter 3: 13
The matter is not settled:
The Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of the Catholic Church
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