Then I snap back into reality and realize the costs to society have far exceeded the perceived benefits.  Telling kids about Santa is pretty cool in that Santa is a giving person.  The myth makes a lot of people very happy, but the second the disciples of Santa start doing doing unimaginably cruel things in his name, the myth should be terminated.  Because in reality, kids that never heard of Santa are no less off the the ones who believe.  If anything, they are in a better state of not having their parents telling them bold face lies for no other reason that to scare them into believing they will get nothing if they F up.

But here we are, where the Catholic church systematically ensured kids were exposed to serial rapists using the money they gave them.  You of anyone knows how many atrocities the Catholic church is responsible and/or compliment in perpetrating against the most vulnerable.  But there they are packing the churches and giving them more money.  And for the grand finale, those same people claim the church is a great course of comfort to them.  Yeah, like the rapist who likes to snuggle afterwards and the Stockholm victims who are comforted by it.

I mean, if "enormous numbers of people" are actually looking to the Vatican for spiritual guidance and validation on something so trivial as this, then I really and truly don't know what to say to them.

Personally, and again speaking as a Catholic, I've always found the ecclesiastical argument against animals having souls to just so much hooey. It wouldn't surprise me if that notion was initially conceived by some Papal States magistrate from long ago, who at the time had somehow managed to corner the Roman market on beef and pork and was trying to convince people to eat more meat.

In my estimation, and given my own understanding of the definition of "soul," any living creature that can feel and know joy, pleasure, pain, anger and fear, has a soul.

So therefore, my ex-girlfriend's late silky terrier Sparky, viciously psychopathic mutt that he was -- Sorry Lisa, but I still have a couple two-inch scars on my right hand from that unprovoked attack to prove that yours was the dog from hell -- is likely roasting in the fires of damnation for all eternity. At least, if there is a god, he should be. Stupid thing bit me so hard that he ripped some tendons.

But in those matters concerning Catholic dogma, for which His Holiness's interpretations and pronouncements are ostensibly considered by the faithful to be spiritually infallible as though they came from the Lord Himself, if you're not a practicing Catholic -- then what's it to you, really? If you don't go to Mass and receive Holy Communion, then how does that affect you?

The cockamamie notion -- strictly my opinion, not the Holy Mother Church's -- that animals don't and can't possess souls has long been part of traditional Catholic dogma. And as a non-Catholic and outsider, you're never going to change that.

You have every right to express your opinion on the subject, but please don't be offended if Catholics ignore your objections or advice in what by all rights is an exclusively internal issue. Any changes to that dogma are going to be realized and achieved within the Church itself, and will not imposed from the outside.

I mean, Hell, it took us the better part of five-plus centuries, before we finally recognized the possibility, however remote that possibility may be, that there just MIGHT be a place for you as a non-Catholic in Heaven! We're not exactly known for moving at a lightning-quick pace on such matters, historically speaking.

See, for example, this.  Among others.

If it's average I can sell it on Ebay.

If it's bad I can turn it off and sell it on Ebay.

The Burrows book is amazing.  Like everything he wrote.  And the title actually makes sense.  The story is set in an overpopulated future where medical care is illegal and doctors are treated sort of like terrorists.   It's so risky that when they make a house call, since there are no hospitals, they cant risk carrying their tools with them.  So someone else brings the doctors bag and meets at the location.

I ask again, if we fail to use all of our resources to protect ourselves and if the terrorists kill, aren't we responsible?? Aren't we our brothers keeper??

One event?? Really? Just ONE?? Have you been in a cave? Have you missed the Boston Marathon? The Fort Hood Murders? The Underwear Bomber? The NY Times Square Bomber? The Spanish Train bombings? The Portland Xmas Bomber? The JFK Fuel Farm Plot? The Fort Dix plot? The El Al killing? The Syndey Murders? The Shoe Bomber? The Honor Killings?

And just who declared global war??

REPORTER: Mr. Bin Ladin, will the end of the United States' presence in Saudi Arabia, their withdrawal, will that end your call for jihad against the United States and against the US ?

BIN LADIN:... So, the driving-away jihad against the US does not stop with its withdrawal from the Arabian peninsula,

but rather it must desist from aggressive intervention against Muslims in the whole world.

OBL ininterview with Peter Arnett then with CNN 3/97

That's plain. You must let me do what I want to do or pay the consequences.

It seems to me that, based on bin Ladin's demands which are echoed throughout the radical islamists holdings and your position, we are more likely to be telling our grandchildren what it was like before the radcial islamists broke our will and we bowed our collective heads in submission.

Jan 14 (Reuters) - Roughly 60,000 Silicon Valley workers won clearance to pursue a lawsuit accusing Apple Inc, Google Inc and other companies of conspiring to drive down pay by not poaching each other's staff, after a federal appeals court refused to let the defendants appeal a class certification order.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals late on Tuesday let stand an order by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California to let the workers sue as a group, and pursue what the defendants said could exceed 9 billion of damages.

If you just Google, "Collusion, salaries, Silicon Valley" you'll get hundreds of cases. It seems the problem is quite endemic. All the Big Boys involved, and, from what I've read, Steve Jobs was fanatic about maintaining the collusion. He demanded swift, and severe, punishment (termination) for any employees who sought better paying jobs. I was doubly surprised that the biggest of the big, guys like the Google Boys, Adobe, and, Intel cowed under to Jobs' demands.

Please understand, cases are still pending, and, I'm just quoting what was offered in the Business News. (Reuters link below) "Innocent till proven guilty."

Before closing, let's put one trending, but erroneous, sound bite to rest.   Heien argued that because the common-law maxim "ignorance of the law is no excuse" applies to private citizens who break the law, it should also be applied to police here. Tweeters are now claiming that today's ruling means the maxim applies to everyone except the police. That not only ignores the very different contexts (criminal law breaking versus justifications for stopping suspected law-breakers), but it's wrong also in its premise. In fact, the Court long ago ruled that a reasonable "ignorance of the law" can be a defense to prosecution. In Lambert v. California (1957), the Court vacated a criminal conviction because the law at issue could not be reasonably known to the citizenry. This ruling still finds application today, albeit rarely. It seems that the Court may have (even if not consciously) reinvigorated the Lambert concept today at page 12, where it indicated that "the government cannot impose criminal liability based on a mistaken understanding of the law." If read broadly, this statement could represent a sea change in the modern understanding of Lambert - a decision that Justice Frankfurter called, in dissent, "a derelict on the waters of the law." But it seems clear that the Court today meant "on [its own] misunderstanding of the law," not a private citizen's.

Meanwhile, police who break the law are still subject to the usual maxim: ignorance of the law will not excuse their lawbreaking any more than anyone else's. But here, police are trying to implement the Fourth Amendment, not break the law. There is of course some tension between the idea that "the law is definite and knowable" versus an officer's "reasonable" legal mistake. But the Court held today only that when police officers reasonably understand others to have broken the law, they may briefly stop them to investigate without violating the Fourth Amendment. Absent a shift in societal standards for law enforcement - and recently we are witnessing at least a re-examination -- this ruling seems unsurprising.