Don, I thank God I did not have your religious upbringing!!! ;-)

So the Catholic Church says animals have no souls, do they? I wonder how they figured that one out? Seems more like wishful thinking to me than any kind of informed opinion.

Anyway, I bet there are some individual Catholics who do believe animals have souls, because there are some pretty independent-minded Catholics around (I've met some of them) and they don't necessarily agree with everything that comes under the authority of the Pope in Rome. In some cases this causes them to leave the church...but in other cases there is enough stuff that they like about the church that they can put up with the stuff they don't agree with.

I'll give an example of how that works: I'm a Canadian. I basically like Canada...for many different reasons. But....there are some things I don't like about Canada. There are things my government does that I totally disagree with! And the winter's too long. Still, I haven't left Canada, have I? That's because there's enough I like about being here that I can put up with the parts I don't like.

The same goes for churches. You don't have to agree with everything in a given church to stay associated with it. You don't have to agree with every point of its dogma.

The same goes for relationships. You don't have to agree with everything about the other person to stay in the relationship.

Everything in life is like that. There is no perfect church, no perfect country, no perfect government, and no perfect relationship...they all involve compromise. And that's why a person can disagree with the Pope about quite a few specific things...and still want to remain a Catholic (for various other reasons quite aside from what the Pope thinks).