After we buried Rupert, I glanced at Facebook to see if anyone had sent me a message, and the post at the top of my page was a theologian’s explanation of why we will not see our pets in heaven. He gave the usual “animals don’t have rational souls so they can’t have immortal souls” argument, its logical steps reminiscent of a recipe in a cookbook.

But this writer thought he had good news for those who’d lost their pet. In the New Heaven and the New Earth, there will be animals! Dogs! Cats! As if this matters to someone who’s lost a dog or cat they loved. So you’ll have dogs, but not the dogs you loved. Big whoop. It was heartlessness dressed up as good news.

Aquinas may be dead right, but anyone who offers systematic theology to someone who has just lost a pet needs to learn a thing or two about love.