Pope Francis has given hope to gays, unmarried couples and advocates of the Big Bang theory. Now, he has endeared himself to dog lovers, animal-rights activists and vegans.

Trying to console a distraught little boy whose dog had died, Francis told him in a recent public appearance on St Peter's Square that "paradise is open to all of God's creatures."

While it is unclear whether the pope's remarks helped soothe the child, they were welcomed by groups like the Humane Society and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, who saw them as a repudiation of conservative Catholic theology that says animals cannot go to heaven because they have no souls.

"My inbox got flooded," said Christine Gutleben, senior director of faith outreach at the Humane Society, the largest animal protection group in the United States. "Almost immediately, everybody was talking about it."

http://www.smh.com.au/world/dogs-go-to-heaven-says-pope-francis-20141212-1269po.html

Note: the word "forgivation" means forgiveness for something that was not anyone's fault — like one's own existence, cats and dogs included... 

If you walked into the Grace Hopper College courtyard last year, you may have seen a cat on a leash. Last fall you might have seen a dog; this semester, there are two of them scurrying around Hopper.

These are emotional support animals. While Yale College does not allow students to live with pets on campus, University Policy 4400 allows students to live with emotional support animals, also called assistance animals, “on a case-by-case basis in a reasonable accommodation for a documented disability.”

Last year, there was one registered support animal on Yale’s campus, a kitten named Sawa. There are now 14 — a number that Sarah Chang, associate director of the Resource Office on Disabilities, expects to rise.

“If what has played out at other schools is true, then yes, [there will be] a lot more,” Chang said. “I do think we’re going to see a large increase in numbers, definitely.”

Emotional support animals require no training. They don’t even have to be dogs. Their purpose is to provide a therapeutic benefit through companionship. At Yale, there are emotional support dogs, emotional support cats and even an emotional support hedgehog. All members of the class of 2021 were asked on the first-year housing survey whether they would be agreeable to sharing a suite with a student who has an emotional support animal or service animal.

Still, despite the increase in the number of such animals, there is little scientific evidence to support their impact on humans, according to Molly Crossman GRD ’19, a Yale doctoral student in psychology who has studied the mental health benefits of people’s interactions with animals.

“There isn’t research that speaks directly to emotional support animals. There’s little directly on that that I’m aware of,” Crossman said. “Although we generally agree that science informs policy, often it just doesn’t work out like that.”

Yale and colleges across the country have adopted policies that allow emotional support animals — not necessarily because the science backs it up, but because the schools have to, in order to comply with the Fair Housing Act. The act states that “persons with disabilities may request a reasonable accommodation for any service animal, including an emotional support animal.” The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 prohibits discrimination based on disability.

“Those two laws are basically the reason we weren’t inspired to create the program,” Chang explained. “We were mandated to create the program. All universities have to follow those laws.”

Violating the laws can be costly. In 2013, Grand Valley State University paid $40,000 in a settlement after a student sued the university for preventing her from keeping an emotional support guinea pig on campus. Two years later, two students received $140,000 in a settlement with the University of Nebraska at Kearney after they were denied “reasonable accommodations” to keep two emotional support dogs. A similar suit at Kent State University cost the school $145,000 the following year.

Read more:

https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2018/04/26/emotional-support-animals-prol...

What in the actual freak is going on here? These students at one of the world’s most prestigious colleges consider themselves to be so fragile that they cannot go to class or exist without their kittens?

And the university allows this?!

...

I know some of you think I focus too much on little things like this. Hey, North and South Korea may be making peace, and you’re blogging about kitties on campus? You have something of a point. But hear me out: this kind of thing is tiny but meaningful. These are signs of ongoing breakdown — psychological and institutional — in our civilization. Yeah, it’s silly — both the concept of “emotional support animals,” and the idea that our leading universities would coddle adult children who can’t get through the day without their mewling wubbies — but it also says something important about the character of our culture.

Yale allows the Christakises, actual grown-ups who took education and maturity seriously, to be driven away from campus by a shrieking mob of woke children, and now allows those children to bring dogs to class so they don’t have a nervous breakdown. Unbelievable.

Read more critic at:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/fragility-in-our-time-emot...

Gus: Rod Dreher needs to take a cold shower. I guess his pet rats love his rant though. Do they allow students to grow some weeds or flowers on campus? Universities is about learning about the NATURE of the human condition. Not about learning how to crunch numbers to engender the next financial crisis... Chasing Christakises?:

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Months after a controversial email helped spur sustained student protests last fall, Nicholas and Erika Christakis will step down as head and associate head of Silliman College, effective this July.

In a Wednesday afternoon email to the Silliman community, Nicholas Christakis announced that he submitted his resignation to University President Peter Salovey last week. The couple drew national attention last fall when a Halloween weekend email from Erika Christakis defending students’ rights to wear culturally appropriative costumes sparked outrage on campus. 

At the time, many students and alumni called for the couple to resign their roles at the helm of Silliman College, arguing that the two could no longer serve as effective leaders of a college community designed to create a home for undergraduates. But others said their removal would constitute a serious blow to free speech on college campuses.

Gus: yep, undegraduates... undereducated, under the weather, under the thumb, under the doona... under-humans... Perfect to understand the nature of the human condition and dog turds...

Read more:

https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2016/05/25/months-after-controversy-chris...

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