万花筒 2009-05-07&05-09 宠物也祈祷？（在线收听）

Well, we all think of our pets as members of the family, right? Well, now, some churches across the country are welcoming pets into the pews during church services. The Church of the Holy Trinity in New York city is one of those churches, Father Michael Philips joins me now to explain, why exactly they're doing this. Good Morning to you, Father Philips?

Good morning, Dave, how are you?

I am great, and this is such a great program. You said it's been going on for at least 15 years at your church, why did you, why did they start doing it, and why do you think it's been such a tremendous success?

Well, it's started long before I came here, I've been at this church for years and every year around St. Francis Day early in October, they do a service called blessing of the animals which is quite popular around the country, but here at this church, it just caught on, because animals are so important especially dogs and cats are important to lives of so many people in New York.

So, describe the scene, because in my head, I am imagining everyone sitting there in the pews, their dogs and cats or mixture, and there's barking, there is meowing, there is complete chaos, is that what breaks out when this happens?

No, you have the wrong image of that, what we find is, first of all, dogs and cats are welcomed in all of our services year around,(wonderful.) especially on St. Francis Day, we will have, you know, 50, 60, 80 pets here and they are so well behaved, they are, for whatever reason, in church, the animals calm down, they are quiet, they are attentive, we'd never had a single problem with any the animal in church.

Oh, Father Philips, they are listening to you, they’re trying to pay attention, you say, any animal is permissible, if you had birds, if you had ferrets  , as Clayton has suggested, what types of animals join the cats and dogs?

In addition to cats and dogs, we have birds we have turtles, we have ferrets  , we have gerbils, we have animals in cages, we have insects that come, reptile  .

That is outstanding, and I have to mention that you said , people can also bring a stuffed animal to represent their pets, but pets you have there, a kitten, a puppy, and an adult dog are up for adoption, tell us about that through bideawee.org and to introduce them.

-Well, this is Petty, and this is , I figure, Tiger, tiger is a puppy, and there are  2 people from a shelter here in Manhattan, Alex and Maria, and there I don't know all about, but I know that they... from the shelter, you can adopt an animal and have that special relationship by just going to a local shelter.

Ok, great, Father Philips, we appreciated and it's a great story. It's going on in New York, it’s going on in Omaha  , it’s going on in Boston, you can adopt those pets through bideawee.org, thank you for joining us this morning.