Aquinas and Zealous Anger

[clem456]

I understand **you believe **Aquinas was not catholic in his
teaching nor are the modern theologians who discuss
zealous anger as virtuous as opposed to vicious
anger as a vice. They also are not Catholics in your view.
Yes we get it. But the rest of us hold Aquinas was
Catholic in his views as were Augustine and Chrystostom.

“he who is NOT angry in the presence of great sin, sins.”

Now that is directly and literally from St. John- a canonized
Catholic saint.

Are you Clem trying to harrass people
into believing
a. St. John Chrystotom was not a Catholic,
had not read the Catechism and
b. Was encouraging people in vice?

You should apologize for this. It is a complete misrepresentation.
I am done as this is pointless.

 

[Peter_Plato]

1. The answer to your question is contained in Aquinas, and is referenced in my post. It is sad that you do not read posts before you pounce on people.

But it is edifying that you seem to be interested in converting from “Socratic” to Catholicism.
In Catholicism, as you may know, since you have graduated to the Summa already, we have something called “Truth”. The Catholic Church has the fullest expression of the Truth. But all men are called to seek it in their hearts, all have an expression of it. But the fullest expression of it is in the Catholic Church, thank God, so that we do not come to idolize our many flawed opinions as Truth. The catechism of the Catholic Church is the normative expression of that Truth.

The catechism is an expression of what we call Tradition, with a capital T. The concept of Tradition is itself explained in the Catechism. Tradition honors the teaching of the Church over the years from theologians like Aquinas and Augustine, saints, scripture, as interpreted by the Magisterium of the Church. Since you have already graduated to the Summa, you should find it easy reading.
As a Catholic, this is what I respect and give my assent to. Since you are considering Catholicism, welcome to the fold.
vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM

The catechism is a beautiful expression of our faith. I hope you find it edifying.

Words are not the end-all or be-all of reality. It is the meaning behind those words that is important. If the words point at inherent conflicts, then there is likely something confused about what the words are taken to mean.

Since you don’t seem ready to answer the direct question, I will assume you subscribe to anger as “a passion and capital vice.”

The problem, as I pointed out in a previous post, is that a “hero” who stops a would-be rapist - moved by anger at the wrong about to be perpetrated - would, by your analysis, have been committing a wrong act BECAUSE he was moved by anger.

I simply do not agree that such a view is defensible.

Second, in order to be a vice, what is implied is a power or capacity to act in a “vicious” or “vice-ful” manner. That entails a capacity or faculty to act is being engaged by the agent. Since vice is a distortion or misuse of a power, then that same power must be, at least in principle, a power that can be directed towards a good outcome. Therefore, that same power can be a virtue or virtuous if it is sufficiently efficacious to enable a vice. If anger can be a “capital vice,” the “passion” that enables it can, likewise, be virtuous if it is directed towards a good end.

This is Aquinas’ thesis and that of the scholastic philosophers whose work forms the basis for Church teaching on the matter.

You keep reiterating the same points as if your view is identical to the Catholic view. However, if your view is assumed to be identical, then you assume the burden of defending it against logical problems. You can’t merely point at Church teaching as if it fully exonerates you from explaining that it is one with Church teaching.

Let me ask two other questions, then.

Is the “hero” who stops a rape, motivated by anger at the injustice about to be perpetrated, guilty of a “capital vice?”

Is his anger justified (just) and, in fact, virtuous?

You will have to explain how it would be possible to answer “No” to both those questions without placing yourself in a logically untenable position. You need to, at least, explain how YOU could answer anything BUT “No” to the first and “Yes” to the second, without reference to Church teaching in order to show that your position is defensible, aside from your contention that your position is identical to Catholic teaching.

 

[marywarfield]

Now since Clem desires to accept only the Catechism and no
other Catholic source lets look just for a moment at
the Catechism again:

From Catechism of the Catholic Church
Second Edition, as Promulgated by Pope John Paul II:

Page 866
ANGER: An emotion which in itself is not wrong, but
when not controlled by reason or hardens into hate,
becomes one of the seven capital sins.

Notice the qualifiers Clem.

Page 436 and 437 on Passions

The apprehension of evil causes hatred, aversion and fear
of the impending evil; this movement ends in sadness at
some present evil, or in the anger that resists it.

Ccc 1773

In the passions, as movements of the sensitive appetite,
there is nether moral good or evil. But insofar as they engage
reason and will, there is moral good or evil in them.

Ccc1774

Emotions and feelings can be taken up in the
virtues or perverted by the vices.

Now Clem please explain why the Catechism does not
support your view.

 

[marywarfield]

Now since Clem desires to accept only the Catechism and no
other Catholic source lets look just for a moment at
the Catechism again:

From Catechism of the Catholic Church
Second Edition, as Promulgated by Pope John Paul II:

Page 866
ANGER: An emotion which in itself is not wrong, but
when not controlled by reason or hardens into hate,
becomes one of the seven capital sins.

Notice the qualifiers Clem.

Page 436 and 437 on Passions

The apprehension of evil causes hatred, aversion and fear
of the impending evil; this movement ends in sadness at
some present evil, or in the anger that resists it.

Ccc 1773

In the passions, as movements of the sensitive appetite,
there is nether moral good or evil. But insofar as they engage
reason and will, there is moral good or evil in them.

Ccc1774

Emotions and feelings can be taken up in the
virtues or perverted by the vices.

Now Clem please explain why the Catechism does not
support your view.

Clem? This is the Catechism of the Catholic Church
published in 1994 with an Imprimi Potest from then
+Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

Anger as an emotion can be virtuous or it can be evil.

Did another Catechism come out rejecting this?

If not, can you let the rest of us discuss the development
of thus idea in peace?

 

[Peter_Plato]

Lest we wander off into unsupported opinions:

God’s speed on your journey to Catholicism.

This, too, is “uncalled for” precisely because all of the quotes you gave with reference to anger being a vice are understood by tradition to mean “never to allow anger to be engaged out of vicious motives.”

That advice does not logically mean we must acquiesce in the presence of evil or injustice. It does mean anger ought to be regulated both towards its proper target - injustice - and in terms of when and how it will be engaged.

Otherwise, anger is to be considered sinful “in itself” - which seems to be your position, but NOT that of the Church.

We know Jesus drove the moneychangers from the Temple out of anger at their deeds. We know he was without sin. Yet, he was angry. Was he guilty of a capital vice?

Again, you can’t presume your view to be identical to Church teaching merely because you can find quotes to represent one aspect of it (anger is a passion and can be a vice) without laying out the case that the Church fully denies the symmetrical aspect (anger is a passion and can be virtuous) which is not contradictory to the first, but, in fact, is logically consistent with it.

All the Church Fathers except, perhaps, St Jerome and John Cassian, do accept that anger is a passion and can be virtuous. That has been shown definitively by St. Thomas. For some reason you resist admitting the possibility.

By the way, I have read the Catechism, Scripture, many of the Church Fathers and much of Aquinas. I don’t accept that your position is tenable. Whether it is the definitive “Catholic” position is a contention you would have to defend not pretend.

 

[Peter_Plato]

But it is edifying that you seem to be interested in converting from “Socratic” to Catholicism.

I see no need to leave “Socratic” behind when converting to Catholicism. It isn’t either/or in this case. In fact, my supposition is that Socrates would take a direct path and be one of the first to cross the Tiber.

From Plato’s Republic:

We must, indeed, not allow him to seem good, for if he does he will have all the rewards and honours paid to the man who has a reputation for justice, and we shall not be able to tell whether his motive is love of justice or love of the rewards and honours. No, we must strip him of everything except his justice, and our picture of him must be drawn in a way diametrically opposite to that of the unjust man. Our just man must have the worst of reputations for wrong-doing even though he has done no wrong, so that we can test his justice and see if it weakens in the face of unpopularity and all that goes with it; we shall give him an undeserved and life-long reputation for wickedness, and make him stick to his chosen course until death…. **the just man, as we have pictured him, will be scourged, tortured, and imprisoned, his eyes will be put out, and after enduring every humiliation he will be crucified and so will learn his lesson that not to be but to seem just is what we ought to desire. **(361c-362a)

Socrates knew the “just man,” Jesus, before we knew him.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Anger is such a dangerous thing precisely because it is so difficult to control.

That anger is difficult to control would imply a lack of virtue in the respects in which it should be controlled. In other words, our inability to control anger merely highlights our weaknesses that ought to function to control anger.

Therefore, anger is not the problem. The problem is that we are too weak and dysfunctional to control it. It is those weaknesses that should be addressed, not the anger, itself.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Find for us the virtue named anger please. Find where anger is a gift of the Holy Spirit. This is nonsense.

Anger is a passion, but its proper ordering is virtuous, and thus, a virtue.

It is not a “gift of the Holy Spirit” because it is a natural endowment and not “supernatural” in the sense that gifts of the Holy Spirit direct the intellect and will towards God. Anger is directed at “injustice” which relates to a natural state of things - justice.

Your argument is bankrupt.
And thank God it is, lest we have folks believing that it is appropriate to latch on to anger, which is a passion (per Aquinas since you like him so much) with a propensity to engender vice (per Aquinas since you like him so much)
:

The part you left out is that anger is a passion with a propensity to engender vice but with an equal propensity to engender virtue when properly ordered towards injustice, which IS its intended function (as per Aquinas,) the function which is, by default, the God-created and natural function of anger (again, as per Aquinas) that is perfected in a saint.

No other anger would be present in a saint. Injustice will provoke righteous and ordered anger (a virtue) in any saint. Saints stand against injustice and anger (passion) properly ordered (virtue) that moves them to do so.

 

[Jeanne1184]

Let me ask two other questions, then.

Is the “hero” who stops a rape, motivated by anger at the injustice about to be perpetrated, guilty of a “capital vice?”

“Lord, please help me to stop my brother from trashing his soul with grave sin.”

To make intervention from the basis of of Love is different than being motivated to act from the ‘righteous anger’ of ego, to me.

 

[Peter_Plato]

“Lord, please help me to stop this man from trashing his soul with grave sin.”

To make intervention from the basis of of Love is different than being motivated to act from the ‘righteous anger’ of ego, to me.

First off our prime concern would be to stop the injustice from being committed against the woman.

What in this intervention would be the object of Love if not a strong desire (anger) to prevent the injustice of the body and soul (of the woman) being trashed - which is the proper response of love for the woman?

The evil has already taken hold of the man (whosoever looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery in his heart,) so loving intervention is not aimed (primarily) at him, but at prevention of harm to the woman.

All our passions are integrated and subsumed in love when properly ordered. Love does not leave the soul bereft of all other passions. That would be acedia…

For Aquinas, acedia is “sorrow about spiritual good in as much as it is a Divine good.” It becomes a mortal sin when reason consents to man’s “flight” (fuga) from the Divine good, “on account of the flesh utterly prevailing over the spirit.” Acedia is essentially a flight from the world that leads to not caring even that one does not care.

…It is this slothful inability to make decisions that leads baroque tragic heroes to passively accept their fate, rather than resisting it in the heroic manner of classical tragedy.
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acedia

 

[marywarfield]

“Lord, please help me to stop my brother from trashing his soul with grave sin.”

To make intervention from the basis of of Love is different than being motivated to act from the ‘righteous anger’ of ego, to me.

Well ok then I ask you the same question as Clem-
When St. John Chrystostom stated:
He who is angry without cause is in danger and he who is angry with cause is not.
And
He who is not angry when he has he has cause to be sins. For unreasonable
patience is the hotbed of many vices.

Question: was this saint encouraging us to act from simply ego?

And when the Catechism tells us anger as a passion when ordered toward
a good is virtuous and if ordered to evil is a vice, is the catechism telling
us to be more egotistical?

 

[marywarfield]

In any case we can eliminate ego as part of the equation
since there would normally be tremendous humility
involved if the anger is indeed righteous.

Therefore Jeanne’s premise is incorrect it seems to
me.

 

[vames]

@ Clem:

I understand you believe Aquinas was not catholic in his
teaching nor are the modern theologians who discuss
zealous anger as virtuous as opposed to vicious
anger as a vice. They also are not Catholics in your view.
Yes we get it. But the rest of us hold Aquinas was
Catholic in his views as were Augustine and Chrystostom.

“he who is NOT angry in the presence of great sin, sins.”

Now that is directly and literally from St. John- a canonized
Catholic saint.

I know the post is not addressed to me, but I hope you don’t mind if I insert my :twocents:

I was raised Catholic and my first catechism book contained an “examination of conscience” section where one of the questions was “Have I been angry?”. Nowhere did it ask “Have I neglected to be righteously angry? Have I sinned by being calm when I should have been virtuously angry? When I admonished the sinner as a work of mercy, did I do that without being zealously angry?” The current guidelines look like this:

Examination of conscience

Children
Have I been selfish toward my parents, brothers, and sisters, teachers, or my friends and schoolmates?
Have I gotten angry at them? Have I hit anyone? Have I held grudges or not forgiven others?

Young adults
Have I gotten angry or nurtured and held grudges and resentments? Have I refused to forgive others? Have I cultivated hatred?

Married people
Have I held resentments and anger against those with whom I work, relatives or friends? Have I forgiven them?

If the current teaching of the Church doesn’t tell us to measure our righteousness against our capacity of maintaining anger (let alone under the pain of sin), I can’t see why anyone should try to say otherwise. Augustine and Aquinas and John Chrysostom wrote a lot of things; the Church has selected only some of these things. If we notice that a certain opinion of a theologian didn’t become official teaching, it doesn’t mean we claim that these saints aren’t Catholics.

Furthermore, when we read a text that deals with a certain topic, we have to consider the whole context and spirit of our faith, because otherwise we’ll end up by justifying anything. Does the Catechism say that emotions and passions can be taken up in the virtues, justice is a virtue and the gifts of the Holy Spirit perfect our virtues? Perfect, then let’s encourage our anger and hatred under the guise of righteousness and under the blessing of the Holy Spirit and ignore the whole context of Jesus’ teaching. After all, what did He know about the subtle intellectual distinctions between hating a brother and hating a sin or between ordering our anger and hatred towards a good or a bad end?

Pope Francis said: “Are you angry with someone? Pray for that person. That is what Christian love is”. It’s precisely what Jerome noticed in his commentary on Matthew 5:22: if we love others and pray for them, all the reasons of staying angry disappear, so there’s no need to add “angry without cause”, as “man’s anger does not work the justice of God” (James 1:20). If the idea of loving others and praying for them seems like edulcorated nonsense that can’t accomplish nothing, of course we’ll need to find arguments to rationalize anger as a noble thing when it’s “ordered” towards a noble end. We’ll even need to find arguments to blame others for not maintaining it. Why? Because we suspect that without the capacity of maintaining anger or hatred, our moral discernment and our determination to act will weaken and vanish.

The Catechism says “Feelings or passions are emotions or movements of the sensitive appetite that incline us to act or not to act in regard to something felt or imagined to be good or evil” and “By his emotions man intuits the good and suspects evil”. So in a moral context, they are just primary, basic reactions. They are not sure guides. Nowhere it says that anger, hatred or fear should be maintained so as to stay with us throughout all the process of moral discernment and throughout our subsequent actions, precisely because they have this powerful capacity of distorting our reason even when we are very confident that we can master them. Acknowledging this power is a matter of wisdom, not of intellectual speculation. This is the meaning of Paul’s blunt warning:

Galatians 5

19 Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, 21 envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22 By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.

 

[Peter_Plato]

I know the post is not addressed to me, but I hope you don’t mind if I insert my :twocents:

I was raised Catholic and my first catechism book contained an “examination of conscience” section where one of the questions was “Have I been angry?”. Nowhere did it ask “Have I neglected to be righteously angry? Have I sinned by being calm when I should have been virtuously angry? When I admonished the sinner as a work of mercy, did I do that without being zealously angry?” The current guidelines look like this:

Examination of conscience

If the current teaching of the Church doesn’t tell us to measure our righteousness against our capacity of maintaining anger (let alone under the pain of sin), I can’t see why anyone should try to say otherwise. Augustine and Aquinas and John Chrysostom wrote a lot of things; the Church has selected only some of these things. If we notice that a certain opinion of a theologian didn’t become official teaching, it doesn’t mean we claim that these saints aren’t Catholics.

Furthermore, when we read a text that deals with a certain topic, we have to consider the whole context and spirit of our faith, because otherwise we’ll end up by justifying anything. Does the Catechism say that emotions and passions can be taken up in the virtues, justice is a virtue and the gifts of the Holy Spirit perfect our virtues? Perfect, then let’s encourage our anger and hatred under the guise of righteousness and under the blessing of the Holy Spirit and ignore the whole context of Jesus’ teaching. After all, what did He know about the subtle intellectual distinctions between hating a brother and hating a sin or between ordering our anger and hatred towards a good or a bad end?

Pope Francis said: “Are you angry with someone? Pray for that person. That is what Christian love is”. It’s precisely what Jerome noticed in his commentary on Matthew 5:22: if we love others and pray for them, all the reasons of staying angry disappear, so there’s no need to add “angry without cause”, as “man’s anger does not work the justice of God” (James 1:20). If the idea of loving others and praying for them seems like edulcorated nonsense that can’t accomplish nothing, of course we’ll need to find arguments to rationalize anger as a noble thing when it’s “ordered” towards a noble end. We’ll even need to find arguments to blame others for not maintaining it. Why? Because we suspect that without the capacity of maintaining anger or hatred, our moral discernment and our determination to act will weaken and vanish.

The Catechism says “Feelings or passions are emotions or movements of the sensitive appetite that incline us to act or not to act in regard to something felt or imagined to be good or evil” and “By his emotions man intuits the good and suspects evil”. So in a moral context, they are just primary, basic reactions. They are not sure guides. Nowhere it says that anger, hatred or fear should be maintained so as to stay with us throughout all the process of moral discernment and throughout our subsequent actions, precisely because they have this powerful capacity of distorting our reason even when we are very confident that we can master them. Acknowledging this power is a matter of wisdom, not of intellectual speculation. This is the meaning of Paul’s blunt warning:

Galatians 5

There is nothing in what you say above that is disagreeable.

However, my suspicion is that more of us are probably guilty of standing back and doing nothing in the face of evil than we are guilty of anger or rage. It is a question of emphasis and balance. Perhaps in the time of Paul and James the kind of vicious anger they warned against was problematic.

In our time when we are slowly lulled to inaction and diversion, perhaps a different emphasis is required. We seem quite willing to do very little in the face of millions of unborn infants being killed and are subject to endless cultural admonishments to “tolerance” even when that tolerance is in the face of acts of distinct immorality. My suspicion is that more of us living in this time will be judged for inaction in the face of evil than we will be for unbridled anger.

I see human history as a kind of universal human life writ large. Back in our infancy and during our childhood days in ancient history, the emotions of human beings, as in any childhood, were unbridled and prone to untempered expression. However, in our more “mature” existence today, perhaps we are more apt to be passive or uninvolved than would have been a problem in earlier times.

You do understand that sloth, despair, acedia and indolence are sins as culpable as those arising from more expressive emotions such as anger, fear or hatred, do you not?

 

[marywarfield]

I know the post is not addressed to me, but I hope you don’t mind if I insert my :twocents:

I was raised Catholic and my first catechism book contained an “examination of conscience” section where one of the questions was “Have I been angry?”. Nowhere did it ask “Have I neglected to be righteously angry? Have I sinned by being calm when I should have been virtuously angry? When I admonished the sinner as a work of mercy, did I do that without being zealously angry?” The current guidelines look like this:

Examination of conscience

If the current teaching of the Church doesn’t tell us to measure our righteousness against our capacity of maintaining anger (let alone under the pain of sin), I can’t see why anyone should try to say otherwise. Augustine and Aquinas and John Chrysostom wrote a lot of things; the Church has selected only some of these things. If we notice that a certain opinion of a theologian didn’t become official teaching, it doesn’t mean we claim that these saints aren’t Catholics.

Furthermore, when we read a text that deals with a certain topic, we have to consider the whole context and spirit of our faith, because otherwise we’ll end up by justifying anything. Does the Catechism say that emotions and passions can be taken up in the virtues, justice is a virtue and the gifts of the Holy Spirit perfect our virtues? Perfect, then let’s encourage our anger and hatred under the guise of righteousness and under the blessing of the Holy Spirit and ignore the whole context of Jesus’ teaching. After all, what did He know about the subtle intellectual distinctions between hating a brother and hating a sin or between ordering our anger and hatred towards a good or a bad end?

Pope Francis said: “Are you angry with someone? Pray for that person. That is what Christian love is”. It’s precisely what Jerome noticed in his commentary on Matthew 5:22: if we love others and pray for them, all the reasons of staying angry disappear, so there’s no need to add “angry without cause”, as “man’s anger does not work the justice of God” (James 1:20). If the idea of loving others and praying for them seems like edulcorated nonsense that can’t accomplish nothing, of course we’ll need to find arguments to rationalize anger as a noble thing when it’s “ordered” towards a noble end. We’ll even need to find arguments to blame others for not maintaining it. Why? Because we suspect that without the capacity of maintaining anger or hatred, our moral discernment and our determination to act will weaken and vanish.

The Catechism says “Feelings or passions are emotions or movements of the sensitive appetite that incline us to act or not to act in regard to something felt or imagined to be good or evil” and “By his emotions man intuits the good and suspects evil”. So in a moral context, they are just primary, basic reactions. They are not sure guides. Nowhere it says that anger, hatred or fear should be maintained so as to stay with us throughout all the process of moral discernment and throughout our subsequent actions, precisely because they have this powerful capacity of distorting our reason even when we are very confident that we can master them. Acknowledging this power is a matter of wisdom, not of intellectual speculation. This is the meaning of Paul’s blunt warning:

Galatians 5

I believe you are working on a false premise- that people
who love and pray for someone cannot simultaneously be
righteously angry on their bahalf.
When the anger is righteous it is not anger as we
know it. It consists from an extremely humble soul.

So giving people the impression that love and prayer
and righteous anger are somehow not sympatico is wrong.
They exist as one unit.

Those that reject righteous anger as a moral good
tend to be removed from most major religions in the
world. The only major religions that have no acceptance
of righteous anger are to my knowledge Buddhism and
Hinduism.

 

[vames]

You do understand that sloth, despair, acedia and indolence are sins as culpable as those arising from more expressive emotions such as anger, fear or hatred, do you not?

I guess I dislike indolence and passivity before evil as much as you do. I just think they are rooted in the lack of empathy and solidarity with our fellow humans. Evil actions are directed against real people (born or unborn), so if I couldn’t care less about these people, why should I try to do something to help them? If all that I care about is my own little universe and well-being, how could I perceive any evil and feel any anger?

Tolerance means that we should refrain from demonizing, repressing or killing people with different beliefs or lifestyles from our own. If someone has been desensitized towards evil, I don’t think it happened as a result of trying to becoming more tolerant (with more empathy) towards other people, but as a result of letting himself or herself become too isolated from others and too individualistic (with less empathy). A person who doesn’t care about the victim of a murder won’t care about the perpetrator either; a person who don’t care about others in general cannot be called tolerant.

Now to use your example from another post, if a woman is attacked and I jump to save her, I am prompted by my natural empathy towards her; I don’t feel anything about the attacker. All my feelings and moral reflections about the attacker and the nature of the attack (theft, rape, a quarrel between spouses) come later, because my first reaction was to defend her physical integrity from an imminent danger, not to think that an act of injustice is committed against the body and soul of a woman because the evil has taken hold of a man. I mean, I’d react the same way if the woman were hit by a falling rock etc.

 

[vames]

When the anger is righteous it is not anger as we
know it. It consists from an extremely humble soul.

Pope Francis and Jerome aren’t Buddhists. They don’t advocate impassibility. What they mean is that if you really love and pray for someone, the initial anger disappears, so there’s no reason to perpetuate it anymore. When the initial anger disappears, we become calm, not indifferent, and freed from the burden of the desire to harm our brother, an eye for an eye style. A righteous person doesn’t need continuous anger to be able to remain righteous. A judge, a jury, a prosecutor, a policeman don’t need continuous anger to do their job. Anger is a desire for revenge against someone: does an extremely humble soul seek revenge against a fellow sinner? Does a parent seek revenge against the children?

Let’s see again what Pope Francis said at the audience. I fail to see here any distinction between righteous or unrighteous anger or any promotion of righteous anger as a condition or a path towards personal holiness or achieving the common good.

Another question: what is the law of the People of God? It is the law of love, love for God and love for neighbour according to the new commandment that the Lord left to us (cf. Jn 13:34). It is a love, however, that is not sterile sentimentality or something vague, but the acknowledgment of God as the one Lord of life and, at the same time, the acceptance of the other as my true brother, overcoming division, rivalry, misunderstanding, selfishness; these two things go together. Oh how much more of the journey do we have to make in order to actually live the new law — the law of the Holy Spirit who acts in us, the law of charity, of love! Looking in newspapers or on television we see so many wars between Christians: how does this happen? Within the People of God, there are so many wars! How many wars of envy, of jealousy, are waged in neighbourhoods, in the workplace! Even within the family itself, there are so many internal wars! We must ask the Lord to make us correctly understand this law of love. How beautiful it is to love one another as true brothers and sisters. How beautiful! Let’s do something today. We may all have likes and dislikes; many of us are perhaps a little angry with someone; then let us say to the Lord: Lord, I am angry with this or that person; I am praying to you for him or her. To pray for those with whom we are angry is a beautiful step towards that law of love. Shall we take it? Let’s take it today!

 

[marywarfield]

Pope Francis and Jerome aren’t Buddhists. They don’t advocate impassibility. What they mean is that if you really love and pray for someone, the initial anger disappears, so there’s no reason to perpetuate it anymore. When the initial anger disappears, we become calm, not indifferent, and freed from the burden of the desire to harm our brother, an eye for an eye style. A righteous person doesn’t need continuous anger to be able to remain righteous. A judge, a jury, a prosecutor, a policeman don’t need continuous anger to do their job. Anger is a desire for revenge against someone: does an extremely humble soul seek revenge against a fellow sinner? Does a parent seek revenge against the children?

Let’s see again what Pope Francis said at the audience. I fail to see here any distinction between righteous or unrighteous anger or any promotion of righteous anger as a condition or a path towards personal holiness or achieving the common good.

Vanes are you possibly on the wrong thread? I was speaking
of righteous anger. I don’t believe I mentioned continued, revengeful,
condoned excited anger, disallowed forgiveness.

Again you confuse righteous anger with disordered anger
and infer I am promoting disordered anger.

I am discussing righteous anger only. If you could
do me the favor of not making inferences about me,
my understanding of Pope Francis, my motives- that
would go a long way toward a fruitful conversation.
Just as with Clem his assumption I was not Catholic
overstepped the bounds of decency your inserting ideas
into the conversation that are not a part of it is not helpful.
I also am a cradle catholic Vames from a family of cradle
Catholics for hundreds of years. I know the Catechism of
the Church.
The title of the thread is Aquinas and zealous anger.

It is NOT who is a Catholic and who is not a Catholic
nor is it entitled anger management for the dysfunctional.

Please stay within the scope of the title.
Thank you.

 

[marywarfield]

And btw, Jerome suffered from a famously bad temper. As such
tended to disallow anything positive in anger whereas
Augustine and Aquinas were of calmer temperaments
therefore not as concerned with vilifying anger as Jerome.

Anger is a natural passion given by God- like love, or
sorrow, etc. To say something given by God to
every man on the planet is to be rejected, avoided,
etc. especially in view of the fact that Jesus Himself
grew angry as did the prophets and St. Paul would
indicate God gave us something useless, without merit.
Don’t you agree? Do you believe God makes gifts of
useless attributes frequently?

 

[marywarfield]

There is nothing in what you say above that is disagreeable.

However, my suspicion is that more of us are probably guilty of standing back and doing nothing in the face of evil than we are guilty of anger or rage. It is a question of emphasis and balance. Perhaps in the time of Paul and James the kind of vicious anger they warned against was problematic.

In our time when we are slowly lulled to inaction and diversion, perhaps a different emphasis is required. We seem quite willing to do very little in the face of millions of unborn infants being killed and are subject to endless cultural admonishments to “tolerance” even when that tolerance is in the face of acts of distinct immorality. My suspicion is that more of us living in this time will be judged for inaction in the face of evil than we will be for unbridled anger.

I see human history as a kind of universal human life writ large. Back in our infancy and during our childhood days in ancient history, the emotions of human beings, as in any childhood, were unbridled and prone to untempered expression. However, in our more “mature” existence today, perhaps we are more apt to be passive or uninvolved than would have been a problem in earlier times.

You do understand that sloth, despair, acedia and indolence are sins as culpable as those arising from more expressive emotions such as anger, fear or hatred, do you not?

This is an excellent post. As to what will be held
against us in future times? Mostly likely extreme
indifference simply due to a lack of zeal in God’s service.
We live in a time when more and more people
do socially acceptable actions for God- like promoting
gentle Bible Studies or hosting meet and greets.
But we also are a people less likely to even have a
statue of Our Blessed Mother in the house for fear
of offending the neighbors.

Do you know last year I opened my home to an
person who had left the Church and joined Assembly
of God? I didn’t know this. I only knew that his son, a
friend of my daughter’s was moving to college and
the father needed a place to land for the night during
the trip so I offered him our guest room.

He got up in the morning ranting raving, literally
screaming, about my Icon of the Virgin of Vladimir
and the statue of Our Lady of Carmel.

He informed his own family that they could have nothing
to do with my daughter or myself as we were filthy harlots.

Hmmm. My husband escorted him to the door in
no uncertain terms.
Later we were told my fellow parishioners and a visiting
priest that a. We should not have asked him to leave,
B. we should have engaged him in debate, c. I should
have removed the statue and offending icon while
he was in the house in order “to keep the peace”,
and d. My husband should apologize to him for asking
him to leave.

I cried. Not over the man’s insults- I understood where
he was coming from and he can always and hopefully
will repent and return. No. I cried for the parishioners
and priest for they are just sort of dead in the water
like a sailboat without sails. I also feel if I was facing
a common enemy they are not people I would send
ahead to scout out the enemy.

Very sad. Our Church is losing it’s zeal, especially
in the U.S. and that us why we are an object of contempt
today for the likes of Vladimir Putin who feels so
sure we are dead in the water over here he calls us Godless.
When Vladimir Putin feels comfortable ridiculing us for
lack of zeal maybe it’s time we take a hard look at ourselves.
Have we become New Age cowards masquerading
as devout Catholics? Are we valuing our Constitution
over our Catechism? Are we valuing the Bill of Rights
over the Bible? And when someone insults the Holy Mother
we hide her in a closet lest she be offensive?