What's the difference between righteous and selfish anger

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How acceptable are feelings or sinful emotions or are they all immediately condemned?

I’m learning. Is self righteousness meaning feeling too pleased or content with your own standards of morality?
Or does that mean justifying whenever you’re wrong? Like thinking if you become angry, it’s righteous but if others do it they are sinful?
 
Well, first the first point is that emotions aren’t sinful. They’re rarely voluntary. It’s what we do with them that counts.

As far as anger goes, I don’t choose to differentiate between types; in the practical management of anger, I will firmly stick with St. Francis de Sales. Read Introduction to the Devout Life, Section 3, Chapter 8. It’s only a few pages long. I’ll give you the highlights I put on my bathroom mirror yesterday:

Quoting St. Augustine:
It is better to deny entrance to just and reasonable anger than to admit it, no matter how small it is. Once let in, it is driven out again only with difficulty.

Quoting James 1:20
The anger of man does not work the justice of God.

St. Francis himself:
When we find we have been aroused to anger we must call for God’s help like the apostles when they were tossed about by the wind and storm on the waters. He will command your passions to cease and there will be a great calm.

I was recently given some modernist advice about anger in the confessional, chose to go with it against my better judgement, and quickly learned that I made a horrible mistake. I’m now in a very scary position, and I don’t know how to extricate myself. Learn from my mistake. Stick with St. Francis. Just leave it alone.
 
Emotions are human. It’s natural to feel them and often we need to work through them. However, we can’t be a slave to our emotions.

When we feel an emotion, it usually motivates us to have further thoughts or do actions based on that feeling. We need to stop and look at these further thoughts and actions and see if they’re something Jesus would do, or if not, pray and work on our responses so we act more like Jesus.

The Bible shows Jesus had emotions just like us. He felt happy, sad, angry, loving, frustrated, lonely, etc. like we do, because he was human. It’s what he did with those emotions that mattered.
 
MrsAngelala said:
chose to go with it against my better judgement, and quickly learned that I made a horrible mistake.
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The beatitude of meekness. I’ve learned that being Catholic places an additional demand on us and even the slightest acting on anger comes with a heavy price while others seem to constantly go into fits of wrath and injustice and simply get away with it. It’s a very narrow path to walk especially when you are caught in a position you can hardly escape from and the toll of injustice threatens to cause you objective damages of great gravity. And let’s not be fooled, pagan friend circles specialize in objectively gathering to cause damage and injustice. Their success at this depends on God permitting and your wisdom, given a hostile group they only need to succeed once at provoking you while you have to keep coherent composure for years on end.
 
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Jump4Joy said:
How acceptable are feelings or sinful emotions or are they all immediately condemned?
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Feelings/emotions are not sinful. They are part of normal human functioning, like your digestive system. They exist. Sometimes they are uncomfortable, and sometimes they offend you or others, but they are not “immoral”.
Jump4Joy said:
Is self righteousness meaning feeling too pleased or content with your own standards of morality?
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God wants us to be pleased and content with HIS standards of morality.
Jump4Joy said:
Or does that mean justifying whenever you’re wrong?
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Justifying wrongdoing is also a natural human response…It is almost like a reflex. It requires the cultivation of humility to overcome this tendency.
Jump4Joy said:
Like thinking if you become angry, it’s righteous but if others do it they are sinful?
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Anger is the God given response to injustice. What can be sinful is how we manage and express the anger.
 
dochawk said:
Knocking over tables and whipping with your belt isn’t quite “meek”

🤣
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Maybe, but Jesus’ cleansing of the temple was not a pure “act of passion” but was a very calculated one.
The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

John 2:13-22
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See how Jesus actually used His act of anger to bolster the faith of His disciples during the event and after?

I think that is how we should act when angry: when the passion of anger reaches us, we must act with reason. That is especially hard when angry because anger actually feels good; this is something the ancients has always known (see Summa Theologiae, I-II, Q. 48, A.1). Therefore I think this something else we should do when we act to something that makes us angry: we must not feel good about reacting to something out of anger; indeed we must do something we really do not like to do at that moment.

It really feels good to say or do something while angry, right? Then don’t; close your mouth and walk away.

When a car cuts you off and possibly even kill you if you had not reacted on time, wouldn’t it feel good to honk your horn, catch up with them, roll down your window and start shouting at them right? Then don’t; pray for him and observe the car from afar, then call the appropriate authorities if it seems the driver isn’t fit to be driving from your observations.
When St. Vincent de Paul felt inclined to anger, he would refrain from speaking and also from acting, and above all, he would not make any decisions until the feelings of anger were under complete control. He used to say, that actions, though apparently good, when done while in a state of agitation are not fully directed by reason and hence cannot be perfect. Therefore in these instances, in spite of the heat of anger, and pretexts of zeal, we must utter nothing but kind and affable words in order to win our neighbor to God.
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The difference ?

Murder - and strong disappointment.

Today’s day and age, people love - to get “ you “ angry -
Cause when your angry - they can rat you out that much more easily !
 
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You used a quote block for your section about St. Vincent de Paul. Where did you pull this quote from? I’d like to read the source.
 
I think selfish anger is a sign of a foul temper and someone who can’t control themselves while righteous anger is the sign of someone with a well formed conscience.
 
Self-righteousness, related to pride, always exalts the self. It’s opposite is humility of course, and the qualities outlined in 1 Cor 13 describing love describe the fruits of that humility, always self-sacrificial in nature. Love causes obedience of God, “God-righteousness”, while self-righteousness allows us to justify any and all behavior we happen to value at the time. Due to this, self-righteousness /pride is the primary cause of sin; it was Adam’s original sin in fact. All evil is done in the name of achieving some perceived good.
 
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The truth has no feelings. Why should we chafe or recoil when faced with the bluntness of our character defaults
 
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