An anger image | Katie van Schaijik
Tags: anger, newman, wrath

A chapter about the passing of Cardinal Newman I came across tonight concludes with some description of his reputation among his Victorian English contemporaries.  Some were dismissive or contemptuous.  Others—clerics, men of letters and statesmen like Gladstone, revered him for his moral stature and literary genius.

But it is with the name of a poet, the only one of the Victorian converts to the Church with a vision in literature transcending his own, that I shall end my list of the lovers of Newman—even as in a procession the greatest figure is the last:

Sweetly the light
Shines from the solitary peak at Edgbaston,

sang Coventry Patmore, who understood that even the polemical disputant had “peace in heart” if “wrath in hand,” and that in his most trenchant moods he but displayed “the gold blazonries of love irate,” never “the black flag of hate.”

How I love that phrase “the gold blazonries of love irate” as a description of holy wrath!

Another frowned-upon emotion | Katie van Schaijik
Tags: anger, emotion, unhappiness

A Wall Street Journal review of two pessimistic books meshes nicely with Podles’ point about anger denial.

“Bright-Sided” opens with Ms. Ehrenreich’s discovery that she has breast cancer. Immediately she finds herself drawn into the intensely feminine, beribboned world of the modern sufferer, with its cuddly stuffed bears, personal-testimony Web sites and insistence that the patient put on a happy face: “Positive thinking seems to be mandatory in the breast cancer world,” she realizes, “to the point that unhappiness requires a kind of apology.”

Americans disallow unhappiness; Christians disallow anger.
I’d say American Christians have a serious reality-deficit problem to contend with.

Podles on anger and the virtuous life [updated] | Katie van Schaijik
Tags: anger, leon podles, wrath

A propos of more than one of our on-going discussions, friend Scott Johnston points me to this archived Touchstone article by Leon Podles, author of a more-than-sobering book about the clerical sex abuse scandal.  Podles argues that common distortions of Catholic teachings have led to a general misunderstanding of anger and its right uses in the moral life—a problem that came to head in the scandal but extends well beyond it.

Mark Serrano confronted Bishop Frank Rodimer, asking why he had let his priest-friend Peter Osinski sleep with boys at Rodimer’s beach house while Rodimer was in the next bedroom: “Where is your moral indignation?”

Rodimer’s answer was, “Then I don’t get it. What do you want?” What Serrano wanted Rodimer to do was to behave like a man with a heart, a heart that is outraged by evil. But Rodimer couldn’t; his inability to feel outrage was a quality that had helped make him a bishop. He would never get into fights, never rock the boat, never “divide” but only “unify.” Rodimer could not understand why he should feel deep anger at evil, at the violation of the innocent, at the oppression of the weak.

Podles goes on to show that this anger deficit is at serious odds with the views of great Catholic theologians and moral philosophers:

Wrath is a necessary and positive part of human nature: “Wrath is the strength to attack the repugnant; the power of anger is actually the power of resistance in the soul,” wrote Josef Pieper. The lack of wrath against injustice, he continued, is a deficiency: “One who does good with passion is more praiseworthy than one who is ‘not entirely’ afire for the good, even to the forces of the sensual realm.”

Aquinas, too, says that “lack of the passion of anger is also a vice” because a man who truly and forcefully rejects evil will be angry at it. The lack of anger makes the movement of the will against evil “lacking or weak.” He quotes John Chrysostom: “He who is not angry, whereas he has cause to be, sins. For unreasonable patience is the hotbed of many vices, it fosters negligence, and incites not only the wicked but the good to do wrong.”

My sense and sympathies are generally with Podles here.
I think it’s undeniably true that we Christians are taught to feel guilty about our anger and to suppress it to a fault—to the serious detriment of ourselves and our communion.  The idea that anger is bad and negative—a sign of moral weakness and lack of virtue—is so strong and widespread that many Christians feel justified in dismissing the claims and testimony of anyone who expresses anger on the grounds of that anger alone.  Rather than attending to what the other is saying and asking the question whether it is true, we shake our heads in sorrow over his lamentable “anger issues”.  I have seen it again and again, including from prominent Catholic leaders.

But I cannot go as far as Conrad Baars—the great Catholic psychologist also cited by Podles—when he claims that feelings are “outside the realm of morality and guilt” (cf. Born Only Once, p.97).  It seems to me rather that a right integration of anger into the moral life will involve not just discernment about what to do with my feelings, but about whether or not those feelings are justified by and proportionate with the moral reality before me.  If they are not justified and proportionate, they are blame-worthy—something to apologize for and correct.

Benjamin Franklin on anger | Katie van Schaijik
Tags: anger, benjamin franklin

This seems worth keeping in mind while we’re discussing anger.

“Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one.”

What divides us? | Katie van Schaijik
Tags: anger, wrath

A propos of our discussion on anger and holy wrath, I am both dismayed and challenged by this passage from Boston Archbishop Sean O’Malley’s blog entry describing his attendance at Senator Kennedy’s funeral.

At times, even in the Church, zeal can lead people to issue harsh judgments and impute the worst motives to one another.  These attitudes and practices do irreparable damage to the communion of the Church.  If any cause is motivated by judgment, anger or vindictiveness, it will be doomed to marginalization and failure.  Jesus’ words to us were that we must love one another as He loves us.  Jesus loves us while we are still in sin.  He loves each of us first, and He loves us to the end.  Our ability to change people’s hearts and help them to grasp the dignity of each and every life, from the first moment of conception to the last moment of natural death, is directly related to our ability to increase love and unity in the Church, for our proclamation of the Truth is hindered when we are divided and fighting with each other.

Is it fair to suggest that the critics of the decision to allow President Obama to give a eulogy at a Catholic funeral for a pro-abortion public figure are motivated by “judgment, anger or vindictiveness”?  Can he give them no credit for concern with true and justice and moral clarity?  And what of the irreparable harm done to the communion of the faithful by Catholic public officials promoting abortion and living scandalous personal lives?

What do others think?

UPDATE:
LifeSiteNews has an article expressing an opinion more like my own (hat tip American Papist), by Msgr. Ignacio Barreiro Carámbula, Doctor of Dogmatic Theology and head of the Rome office of Human Life International

In the same way that publicly incoherent Catholics might be denied communion, these persons can also be denied ecclesiastical funeral rites. The Code of Canon Law establishes, Can. “1184 §1. Unless they gave some signs of repentance before death, the following must be deprived of ecclesiastical funerals: 3/ other manifest sinners who cannot be granted ecclesiastical funerals without public scandal of the faithful.”

It’s that “public scandal of the faithful” that I thought missing from Archbishop O’Malley’s blog item—that I think missing from much of Catholic ethos and practice today.  Needless to say, this ties into our forgiveness discussion as well.  Can there be meaningful forgiveness where there is no repentance?

Msgr. Carambula gets even stronger and more specific:

We are informed by the press that the person who received the recent funeral in Boston gave some signs of repentance; but those signs were not specific at all with regards to the many grave and public violations that he committed against the teachings of the Church. Even if the signs of repentance would have been judged sufficient by competent local ecclesiastical authority, the problem of the scandal remains because the ordinary of the place where the funeral was officiated could not have been ignorant that the funeral was going to be turned into a celebration of the life of that particular person.

A child psychologist’s insights on anger | Katie van Schaijik
Tags: anger, child psychology, wrath

I’m reading a book I wish I’d read 20 years ago, before my children were born.  It’s called Between Parent and Child, by Dr. Haim G. Ginott.  It includes some insights relevant to our discussion of anger, and not, I think, unrelated to the prudishness problem.

In our own childhood, we were not taught how to deal with anger as a fact of life.  We were made to feel guilty for experiencing anger and sinful for expressing it.  We were led to believe that to be angry is to be bad…With our own children, we try to be patient; in fact, so patient that sooner or later we must explode.  We are afraid that our anger may be harmful to our children, so we hold it in, as a skin diver hold his breath…
Emotionally healthy parents are not saints.  They’re aware of their anger and respect it.  They use their anger as a source of information, an indication of their caring.  Their words are congruent with their feelings. [His emphasis.]
There is a place for parental anger in child education.  In fact, failure to get angry at certain moments would only convey to the child indifference, not goodness.  Those who care cannot altogether shun anger.  This does not mean that children can withstand floods of fury and violence; it means only that they can stand and understand anger that says, “There are limits to my tolerance.”

I would be very interested in hearing what Personalist Project adviser, Danish psychologist Dr. Peter Damgaard-Hansen would say to this.  He has done a lot of important work on the problem of anger and I suspect would have a different take.

Stevenson’s wrath | Jules van Schaijik
Tags: anger, damien of molokai, sadness, stevenson, wrath

I just read an open letter, wonderfully written by Robert Lewis Stevenson (the author of books like Kidnapped and Treasure Island), in defense of Blessed Damien of Molokai against the pharisaical slander of a certain Reverend Hyde. The letter strikes me as a great example of just the sort of holy wrath so sorely missing in today’s (Church) culture (see Katie’s previous post).

Stevenson apparently knew Reverend Hyde personally, and even had some cause to be grateful to him.  But he considered that no reason to remain silent:

…there are duties which come before gratitude, and offences which justly divide friends… Your letter [in which Hyde calls Fr. Damien “a coarse, dirty man, head-strong and bigoted” and accuses him of not being “a pure man in his relations with women”] is a document which, in my sight, if you had filled me with bread while I was starving, if you had sat up to nurse my father when he lay a-dying, would yet absolve me from the bonds of gratitude.

Stevenson’s defense of Fr. Damien is noble and convincing, but also vehement.  It is clearly a fruit of his outrage, wrath and indignation.  It simply could not have come about without these.  Mere sadness would probably have kept silent.  For, as Aquinas explains, “sorrow by its very nature gives way to the thing that hurts” while anger “strikes at the cause of sorrow” and “cooperates with fortitude in attacking.” (I-II 123,10 ad. 3)

Stevenson’s letter is itself a concrete illustration of the place for “holy wrath” in society.  It also contains a good example of it.  Towards the end, Stevenson writes that he had heard rumors of Fr. Damien’s alleged impurity before, and he relates how this rumor was received by one of the bystanders:

A man sprang to his feet…‘You miserable little -’ (here is a word I dare not print, it would so shock your ears).  ‘You miserable little -,’ he cried, ‘if the story were a thousand times true, can’t you see you are a million times a lower - for daring to repeat it?’

Would that the Reverend Hyde had reacted similarly:

I wish it could be told of you that when the report reached you in your house, perhaps after family worship, you had found in your soul enough holy anger to receive it with the same expressions; ay, even with that one which I dare not print; it would not need to have been blotted away, like uncle Toby’s oath, by the tears of the recording angel; it would have been counted to you for your brightest righteousness.

Ronda Chervin on Anger | Katie van Schaijik
Tags: anger, ronda chervin

These remarks in a comment thread below by Dr. Ronda Chervin deserve an entry all their own:

I am a disciple of Dietrich Von Hildebrand,a professor of philosophy at Holy Apostles Seminary and author of many books including one on anger entitled Taming the Lion Within: Five Steps from Anger to Peace.
I would like to share a few key points about anger that might be helpful:

First we need to distinguish hot anger, expressed in screaming, throwing things,etc,and cold anger characterized by inner resentment, withdrawal, etc.
Then there is just and unjust anger. Just anger is directed to real injustices directed against us or others. Unjust anger comes when we are furious without cause, for example when rightly upbraided for bad behavior (the pouting child in the corner for example).
Self-righteous anger can be just or unjust. In any case, according to Thomas Aquinas, even if anger is just, it should never be disproportionate, out of control, unforgiving, or vengeful!
Dietrich Von Hildebrand analyzes Pharisaic anger as involving enjoying sitting on the throne of truth hurling denunciations at others. Even if we are justly angry we should be deeply grieved by the sins of others vs. enjoying sitting on the throne of truth hurling denunciations.

I have been involved in a great self-help group called Recovery, International (not 12 step). The founder, a psychiatrist Abraham Low, coined an expression that is greatly helpful to me.

It is symbolic victory. We like to feel strong. In many things in life we are weak or inferior to others in talents or virtues or just in ability to overcome adversaries. To compensate for our feelings of weakness we indulge in hot or cold anger because anger makes us feel, to use Biblical imagery, like lions instead of weak lambs.

Examples I give to illustrate this: a driver is speeding dangerously. We are weak. Even if we called 911 it could be too late for avoid an accident killing us or our loved ones. Some compensate for this unbearable feeling of weakness by screaming at the driver through his or her CLOSED window. This is a symbolic victory. The curses don’t actually hurt the dangerous driver who can’t even hear them, but they give the lawful driver a feeling of being a raging lion instead of a lamb ready for the slaughter.

Take any example of anger if your own life or in controversies you read about such as handing of pedophilia by the Bishops and check to see - even if my wrath is justified, is it disproportionate, unjustifiably sarcastic, unforgiving, vengeful in the sense of indulging in symbolic victory in my head as I wish the bishops disaster and maybe gloat over the millions that are being paid out in law suits.

How should I deal with it instead? It is right to be angry at cover-ups. I should pray much more for the victims, the pedophiles and the bishops than I do. I don’t think that I am okay if I say a one line prayer for each of these groups after 2 hours of vitriolic sarcastic hurling of denundiations from the throne of truth.

Anger, passivity, bureaucracy | Katie van Schaijik
Tags: anger, bureaucracy, passivity

Mona Charen’s column today jives nicely with the discussion about wrath.

Here’s one line:  “Some of this is the bureaucratization of America — the deliberate attempt to drain individual judgment and initiative from life.”

Where’s the wrath? | Katie van Schaijik
Tags: anger, sadness, sex abuse, wrath

A Zenit item about the Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ $660 million settlement with over 500 victims of sexual abuse is titled, “Spokesman: Church Saddened by Pedophelia”.

Father Lombardi spoke of the attitude the Church takes regarding the crime of sexual abuse.
He said: “Cardinal Mahony explained—as John Paul II and Benedict XVI have said many times—that the Church is evidently and above all saddened by the suffering of the victims and their families, for the harm caused by the grave and inexcusable behavior of some of its members, and is firm in its resolve to avoid future vile acts of this kind.
“The agreement, and the sacrifice it involves, are also a sign of this resolve, of the decision to close a sorrowful chapter in history and to look forward in terms of prevention and the establishment of a secure environment for children and young people in all areas of the Church’s pastoral work.” [my emphasis]

I raise this question for discussion:  Is sadness the right response to wrongs of this kind?  What about wrath?

In a review of Leon Podles’ disturbing book, Sacrilege: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church, Adventist pastor, Bill Cork, argues that lack of due anger is part of the problem.

For Thomas Aquinas, anger is a necessary element of the virtue of fortitude—fortitude isn’t a matter of just putting up with evil, or of enduring sorrow, but includes actively resisting evil, bravery in the struggle, and anger at the evil which has led to sorrow. Summa Theologica, IIa-IIae, Q. 123, Art. 10.

Leon Podles is angry, and wants us to be angry, too. He wants us to be angry at the sin of sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy. But more than that, he also wants us to be angry at the bishops and pope for not being angry at that same sin. That’s what irks him about this crisis more than anything else—never have the bishops or popes expressed any anger that priests molested kids or that other bishops covered it up and transferred the predators to new hunting grounds.

I tend to agree with him.  But I would love to know what others think.