Pints With Aquinas - 129: Aquinas on Anger, with Fr. Chris Pietraszko

Episode Date: October 23, 2018

Sup, please become a Patron of Pints With Aquinas here. Oh, and subscribe to my Youtube channel here. Today I interview Fr. Chris Pietraszko about what Aquinas had to say about anger (or wrath).  Fr. Christopher is a priest in the diocese of London, Ontario, Canada. He devotes himself to on-going studies and an apologetic ministry. Check out Fr. Pietraszko's podcast, Fides et Ratio, here. SPONSORS EL Investments: https://www.elinvestments.net/pints Exodus 90: https://exodus90.com/mattfradd/  Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd  STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/  GIVING Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mattfradd This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer coproducer of the show. LINKS Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/ SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd MY BOOKS  Does God Exist: https://www.amazon.com/Does-God-Exist-Socratic-Dialogue-ebook/dp/B081ZGYJW3/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586377974&sr=8-9 Marian Consecration With Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Marian-Consecration-Aquinas-Growing-Closer-ebook/dp/B083XRQMTF/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586379026&sr=8-4 The Porn Myth: https://www.ignatius.com/The-Porn-Myth-P1985.aspx CONTACT Book me to speak: https://www.mattfradd.com/speakerrequestform    

G'day and welcome to Pints with Aquinas. My name is Matt Fradd and your name is Tricia. That's probably not Tricia, although there's probably at least one listener named Tricia who just totally freaked out. Am I right, Tricia? Am I right? What am I doing? Oh, yeah. Hey, welcome to Pints with Aquinas. We are joined around the bar table today by Father Chris Prochaszko, very holy priest, good man, lives in Ontario, Canada. And we're going to discuss anger. What purpose does it play? What does Aquinas have to say about it? Can it be negative? I think we all understand it can be negative. So how do we avoid negative anger? Can we live anger- free? It's a very philosophically

interesting episode as well as a very practical one. So enjoy the show, especially you, Tricia, especially you. G'day, g'day. Welcome back to Pints of Aquinas, the show where you and I pull Who's in your house? posting some pretty cool stuff on that YouTube channel. And if you are not, you know, subscribed, you're going to be missing all this great content, you know, and then people will be talking about it and you won't know what's going on. You're going to feel like a loser. Well, you don't want to feel like a loser. So go and subscribe to my YouTube channel. Oh, also, um, those shirts I talked about last week, non nissite domine. I know what you've been thinking. You'd be like, I should get one. I totally should get one.

It's Latin and I'm a geek. Well, you have till 12 p.m. today, people. That's not long. 12 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. So go on over and get it because then they're gone. What else? Oh, I also want to say this. All right.

I really want to say a big thanks to everybody who has chosen to review Pints with Aquinas on iTunes. If you're one of those people, give yourself a pat on the back. But if you haven't yet, go and review it for goodness sake, right? Hey, why not? You know, it helps us when people search stuff like Aquinas and Pints and anger, I don't know, stuff like that. And we'd really appreciate it. Just imagine I'm standing next to you, looking at you disapprovingly until you do it. You know, good Catholic guilt. Who says it's not good for anything? It's good for that. Do it or don't, but do it or don't, but do it. Unless you want to give us a one-star review and then why waste your time on such a crap podcast? You know, it's not even worth it. I wouldn't worry

about it. But if you want to give a five-star review, go do that now. I'm going to shut up now. Here's the episode. Father Chris, it's good to chat with you again. Yeah, likewise, Matt. It's been about five months. That's how it feels. Yeah, it's been a while. How have you been? I've been very good. I just got back from about a month's worth of vacation up north. Nice. Where's that of vacation uh up north nice where's that where's up north oh i should say yeah i'm in canada so northern canada um which for most americans is

all of canada um but anyway uh yeah it's up near sudbury area and uh my family has a cottage with no electricity no plumbing oh you're kidding that's a nice cabin yeah it, no plumbing. Oh, you're kidding. That's awesome. Nice cabin. Yeah, it was good. No plumbing. No plumbing. You got to bury it. You got to bury it. Wow. But I grew up there.

That's cool. Yeah, I love it. Did you grow up without plumbing? No, no. What I mean is I grew up going there on vacations. Yeah, no. Growing up without plumbing would suck. Yeah, let's be honest.

Oh, that's cool. I had a month off the internet, as you know, and that was really great. It's amazing how less distracted I am without the constant distraction of the internet. Yeah, you feel more peace in your life? I did. Not anymore. I came back and the world was on fire. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's right. Hey, I'll just question. What's it like being a priest wearing your Roman collar right now? Oh, my gosh.

When I got back from vacation, that was during my vacations when all that news hit. So when I got back, you know, I hadn't been in my collar when I go fishing and that kind of thing. So I was thinking of going to the mall and um to pick up a couple of odds and ends and uh right away i thought uh this is i just felt this pressure to not wear my collar yeah to be to be perfectly priest these days. But the reality is, this is my two cents, but I want to willingly do whatever God wants me to do in this situation. So I thought of how many priests have died and that were guilty of some sort of sin and that they went unpunished. And I thought, you know, maybe this is just a small sacrifice on my part that if I get any barbs or any kind of assaults or anything like that in public, I can just take that on in reparation.

But the exact opposite, of course, happened. There's something really strange happening in the church right now because ever since the abuse scandal has broken out, our parish has just had this influx of people registering, people coming back. Yeah, and I've heard this from other people, too. It's probably because you're a holy priest celebrating Holy Mass well. Do you think, like, are are we done i just feel like some people are done with just the yeah i mean i i don't know cultural catholicism which probably doesn't exist anymore and we just want reverence and i don't know but so your friends that you're also hearing this from though are they holy priests who are trying to celebrate the mass reverently a lot of them are uh but what i would think is, I'm also hearing this from the

laity. And so I don't know that you can just sense the Holy Spirit is really, really purifying the church, but also eliciting a response from the lay faithful that is righteous. And I'm pretty excited about that. I know that there are people that are probably falling away and I don't want to, you know, not grieve that. But on the other hand, I do think that God is definitely, there's this influx and of grace that's coming in with the light that God is shining on the church today. Yeah, that's awesome. I am about to open what sounds like a beer, but it's actually a spin drift. Sparkling water and real squeezed fruit.

That's it. Well, that's good because it's nine o'clock in the morning. Let's be honest. Yeah. It would be problematic right now. How awkward if I'm like, I'm drinking scotch. And you'd have to gently correct me as a loving spiritual father at nine in the morning on air. Yeah, I would do it privately. Oh, that's good. I appreciate that.

Well, today we're talking about the sin of anger. And speaking of anger, right? Speaking of scandal in the church and making people angry, Aquinas had a lot to say about anger, didn't he? of scandal in the church and making people angry, Aquinas had a lot to say about anger, didn't he? He did, yeah. I was hoping that we could talk a little bit about, before we go into the sin of wrath, talk about righteous anger. Sure. Well, that's right. Let's talk about, I'm sure you feel a righteous anger in regards to what's taken place in the church. Yeah. I mean, anger is a gift from God. It's part of our emotions, our three core emotions, which we know are happiness, sadness, and anger. And actually, St. Thomas Aquinas spends

a lot of time talking about all these emotions, especially when he's speaking about the seven deadly sins, and where they go right and where they go wrong. And, um, our anger is, um, he says a couple of things about it, but one of the things that I, I absolutely loved about it that kind of threw me off was he said that anger is always associated with hope. And yeah. Um, and the Interesting. humble process. But the hope and the experience of confronting injustice with hope is what anger does for us. And when I read that, you know, first of all, the issue of injustice kind of threw me through a loop because I thought, well, you know, I get angry about things that aren't necessarily matters of justice. I thought of, you know, what about those days when the weather really sucks? And I'm angry about it. But then I realized all of a sudden, okay, well,

that actually makes my anger pretty petty, because I feel like the weather owes me something. And the moment that I use that term, oh, I'm using a category of justice and I'm applying it to the dumb forces of nature in terms of weather. I can just see people in California right now judging you, being like, how could you get angry about the weather? He lives in Canada. He wears some sort of coat for like eight months of the year. So true. But yeah, so I think that the anger we experience, we have to understand why it's there. And Aquinas just has this psychology that's so simplistic, but it really shines a lot of light on it. And that helps us maybe kind of be more intentional and discerning about when we're experiencing anger. So there has to be this perceived injustice, which means we have to have

this conversation with ourself, which is, is this injustice defined by my ego? Is it injustice defined by some objective principle or standard or relationship? And can I surrender to whatever that is? Because we cannot overcome any of the deadly sins without first building up ourselves in humility, speaking the truth to ourselves about it. So he brings those two together. And the one thing that I like about anger is that when we're holding on to it, it's because we're also holding on to a hope that we can somehow overcome this injustice. I just want to give you a trivial example of when I get angry, right? So suppose I actually hurt myself or somebody jumps out and scares me.

You know that feeling where you get immediately angry? I don't know if it's – I think men – this is probably not always true, but it seems to me that men tend to do this more than women, and it might be because we're embarrassed. We're embarrassed that we were scared, and so we get angry. This is kind of what I do. Somebody jumps out, like, oh, my goodness, you kind of scared me. Yeah, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm going to kind of calm down. I have a funny story for you my my my dad was saying to my niece she's in grade one but he was saying uh he was you know playing around with her and she said grandpa you can't scare me and my my dad said oh yeah and so later on you snuck up on her and uh just growled and she punched him right in the nose. Did he get angry? No, he didn't.

Good. She started crying because she felt so bad because that impulse to protect yourself came through. But she started crying. My dad just said to her, oh, don't worry, Gwen, I deserve that. But I just thought it was so funny how our anger can be a really good defense mechanism that we have built in with ourselves. And I know we're going to read a little bit directly from Aquinas, so we're going to get into this in greater detail. But how would you just sum that up for somebody listening? Like, what's the difference between anger and righteous

anger? So, like anger that's sinful or wrath, maybe you want to distinguish those two, and then righteous anger. Yeah, I would say, ultimately, wrath is an unreasonable expression of anger. Is that why you would call it wrath? Are you trying to distinguish anger from wrath and using that word? Correct. So the deadly sin of wrath. Now, I know the term wrath can be used in all sorts of different ways. We can talk about it in terms of God's wrath, which is always righteous. But in this particular case, when I say wrath, I'm speaking about the deadly sin of anger, where anger goes sinful. And we experience that when it becomes unhinged from reason and truth. And so it could be just like, I'm personally slighted by this correction, therefore I'm going to be angry. But if that slight is actually a genuine true statement

that we need to listen to, That's our ego defining what justice is. And therefore, our wrath, our anger is stirred up within us in an evil way. I like that. So like a passion or an emotion unhinged from reason. Exactly. In that sense, yeah. Whereas righteous anger would, of course, be defined as, you know, something that's united to what the true nature of justice is and clinging to a hope of restoring that justice, which I think is an obligation as Christians, as human beings to cling to. And so I actually think that it can be sinful to not become angry.

Right. The situation warrants it. Well, see, this is helpful because there are people listening to this who struggle with anger, right, in their families, in their workplaces, or wherever else. And it's kind of nice to know that anger serves a purpose. So, it's not a matter of just shutting that down completely. It's just that it's sort of, it's in, what do you say, like override, or it overrides the intellect, right? So, we're not, so we're kind of saying to somebody struggling with anger, look, anger can be a good thing and it serves a purpose. We don't want to dismiss it

altogether. We don't want to shut that down altogether. Is that right? Absolutely. And I think in the process, we want to make sure that our faculties are in control of our anger rather than our anger being in control of us. And what I mean by that is if you're going to be angry, let's say, as a parent with your children or as a priest with your congregation when you're preaching, you want to be intentional about it. You don't want to fly off the handle and then say, oh, why did I do that? Um, so sometimes it's actually a loving thing to show someone that you are angry, but at the same time demonstrate that you are not out of control in the process of being angry. And what's so interesting is like from a parent's point of view, I know this is true. Like sometimes I'll get angry and I'll shout. And the reason I'm doing that is because

I feel out of control and I'm trying, there's an injustice in my mind, right? In the sense that chaos has ensued. And now I'm trying to reestablish order through my authority as parent, right? As father. But when I yell, the very thing that I want, I lose. And that is control. It's ironic. And I think it's funny because I keep going back to this idea that one of the greatest gifts that God has given us is our ability to reason, to align ourselves to the truth. And we just, we divest ourselves of this great gift and we become like beasts when we just allow our passions to consume us. And I was thinking about that in regard to something that I think I had earlier had a conversation with you about, which is even about swearing, the language that we use.

You know, I was thinking, I was talking to a good friend of mine named Joseph, and he said, you know, it's funny because when we start swearing, he says it always reminds him of becoming like apes, where we're just pounding our chest and we're making these statements that are devoid of reason but are just emotional and in the process we're losing touch with our ability to rationally express ourselves and and i think that that vice even let's say, it's a venial one in the moment, it is chipping away at our interior freedom to have some control over what we're saying and what we're intending to do. There's a great book by Francis Selman called Aquinas 101. It's a basic introduction to the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. I'd highly recommend it to anyone interested in getting a better grasp on Aquinas. Here's a sentence or two from him on anger.

He says, the spring of anger seems to be hate rather than love. But even here, love is the cause of anger because anger desires to avenge injustice. Thus, St. Thomas describes anger as the appetite for revenge. It arises from sadness at a wrong done to oneself. An angry person seeks the evil of harming someone under the aspect of the good of restoring justice. He says much more, but I thought that was a nice way of summing it up. And what I found so fascinating when I was reading Aquinas in seminary was we had a whole class on vengeance, on Aquinas' take on vengeance, which was so counter-cultural and counter-intuitive to my Christian sentiments at the time, because Aquinas actually says that vengeance is a virtue. Wow.

Where are we looking here? This is in the Secunda Secunda? I believe this is 108 in the Secunda Secunda Article 1. Okay. He says, if, however, the avenger's intention is directed chiefly to some good to be obtained by means of the punishment of the person who has sinned, for instance, that the sinner may amend, or at least that they may be restrained by others and be not disturbed, that justice may be upheld and God honored, then vengeance may be lawful, provided other due circumstances are observed. And so, that's just a small snippet of what Aquinas is saying, whether vengeance is a virtue or not. So by vengeance, does he just mean justice rightly meted?

Correct. Is that kind of what he means? Yeah, yeah. So there's a form of penal evil that we're inflicting upon a sinner. And so, you know, you see this in nature. I remember the first time I went to pick up a dog with my parents as a little kid. All these little puppies were nipping at the mom. And the mom, female dog, ended up nipping back at the children just to show them how it felt.

And it wasn't over the top. It was an eye for an eye in a sense. It was just a teaching moment, an opportunity. Now, the challenge that I find is that often in our Christian sentiments, people say, well, vengeance belongs to the Lord Father and dip back into this very passive place, pacifistic place. But, you know, love belongs to the Lord too. You know, in fact, it's so, in other words, we're not going to...

Doesn't mean we ought not to love, yeah. Yeah. Love belongs to the Lord. Cut it out. Yeah. Yeah. You know, but so the point maybe perhaps of that statement is that God defines what is justice and what is love, and we surrender to those realities and we become their ministers rather than the one arbitrating a definition of what vengeance is out of my ego and so on and so forth. This sums up what you just said there. This is reply to objection one in article one of question 108 in the Secundi Secundae. He says, He who takes vengeance on the wicked in keeping with his rank and position, that's important,

does not usurp what belongs to God, but makes use of the power granted him by God. Yeah. And that's from Romans 13.4 that he's appealing to later on. Yeah, it's, you know, so there's a lot of discernment that goes into this process of enacting vengeance. We have to make sure and discern that we have, first of all, that role, not just as a private individual going up to someone and, you know, slapping them in the face, but that we have to discern whether we have that authority over them or whether we can pursue those maybe who do have that authority over them to hold them accountable. Mm-hmm. All right. Well, do we want to look at any of these articles in particular on anger from question 158? Yeah, let's go there um i found this article two is really fascinating

because he talks about you know anger unhinged from reason how we've described it isn't really anger per se it sounds like he's saying that anyway so he says um this is from the respondio in article two anger as stated above is properly the name of a passion. A passion of the sensitive appetite is good insofar as it's regulated by reason, whereas it is evil if it set the order of reason aside. Now, the order of reason in regard to anger may be considered in relation to two things. First, in relation to the appetible object to which anger tends, and that is revenge. Wherefore, if one desire revenge to be taken in accordance with the order of reason,

the desire of anger is praiseworthy and is called zealous anger. On the other hand, if one desire the taking of vengeance in any way, whatever contrary to the order of reason, for instance, if he desire the punishment of one who has not deserved it or beyond his deserts, or again, contrary to the order prescribed by law, or not for the due end, namely the maintaining of justice and the correction of defaults, then the desire of anger will be sinful. And this is called sinful anger. You know, it's interesting because he uses what I would call as a modern day swear word in theological terms, which is revenge.

He's using this term revenge. But in fact, he describes it as the object of the action. And in fact, it's a good object. So what does he mean by that? And it goes back to vengeance. It's just another form of pursuing justice through punishment. to vengeance is just another form of pursuing justice through punishment. But we're discussing here that whole order of reason that we're not just allowing our anger to be assigned to anything that we want it to be, but rather it has to be in line with the truth. And that's where I think

there's a level of self-denial that comes into this process of experiencing anger for two different groups of people. For one, the group of that person who's maybe experiencing cowardice to confront evil, that they have to surrender to the truth and say, no, this is something that I'm obligated to be angry about. To the person who's maybe giving way to too much passion of anger in the sense that it's all about me, it's all about how I feel, they have to deny themselves and say, but what's the truth in regard to how much anger is needed? How can I moderate this to make it really proportionate to the evil that's in fact happened? And how can I make this not about myself, but about justice and about a relationship with God and my neighbor? Right. And he's saying, of course, part of it has to do of the intention of the one acting or

giving out vengeance, like even if he says vengeance ought to... So this is the second, but I'll just read him. He's much more coherent than I am. Secondly, the order of reason in regard to anger may be considered in relation to the mode of being angry, namely that the movement of anger should, I love this, not be immoderately fierce, neither internally nor externally. So not raging from within, seething from within. If one is to do that, one is still kind of committing this sin of anger. Nor externally. And if this condition be disregarded, anger will not lack sin, even though just vengeance be desired. Yeah, that's such a profound spiritual point. Immoderately fierce. If you can be immoderately fierce, then presumably you can be moderately fierce. You know what I mean?

I don't usually think of fierce as something that could be virtuous. Yeah, but he's saying it is. And this is perhaps maybe something our culture is in need of challenge is there's a repressive tendency towards anger. tendency towards anger. And as if anger is a automatically negative and unjust emotion to experience. And this is actually, this could lead to exactly what that's talking about, which is just purely internally angry and just controlling it and sucking it into ourselves and just pretending it's not there. Yeah. I feel like we in the West, or at least the English speaking West, I'm thinking of America and Australia, don't tend to start shouting crap out, you know, like in lines or in traffic or in traffic, maybe we do, but that's because we're behind a windshield. But if you go to like Italy or like some of these Eastern countries, it seems like there's people can be a lot more angry,

but it's okay. You know what I mean? There's a lot more kind of shouting and getting upset with each other. I'm thinking curb your enthusiasm. You know, it's like people are just going to get angry all the time, but no one's going to getting violent. Whereas here, it's like we all have to be polite. Shouting is a really bad thing to do. Well, and the automatic interpretation of anger for many is if you're angry at me, it means you hate me. And so there's an unfortunate marriage of hatred associated with anger in the sense of personally attacking a person rather than pursuing some sort of justice. pursuing some sort of justice. And that, I think, is actually why when I went to a conference in Boston for vocations a number of years ago, they said that there was a personality

disorder that I was developing amongst young adults at that time. And they kind of described it as conflict avoidance. There's this inability to enter into conflict and this need to just kind of acquiesce. And I think part of the reason is because anger is, you know, if you're angry, it means you're not a good Christian. But I disagree with that. I think, in fact, the church needs more angry Christians, reasonably angry Christians, because how else is the church going to be purified if we have nothing but a bunch of enablers in the church? We need people that are angry at injustice that are going to hold it accountable. And so for anyone listening that might be on the edge and thinking that, well, my anger makes me reconcile to belong to the church. No, in fact, that might be a sign that God is pushing you to enter in and fight for the church more profoundly.

To that point, here's a quote from Catherine of Siena that I love. She said, I don't know where the reference is, but apparently she said it. We've had enough of exhortations to be silent cry out with a hundred thousand tongues i see that the world is rotten because of silence and of course she was uh one of the reasons she became a saint is that she was the one who criticized and rebuked the holy pontiff and to return back to Rome. Yeah. And she was a lay woman. She, she was third order, but she was a lay woman and the church has, has honored her for, for being bold, a bold witness of Christ. And,

and when we discern her office, you know, to, to be able to speak to the Pope like that. Well, she spoke out of her, you know, her baptismal call out of her being a priest, prophet and king. So all of us are going to be called to confront those realities. And I think that's where anger is a good. But we have to, please, please take time to discern that. We cannot, and that's where I think, you know, social media sometimes can become an echo chamber and we really need to discern our faculties and check our motives and really kind of examine the facts and not make up our mind about things before

we've had the opportunity to genuinely look over them. I say all that thinking in the back of my mind of a parishioner of ours who's a lawyer, and I've run into a couple of them. I had one homily on the abuse scandal, and a crown attorney that was persecuting, uh, one of the, um, guilty priests just happened to be there when I was preaching about the importance of law. And he, he said, he's never felt so validated. Oh, that's wonderful. Yeah. And I said, well, you know, he's, he said, thank you. I said, well, thank you because, you know, we as a church need to be held accountable. Because we as a church need to be held accountable. None of us are above the law.

And what is that, ultramontanism or something like that? This idea that none of us, all of us are going to be held accountable, both to natural justice and to God's divine justice. So I think that that's not a personal attack on anyone, but it's really actually a form of mercy because justice itself frees us from committing sins, from continuing those sins. But it also holds us accountable in the truth so that we can acknowledge our sins and be healed of them as a community or as an individual. So justice is not in opposition to mercy. In fact, justice is often a type of mercy. It's a painful one.

And that's where I think, you know, as we have lawyers in our community as a church that have sued churches for whatever, could be abuse, could be, you know, burn victims of some sort of negligence. I don't know. Whatever it could be, we have these lawyers that are actually fighting for justice. And we need to make sure that they know that they are welcome because they're actually building up the kingdom as they do this. Now, I say that and I'd like to add just a short caveat because there are some people that think it's just to try to destroy the church as well. And so we have to find that middle ground where there are lawyers that are actively trying to help the church become more just. And then there are people that are trying to destroy the whole institution because they've come to believe that the whole thing is evil. And I think that's, again, where we would say we have to pursue justice reasonably. In this case, the Church of Christ, the Catholic Church, belongs

to Jesus. It belongs to him. And if it's been hijacked, we have an obligation to win it back for him because it's his church, it's his wife that's being abused, and we have to defend her. And so, we don't throw her away. We fight for her. And that's where I think the justice can be properly framed. Sorry, I didn't mean to go on. No, that's okay. No, I understand you wanted to also kind of round that thought out. So, okay. So, sinful anger. There's this phrase in Latin, agere contra, where if you feel inclined to commit a sinful act, you then act against that inclination. So, if I'm tempted to greed, you know, then I will go against that in giving, let's say,

the biggest slice to the person I'm serving or the better, you know, whatever. What's the contrary virtue to the sin of anger? Yeah, it's meekness. What's that and how do we develop that? Let me just open up. Sorry. I mean, my understanding is that meekness is like gentleness with others, with the faults of others. But it's interesting that many people probably don't know what meekness means.

Yeah. So I think meekness is a type of leniency towards another. So this is what Aquinas says. He says it's a type of leniency. Where is this that you're looking? I'm looking at, is it 157 Article A in the second part of the second part. So he says consequently meekness is insofar as it restrains the onslaught of anger concurs with clemency towards the same effect. So clemency is the key word there, I think yet they, uh, differ from one another in as much as

clemency moderates external punishment while meekness properly mitigates the passion of anger. Break that down. So, I think meekness, here, I'll give an example, because Dante in his purgatory, actually, Dante seems to me very ptolemistic in his tradition. in this tradition. He gives the example of our Blessed Mother, who sees that Jesus has abandoned them, has gone to the left state at the temple. And this is his counter example to the sin of wrath is that Mary, instead of just yelling at Jesus, making up her mind about why he did what he did and throwing out all sorts of punishments. Instead, Our Lady asks Jesus a question. And she says, why would you do this to us? And I think that's such a profound example of what meekness is, is it's you're kind of offering some sort of deference to the other person. You're saying, let me kind of understand what you're kind of offering some sort of deference to the other person. You're saying, let me kind of understand what you're going through. Let's not make up our mind about things before we know

too much. And so she's mitigating perhaps what a fallen person would experience, which is this temptation to jump to conclusions because of our anger, because of how we feel. And she rather gives God the benefit of the doubt by asking him a question. So I think what Aquinas is saying here with meekness in regards to the passion of anger is that it's actually what prevents anger from just becoming this extreme force unhinged from reason that's just totally rolling out of us without much thought. Meekness is saying, let me try to entertain in my heart and my thought something good for this person. Let me try to see what is truly good for them. Let me try to be lenient in any way that is just that I can be to this person. Whereas clemency is specifically dealing with an act that we're giving to a person, an external punishment, while meekness is more of an internal reality that will manifest itself outwardly. The reason why I think it's important, I'm a big follower of Bishop Robert Barron. I

absolutely love everything. I listened to your podcast with him, which I thought was phenomenal. But in his, what you call it, the Seven Deadly Sins, he actually says that the counter virtue to wrath is forgiveness. And I don't disagree that forgiveness can be a form of meekness or a way of, let's say, contradicting or mitigating that passion of anger when it becomes unreasonable. However, it doesn't always apply to every form of wrath, which would therefore make it not the counter virtue. Because people can make us angry or can elicit anger within us. And they've done nothing wrong. And the proper response is not to forgive them. I mean, that would be kind of insulting to justice is to say, you know, I don't know if you've ever experienced someone that you've done something just and they come up to you and say, well, I forgive you.

You know, it's kind of like it's it's it twists you up. Well, there's nothing to forgive. And that's where forgiveness is as a form of clemency, born of meekness can be an expression of meekness. But it doesn't always apply to anger. And the problem with attributing forgiveness as a counter-virtue to all forms of wrath is it assumes that anger is always in response to some form of injustice, objectively, but it's not. form of injustice objectively, but it's not. There are times when we are angry about things that we shouldn't be angry about when we're corrected and we don't want to be corrected, you know. And so, I think that's something I just wanted to clarify. I think that might

be important to look at. Yeah. How do we begin cultivating this virtue of meekness? Hmm. Well, I think one possible way is to look to Christ, who by his own meekness has given us the opportunity to have some hope that we'll go to heaven. In the sense that, you know, he's willing to forgive our sins if we acknowledge them and repent of them. So if we appreciate receiving meekness, we will therefore imitate it to others. There's a really powerful image. I think it's in the Sistine Chapel of the Last Judgment where Jesus has one arm flexing and the other arm that's

lenient. And so it demonstrates both his mercy and his justice, his meekness, I would say as well. And so in that image, we have to hold the two together in attention. So in order to make sure our meekness doesn't just become a form of passivity, I think we need to make sure that, um, that we understand that meekness is serving justice, that we're trying to create a more righteous person when we're clement to, when we're offering them clemency. Um, it's difficult, isn't it? When you have to walk a fine line, you know what I mean? I said earlier that it's nice to know we don't have to completely disregard anger, shove it in a closet because it can serve a purpose. But the downside is you have to use it well, which can be a lot more difficult. You know, I mean, Aristotle talks about bending a bent stick kind of back past the center point so that it'll

eventually be straight. And so I was going to ask you, if somebody's struggling with anger, say at their spouse or their children or their co-workers, you know, would you recommend them emphasizing meekness for the time being in order to try to grow in that virtue? But the problem is, yeah, because the problem is that there are some times where you ought to take vengeance in the way that Aquinas would say that, you know. I had this experience a number of years ago where I was trying to grow my relationship with Our Lady during my time in the seminary. And this image came to me when I was praying of Our Lady walking me down to the beach. And she was pointing out the water, which was stirred up very rapid.

And she said, what do you see at the bottom? And I said, I don't see anything. I just see the waves. And she said, and then all of a sudden the waters calmed and the light could penetrate through them and you could see to the bottom. through them and you could see to the bottom. And what I experienced in that moment of prayer was Our Lady was saying that we can only make good judgments when we have this interior peace, when there's a sort of calm and reasonableness to what's going on, which is why St. Ignatius says we shouldn't make big decisions in periods of desolation. The point is, is that we need to regain control of our faculty to reason and get rid of this impulsivity that is in control of us. So part of that process is exactly what

you're saying, which is that if our impulse is to go towards anger and wrath, then we need to not only stop ourselves from doing that, but also generously offer meekness and then maybe take some time to reflect on what is the right thing that I do. If we're angry about something, my dad's advice to me was number one, don't drink. Number two, wait a day at least to decide what you're going to do with that anger. And so, you know, because we sometimes just don't have the clarity of mind to discern God's voice from all the other voices that we're hearing, all the other pressures that we're hearing. So even waiting could be a form of meekness. And I'm not talking about giving the person the silent treatment. That's just passive aggressive.

But I'm talking about an actual, you know, if a smile towards the person that you're really angry with, even if you don't feel it inside you. And then to say, can we talk, you know, another day when you're a little more calm and you're able to, to express it? I mean, it depends on every situation, um, depending on how complex and how immediate they are. But I think in general, um, that's probably a very practical way of building up the virtue of meekness in our lives. Yeah. I like that when you're talking about, you know, attention to the heart, you know, um, if heart. If we walk around with sort of stirred up distractions and passions, it's very difficult to see anything clearly, isn't it?

We think people are slighting us when they're not. Yeah. And that's the last thing is Mary's example I think is a profound one. To ask questions before you accuse. You know, to ask questions before you accuse. First of all, it doesn't burn a bridge when you don't need to burn one. Because if you're entering into a miscommunication, what you're doing by asking a question is you're saying, well, maybe I've misunderstood this, you know. So I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt.

Could you explain why you did what you did? Instead of jumping down the person's throat, having everything all kind of made up in our mind. And so asking questions, I think, is actually a way of respecting the person that we're angry at, opening up our mind to the whole truth so that we can make sure that if we are going to be angry, it's going to be about something truthful and not some narrative that we would prefer. Yeah. This is going to sound like a bit of a detour. There's this chapter, The Brothers Karamazov, where Ivan, one of the brothers, is walking home and he realizes he's experiencing something, but he doesn't know what it is. And he's thinking like, what is it? You know, what is this mood that's at the base of all this? And I just want to read this here. He says, or the author says, the strangeness lay not in the anguish itself, but in the fact that Ivan Fyodorovich simply could not define what the anguish consisted of.

He had often felt anguish before, and it would be no wonder if it came at such a moment, when he was preparing the very next day, having suddenly broken with everything that he had often felt anguish before and it would be no wonder if it came at such a moment when he was preparing the very next day having suddenly broken with everything that he had that had drawn him there to make another sharp turn entering upon a new completely unknown path and yet at that moment though the anguish of the new and unknown was indeed in his soul he was tormented by something quite different okay so i read more than I needed to. But the point is, it's like how many of us do that? Like that introspection. I love how Dostoevsky talks about that

because you notice like, what's going on? Like what did... And maybe you'll remember, ah, it's what that person said to me last night. Or it's because I did this or this happened this morning and I didn't really think it through, but now I feel it rising up within me. And I kind of think that in this digital age where we're never bored and continually distracted, we're not often aware, we're not often cognizant of those moods beneath the surface that perturb us, you know? And this is why it's so important to sort of step back from these distractions and to pray and to think and to allow our mind to unwind so that we can get in touch with what's going on within ourselves,

as opposed to continually plunging outward, you know? Absolutely. I think that's so crucial. And what does Cardinal Serra prescribe for that, right? In his book is silence. And I think it's important to recognize that silence is an interior silence. But when it's an interior silence, it means that we're listening, that we're listening. think about our readings this last week, that we're open to the truth, we're open to the Word, and we realize that we need His Word to whatever truth is, justices, we need to be open to that. But we can't be when we are so immersed in the voices of ourself or of the world or of the evil one, whatever it is, we really need to discern God's voice out of all of it, which is why vengeance belongs to the Lord. It doesn't belong to the world. It doesn't belong to us. I often think it's important to realize that we very rarely stop to reflect upon all that other people have to put up with when it comes

to ourselves. You know, like I think to myself, oh, gee, this kid's too much like this. Why does my wife do that? This person eats too loudly. This person speaks too closely. This person's always leaving a mess. But I don't often think, how am I like a real pain in the butt to my family? I mean, they have to put up with a lot about, you know, these irritating habits that I have and that I never consider them. You know, and I think most of us are like that. Like we're idiots. We just walk around essentially thinking we are Jim from The Office and everybody else is messed up. But we're kind of like the one normal one in our life thing.

And I think it's really important to realize, like, you know, it's amazing you have any friends at all. Like you are disgusting. And I think it's really important to realize, like, you know, it's amazing you have any friends at all. Like, you are disgusting. It might be helpful to say it that frankly. Yeah, I guess that's kind of true. Like, I am pretty annoying. Yeah, I don't find you that annoying, Matt. But I do think that there's something to take away from when we experience annoying habits, like you're talking about eating.

It just brought me back to the seminary, actually. Just this guy who just would shove an entire muffin in his mouth and salivate for the next 15 minutes. And you're hearing it, and it's just like fingernails on a chalkboard. But this practice that I kind of tried to form is asking myself, is that how, like the feelings that I have right now, is that how I make Christ feel when I sin? You know, or like any kind of irritable experience. And yet he endures it so perfectly with love and patience. with love and patience. And so again, I'm turning to the Lord to try to be my inspiration to somehow, you know... You know, one of the 12 was eating in a gross way in the upper room, you know? Exactly. Or when they would get together, you know? One of them had body odor, you know? But it just becomes... Bad body was probably judas though probably um but i i do

think that that there's a sort of game mental game that we can play that's that's actually beneficial to our spiritual life when when we look at the things that are irritating us and others and try to turn them into something purifying and saint teresa or teresa Teresa of Lisieux did that when she heard the clacking of the rosary beads that drove her absolutely nuts. But she just tried to bring them into something that was pleasing to God in her own psyche. And I think those are things that we can do to try to chasten our irritability or anger. It's just to take ourselves kind of out of the equation a little bit and bring God back into it. I also feel, and this just comes out of the equation a little bit and bring God back into it. I also feel, and this just comes from my perspective as a parent, I think there are a lot

of parents out there who really want to be good parents. They're not, and so they become, or they act, sometimes they're not, maybe they are, but they act in ways that, you know, they yell at their kid, they fly off the handle, maybe they, whatever they do. And then they think, gosh, and they feel shame, tremendous shame. And then that sort of that child or that spouse or whoever, and the shame kind of become associated. And so that whenever they see that child, they get angry because they don't like feeling like a failure. And speaking of kind of bending the stick back the other way, I know in my experience as being a father, when a child begins to irritate me,

I really pray to push past that and to sort of be physically affectionate with that child then and there. You know what I mean? Yeah. So to sort of like, okay, I'm going to hug him or her. I'm going to lay in bed with her tonight and read her a story. I'm just going to go say something kind to them. I like going up to my kids and I'm like, hey, look at me.

It's really good that you exist and I like you. Something like that. And just pushing past. It's almost like that can stir up our emotions in a good way. It reminds me of somebody who said, if you're having trouble loving the scriptures, do something overly emotional, like get down on your knees and kiss the pages,

you know, emotionally and thank, you know, to kind of stir up the emotions, which God's given you. Yeah. You don't want to become a robot, right?

Because, because that, that is a huge gift that God has given us, is every aspect of our being, which is part of our emotions. You know, they need to be healed, but they don't need to be repressed or turned off. So, and sometimes eliciting passions towards good things is, in fact, one of the best ways to to foster that change i i wanted to add just one more point um that just came to my mind as you were talking was are you familiar with father uh ripperger i'm not okay well anyway i was listening he's a he's a he's a thomist and um i was listening to one of his talks and he this is specifically for the men out there, is that he was saying that today in our culture, men struggle with effeminacy.

And you might be wondering where I'm going here, but one of the things that he was saying in regard to that was actually anger. He said that as men, before the fall, we were created to kind of be in charge of our anger and he sees it as a type of softness when we give into our anger um impulsively and and so for for the men out there you know um sometimes we look at just being angry all the time and flying off the handle as something macho or something masculine but his point in fact, it's a form of weakness and softness, and it's the result of us going towards what's comfortable to us. It's an inability to endure agitation.

Absolutely, to make sacrifice. So I think that's maybe a good caveat for anyone listening, is that there's something strong in a man who's angry but is also willing to be meek at the same time because there's an incredible amount of self-restraint and thinking about another in the process of that. And that requires more strength than just flying off the handle. In fact, flying off the handle is one of the forms of incredible weakness that we need to rage against as men. Well, as we wrap up here today, let's get a little practical. So, you are a priest, you hear many people's confessions, no doubt, I'm sure people have come to you and confessed the sin of anger. Do you have some final kind of practical tips for those listening who are struggling with anger? Other than what we've already said, of course.

Yeah. I would maybe go to the passage in Scripture where Jesus is righteously angry in the temple when he's flipping tables over and and listen to what he says about what is causing his anger his anger is ultimately focused on a love for the father and for the father's will and that type of anger is is very sacred and holy and i think that if we can tether our experience of anger habitually to glorifying God and defending Him when His name is offended, I think we're on the right track. And I just add that to everything else we've already said. Yeah, I'd recommend people check out Dr. Ray Garendi. You might be familiar with him from Catholic Radio, but he's written and spoken a lot on the issue of anger. You might be familiar with him from Catholic Radio, but he's written and spoken a lot on the issue of anger.

So if you were to type in anger, Ray Garendi or Dr. Ray, there's actually some videos of his. It's called Control Anger and Self-Help for Parents. And so he's really great, Dr. Ray. There's no sort of duplicity in him, as Christ said to someone else, right? He's very much himself, and he gets the plight of parents and how difficult it can be. And he also has a book called Fighting Mad, Practical Solutions for Conquering Anger. So, I just add that to the advice already given that that might be helpful, because it's an embarrassing thing to get angry, because you get angry, and then you look at yourself, you're like, wow, and it's the same with any sin, quite honestly. It's sort of like before

someone acts out sexually, so they masturbate to porn or something. Only afterwards, in sort of the sober light of reality, can you look back and be like, oh, that was really pathetic. Like, wow, wow, oh, gosh, that's what that actually is. And so so we don't want to be trapped in our shame and embarrassment because that's not a good place to stay. So I think if there's people listening, check out that. And also, don't think you're too good to see a counselor or to see a therapist. I go to a therapist on a weekly basis to discuss certain things. And there are certain things that a therapist, psychiatrist, psychologist is trained to deal with that, say, a spiritual director isn't necessarily trained to deal with. So, you know, don't be afraid to seek out help because I think, you know, it takes a lot of courage to realize when you need help and reach out for it.

So, yeah. Awesome. That's it, man. Well, thank you so much, Father. Tell us about your podcast and some of the work you're doing so people can follow you i see i see you have a new logo or for your podcast and stuff right or yeah i i just uh got a website through podomatic um and uh what is it uh gosh it's like it's my last name so it's like really why don't you just add a link uh i would just a

bit of a bit of a advice, a friendly advice. Never use your last name in a, in a, cause your last name, I don't even know how to right now. I could, if you bet me a hundred bucks, I couldn't get it right. Przeszka here. P-I-E-T-R-A. No idea. No idea.

Yeah, that's right. So far. Uh, P-I-E-T-R-A-S-Z-K-O. That's my last name. Yeah, Poland polish anyway yeah you know i got a podcast called fidei at razzi you can get it on google play or on itunes and uh it just means faith and reason um i put up my youtube uh or not my youtube videos i put up my um classes and my uh homilies sometimes up there um yeah check it out yeah i'll put up a link in the show notes thank you very much for being with us thanks all right guys i hope you enjoyed that episode thank you so much for tuning in week after week to pints with

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