The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 237: The Morality of the Passions (2025)

Episode Date: August 25, 2025

Together, we examine The Morality of The Passions. Fr. Mike unpacks and explores the different elements of the definition of “passions”. He emphasizes that while passions, themselves, are neither good nor bad, there still is a moral component to them. It is what we do with our passions that can either contribute to virtue or vice. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 1762-1775. This episode has been found to be in conformity with the Catechism by the Institute on the Catechism, under the Subcommittee on the Catechism, USCCB. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/ciy Please note: The Catechism of the Catholic Church contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.

Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to The Catechism in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in scripture, and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a year is brought to you by Ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity in God's family as we journeyed together toward our heavenly home. This is day 237. We are reading paragraphs 1762, to 1775, all about the passions. As always, I am using the Ascension edition of the catechism, which includes the foundations of faith approach, but you can follow along with any recent version of the catechism of the Catholic Church. You can also download your own cacism in a year

reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com slash cI. And you can also click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates, daily notifications. Today is going to be the day. It's going to make it back to you. Day 237. Paragraph's 1762 to 1775, all about the passions. In fact, about the morality of the passions. Yesterday, we had a chance, oh, man, how good is this? Yesterday, we had a chance to talk about the sources of morality. What makes an act good? What makes an act evil?

What are the three components? Essential components that make an immoral act, either morally good or morally bad. Remember, it was the object chosen, the end or the intention, and then the circumstances. Today, we're talking about some of that inner world stuff. And the recognition is, what does term passion even mean? It's this. It's the term passion belongs to the Christian patrimony. So basically feelings or passions are emotions or movements of the sensitive appetite that gets more technical, hang on, that incline us to act or not to act in regard to something felt or imagined to be good or evil.

So there you go. The definition of passions is in paragraph 1763. If you want to take a look at that ahead of time or after the fact, either way, it's going to be great. Probably want to take a look at it a couple times because we recognize that these are feelings and that not just feeling feelings. These are feelings that wouldn't even feeling feelings. I don't know what I mean. I mean, these are feelings. Again, they're natural components of the human psyche. And the sensitive appetite, what do we mean about that? Well, we recognize that we have an appetite. We have a will, right? The

will is what enables me to choose. The appetite is what draws me. The appetite is what moves me. The appetite is that inner world, that thing that I want, I grasp, I seek out after this thing. And the appetite, again, can be anything. It can be that I long for honor. I long for fame. I long for. I long for or love, those things that we don't even will, but we just simply experience, we feel them. That is the movement of the sensitive appetite that incline us either to do a thing. I want to be a great basketball player. So this passion, this drive, this hunger, like the kind of thing that like, I don't know, singers would sing about and poets write about and athletes like, you know, I always had this

drive, that kind of thing, to do the thing or not to do the thing. We recognize that there's sometimes someone who has some kind of self-discipline and they're going to say, yep, I'm not going to go out tonight because I have this innate or this inside of me, this sensitive appetite that turns away from, you know, the things that get in the way of my achieving these goals, basically. Now, it's not just about goals, though. This is to act or not to act in regard to something felt or imagined to be good or evil. So remember we talked about Christian Smith the other day and how he had discovered, really, that American young adults, by and large, did not have the ability or the categories to make moral decisions.

So there's this sense of sometimes there's things that remember they wouldn't even use, many of them wouldn't use the word this is good or evil or bad or better good, but they would say this is stupid or this is just dumb or that's just sick. So it's regard to something either felt or imagined to be good or evil. So that sense of it's drawing me towards something good or it's drawing me away from something bad, that appetite or can do the opposite, right? I can be drawn to the evil thing. I can be repelled by the good thing. We're going to talk about those passions and also about how they fit into the moral life today. So that's a lot of an intro today.

I apologize for that. Let's get launched in by calling upon the Lord. We pray. Father in heaven, we give you thanks. Truly, truly, truly. You've made us human beings with bodies and souls, those bodies. We have desires in our hearts of desires in our bodies. We have desires in ourselves, in our psyche.

Lord God, and you've made us, you've given us these, so many of these desires. but also so many of these desires have become distorted. So many of these desires have experienced the result of the fall. We experience fear where we should not fear. We experience bravado where we should be humble. We experience greed where we have enough. We experience all of these emotions, anger when we're not justified in this. Or Lord God, we know that sometimes our justified emotions, we act on.

in not good ways. We twist them. We feed those that shouldn't be fed and we don't feed those that should be fed. Lord God, just give us clarity today. In the midst of our passions, in the midst of this call to live a moral life and a good life, we ask that you please,

refine our emotions, refine our passions. Make those that should be strong, strong, and make those that should be said no to. Give us the ability to have a will that is in charge of our passions. Give us the ability to have an intellect that knows when it's the right thing to run and when it's the right thing to stand and fight. Oh, God, help give us an intellect that knows when to act and when not to act.

And give us strong passions, strong passions so that we can respond to life with power and with strength. In Jesus' name we pray, amen, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Today is day 237. We're reading paragraphs 1762 to 1775. Article 5. The Morality of the passions. The human person is ordered to be attitude by his deliberate acts. The passions or feelings the experiences can dispose him to it and contribute to it. Passions. The term passions belongs to the Christian patrimony. 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. The passions are natural components of the human psyche. They form the passageway and ensure the connection between the life of the senses and the life of the mind. Our Lord called man's heart the source from which the passions spring. There are many passions. The most fundamental passion is love, aroused by the attraction of the good. Love causes a desire for the absent good and the hope of obtaining it. This movement finds completion in the pleasure and joy of the good possessed. 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 To love is to will the good of the other All other affections have their source In this first movement of the human heart toward the good Only the good can be loved As St. Augustine said Passions are evil if love is evil

And good if it is good Passions and the moral life In themselves, passions are neither good nor evil They are morally qualified only to the extent that they effectively engage reason and will. Passions are said to be voluntary either because they are commanded by the will or because the will does not place obstacles in their way. It belongs to the perfection of the moral or human good that the passions be governed by reason. Strong feelings are not decisive for the morality or the holiness of persons. They are simply the inexhaustible reservoir of images and affections in which the moral life is expressed.

Passions are morally good when they contribute to a good action. Evil in the opposite case. The upright will orders the movements of the senses it appropriates to the good and to beatitude. An evil will succumbs to disordered passions and exacerbates them. Emotions and feelings can be taken up into the virtues or perverted by the vices. In the Christian life, the Holy Spirit himself accomplishes his work by mobilizing the whole being, with all its sorrows, fears, and sadness, as is visible in the Lord's agony and

passion. In Christ, human feelings are able to reach their consummation in charity and divine beatitude. Moral perfection consists in man's being moved to the good, not by his will alone, but also by his sensitive appetite, as in the words of the Psalm, my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God. In brief, the term passions refers to the affections. or the feelings. By his emotions, man intuits the good and suspects evil. The principal passions are love and hatred, desire and fear, joy, sadness, and anger. In the passions, as movements of the sensitive appetite, there is neither moral good nor evil. But, insofar as they engage reason and will, there is moral good or evil in them. Emotions and feelings can be taken up in the virtues or perverted

by the vices. The perfection of the moral good consists in man's being moved to the good, not only by his will, but also by his heart. Okay, there we have it, paragraphs 1762 to 1775, the morality of the passions. Okay, so on one hand, the passions are amoral, right? They're neutral. They are something that's, they're neither good nor bad in and of themselves. To feel anger or joy, love, or hatred, a fear, sadness,

anger, say that already, maybe said it twice. It's in paragraph 1772. It highlights these. It says the principal passions are love and hatred, desire and fear, joy, sadness, and anger. To fuel those on their own is simply amoral, right? So that's, it's, they're just, they just are. In some ways we can look at that. And there's a lot of us, right? There's a lot of stuff in our lives that just, they're amoral. They're neither in and of themselves, they're neither good nor bad. So we'll keep that in mind. At the same time, there is a moral component. And that's why Article 5 is all about the morality of the passions, because there is a moral component to this.

So let's begin by defining what passions are. So you might just say it like this, passions are feelings. I mean, you can make it really, really simple. But I think there's something good about paragraph 1763 that offers a deeper definition. So passions are what? They're feelings or 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. on their own feelings are neither good nor evil, right? We call that amoral. That's different

than immoral. That's with an I am. Immoral is wrong, right? Amoral is neither good nor bad. It's neither moral nor immoral. In so many ways, the feelings we feel, they're just are. You might call them like they're part of the raw material that we have to work with, right? So you might be someone who's more inclined to anger, to feeling that anger. You might be someone who's more inclined to be optimistic, right? to kind of feel a pleasantness about you, that is neither good nor bad. If you're the kind of person who's naturally more cantankerous in the sense that you experience, uh, we'll say, uh, negative emotion versus someone who is more optimistic or pleasant and you experience more, a higher degree of positive emotion, then that's, that's neither good

or bad. That's neither virtuous nor vicious. Now, at the same time, this is where everything hangs. what we do with that that's where we either grow in virtue or we grow in vice right so if i'm someone who's naturally more inclined to a negative negative feelings negative emotions and i feed that then i become that cantangorous person i use the word cantankerous before but we need to be clear just having negative emotion is on its own it's it's not the best right but it's not a vice yet if i act on that if i feed it then i'm becoming a cantankerous person then i'm becoming more vicious right same kind of thing when it comes to someone has a lot of positive emotion. If I feed that and I channel that positivity or maybe use that positivity united to virtue,

then I become not only a happy person. They seem like a pleasant person, but I might even become a joyful person. I might even become a generous person. I might even actually use that natural disposition I have any towards positivity to help other people. And in that case, it would be growing in virtue. Now, I can also take the negative emotion and channel it. into, like, so I have negative emotion about an injustice. I really actually become angry when I see something wrong.

Okay, you can, that's, see anger on its own, neither bad nor good. But if I channel that anger into acting positively, right, if I channel that anger of like, this is something unjust happening, this is something wrong happening, and then I act in virtue that I stand up for the person who would need to be stood up for, that I see that homeless person and I say, this is wrong, I want to do something about this. So if I see that person who's being bullied, whatever the thing is, right? If that anger moves me to good action, that becomes virtuous. Similarly, you know, my pleasant feelings, I'm always pleasant.

I'm very agreeable. Maybe that's, maybe your natural disposition is you're someone who's really more agreeable than disagreeable. And that leads you to inaction, right? You see injustice, but you don't care. That you see something that's wrong. And you're like, yeah, but I mean, we're all fine. Everything's fine.

I'm fine. And that agreeableness, right, can sometimes lead us to a place of vice where I didn't act when I should have acted. Now, in paragraph 1765 and 1766, it highlights it says there are many passions, but the most fundamental passion is loved, which is aroused by the attraction of the good. Now, why would the church say the most fundamental passion is love? Now, why would the church say the most fundamental passion is love? I would say it like this, that if we recognize the passions are the driver, right? The passions are the engine, right? The engine that either moves us to act or not to act.

That love is the most powerful of all of these drivers. Because other powerful drivers, they can be good, they can be helpful, but they also, they're not the same as love. Like, for example, fear. I used anger earlier too. Fear and anger, those also can be powerful drivers. But they're not powerful drivers in the same way that love is a powerful driver. In fact, it says here in 1765, it says,

the apprehension of evil causes hatred, aversion, and fear of the impending evil. In this movement ends in sadness at some present evil or in the anger that resists it. Again, powerful and good, but love, love is will, is to will the good of the other, is to choose the good of the other. And I love how 1776 kind of ties it up with a bow here and says, all other affections have their source in this first movement of the human heart toward the good. and all other affections have their source in this first movement of the human heart to the good. Again, those other things, hatred, aversion of fear, impending evil, joy, all those other affections, all those other passions have their source in this first movement of the human heart toward the good. Why? Because only the good can truly be loved. And that's St. Augustine who said,

only the good can be loved. He say, how is that possible? Well, because the very definition of love to love is to will the good of the other. And so anytime it's not the good, it's not love. It's something other than love. It might be a strong feeling. Again, it could be a strong passion.

It could be a strong passion, but unless it's the good, then it isn't love. Now, going on from here, we have paragraph 1768 that highlights this so important it says strong feelings are not decisive for the morality or the holiness of persons. You know, someone could say, yeah, they feel very strongly. They feel passionately about this. Like, that's wonderful, maybe.

But they are not decisive for the morality or the holiness of persons. Just because someone has a strong, deep conviction about something, just because someone is passionate about something, just because someone has a lot of emotion around anything, a lot of desire that doesn't make that thing good and doesn't make that person virtuous. Keep this in mind. We feel a lot of passions. We feel any number of passions. Our passions do not give us permission. Keep this. Hold on to this. Please, it's so important for us to understand this because we live in a culture right now where our passions give us sanction. In fact, there's a man named Sheldon Van Aachen, who I believe wrote an essay called the parenthetically false sanction of Eros. And in this, he's

talking about Eros. Right. Eros is that kind of love that. that love of desire, right? So passions. And he would, he highlighted this and he highlighted this years and years ago where you have Mr. A, who's talking with you and he's, Mr. A is saying, oh, I just, I can't begin to tell you how, how Jane makes me feel when I'm with her. She, she, she, it's the best thing. She makes me more generous. She makes me more patient. She makes me so kind and good. Of course, Sheldon Mnocken goes on to say, Mr. A is not married to Jill. He's married to Betsy, you know, kind of a situation where it's like, wait a second. but buddy's saying but no but I desire her so much and she makes me so happy and because I have

this desire it gives me permission because I feel so strongly about this I get to break my promises and here in paragraph 1768 it's highlighting this strong feelings are not decisive for the morality or the holiness of persons just because I feel something strongly doesn't give me automatic permission to do that or to act on that thing strong feelings are merely what are they they're simply the inexhaustible reservoir of images and affections in which the moral life is expressed. So, passions are morally good when they contribute to a good of good action, but passions are morally evil when they contribute to an evil action.

This is so, so, so important for us, that on their own, strong feelings are neither good or evil. Also, on their own, strong feelings cannot give us permission to give in to our passions. It goes on to say, emotions and feelings can be taken up in. the virtues when we choose the good or perverted by the vices. Now, last two things. One note here is that in the Christian life, the Holy Spirit is the one who accomplishes his work by mobilizing the whole being. So what does that mean? That means that all of our sorrows, our fears, our sadnesses, all of those things we feel, the Holy Spirit's the one who brings them together

united with our intellect and with our will. Our passions are intellect and our will. The Holy Spirit is one who brings all of those together to create a person who's holy. So keep this. and mind. All of those things can be brought to the Lord. If you're feeling what you would say, but yeah, this is a negative passion. Like this is not a, it's not one of the, the, doesn't seem like, doesn't look like a holy passion. So I'm going to put that off to the side. No, bring that to the Lord. In fact, the Lord brought that to his father, right, in the agony in the garden. He brought his sorrows. He brought his fears. He brought his sadness to his father. So please, please, whatever passion you're experiencing, all of that can be brought before the Lord. Because if that's

what's in there, if that's what's in the engine, or if that's what's driving the engine right now is fear or sadness or whatever that is, then that has to be brought before the Lord because we have an intellect and a will and we have passions. And here's the last note on this is the church even says that, yes, the will is wonderful. I mean, I'm paraphrasing, of course. The intellect, obviously, the intellect wants to apprehend the true here. And the will wants to choose the good. The church is not teaching us to destroy or defeat the passions, to eliminate the passions. That is not at all what the church teaches. In fact, it's the opposite. As C.S. Lewis has highlighted, it's not that we desire too much in life or out of life. We desire

too little. And Jesus doesn't say, you guys love too much. You need to love less. He doesn't ever say that. He doesn't say, you guys feel too much. You need to feel less. He doesn't ever say this. And moral perfection, paragraph 1770, this is lining the plane here. Moral perfection consists in man's being moved to the good, not by his will alone, but also by a sensitive appetite. Keep this in mind. Again, our intellect wants to apprehend what's true. That's true. And our will wants to choose that as good. But our perfection is that our inner world has been so transformed that we also desire the good. That what paragraphs 1770 is trying to caution us against is white-knuckle Christianity, where I have these passions

that are just out of control, wild, crazy, and they want the bad all of the time. And yet, okay, no, but I'm going to choose the right thing. That's still, that's still virtuous. That's still good. But true Christian perfection, right? Freedom. Remember that word freedom? Freedom is found when not only my intellect apprehends the true, and my will is choosing

the good, but also my desires, those passions are oriented towards. the good. And I not only tell myself, okay, this is the right thing, this is the right thing, this is the right thing, but actually I want to do the right thing. It's something like when people will talk about having eliminated processed sugar from their diets, right? They say at first just, oh man, all I want is a donut or all I want is whatever that processed sugar is. And then after a while, they realize I don't want that at all. Actually, I kind of begin to crave what they might call, you know, clean foods or something like that. That's just simply an analogy. But we recognize that our passions, our desires, what we're oriented toward, what moves us, can change.

And in fact, for Christian perfection, it has to change. So again, my intellect wants to apprehend the true. My will wants to choose the good, but the church also says, and in doing that, the goal is not just, okay, I'm choosing what I know is good, when I'm choosing what I know is true, but also I want that. And my desires have not been eliminated. They've not been eradicated. my desires have been reoriented. That's, that's the, they've been transformed. And that's, that's part of the goal. Anyways, so here we are morality, morality of the passions.

Hopefully it's made sense. Yesterday, kind of confusing. Hopefully today, even less confusing, if that's the right way to say it. I don't know what to tell you other than I am praying for you. Please pray for me. My name's Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.

Thank you.