By Derek Rusnak
St. Raphael Counseling
"Is anger a sin?" As a Catholic therapist at St. Raphael Counseling, a ministry of Catholic Charities, this is a common question from my clients. It is also an important question to address from both the moral level as well as the psychological level because working with anger is often a key aspect of the therapeutic process.
So, what does the Catholic Church have to say about this? In both the Catechism and in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, a distinction is made between anger as a passion and anger as a sin. Notice that even in this basic distinction, it’s clear that being angry is not necessarily a sin. This is a distinction that is rooted in the New Testament: "Be angry but do not sin" (Eph 4:26a).
But what does ‘anger as a passion’ mean? The glossary of the Catechism defines moral passions as “the emotions or dispositions which incline us to good or evil actions.” The list of passions includes not only anger, but love and hate, hope and fear, joy, and sadness. The Catechism tells us that the passions are neither good nor evil in and of themselves, but rather depending on whether they contribute to a good or evil action.
Here’s where our discussion takes a surprising twist: Both the Catechism and Aquinas define anger as “the desire for revenge.” But isn’t it sinful to want revenge? It is important to distinguish between the modern, common understanding of vengeance as opposed to Aquinas’ definition of vengeance as “the infliction of a punishment on one who has sinned.” Additionally, the saint tells us that this is not necessarily the case, “since revenge may be desired both well and ill.” More specifically, it is morally evil to intend primarily to do evil to someone who should be punished; however, it is a good thing to “to impose restitution to correct vices and maintain justice.”
Another aspect of anger where, according to Aquinas, morality comes into play is if we are angry at the wrong person or if the degree to which we are angry more or less than is reasonable. And while it may come as no surprise that we can sin when we are angrier than is called for in a situation, as anger can help us to resist something evil, we can also sin if we are not proportionately angry in the face of evil.
Additionally, as the Catechism tells us, another way anger can get off track is when it “hardens into resentment and hate.” Aquinas defines hate as the opposite of love and teaches us that while it is a sin to hate others “it is part of our love for our brother that we hate the fault and the lack of good in him.” In more common terms, we are called to hate the sin and love the sinner. And in many ways, resentment can be thought of as a synonym for unforgiveness.
Even when we are positive that our anger has led us to sin, it can be helpful to recall the Church’s teachings around the gravity of a sin and the matter of deliberate consent. In terms of gravity, the Catechism says that we commit a sin of grave matter when we hate someone to the point of deliberately desiring them grave harm. And in terms of culpability, the Catechism points out that “responsibility for an action can be diminished or even nullified by ignorance, inadvertence, duress, fear, habit, inordinate attachments and other psychological or social factors.” While we don’t want to use this as an excuse to harden our hearts, part of God’s mercy is that he understands and accounts for the concrete aspects of our experience.
In summary, the call isn’t never to be angry but rather to feel and express anger in a properly ordered way. So, if we can feel the proper degree of anger at the proper person, find a way to forgive them without having to let go of desiring revenge well and learn to hate the sin and not the sinner, then we do not need to fear our anger, but can embrace it as fuel to taking virtuous action. And when we do sin with our anger, we have a merciful God, and so when we decide it’s time for us to make a change, we’re already moving back on track to growing in holiness.
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