Pope St Gregory the Great defined what we know as the Seven Deadly Sins as the “Capital Sins”. They are capital because they give rise to others. Anger, for example, can lead to murder. Is anger a natural human emotion? In St Matthew’s Gospel Jesus says some hard things about anger. He warns against showing anger towards our brother. Who has not felt that? He uses <em>orgizesthai</em>, which is related to our word “orgy”. It describes a slow-burning, simmering anger that seeks an opportunity for vengeance and takes pleasure in it. The other Greek word for anger, <em>thymos</em>, signifies that sudden eruption of irritation like a flame that bursts from dry straw. It appears rapidly and as quickly dies. It is the first type of anger that is the most dangerous, since it involves the diversion of something good to the wrong end.
Anger principally arises from a distorted sense of justice; its wellspring is sorrow and pain. I have been hurt and my immediate reaction is to hurt back because what I feel is not fair. Anger hopes to redress a wrong which has been done to me. When I feel something has been unjustly taken from me anger offers a way of healing the original injury by restoring the balance of justice. St Thomas Aquinas says that all motives of anger may be reduced to slight. If I am slighted my dignity is under attack and the respect that should be accorded to me is lacking. He says there are three types of slight: contempt, spite and insolence. All of them involve my being diminished in some way, and the more public they appear to be the more painful they are.
One response is the desire for revenge. Anger looks to hurt someone for the deliberate hurt they have done to us. Yet, as Aquinas says, “the greatest injustice is to injure someone by deliberate intent or effort or conscious malice” (<em>Summa Theologiae</em>, Ia2ae 47:2). By trying to right a wrong done to us out of a misplaced sense of justice, we can do as much damage as the original slight, and in the end, risk becoming a mirror image of what we condemn. We perpetuate the disorder as we pass the parcel of pain and hurt from one to another, each adding a layer of bitterness and making the parcel heavier. The game continues until someone has the grace to break the circle by not passing it on. This is what Jesus does: he endures the slight and breaks the circle, showing us the way to peace.
Is it always wrong to be angry? Aquinas says that some people seem naturally choleric; he thinks they get it from their parents. They fly off the handle quickly. For them such drama may seem a small thing, but it intimidates and humiliates others. Can anything be done about it? As with any skill, we need to practise. We need to develop good habits. Habitual anger can develop into a deep-rooted hostile attitude to the world and humanity, giving a certain kind of perverse pleasure from always feeling victimised. Irascibility is often an expression of self-indulgence.
What is the appropriate reaction to true injustice? Should we be angry at that? That kind of anger flows from the same source as vengeful anger. It sees a wrong and tries to right it. The question is how this “righteous anger” should be channeled so that it brings about the true justice that it seeks. Anger needs regulation by reason. We live in an age that has become suspicious of reason and prey to unbridled emotion. Rational argument in moral practice receives short shrift in some circles. In the United States, where I live and work, the force of irrational anger can be seen in present political debates, in the increase of violent crime, in the appearance of the new crime of road rage. The intemperate seems to have become the norm and the expression of immoderate anger appears as the only way to be taken seriously in public life.
What is the counterweight to anger? It is the unfashionable virtue of meekness, which means having a part to play in the control and proper direction of anger. Meekness is expressed in restraint. When we are angry, we are liable to act with bad judgment; we lose our sense of proportion. A fierce sense of hurt is expressed in a fierce angry response. Meekness bridles this spontaneous reaction and gives us pause for reflection. Who has not regretted the sharp email fired off in the midst of passion towards the one who is not really our enemy? Meekness, a reluctance to judgment and a restraint on the irascible, is a restraining factor on our ability to do harm. It is related to the temperance that regulates and moderates our emotions, which, in eluding our control, dehumanise us and threaten the common good.
<em>(Photo: The Great Day of His Wrath – John Martin, 1851)</em>
<em>Fr Allan White OP is a former Principal of St Mary’s School, El Centro, California, where he continues to teach</em>
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