Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Fr. Rutler on Anger

Fr. George Rutler is probably my favorite priest right now in terms of being a guy who I just love to read.  He has a fantastic article that really speaks to a realization that I've had over the past few years (and there is probably ample evidence of that realization on this blog) and that is that timidity is not the solution (nor the opposite) of sinful anger.  Here are a couple of great quotes from the article:

"I do not know which is worse: sinful anger, which thinks that it is just, or timidity, which thinks that it is charitable."

"Righteous anger is like harnessed wind power, while sinful anger is, to use an infelicitous metaphor, just passing wind."

"At least they were vital enough to be angry. We now inhabit a hedonistic culture too slothful to be angry about much of anything, which is why it is easily bought off by sensual gratifications of the crudest sorts"

"The cure for both kinds of sinfulness, angry and timid, is the virtue of courage."


Click here to read the rest of Fr. Rutler's article.  It is very well done, and I hope explains a lot of what I do on this blog.  I guess I won't know for sure until the judgment, but I hope and pray that it sums up what I try to do here.

2 comments:

  1. Amazing article!

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  2. I like Father Rutlers final sentence.
    The Confessors and Martyrs, ancient and new, had only one kind of Anger Management Therapy: kneeling down and saying, “Bless me Father, for I have sinned.” Then they got up and went to work.

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