Anger

Vice Capital

Definition

Dictionary

Merriam-Webster 1

  • A strong feeling of displeasure and usually antagonism
  • A threatening or violent appearance or state

Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Theology 2

“Anger is dangerous and to be avoided. Generally, it serves mortals poorly.”

New Advent Encyclopedia 3

“The desire of vengeance. Its ethical rating depends upon the quality of the vengeance and the quantity of the passion. When these are in conformity with the prescriptions of balanced reason, anger is not a sin. It is rather a praiseworthy thing and justifiable with a proper zeal. It becomes sinful when it is sought to wreak vengeance upon one who has not deserved it, or to a greater extent than it has been deserved, or in conflict with the dispositions of law, or from an improper motive. The sin is then in a general sense mortal as being opposed to justice and charity. It may, however, be venial because the punishment aimed at is but a trifling one or because of lack of full deliberation. Likewise, anger is sinful when there is an undue vehemence in the passion itself, whether inwardly or outwardly. Ordinarily it is then accounted a venial sin unless the excess be so great as to go counter seriously to the love of God or of one’s neighbour.”

Catechism of the Catholic Church

CCC 2302

By recalling the commandment, “You shall not kill,” our Lord asked for peace of heart and denounced murderous anger and hatred as immoral. Anger is a desire for revenge. “To desire vengeance in order to do evil to someone who should be punished is illicit,” but it is praiseworthy to impose restitution “to correct vices and maintain justice.” If anger reaches the point of a deliberate desire to kill or seriously wound a neighbor, it is gravely against charity; it is a mortal sin. The Lord says, “Everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment.” 4

Victory over Vice

  • Anger is not sinful when it holds three conditions
    • The cause is just
    • It is not greater than what the cause demands
    • It is quickly subdued
  • Therefore, there is Sinful Anger and Just Anger. This in accordance to Thomas Aquinas view of righteous anger and sinful anger.
  • “… anger is based upon reason, which weighs the injury done to satisfaction to be demanded.”
  • Blessed Fulton Sheen associates the vice of anger with Jesus word: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” (Lk 23:34) This is the reason for which he says that we need to recognize that people do us wrong due to their ignorance, and we, followers of Jesus, need to forgive them because “know not what they do.” 5

Thomas Aquinas

In his work “Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics,” he describes anger as a desire for vengeance. Moreover he establishes that anger is an opposing vice to meekness. As Blessed Fulton expressed above, (and probably based on Aquinas), there is sinful and righteous anger. When the anger is oriented toward vengeance it becomes sinful. 6

Magisterium AI

The Catechism of the Catholic Church treats anger as a disordered passion that can become a mortal sin when it takes the form of “a desire for revenge” that leads to the violation of the commandment “You shall not kill.”

Other Sources

Holy Family School of Faith

“Anger is a God-given emotion meant to prompt us to achieve something difficult, correct some evil, or endure something we can’t change without giving up. Anger is meant to be constructive. It’s meant to give us energy, the power to correct an evil we can change or endure an evil we cannot change. Anger becomes sinful when it’s destructive.” 7

Ideas

The reason for forgiveness is ignorance. Software developers are ignorant about two things: themselves (they don’t know themselves, and they don’t understand their motivations), and the effects the software is going to have on others. Therefore, we need to know ourselves better and acknowledge that the software is going to behave strangely once it’s live and be ready to pivot. The atomic bomb was made to end the war, and some foresaw what came after as the arms race. There is no way to know the future; there are possible outcomes that are unpredictable. There is a story that says a place was overrun by cobras. The government then incentivized people to hunt them by giving them money. The effect this had was that people figured that breeding cobras was profitable. When the government realized this, it stopped paying, and the people who bred cobras just released them. By the end, there were more cobras than at the beginning. So, what to do? Consider the potential outcomes with the information that is available, and leave the rest to God. Once the product is released, be prepared to change it or even scratch it if the product is not helping with human flourishing.

In terms of social networks and how their algorithms adapt to the things and posts we want to see, they adapt and want to affirm us, and please us, and never contradict us. They want us to like the content. I wonder what is the reason they would give to why they are doing this. I think is mainly profit, and not in the least they are thinking in the wellbeing of their users. One of the effects that we are seeing now is that social networks are polarizing people, making them “hate the other side.” The technology is enforcing the concupiscence that is already there. What should we expect from the developers and the tech companies? Is this something that should be regulated by the government (see below), or by the user, or by technology producer, or by formation at home? Platforms will need to display a skippable warning for 10 seconds when a child first logs on each day, plus an unskippable, 30-second warning if a child spends more than three hours on the site. The 30-second warning must repeat after each additional hour of social media use.

VoV conditions for anger not to be sinful recall the conditions for just war. (See CCC 2265-2266)

Examples

Being angry in itself is not vicious. It becomes a vice if it breeds inside the human heart and grows its desires into the thoughts and actions of the person.

A very regular example of being angry is when a person is driving and another person cuts them off. All sorts of emotions boil in the heart, and if one let’s one’s guard dawm, it can produce verbal and physical insults toward the other driver, and in some cases produce road rage. From the moment, that one let’s the emotion boil and consents to the desire for ‘revenge’ the emotion becomes vicious. The alternative is meekness. Meekness “is the calm strength that harnesses the power of anger and directs it to good.” [^hsof_meek] Also, John Chrisostom says it is avoiding or restraining passionae impulses when provoked. 8

When a person feels like there is an injustice being force into them, the default response is to get angry. One possible situation is the employee who feels she is being underpaid. This angry can tack hold of her soul and start producing sinful fruits in the form of negligence, gossip, unfair comments, etc. There are many situations that might have led to the position of being underpaid, but the fact remains, one needs to keep oneself soul pure of sin. Patience and meekness would be two virtues that can be cultivated. One to harness the power of anger in the face of injustice to take just action, the other to endure the situation until it can be resolved by humility, a raise, or getting another job depending the specific circumstances.

Notice is this last example, that the feeling that an injustice was happening was not vicious in itself. It was the emotions and consequent actions that brew to take “matters” into our own hands. Also, it is with opposite, or related virtues, that we attack the seed of the vice. In Catholic tradition we have an additional aid, that we receive through frequent confession and Eucharist.

A Prayer

Let nothing trouble you
Let nothing frighten you
Everything passes
God never changes
Patience obtains all
Whoever has God
Wants for nothing
God alone is enough.

St. Teresa of Jesus

  1. “Definition of Anger,” 12 October 2025, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anger. ↩

  2. Greg Carey, “Anger,” The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Theology. ↩

  3. “CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Anger,” n.d. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01489a.htm. ↩

  4. “Part Three Section Two The Ten Commandments Chapter Two You Shall Love Your Neighbor As Yourself Article 5 The Fifth Commandment III. Safeguarding Peace,” n.d. https://www.vatican.va/content/catechism/en/part_three/section_two/chapter_two/article_5/iii_safeguarding_peace.html. ↩

  5. Victory Over Vice & The Seven Virtues, p 5-6 ↩

  6. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, bk. 4, lect. 1, no. 805. ↩

  7. Mike Scherschligt, “Anger,” School of Faith, n.d., https://schooloffaith.com/rosary-archive/anger-1. ↩

  8. Liguori, Alphonsus. The Dignity and Duties of the Priest. Benziger Brothers, 1888. (https://archive.org/details/alphonsusworks12liguuoft/page/n335/mode/2up) ↩