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Q u i c k Q u e s t i o n s
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This Rock
Volume 12, Number 7
 September 2001 
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Be Angry but Do Not Sin
Q: I was searching through various web sites and was curious as to what a certain "non-denominational" site thinks about Catholicism. It was offensive, incorrect, and insulted the Church in many ways. I am very angry, but I don’t know what to do or say about this. Am I wrong for feeling this way? Should I just forget about it?
A: Your anger is understandable. By attacking the Church, the people you mention are attacking what Catholics hold sacred.
Being angry is not a sin. Jesus reacted with anger when he cleared the Temple because of the desecration it was suffering. Similarly, Paul tells us, "Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger" (Eph. 4:26). The question is what one does on the basis of the anger. If one allows the anger to lead one into hatred—willing evil to the ones who have provoked the anger—then that is a sin.
Anger may provide a motivation to accomplish some good—for example, if it were to move you to write to the individuals and correct them. However, before doing so one should ask certain questions: Is there a reasonable prospect that the individuals are open to correction? Do I have the knowledge I need in order to correct them? Am I in a frame of mind where I can correct them in the best manner, or am I too angry right now?
How long should you feel angry? When it is clear that the anger can no longer serve a useful purpose it is probably time to put it to rest. When it is clear that the anger is being harmful in some way (e.g., as a temptation to hatred, as a distraction from something else one should be doing, as something that is harming one’s attitude) then it is definitely time to put it to rest.
Q: I was wondering what is the Catholic Church’s opinion on usage of nuclear weapons and if there are any official statements about the topic?
A: Here is what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says: "‘Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation’ (Gaudiam et Spes 80). A danger of modern warfare is that it provides the opportunity to those who possess modern scientific weapons especially atomic, biological, or chemical weapons to commit such crimes" (2314).
Q: Does the Catholic Church have a specific view on psychology? Does this view include any Jungian psychology?
A: The Catholic Church does not have an official view on psychology or any other scientific discipline. The Church encourages the scientific enterprise as a method of better understanding God’s creation and of better exploring the potential to improve the human condition. However, it also holds that the scientific enterprise must be conducted under proper moral restraints and that its reported findings must not be overstated or misread, especially when they touch on matters of faith.
Within those parameters, the Church rejects nothing that is a genuine scientific insight into either nature or the human psyche, regardless of whether it was achieved by Carl Jung or any other particular psychiatrist. The theories of such individuals must be evaluated on a point-by-point basis, noting which items are in harmony or out of harmony with the Catholic faith and with good science.
Q: My sociology professor appears to be anti-Catholic. His most recent statement was "Catholic schools are declining, and that is one indication that Christianity is decreasing in the U.S." What should I say in response?
A: Whether Christianity is increasing, decreasing, or holding steady in the U.S. is a matter that can be judged by a number of indicators, only one of which is the state of Catholic schools.
The claim as made is vague. By what standard is the alleged decline being measured? Attendance? Funding? Number of open schools? Doctrinal orthodoxy? How could the last of these even be quantified? Even if there were a decline in Catholic schools, what evidence is there that this is somehow indicative of Christianity as a whole? For example, if attendance is down at Catholic schools maybe that says more about a recent drop in the tuition at non-Catholic schools than it does about Christianity as a whole. A single, contextless indicator tells you nothing about the state of a religion as a whole.
The strength of religious feeling in this country has up trends and down trends that last a number of years. If the alleged decline is happening, perhaps that is just the indication of a contemporary down trend to be followed by an up trend.
Reports of the imminent demise of Christianity or religion in general have been prevalent for decades. Often individuals take real or supposed evidence of a contemporary downturn in religious feeling and extrapolate down to the point of extinction. But it never happens that way. Even the active suppression of Christianity by totalitarian regimes in Russia and China has failed to send the faith the way of the dinosaur.
Indeed, recent studies in what has come to be called neurotheology suggest that there is a neurological basis for religious belief in humans. (Guess who put it there?) We thus appear to have a hardwired religious impulse (per Romans 2:15) that will prevent religion from dying out.
Q: Is there any hope for those who have committed suicide?
A: The Church does not despair of the salvation of those who have committed these acts, for they are often committed under a form of mental duress that robs the person of full accountability for his actions. It is also possible that, in the last moments of life, a form of repentance may take place that reconciles the person with God even if this cannot be perceived and it is too late for the person to stop his own demise.
Here is what the Catechism of the Catholic Church has to say on the subject: "Grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide.
"We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives" (2282b—2283).
Q: In an Internet search for encyclicals, I came across a web site about Pope Pius XIII. I was shocked and amazed. The last Pius was Pius XII. What is this all about?
A: Currently there is more than one individual calling himself Pope Pius XIII. These gentlemen are, of course, anti-popes, false claimants to the See of Peter. They have no significant following and have drawn no comment from the Holy See.
Every era has people who either proclaim themselves pope or who have themselves "elected" pope by tiny, unqualified constituencies. (Under the Church’s law, only validly appointed cardinals are qualified electors.) There hasn’t been an anti-pope with a significant following in centuries. These guys are merely the most recent crop.
Q: How can 2 Maccabees 12 prove purgatory? The dead soldiers for whom Judah prayed had committed the sin of idolatry, which is a mortal sin.
A: This is a common argument among those who wish to deny purgatory. If the soldiers committed idolatry then when they died they would have gone to hell, in which case Judah shouldn’t have bothered praying for them.
But the text tells us that Judah did pray for them. Even if he was wrong to do so, it still testifies to belief that prayer for the dead can do them good, and it is this theological belief—not the fate of certain particular individuals—that the author of 2 Maccabees stresses by recording the incident. Indeed, he sums it up by pointing out that "it was a holy and pious thought" on Judas’s part to make "atonement for the dead, that they might be delivered from their sin" (12:45) Whether the men in this particular case could be benefited is beside the point.
However, it is not at all certain that the individuals in question were damned. In the case of every human being, no matter how his spiritual state seemed to others at the time of his death, it is possible that there was a last-minute repentance that was not obvious to onlookers. Let’s be generous. If we don’t know that someone is unsaved—and we have no way of ever knowing for sure—let’s pray for him.
That would be a permissible course of action even we knew that a person was in mortal sin moments before his death, but in the case in Maccabees that is very far from clear. The soldiers Judah prayed for had been fighting a battle for Israel and its God—the true God. They happened to also be wearing "sacred tokens of the idols of Jamnia, which the Law forbids Jews to wear" (12:40). In other words, they were wearing pagan good luck charms.
That isn’t the same as full-blown idolatry. Even in our monotheistic culture, a lot of people have charms or symbols of other religions (Egyptian ahnks, Taoist yin-yang symbols, Amerindian dreamcatchers) that in no way can be read as indicating the person’s fundamental religious convictions.
In this case, one can say with rather a lot of confidence that the charms of the Jamnia idols would seem not to be a good indicator of the soldiers’ religious convictions, since they died fighting for the true God. They may have had a superstitious involvement with amulets, but they were putting their lives on the line for Israel and its God.
Bottom line: Judah did the right thing.
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