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Is it really true that if you’re not angry you’re not paying attention? Joe Heschmeyer, author of The Early Church Was the Catholic Church, explains why anger at modern problems is not always a virtue.
Cy Kellett:
Ever hear phrases like, “If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention?” Joe Heschmeyer challenges those ideas next.
Cy Kellett:
Hello and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers podcast for living, understanding, and defending your Catholic faith. Joe Heschmeyer with us this time. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. We talk with Joe about anger, specifically about the growing anger industry, the outrage industry that is all around us. There’s certainly plenty to be outraged about in the modern world, but just how much of that is healthy and good for us? How much of it should we be listening to? How much of it should we be paying for? Beyond those natural questions about how much of it is healthy or good for us, there’s the supernatural questions. At what point does this outrage industry become an offense against the gospel, maybe even a sin, maybe even a very grave sin for us? Finding that place where we are not sinning in our outrage and not encouraging others to sin by stoking outrage, but also not just burying our heads in the sand and not being aware of or attentive to justice and the demands of justice in the world today. Here’s what Joe Heschmeyer had to say.
Cy Kellett:
Joe Heschmeyer, author of A Man Named Joseph: Guardian for Our Times, thanks for being here with us.
Joe Heschmeyer:
I’m thrilled to be here.
Cy Kellett:
I’m angry, Joe.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Why are you angry this time?
Cy Kellett:
I’m mad. I’m mad. Why are you angry this time? Because that’s the default position currently, to be angry about pretty much everything. I say that in a joking manner, but I don’t think I’m better at this than anybody else. I don’t think I’m less angry than other people or somehow I’ve mastered myself.
Joe Heschmeyer:
I think you’re less angry than some people. Certainly we’re not immune from the full range of human emotions.
Cy Kellett:
No.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Some people maybe give in to them a little more.
Cy Kellett:
I give in to them enough, more than Jesus would want me to, I’m pretty sure.
Joe Heschmeyer:
I’ve driven with you. I know what you’re describing.
Cy Kellett:
Okay. Let’s talk about that, about the … Would you say that we have a bit of an addiction to anger?
Joe Heschmeyer:
I would say we very much have an addiction to anger and not only would I say that. Psychology Today back in 2015 suggested it was a public health epidemic of an addiction to anger.
Cy Kellett:
Really?
Joe Heschmeyer:
It’s easy to think about this-
Cy Kellett:
I hate Psychology Today. Those people are stupid. Oh, sorry.
Joe Heschmeyer:
The reason is this is something when people are saying, “Well who’d want to be angry? Who’d want to be mad,” it’s like don’t be naïve. There’s a huge psychological rush that’s very close to what we get with thrilling-seeking activities. You get dopamine reward receptors in the brain that just go off on these things. It’s akin to gambling, extreme sports, and even drugs like cocaine and meth. That’s what’s going on when we get angry. You actually get a little bit of an anger high. Now, some listeners probably know what I’m talking about.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, I do. I know that.
Joe Heschmeyer:
It actually kind of feels … Especially if you feel like it’s a righteous anger-
Cy Kellett:
That’s the thing is though. It’s a temptation that hides the fact that it’s a temptation because it justifies itself in the act of doing it.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
It’s not like, “Oh, I gave into the temptation.” It’s like by having this anger, I am justifying this anger.
Joe Heschmeyer:
I would say it’s very, very easy to find things to be angry about right now.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Easier than maybe it’s ever been in history and I would suggest in this way. We are now privy to all of the injustices in the world at a click of a mouse.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
People use track pads now, but whatever. The click. You can see injustices everywhere. So if you want to be really upset about a situation you’ve got no control over, you can and it feels kind of good and you don’t have to deal with your own life and your own problems.
Cy Kellett:
I’m going to push you a little bit on that though-
Joe Heschmeyer:
Please.
Cy Kellett:
… because it’s not just that there’s the kind of neutral temptation because we have so much media available. Media itself is consciously a tempter in this direction. As a matter of fact, I don’t think if you went to a college class, you completed a Bachelor’s degree at most universities, you could get through all of your classes saying, “I choose not to be an angry person. I have the peace of Christ in my heart and I’m just not going to be angry,” without being accused of failing morally.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yes.
Cy Kellett:
Outrage is considered a sign of moral success, not failure.
Joe Heschmeyer:
It is a sort of faux virtue. It’s a cheap virtue. Look, it’s good. It actually is good to be angry over injustice in the right time and place, but when that’s all we do, it flattens it and it cheapens it and we start using that as a pretext to get the cheap high first of being angry and then from being praised for being angry about the right kind of thing. The result is that you get a generation of very angry people.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
I think we see that pretty widely. Now, you mentioned people kind of stoking these fires. We don’t even have to look at college. You can just look online.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
There is an article that Wired Magazine did called You’ll Be Outraged at How Easy it Was to Get You to Click on This Headline, all in caps. It was brilliant and I clicked on the headline.
Cy Kellett:
Of course you did.
Joe Heschmeyer:
What is talked about is that emotional arousal really leads to clicks. For anyone who’s naïve about this, the point of news is not to inform the world. The point of news is to sell products and you sell products by getting a lot of clicks and then selling the popularity of your site to advertisers.
Cy Kellett:
Right. I got to tell you something.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Please.
Cy Kellett:
I have this experience of-
Joe Heschmeyer:
Catholic Answers.
Cy Kellett:
Well okay yes, but Catholic Answers has provided me with some of this experience to talk to people who say, “I was doing my podcast, my Catholic podcast, and I had a few hundred people interested because I would talk about Jesus and Mary and the saints and the Eucharist and all that, but when I started talking about how evil Pope Francis is, then my viewership shot through the roof.”
Joe Heschmeyer:
Look, I will cop to this. I didn’t do this intentionally, but I am a case study of this.
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Joe Heschmeyer:
A good Focus episode gets how many views, would you say, a good Focus episode gets?
Cy Kellett:
What are there, 7 billion people on Earth? I would say not more than 6 billion.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Okay. Thank you.
Cy Kellett:
Let’s say-
Joe Heschmeyer:
Very helpful. This is why I go to you for stats.
Cy Kellett:
… views on YouTube for example. Okay. So 2000 would be okay. That’s fine.
Joe Heschmeyer:
I went on Matt Fradd Show.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Great show, but the headline he gave for a clip from the show is Why I Stopped Defending Pope Francis.
Cy Kellett:
Yes, I remember that when that happened, Joe. Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
It has, I think, 130,000 views.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
I’m not saying that to knock Matt Fradd or myself.
Cy Kellett:
No, Matt Fradd’s on the side of the angels on this.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yes.
Cy Kellett:
You don’t watch Matt Fradd and think, “This guy’s just stoking up the anger.”
Joe Heschmeyer:
You don’t come away furious.
Cy Kellett:
As a matter of fact, I feel so happy because I feel like there’s a guy that’s doing the right thing and making it.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Right.
Cy Kellett:
But the rest of us, we rely on anger a lot of the time.
Joe Heschmeyer:
But even in terms of the drivers, you’ll notice the kind of thing that a ton of people clicked on.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Thanks be to God they clicked on it and hopefully got a nuanced presentation. They clicked on it and hopefully got two people trying to be fair to everyone involved.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
But what was your motive in clicking? Again, hopefully people’s motives were good as well, but you can see why there’s a real desire to just be told, “You’re good. They’re bad. Let’s hate them.”
Cy Kellett:
Yes.
Joe Heschmeyer:
The five minutes of hate is extremely cathartic.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
That’s just something we need to watch out for.
Cy Kellett:
It’s not just cathartic, Joe. It’s also bonding.
Joe Heschmeyer:
It is. Yes, yes.
Cy Kellett:
If you and I can be angry together, I’m in a relationship with you now that has a kind of solidity because we’re angry. If a million of us get angry, now I’m part of a movement. Anger can lend meaning to life because it bonds us with other people.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah, there’s this inherent paradox in life that’s much bigger than just anger, but I want to point it out because I think it’s easy to overlook. Any in-group marker is also going to separate you from the out-group. So if you say, “What we all have in common is we all wear blue shirts,” well now everyone not wearing blue shirts is a little bit excluded.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
This is everything. This is being Catholic. This is being American. This is anything that draws us together. Anything that gives us a sense of cohesion also distinguishes us from everyone who doesn’t have that property. If you want to get super technical, we can say that the metaphysical principle of [unum 00:08:42] is related to [inaudible 00:08:44], that unum oneness is inseparable from [inaudible 00:08:48], distinction from others. What it is to say a thing is one is to say both that it’s united and to say it’s not something else.
Cy Kellett:
Right. Yes.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Given all of that, you have people who stoke that, who stoke the separation because that also creates oneness. If we’ll all united against the axis, well what are we? We’re allies. That creates a certain togetherness that we wouldn’t have otherwise.
Cy Kellett:
Like with Herod and Pilate.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah, exactly.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
The two became friends after their cooperation. This is-
Cy Kellett:
We both hate Jesus. That makes us friends.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Right. You see this in criminal organizations, that people form friendships of vice over this very thing. They have something in common even if it’s just who they hate. This is one of the things that makes it really tricky. You get group membership. Now, apply that to something like American politics. You’ve got two big teams or you can go for some weird franchise team, but that’s a little bit like being a Cincinnati Reds fan. It’s just not super exciting. You want to choose one of the big ones.
Cy Kellett:
I apologize, Cincinnati. Continue.
Joe Heschmeyer:
They know. No one’s more familiar-
Cy Kellett:
Again, I apologize, Cincinnati.
Joe Heschmeyer:
… with the pain of what it is.
Cy Kellett:
And I apologize to the American Solidarity Party as well. Please continue.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yes, the Reds of politics.
Cy Kellett:
No.
Joe Heschmeyer:
I guess Reds, inadvertently it’s much more political than I meant it to.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, the Reds. Oh, I see because you were talking about the Cincinnati Reds. When you said it, I thought you meant communists.
Joe Heschmeyer:
No, I did not. I did not mean to accuse them of that.
Cy Kellett:
See how the out-group works though.
Joe Heschmeyer:
But the Communist Party in the US, very small, kind of like the Reds.
Cy Kellett:
Yes.
Joe Heschmeyer:
So we can … There it is.
Cy Kellett:
All right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Salvaged that bad baseball example.
Cy Kellett:
Right. Okay.
Joe Heschmeyer:
But the point there is you want to root for one of the major teams and that means that you’re going to view your own team a little more sympathetically than you view the opposing team.
Cy Kellett:
Sure.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Literally people will overlook horrible crimes committed by sports players because they’re on their team, that they just think, “How can the fans of the opposing team be okay with them doing that?”
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
We do the same thing with politicians. Unfortunately, we can very easily be drawn down the road into saying, “Maybe what they’re doing isn’t so bad,” or starting to not oppose the evils that your party stands for, starting to be okay with it.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
It weakens that until you actually just get onboard with the party.
Cy Kellett:
So I’m a pro-life person and I really value the fact that the Republicans are the pro-life party so I start to overlook maybe some of the corporatism, anti-worker policies.
Joe Heschmeyer:
I mean we say this in a really flagrant way, I would suggest, back in the Bush administration when you had plenty of Catholics arguing that Iraq was a just war and arguing that torture might be okay. Oh, sorry. Extreme interrogation.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Okay. They were using the same kind of euphemisms that the pro-choose movement has used for a long time like pro-choice and using the same kind of techniques and tactics.
Cy Kellett:
But maybe on the other side, I love the Democratic Party because they have at least rhetorically this love for immigrants, they love the worker, they care so I overlook abortion.
Joe Heschmeyer:
I think we see this among Catholics who spend A) too much time online and B) too much time thinking about and talking about politics, that these are two very common temptations. If you don’t see it in your own side, I suggest you at least see it in Catholics on the other side. That may be a good sign if both you and your mirror image on the other party are seeing it in the other side, that maybe it’s a real thing we ought to be watching out for in ourselves as well. There but for the grace of God go each of us.
Cy Kellett:
Right. Right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
But in that, again, there’s still an online component. That’s an inherent risk in any kind of partisanship. You trust your tribe on the big issues and therefore you start trusting them on these other issues that they really don’t deserve your trust.
Cy Kellett:
But as an intelligent, reasonable, especially Christian with a very high obligation to love your neighbor as yourself, you should be more critical than that. You should use your critical reasoning more than that.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Absolutely.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
But this is amplified in the modern world. The risk of taking too deep a step into politics, I would just say look at the current controversies at CNN. The president at CNN stepped down allegedly just about this affair, but the details of it are really kind of striking because the woman with whom he was having an affair was a high-level CNN executive who was the former communications director for Governor Cuomo. So they’re investigating Governor Cuomo and his sex abuse and then the other Cuomo is running interference and has his own scandals and then the head of CNN who should be overseeing this is compromised because he’s having an affair with someone who’s also involved with Governor Cuomo’s office. The result is that one of the major news networks was so deeply embedded in not just one political party but one politician’s pocket-
Cy Kellett:
Yes, I see what you’re saying.
Joe Heschmeyer:
… that they were not even remotely objective. They were not even remotely fair to the other side, whatever that looked like. It cost in terms of just moral calculation. You could find equivalent or maybe not equivalent but maybe just similar kind of examples of people who are deeply embedded in the Trump administration working for Fox. I’m just taking the most recent high-level a lot of people kind of know about it story.
Cy Kellett:
It just happened.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Exactly.
Cy Kellett:
Right. Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
To say if you’re spending a ton of time watching that propaganda disguised as news, it doesn’t-
Cy Kellett:
You’re subjecting yourself to a temptation to-
Joe Heschmeyer:
Exactly.
Cy Kellett:
… rage.
Joe Heschmeyer:
In the same way that if you struggle with lust and you just spend all of your time watching salacious programming-
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
… you’re not making your life easier.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
So if you struggle with anger, if you struggle with not loving people of a different political party than yourself, don’t subject yourself to that. People will say, “Well I need to. I got to be informed.” You just don’t. You don’t need to have an opinion on the latest controversy of the day.
Cy Kellett:
No.
Joe Heschmeyer:
That’s not a moral duty. You do have a moral duty-
Cy Kellett:
They’re not informing you anyway.
Joe Heschmeyer:
… to love your neighbor. Exactly.
Cy Kellett:
You could watch a whole hour of most of the major cable news shows and the amount of information that is provided is virtually nil. What’s provided is takes.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yes.
Cy Kellett:
So we’re addicted to takes and then the takes make you angry and now you’re-
Joe Heschmeyer:
And you can see this objectively. This is not just like your and my take on takes. If you look at opinion programming versus information programming, the shifts are widely out of bounds and for a simple reason. There’s not 24 hours worth of news everyone needs to hear and wants to hear.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
That’s a good distinction because the stuff we want to hear is different than the stuff that maybe would actually help us have a better view of the world. What’s going on in Yemen right now with the Saudi invasion and all of the alleged war crimes? Most of us don’t have any idea.
Cy Kellett:
No. Right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
It’s not because there’s not enough time for news. It’s because news has become entertainment-
Cy Kellett:
Right. And we know Anderson Cooper’s take or we know Tucker Carlson’s take.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Right.
Cy Kellett:
But I don’t actually know what’s happening in the world by watching these networks.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Exactly. There have been studies that have suggested this, that people who spend a lot of time watching the major news programs do worse at knowing the percentage of the opposing party that fit certain … In others, what they get is a really skewed-
Cy Kellett:
View.
Joe Heschmeyer:
… view. Exactly.
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Joe Heschmeyer:
So they would ask questions like, “What percentage of Democrats are homosexual? What percentage are atheists? Then what percentage of Republicans are evangelical? What percentage are young earth creationists,” those kind of questions.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
What they consistently find-
Cy Kellett:
And you get a caricature of the other side.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Exactly.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
What you’re getting is not a better informed view of reality.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
You’re getting a caricature that’s actually less real, that the people how are basically apathetic about politics outperform the people who spend … Imagine any other area of life where the more you spent time watching it on TV, the less you knew about it.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
If I watched a ton of stuff about football and as a result knew less about football than a casual observer, I would say I just think I wasted my life.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, right. Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
We do that with politics. We aren’t better informed. We’re not informed in meaningful ways typically speaking.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
As a result, there’s this serious moral penalty, this serious moral temptation to become less virtuous, to become less charitable. I would just say on all of those reasons. There’s also … The last thing I’d say here until you give me some more questions is-
Cy Kellett:
I’ll work on it, Joe.
Joe Heschmeyer:
… there’s a trade-off that every minute you spend indulging in this stuff is a minute you’re not spending in things like Catholics Answers programming or even better, prayer.
Cy Kellett:
Nature.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah, nature, just being human.
Cy Kellett:
Looking at a tree blow in the wind which is so good for your soul.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Right. So spend time thinking about, “What do I invest my time and energy into and who do I invest my time and energy into? Is it the real people in my life or is it these characters on the screen that I don’t even know?”
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, right. Right. You actually cooperate in the replacement of the real world in your own life because it’s providing some kind of emotional stimulus that just keeps you going. It also is supplying probably a replacement for actual socializing in that you are getting some social needs met. That is are a member of a group, you feel yourself to be a member of that group, and you feel like that group has a righteous purpose. So actually sitting in a pub and having a beer with people is not … You don’t engage in it because you’ve replaced it with something that’s a simulacrum.
Joe Heschmeyer:
I think there’s a little bit of a chicken-egg thing there that’s worth calling out which is the average viewing age of almost any network programming is in the 60s or above. Most of the people who are becoming radicalized by CNN, by Fox, by MSNBC-
Cy Kellett:
Isn’t that awful?
Joe Heschmeyer:
… are older people who are lonely and this is providing them both a sense of community and a window into the world.
Cy Kellett:
Okay. Since we’re talking about the chicken and egg thing though, why are you lonely? In some cases, in many cases, it’s because there is nobody out there in a bowling league for you to join-
Joe Heschmeyer:
Right.
Cy Kellett:
… because bowling alone.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Bowling alone. Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
But in many cases because you chose to be alone. It’s because it was easier that, it was easier to engage with media than to engage with real people, it was easier to withdraw from family than to engage with family. You choose fewer kids so you could have more vacations. I have to say I took this idea from Patrick Deneen in his book on liberalism where he said we blame technology for making people lonely. You have a choice about how you use technology and we’ve chosen to do this.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah. I think you’re right to call out it’s easier. It’s much easier to spend your time watching programming that agrees with your priors and makes you feel like a good person for watching it.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
You feel angry about the things that you’re told to feel angry about. You feel joy about the things that you’re supposed to feel joy about. You’ve got a team. Then your daughter has totally different politics than you. Well that’s a hard conversation. Let’s just not talk about it and then you just slowly grow estranged or-
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
… you just have an increasing number of things you can’t talk about or you just maybe yell at her and she just kind of takes it and silently grows distant from you.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Those kinds of things, there’s real damage being done not just on some macro level but individual families where you watch them get turned radicalized, turned into these people who just view the other side as a caricature. I would say love someone who doesn’t agree with you politically and take them seriously and try to understand why they think the way they do even if they’re wrong and see if that’s not more deeply human than-
Cy Kellett:
Exactly.
Joe Heschmeyer:
… everything else that we kind of engage in.
Cy Kellett:
Right. The identity thing is … This is something that I know a guy who wrote about this, finding your identity in Christ.
Joe Heschmeyer:
I think I’ve read that.
Cy Kellett:
This is a very insightful thing that you wrote about, Joe. Say the name of the book because I’ll-
Joe Heschmeyer:
Who am I, Lord? Finding Your Identity in Christ.
Cy Kellett:
With a beautiful El Greco on the cover. Okay. But if I could kind of paraphrase your idea there is that we’ve taken to finding our identity in all these other things and losing the sense that our identity is given to us in Christ. If my identity really is that I hate all the January 6th people or I love all the January 6th people, that’s my identity and my daughter comes home and she’s the opposite on January 6th, where’s the relationship with my daughter? Our identities are opposed to one another.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yes. Yeah, it’s very true and it becomes … People talk about civil war, but that’s the real kind of civil war I think we’re facing, the breakup of families. The breakup of families not in the normal way we talk about that, but just in that sort of spiritual and intellectual falling out where we can’t have a communication and I no longer view you as someone who I know and love and trust but as someone who is on the other team. There’s something broken because something that doesn’t deserve to have that high of an allegiance is claiming an allegiance it shouldn’t have above family and arguably above God, that if you feel closer to other members of your political team than you do to other Catholics, that should be very alarming.
Cy Kellett:
Right. Right. Yes, that should be very alarming, but we do in fact do that. Maybe even our group is our country and we have that idea that the way I live out my love for Jesus is by loving America. Well to a degree, yes. I mean you should love your country, but that’s not actually synonymous with Christianity, to be a good American.
Joe Heschmeyer:
It’s not. I will go on record and say I’m deeply uncomfortable with American flags in sanctuaries.
Cy Kellett:
As am I. As am I. I think that’s a mistake to put the American flag in the front because what we are in the presence of is the person Jesus who is the transcendent and living God and that flag is trivializing that. It’s not assisting it.
Joe Heschmeyer:
So I want to maybe point out something about the relationship I’m seeing and see if you agree or disagree with this. I see us becoming less and less devoted or fanatical or zealous, however you want to describe that, becoming more lukewarm about all things religious at the same time we’re becoming more and more zealous and fanatical about all things political, that you don’t see people yelling at each other over religion-
Cy Kellett:
Yes.
Joe Heschmeyer:
… and you see people yelling at each other constantly over politics. There are exceptions of course in both directions.
Cy Kellett:
Right. Right. But politics often being an actual proxy for morality so that for example-
Joe Heschmeyer:
Right.
Cy Kellett:
… I feel closer to the Protestant or Muslim who is pro-life than I feel to the Catholic who is pro-choice in many ways.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
I’m not saying this in a hypothetical sense.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Oh, sure.
Cy Kellett:
I’m saying I actually feel that in many ways. So that Protestant calls up on the radio program with their pro-life attitudes and their love for Jesus. I somehow am in a relationship with them that is lacking with my Catholic brother or sister, but that seems to me that that’s a subjective reality whereas there’s a substantial relationship that I have sacramentally with the fellow Catholic that I’m failing to experience subjectively.
Joe Heschmeyer:
In a certain way, it’s how close do you feel to your friends? How close do you feel to your family?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Okay.
Joe Heschmeyer:
With friendship, there’s an intentionality and a grouping around common interest.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Likewise with pro-lifers, it’s like, “Oh, cool. We share this thing we’re very passionate and we care deeply about,” and that really is a huge moral issue. With the Catholic, even the Catholic who may not agree with everything the church teaches, who may be pro-choice, maybe holds really bad opinions about things, we’re still family in a certain way through baptism. You don’t choose your family. Sometimes your family drives you nuts, but there should be two different types of closeness, I’d suggest. Now ideally, you’ve got both. I’m very good friends with my brother and that’s great because we have the bond of family and the bond of friendship. You sometimes have one or the other bond. I don’t mean to suggest there’s anything wrong necessarily with any of that. What I think is a problem is when you have two Orthodox Catholics, two believing Catholics who disagree only on prudential issues, but because they’re in different parties-
Cy Kellett:
Oh, yes. This thing. Oh, right. Right. I hate you because you say the Our Father in English and I say the Our Father in Latin when we’re praying the rosary.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Are you looking at Chris?
Cy Kellett:
No, no. No, but I mean I’m trying to … I intentionally slightly trivialized it there, but that’s not-
Joe Heschmeyer:
Right.
Cy Kellett:
… unheard of.
Joe Heschmeyer:
It’s not.
Cy Kellett:
There are people who will tell you you praying in English is not as efficacious as me praying in Latin. All right. I don’t know.
Joe Heschmeyer:
I do know, but-
Cy Kellett:
Okay. I don’t know what to say, I guess is what I mean.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yes. Yeah. There’s something very … Factionalism, there’s some kind of … The fratricide we see in the church.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
It’s something to watch out for. CS Lewis in The Screwtape Letters kind of pegged this back in … I guess when was it? The ’40s? Whenever he wrote Screwtape Letters, he’s looking at the perspective of a demon. Maybe the ’50s. So it’s told from the perspective of a demon. He says, “All extremes except extreme devotion to the enemy are to be encouraged.” Not always of course, but at this period. “Some ages are lukewarm and complacent and then it is our business to sooth them yet further asleep. Other ages, of which the present is one, are unbalanced and prone to faction and it is our business to inflame them.” Then a little further on, he goes, “Whichever he adopts, your main task will be the same. Let him begin by treating the patriotism or the pacifism as part of his religion. Then let him under the influence of partisan spirit come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually, nurse him onto the stage at which the religion becomes merely part of the cause and which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce in favor of the British war effort or of pacifism.”
Joe Heschmeyer:
You see what I mean? So we can do this even among pro-lifers where we say, “Oh, if I could just convert them to Catholicism, they’d become pro-life.”
Cy Kellett:
All right. Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
So then-
Cy Kellett:
Then the key is what I’m trying to make is converts to the pro-life position-
Joe Heschmeyer:
Exactly.
Cy Kellett:
… not converts to Christ.
Joe Heschmeyer:
If CS Lewis can say opposing Hitler has to take second fiddle to serving Jesus Christ, we can also say being pro-life, opposing abortion has to take second fiddle to being a servant of Jesus Christ. Now in right relationship, the pro-lifeness shows up, but it can easily become a god of its own.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Any kind of partisan thing, and I mentioned the pro-life thing because it is perfectly Catholic and it’s purely partisan all at once in this way that’s really inseparable and is thus both really important and potentially very dangerous because in the same way it can make these great bedfellows of now these pro-life Protestants, these pro-life Muslims, take us seriously, want to hear about the gospel of Jesus Christ and about the Catholic Church depending on which group you’re talking about, but on the flip side, it can start to take, very subtly can start to take-
Cy Kellett:
Yes.
Joe Heschmeyer:
… the place of the center of religion.
Cy Kellett:
But the subtly has to do with the fact that I don’t think we assign intellectually the same weight to rage that we do to lust.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Oh, definitely.
Cy Kellett:
We just don’t. I mean I imagine as … I don’t know what priests hear in confession, but I would assume there’s much more, “I lost control of myself to my lust 47 times in the last week, Father,” than … I’m just giving my confession.
Joe Heschmeyer:
I really enjoy how carefully you keep track of number and count.
Cy Kellett:
Right, but the priest is much less likely to hear, “I lost myself to the enticements of rage-”
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yes.
Cy Kellett:
“… 47 times in the last week, Father.” That’s because I think we think of sexual sin as damnable in a way that we don’t think of the sin of rage.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah, and it’s a skewed ethos. It’s not what the church teaches. It’s not what scripture teaches. We’re not told that, “Just don’t be angry.” We are told to be angry but do not sin, but we’re also told very explicitly that wrath is a mortal sin.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
So just as-
Cy Kellett:
Jesus is very explicit about it.
Joe Heschmeyer:
He really is.
Cy Kellett:
We just had a caller call and ask about that, but I mean in the fifth chapter of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus could not be clearer.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Right.
Cy Kellett:
This is something that I really feel like all of us have different emphases, Joe, but this is one of your strong emphases. We were just talking yesterday about, just kind of having fun at lunch, who’s leading more souls into hell, this certain pop culture figure and this other which is a figure of internet rage. You went immediately to the internet rage person and I went to the pop culture person, but I do admire the way in which you see rage as very, very dangerous.
Joe Heschmeyer:
I think I’ve just watched it corrupt a lot of people who were on the road to sainthood.
Cy Kellett:
Ah, yeah. Talk about that.
Joe Heschmeyer:
So in the case of the pop culture thing, we’re talking about a singer and a lot of the people that she’s enticing weren’t particularly virtuous before they encountered her. With the celebrity rage person, a lot of the people he’s reaching-
Cy Kellett:
Oh, I see.
Joe Heschmeyer:
… were very good people who you watched it darken their intellects.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
You watch it darken their whole disposition and demeanor and you watch them start to change and become less gentle, become less Christlike. So I see the movement there in terms of just-
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
… this sheer-
Cy Kellett:
So it’s a danger to the saved.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Exactly. Yes.
Cy Kellett:
Rage is a danger to the saved.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Because it slides in much more easily.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
CS Lewis talks about this, that there are some sins that are really disgraceful. If you have a really obvious sin of lust, you just are like on the kiss cam and someone catches you gawking at a woman who’s not your wife. Take a really silly, simple one.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
You’re going to be embarrassed about that.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Or you just can’t control your impure thoughts. There’s some shame with that that we should feel with rage, but some sins just don’t trigger that in the same way and it has to do a lot with the [fallenness 00:31:50] of the body. So any sin connected with the body we feel more embarrassment.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, I see. Yeah. Right. I’m not embarrassed of my pride-
Joe Heschmeyer:
Right.
Cy Kellett:
… in the same way I’m embarrassed of my gluttony.
Joe Heschmeyer:
There’s all sorts of bodily stuff that we get, even stuff that isn’t sinful. If you belch on the air-
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
… that’s more embarrassing than the time you got really proud and thought you knew better than a caller even though one of those is worse for your soul than the other.
Cy Kellett:
In my case, that was the same exact moment.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Exactly.
Cy Kellett:
I got so proud that I belched, but okay.
Joe Heschmeyer:
St. Paul in Galatians 5 is going to give us a list of warning signs that I would suggest we watch out for. He says, “The works of the flesh are plain: immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like.” Then he warns that if we do those things, we’re not going to inherit the kingdom of God. So that’s a checklist. Yeah, the lust is-
Cy Kellett:
That’s a hard checklist.
Joe Heschmeyer:
It is a hard checklist.
Cy Kellett:
Really? Okay.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Anger’s on there and jealousy is on there and dissension is on there.
Cy Kellett:
Right. Party spirit.
Joe Heschmeyer:
And party spirit. Yeah, that factionalism is on there.
Cy Kellett:
We don’t mean woo woo party spirit. We mean party spirit like my party.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Although that other carousing is also on there so both kinds of party spirit are on there. Yeah. It’s like this. You should have no allegiance other than Jesus in a certain way. Now, all other allegiance … Another way to say that would be every other allegiance you have flows from your allegiance to Jesus.
Cy Kellett:
And is ordered by it.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Why should you care about being a good husband and father, a good American, a good host, a good everything else? Well because of being rooted in Christ.
Cy Kellett:
Amen.
Joe Heschmeyer:
When those things are unmoored from that-
Cy Kellett:
Yes.
Joe Heschmeyer:
… and become rivals to that, including your political membership, including whatever else, it can easily become an idol. It can easily become another god that you serve besides the one true God. It doesn’t even matter if you serve the one true God 95% of the time and that other idol 5% of the time. God is a God of 100%. So if we’ve carved out this little niche that isn’t for God, that is like, “Well this is my political side and I can say whatever I want over here. I can act whatever way I want over here,” that’s a red flag. The flip side, the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. So look at the way you act online.
Cy Kellett:
I have one of those.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Against such there is no law so you can have it. Look at how we behave online. Look at how we behave in person. Look at what our choices reflect.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Are we cultivating the fruits of the spirit? Are we cultivating the works of the flesh?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
I think we should have a search and examine and it does not, it won’t help you an iota on judgment day to say the other side did it too.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, or worse.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
They did it worse. You think about people call us every now and then, Joe, and some people are very frightened by Jesus’ description of the sin against the Holy Spirit because that won’t be forgiven. So the church has a very clear, has developed a very clear understanding of that and the church is the authentic teacher of scripture so what she says is true about it. What Christ is warning us against is the refusal of the mercy of the Holy Spirit.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah, the final impenitence. You refuse to be healed. You refuse to be-
Cy Kellett:
So what’s more likely when the Holy Spirit moves my heart at the moment of death to make me impervious to those movements, the fact that I have squandered my life in lust or the fact that I’ve committed myself to rage? I have to be honest with you. Neither one is the one that I want. I’m not looking for … But if I am committed to rage as a high good and the Holy Spirit says to me at the moment of death, “I’m actually not angry about anything and where you’re going, there’s no one who’s angry about anything,” I feel like … Look, I choose … I’m not choosing a coward like you, Holy Spirit, who’s afraid to stand up. I’m going to choose this internet priest who’s mad at everybody.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah, I mean it’s much harder to let go of the vices you’ve taken as virtues.
Cy Kellett:
Yes, that’s I guess what it is. Most people don’t think of their lust as a virtue. They just think of it as-
Joe Heschmeyer:
It’s very hard to think of your lust as-
Cy Kellett:
No, unless-
Joe Heschmeyer:
… Lust is very gross.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, unless you’re the Playboy guy. What’s his name? Hugh Hefner or something.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Even there-
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, probably not. You’re right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
It’s such a giving up on order and on life, giving into your baser lower passions. You can’t be happy with that. There’s something so pathetic and so miserable.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Hefner is just gross.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, but there’s people that get mad if you say to them, “God is not angry right now about anything. God is perfect peace.” “Well the Bible has …” Yes, yeah, but properly understood, I can talk about the anger of God, but God’s not like you. He’s not walking around with this [inaudible 00:37:04] emotion of rage and He never has been and He never will be.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah, He’s not losing his cool.
Cy Kellett:
And He’s going to forgive the people you hate too. Deal with it.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Right.
Cy Kellett:
Deal with it now because it’s going to be hard to deal with it later if you don’t.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah, so I went to school in Topeka and that’s where the Westboro Baptist Church is located. They had God Hates America and God Hates, then fill in the blank. They don’t like homosexuals. They don’t like-
Cy Kellett:
They had a certain three-letter word for-
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yes. Yes.
Cy Kellett:
… homosexual people that they really loved.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yes.
Cy Kellett:
It was like a scriptural word to them.
Joe Heschmeyer:
And they really flourish on just trying to revel in hurt and pain and misery. Then there was something so deeply demonic about it. They go into funerals of people and mocking the dead and these things that are just straight out of the bowels of hell, but the thing is they thought they were serving Jesus Christ in the midst of this. That’s the … Now, obviously most of us don’t go to that extreme.
Cy Kellett:
No, but we should ask ourselves, “Am I the person who is holding onto my rage rather than embracing the peace of Christ?” Because we can see it in other people like, “That person doesn’t see that they need to let that go or they’re not going to be able to grasp the thing that they need to grasp which is the love of God,” but I don’t think I would see it in myself.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah. It helps to listen to others, including those that you have trouble respecting and listening to because here’s the real danger. One of the reasons that this becomes so hard is that when you have surrounded yourself with like-minded people and the rage is a communal rage against the-
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
… target of the day-
Cy Kellett:
Especially when it’s rage against evil.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
Okay. We get it. The thing that you’re raging against really is evil.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yes, and so in the midst of that, it becomes very difficult to be checked on that, to be called out on that because what’s encouraged is more immoderation of it, that you should be angrier.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
If you’re not mad, you’re not paying attention, that whole kind of mantra of let’s have people be more miserable, be more upset, be more angry. It’s very unifying, but it’s very spiritually destructive. It’s very socially destructive.
Cy Kellett:
Yes. Then we’re not capable of healthy anger and healthy anger is the anger of the person who is being victimized by somebody else who their anger gives them the strength to stand up and say no or it gives another person the strength to stand up and defend them. All that … I wouldn’t want anyone to think we’re just saying never be angry.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Right.
Cy Kellett:
But the healthy anger, the sign of it is that it’s liberating, that it’s the kind of anger that says, “No, I’ve had enough of slavery. I’m going to fight on the side of the Union. I’ve had enough of sexual abuse in the church. I’m going to speak up about these bishops and priests. I’ve had enough of my husband being brutal. I’m going to take the kids and go to a shelter.” Do you see what I’m saying?
Joe Heschmeyer:
I do.
Cy Kellett:
That’s the energy behind doing right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
I do. This is the great tension of be angry, but do not sin.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
This is why I point to what St. Paul says about the fruits of the spirit because in our righteous anger, you still love the other person and you can be peaceful even while you’re angry, but if you find instead that the other person is becoming more and more of a caricature, that’s not of God.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Because God’s never trying to say, “Hey, lose the image of God in the other person that I created.”
Cy Kellett:
I’d end right there. That’s a great closing line. What do you think? Is there more you wanted to go over?
Joe Heschmeyer:
No, there we go.
Cy Kellett:
That is beautiful. I do want you to know that if I went to my priest and confessed 47 sins of lust and 47 sins of anger in a week, he’d say, “Well I’m glad you had a good week.” Thanks, Joe.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Thanks, Cy.
Cy Kellett:
So often the emotion of rage, outrage, anger can actually be a very good thing, can move us toward doing what needs to be done. I mean how many children being abused would not have been helped had a person not been given courage by the outrage of seeing such a thing and given the energy to move and act. We need that energy to overcome our inertia, our fear, and our lack of love and charity. So often outrage can be in fact a sign of charity for others. When we’re outraged by what happens to those who are being treated unjustly, then there’s some charity in us.
Cy Kellett:
The charity’s alive in us making that possible, but the truth is you and I both know, as a matter of fact I just don’t think there’s anybody that doesn’t know, that this great developed and well-financed industry of outrage is harming us. It’s harming our society. It’s harming our souls. So we know that there’s a limit. How much of that can I watch? Maybe we need to back off even more and remember that the joy of the gospel is the reason for outrage because ultimately what injustice does is it cuts people off from what they deserve, what God has given them. The more we’re in contact with the Jesus who is loving and joyful and has come to be the friend of humanity and to restore us to the joyful love of the Father then the more our outrage will be appropriate. It will be in the appropriate places, it will be directed at the appropriate things, and it will be of the appropriate proportion.
Cy Kellett:
Thanks to Joe Heschmeyer. We do always appreciate when he’s here with us to have these discussions. If you’d like to get in on the discussion, you got something you want to let us know, if you want to correct us or suggest a future episode, focus@catholic.com. That’s where you can go, focus@catholic.com. Support us financially at givecatholic.com. If you’re watching on YouTube, hit that little bell down there. That way you’ll be notified when new episodes are available. If you want to be notified on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts, like and subscribe. That way you’ll get notified when new episodes are available. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. Thanks for being with us. We’ll see you next time, God willing, right here on Catholics Answers Focus.