Leon J. Podles :: DIALOGUE

 
In watching Al Jeezera, I have noticed that the protests always began with young men, who have given an extraordinary example of what the Greeks called thumos, spiritedness. The Arabs peoples feel themselves oppressed, and the spark that set everything off was the self-immolation of a young man whose fruit stand was confiscated by the [...]

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The Greek philosophers in general and Christian thinkers after them have seen the emotions (passions) as innate parts of human nature. Even the Stoics, who seem to condemn the passions, really only condemn disorderly, irrational passions, as Aquinas and others have noted. 
John Chrysostom cautions against anger, but he implicitly means disorderly anger, as he sees [...]

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The late Father Richard Neuhaus of First Things was upset by my book Sacrilege: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church. He thought that there was no justification for the level of anger I felt. He preferred the detached, scholarly approach that Nicholas Cafardi took in Before Dallas: The U.S. Bishops’ Response to Clergy Sexual Abuse [...]

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As I noted in my book, Catholic bishops uniformly failed to get angry when they heard that a priest had defiled a child, often in the church itself. I examined this failure at length in my book Sacrilege, especially on pp. 465-471. 
The bishops have failed to heed the warning of St. John Chrysostom: “He who [...]

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