Welcome to episode 23 of the Behind the Catholic Counter Podcast. I'm Ian Rutherford, President of Aquinasnandmore.com. I interview Catholic authors, publishers and manufacturers to give you the latest news about great new Catholic books and gifts. You can listen to this and past episodes at aquinasandmore.com/podcast.

This week I spoke with Father Thomas Morrow, author of Overcoming Sinful Anger.

Since Lent is already underway, just a quick reminder that if you were considering gettingrose chasubles or black chasubles for the season, now is the time to order them.

Let's get on with our interview.

Ian: Today I'm Pleased to have Rev. Thomas Morrow on our show, we're going to be discussing his new book Overcoming Sinful Anger, from Sophia Institute Press – How to Master Your Emotions and Bring Peace to Your Life. Thank you, for joining me on the show today Father.

Fr. Morrow: You are welcome.

Ian: Father one of the things that is kind of hard to distinguish here from the start is, what is the difference between anger and hate?

Fr. Morrow: Well, anger could be either a feeling or something we take hold of and express in unhealthy ways, and hatred is one of the things that comes from unhealthy anger. So mostly you know, we can't control the feelings that we have but we can control what we do with those feelings and we can either take care of that anger in a healthy way and dissipate it or we can express it in a very unhealthy way and make life miserable for all those around us.

Ian: So, you are talking about healthy and unhealthy anger. What is the distinction? I have an assume that Jesus is anger in the temple with a healthy kind of anger-

Fr. Morrow: Exactly!

Ian: What about Job's anger?

Fr. Morrow: Job's anger was misplaced and the anger of Jesus was what we call righteous anger and so some sequences – you know there is such a thing as righteous anger and it's a virtue to have righteous anger but it's also not a virtue to express anger in a harmful and nasty way. We need to express our anger in a constructive way or a way that expresses the outrage but again within reason, not the outrage of something that's really way off the charts in terms of being a correct activity.

Ian: You mention within reason, do you mean that we use reason to make decisions about what we're angry about instead of irrationally?

Fr. Morrow: We use our reason to try to forget what we're angry about and decide if it's worth being angry. Sometimes people get angry over things that are trivial and in fact I've worked with couples from time to time and “Oh, we had a terrible argument.” and I said, “Well, what was that about?” and they say, “Well actually I don't remember, it wasn't anything important.” So a lot of people get angry over trifling things and now, that of course stems from an exaggerated pride that- “How dare anyone inconvenience me?”

Ian: So you're saying that having a little bit of humility is a good way to help stem anger?

Fr. Morrow: Extremely important to pray for the virtue of humility, absolutely.

Ian: So what are some of the other ways that we...