The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)

Episode: Day 237 – The Morality of the Passions
Date: August 25, 2025
Reading: Catechism of the Catholic Church, Paragraphs 1762–1775

Episode Overview

This episode explores “The Morality of the Passions,” as outlined in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Fr. Mike Schmitz guides listeners through the Church’s understanding of passions (emotions, feelings), their definition, their place in the human psyche, and, crucially, their moral significance. He addresses how passions relate to virtue and vice, their neutral nature, and how authentic Christian living involves the transformation—not elimination—of our desires.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Defining Passions and Their Role

• Passions are Natural and Amoral in Themselves

  • Passions, also called feelings or emotions, are “movements of the sensitive appetite that incline us to act or not to act in regard to something felt or imagined to be good or evil.” (00:57, referencing CCC 1763)
  • They form the bridge between our sensory life and intellect.
  • “On one hand, the passions are amoral, right? They’re neutral. They are something that’s… neither good nor bad in and of themselves." (14:10)

• Appetite vs. Will

  • The human will enables choice; the appetite moves us, draws us, seeks things out.
  • Passions are the “engine” or “driver” that can move us toward or away from perceived good or evil.
  • "The appetite is what draws me. The appetite is what moves me... and the appetite again can be anything." (02:07)

2. The Most Fundamental Passion is Love

• Love as Foundational

  • Of all passions, love is central—it is aroused by attraction to the good, causes desire for absent good, and is fulfilled in the joy of its possession (referencing CCC 1765-1766).
  • "Love is the most powerful of all these drivers." (18:40)
  • “To love is to will the good of the other.” (18:58)

• Other Passions and Their Source

  • Emotions like hatred, aversion, fear, joy, and anger spring from the fundamental movement toward or away from perceived good or evil.
  • “All other affections have their source in this first movement of the human heart toward the good. Only the good can truly be loved.” (19:23)

3. Passions and the Moral Life

• Passions Become Moral When Engaged by Reason and Will

  • Passions are qualified as morally good or evil only when they engage reason and will (CCC 1767-1770).
  • “Strong feelings are not decisive for the morality or the holiness of persons... They are simply the inexhaustible reservoir of images and affections in which the moral life is expressed.” (21:15)

• Virtue and Vice

  • Feelings can be “taken up into the virtues or perverted by the vices.”
  • Example: Anger over injustice, if channeled into virtuous action, is good; if it leads to destructive behavior, it’s vice.

• Strong Feelings Do Not Grant Permission

  • Modern culture sometimes treats strong feelings as moral justification; the Catechism warns against this error.
  • Fr. Mike recounts the “Parenthetically False Sanction of Eros” (Sheldon Van Auken) to illustrate how one’s desires or passions do not legitimize breaking moral law (24:38).

Quote:
“Just because I feel something strongly doesn’t give me automatic permission to do that or to act on that thing.”
— Fr. Mike Schmitz (25:00)

4. Transformation, Not Elimination, of Passions

• Passions are Not to Be Destroyed!

  • The Church does not call for the eradication of passions, but for their transformation and proper ordering.
  • “The Church is not teaching us to destroy or defeat the passions, to eliminate the passions. That is not at all what the Church teaches. In fact, it’s the opposite.” (32:40)
  • Referencing C.S. Lewis: The human problem is not desiring too much, but too little; Jesus never calls us to “feel less.”

• Christian Perfection

  • True moral perfection is not just “white knuckle Christianity” (doing the right thing with contrary desires), but in having our inner world transformed so we sincerely desire the good.
  • Analogy: Like someone whose cravings change after giving up sugar, our deepest desires can and should become oriented to the good.
  • “The goal is not just okay, I’m choosing what I know is good … but also I want that. And my desires have … been transformed. And that’s part of the goal.” (34:30)

Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On the Neutrality of Passions:

  “If you’re the kind of person who’s naturally more cantankerous… that is neither good nor bad. That’s neither virtuous nor vicious. Now, at the same time, this is where everything hangs. What we do with that, that’s where we either grow in virtue or we grow in vice.”
  — Fr. Mike Schmitz (16:21)

• On the Power of Love as a Passion:

  “Love is the most powerful of all these drivers. … Only the good can truly be loved. And that’s St. Augustine, who said, only the good can be loved.”
  — Fr. Mike Schmitz (18:40)

• On Moral Responsibility and Passions:

  “Our passions do not give us permission. … It’s so important for us to understand this because we live in a culture … where our passions give us sanction.”
  — Fr. Mike Schmitz (24:38)

• On Christian Perfection:

  “Moral perfection consists in man’s being moved to the good not by his will alone, but also by his sensitive appetite.”
  — Fr. Mike Schmitz, paraphrasing CCC 1770 (33:40)

Timestamps for Important Segments

• [00:57] – Defining passions per Catechism (CCC 1763)
• [02:07] – Appetite vs. will; what “moves” us
• [14:10] – Passions are amoral; their raw material aspect
• [16:21] – Dispositions and their morality
• [18:40] – Love as the fundamental passion
• [19:23] – All affections sourced in the movement toward the good
• [21:15] – Passions, virtue, vice, and moral life
• [24:38] – The “false sanction of Eros”; feelings do not confer moral permission
• [25:00] – Strong feelings are not decisive for morality
• [32:40] – Church rejects elimination of passions; desires are to be transformed
• [34:30] – Analogy of changing desires; transformation as the aim

Summary Table: The Morality of the Passions

| Concept | Neutral? | Moral Significance | |-------------------------------------------------|----------|------------------------------------------------| | Feeling (passion, emotion) | Yes | Becomes moral if engaged by reason/will | | Fundamental passion (Love) | N/A | Source of all other affections | | Strong feelings (positive or negative) | Yes | Must be ordered toward good to be virtuous | | Transformation (goal of Christian perfection) | N/A | Desires are reoriented towards the good | | Acting because of feelings alone | No | Strong emotions do not justify immoral acts|

Takeaways for Listeners

• Passions are a natural, God-given part of human nature, neither to be feared nor to be blindly obeyed.
• Moral growth involves learning to bring passions under the guidance of reason and the will, directed toward the good.
• The fundamental call is not to eliminate desires, but to have desires transformed by God’s grace, so we want what is good.
• Strong feelings never grant permission to act against goodness or truth.

“Freedom is found when not only my intellect apprehends the true, and my will is choosing the good, but also my desires, those passions, are oriented towards the good.”
— Fr. Mike Schmitz (35:02)

End of Summary – Day 237: The Morality of the Passions