I’m thinking about my Fediverse profile as where I perform as a sort of, well, social justice warrior, but specifically, I see myself often succeeding when I try and “beat the drum” of validating anger and rage. And my Substack is often where I’m analyzing my melancholy as a mechanism of hoping.
So, this relates to my brand and my public image.
And that got me wondering what persons of the Catholic Church relate to those practices. Here’s my keyword salad.
- Anger
- Aquinas wrote about anger as ira, with virtuous and disordered forms: ira bona and ira mala
- Catherine of Siena wrote about holy indignation
- Francis of Assisi
- normally Catholic signifier for jouissance, that non-teleological joy, but much like anarcho-nihilist jouissance, Francis’ joy came from frustration about wealth and violence
- he framed it as a zeal for justice.
- normally Catholic signifier for jouissance, that non-teleological joy, but much like anarcho-nihilist jouissance, Francis’ joy came from frustration about wealth and violence
- Dorothy Day
- publicly, all about holy anger
- her journals revealed melancholy she used for hope
- Melancholy
- Augustine of Hippo wrote about the inquietum cor (restless heart)
- John of the Cross wrote on The Dark Night of the Soul
- “night” is the condition of hope
- Teresa of Ávila, contemporary of John, wrote on spiritual aridity:
- a melancholy that comes from deep prayer
- prepares the soul for deeper union
- She discusses an interior castle
- The emphasis on an internal sanctuary seems to be a development of Catholic scholarship that is not (yet) found in development’s like hope as developed by Byung-Chul Han in The Spirit of Hope (2024ce)
- Ignatius of Loyola
- founder of the Jesuits
- contrasted desolation and consolation
- taught that desolation can deepen hope:
- revealing our dependence on God
- opportunity for perserverance
- perserverance here then is a mechanism of hoping
- Thérèse of Lisieux
- created the Little Way
- another focus on spiritual aridity, connecting it with melancholy and doubt
- absence of consolation is the highest form of hoping:
- trust without /sought-after/ evidence
- created the Little Way