You're listening to Catholic Sprouts, the daily podcast for Catholic kids that strives to plant seeds of faith.

Hey there, Spouts. Today is Monday, May 27th, 2019. This week on the Catholic Spouts podcast, we are going to be talking about an issue that unfortunately we have to deal with and think about too often in this world. And that issue is war. Very often, various countries around the world are going to war,

and even our own country can get involved in these conflicts. War is unfortunately too common,

and it is important that we understand why we might be called to go to war in a good way, why we should be very

thankful for those that defend our country, the alternatives for going to war, and finally,

what our faith outlines as a just war, meaning a war that is good. So today we're going to start with the precursor to war,

something that begins the movement toward war. And that first thing is anger. Now, we might think

that anger is all bad, that it is bad to feel anger. And for the most part,

you might be right. But we know that anger can actually, in certain situations, be good. Anger is, in fact,

the correct way to respond when we witness evil.

When we see someone who is innocent, being abused, or taken advantage of, we should be angry.

For example, if we were to have lived a couple decades ago in the United States and we saw the

terrible discrimination against people based only on the color of their skin, we should have been

mad. Even if this didn't mean that we were treated poorly, we still should have been angry that anyone be treated this way.

And it is this anger over evil that motivates us to fight for what is good.

Therefore, anger can be good. Anger, of course, can also be bad. Anger can be a sinful thing when we are

simply angry about something that has solely to do with us. For example, if I get angry that people are disrespecting me, or I'm angry because I'm not getting

enough attention as I feel I should, or if I'm angry about something that's not even true,

I'm angry because I feel like I'm not getting everything that I deserve to get.

All of these things are a sinful way to experience anger and they often lead us to bigger

sins like revenge or hurting someone just to hurt them. Just anger would never do that.

The best example of pure and holy anger we see from Jesus Christ in the Bible. You might remember that there's a story when he is in Jerusalem and he goes to the big temple there. Now, according to the Jewish faith, at certain key moments in a person's life, they had to go to the temple and they had to make an animal sacrifice.

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