Understanding Our Capacity for Evil

The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast

Ascension

Christianity, Religion & Spirituality, Society & Culture

4.9 • 7.1K Ratings

🗓️ 13 June 2019

⏱️ 8 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Fr. Mike asks if the bad things you think you don’t have the capacity to do are actually just things you don’t have the opportunity to do. A friend of Fr. Mike’s was recovering from an addiction, and this friend noticed how he was deceiving himself. He was telling himself “I would never …” when he should have been saying, “I haven’t yet ...” Many times the sins we avoid we have only avoided because we haven’t had the opportunity to commit them. Acknowledging that we may do something regretful if given the opportunity is a great—although difficult—exercise in self-knowledge that could prevent some serious sin in the future.

This week, consider the benefits that come with strengthening your self-discipline. Make an extra attempt to reinforce a virtue that may help you combat the corresponding vice. This will go a long way in increasing your holiness.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	How many names father Mike Schmitz and this is essential reasons.
0:08.0	So I have this friend who has been in recovery for many years.
0:11.2	He has been sober for a long time now and he told me about when he was using.
0:21.2	He would often use these three words and the three words were I would never.
0:27.3	He was deceiving himself by saying I would never.
0:30.5	So yes, he said I'm drinking but I would never drink and drive.
0:34.7	Yes, I'm smoking weed but I would never smoke under the influence.
0:39.9	Yes, I've been, I'll do this thing but I would never do the next thing.
0:43.9	I've never go to the next level because that's way too bad.
0:47.8	That's nothing that I would ever do.
0:49.6	I would never.
0:50.9	And he said at one of his moments of kind of rock bottom,
0:53.1	he realized that almost all of his I would never.
0:57.3	Were simply I haven't yet.
1:00.2	So the three words were switched, right?
1:01.8	I would never he realized that self-knowledge was like, oh my gosh, it's not I would never.
1:06.6	It's merely I haven't yet.
1:09.8	See what happened was he didn't have like the self-knowledge.
1:13.4	He had some self-deception and it was he thought like, I know I don't have the capacity to do that.
1:19.1	I know myself well enough, I don't have the capacity to make this big decision, a terrible
1:24.6	decision to do this evil thing.
1:27.5	And he realized over the course of time what many of us realized, which is he had the
	...

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