emotions: catechism

Re: Emotions, Psycho-spiritual Viewpoint
Fr: Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994) # 1762-1775. (underscore mine)

• Definition
“Feelings or passions are emotions or movements of the sensitive appetite that incline us to act or not in regard to something felt or imagined to be good or evil” (# 1763). They “form the passageway and ensure the connection between the life of the sense and the life of the mind” (# 1764).

• Classification
“The principal passions are love and hatred, desire and fear, joy, sadness and anger” (# 1772).

(a) Attraction to Good
“‘To love is to will the good of another’” (St. Thomas Aquinas) (# 1766). “The most fundamental passion is love, aroused by the attraction of the good” (# 1765). “All other affections have their source in this first movement of the human heart toward the good” (#1766). Love causes a desire for the absent good and the hope of obtaining it; this movement finds completion in the pleasure and joy of the good possessed (# 1765).

(b) Aversion to Evil
“The apprehension of evil causes hatred, aversion, and fear of the impending evil; this movement ends in sadness at some present evil, or in the anger that resists it” (# 1765).

• Morality
“In themselves passions are neither good nor evil. They are morally qualified only to the extent that they effectively engage reason and will, (# 1767) i.e., insofar as they engage reason and will, there is moral good or evil in them” (# 1773).

• Principles
 “The human person is ordered to beatitude by his deliberate acts: the passions or feelings he experiences can dispose him to it and contribute to it” (# 1762).
 “Passions are said to be voluntary, ‘either because they are commanded by the will or because the will does not place obstacles in their way’” (St. Thomas Aquinas) (# 1767). “The upright will orders the movements of the sense it appropriates to the good and to beatitude; an evil will succumbs to disordered passions and exacerbates them” (# 1768).
 “It belongs to the perfection of the moral or human good that the passions be governed by reason” (Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas).”
 “Passions are morally good when they contribute to a good action, evil in the opposite case” (# 1768).
 “Emotions and feelings can be taken up in the virtues or perverted by the vices” (# 1774).
 “In the Christian life, the Holy Spirit himself accomplishes his work by mobilizing the whole being, with all its sorrows, fears and sadness, as is visible in the lord’s agony and passion. In Christ human feelings are able to reach their consummation in charity and divine beatitude” (# 1769).
 “Moral perfection consists in man’s being moved to the good not by his will alone, but also by his sensitive appetite, as in the words of the psalm: ‘My heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God’ (Ps 84:2) (# 1770).”