Yes, Catholics Are Supposed To Hate
Table of Contents
God Commands Us To Hate
People that hate me call this website a “hate site” and in a sense, they are right.
I hate evil. I’ll say it again: I hate evil. I hate sin. I hate degeneracy.
And no, I am not sorry. I cannot, and will not, apologize for my hate, which is severe.
But why am I so hateful, you ask? It is because God calls me to be hateful.
In fact, He calls all of us Christians to be hateful against evil. The Bible says:
You that love the Lord, hate evil: the Lord preserveth the souls of his saints, he will deliver them out of the hand of the sinner.
Psalms 96:10 (Psalm 97:10)
Thus, in obedience to the Lord, I have to hate evil, and I admonish you, brethren, to do the same!
In this article, we will go over what hate is, what we cannot hate, and what we can and should hate.
What Is Hate?
The Catholic Dictionary says hate is:
A voluntary act by which someone or something is regarded with bitter aversion. On the first level hatred is directed against either God or some rational being; on the second level it is directed against some quality in another but without hatred of the individual personality.
Catholic Dictionary
Let’s unpack this. We hate by voluntarily, willfully and bitterly abhorring someone or some thing.
Firstly, it’s not an accidental feeling.
We must knowingly choose to have bad will towards someone or something.
Secondly, the “someone” could be God or anyone else.
Thirdly, it is possible to hate some attribute of a person, without hating the person in and of themselves.
So we will quickly go through what we cannot hate, and then discuss what we must hate.
Hate Towards God
The Catholic Dictionary continues:
Personal hatred of God may take the form of disgust, when a person detests God because he punishes sinners. It is a grave sin because it is contrary to the justice of God. Another form is the hatred of enmity, when a person actually wished evil to God. Such hatred is of its nature diabolical, and is the most grievous of all sins, since it approximates the enmity that the devils have against God.
Ibid.
How can you love justice while hating He who is justice personified? You can’t.
When one hates God, Who is always just, this can only happen because one hates justice.
Moreover, St. Thomas Aquinas says:
Some of God’s effects, however, are contrary to an inordinate will, such as the infliction of punishment, and the prohibition of sin by the Divine Law. Such like effects are repugnant to a will debased by sin, and as regards the consideration of them, God may be an object of hatred to some, in so far as they look upon Him as forbidding sin, and inflicting punishment.
ST II-II, q. 34, a. 1
Thus, people only hate God because they are in Mortal Sin and hate the justice that is contrary to their sin.
You see hatred of God all the time in people that are pro-baby murder, pro-sodomy, etc.
This is because they are not capable of loving the God of Justice while simultaneously hating justice.
But as Christians, we cannot hate God, since He commanded us not to:
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind.
Matthew 22:37
Since God is Justice, we must love justice and hate injustice. We must also hate the cause of injustice.
Which leads us to…
Hate Towards Our Fellow Man
The Catholic Dictionary continues:
Personal hatred of a human being is the direct opposite of the virtue of love. Where love inspires a person to wish well to another, hatred arouses the desire to do harm or have harm befall the one hated, not as a source of possible good, but precisely as evil. The gravity of such sins of personal hatred depends on how serious the harm wished or intended, and on how deliberately the malicious desires are harbored.
…
It becomes sinful only if the hatred extends to the person who has some admittedly evil trait or sinful habit. Moreover, it becomes specially sinful when the hatred is directed at some virtue that a person possesses, even when the enmity does not extend to the individual personally.
Catholic Dictionary
Moreover, the Catholic Encyclopedia says:
This…kind of hatred, as involving a very direct and absolute violation of the precept of charity, is always sinful and may be grievously so.
Catholic Encyclopedia
Also, St. Thomas Aquinas says:
The hatred of one’s brother, if we consider it simply, is always sinful.
ST II-II, q. 34, a. 3
And the Bible says:
Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer. And you know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in himself.
1 John 3:15
All of this is pretty straightforward. We are not to wish harm against our brother (for evil reasons).
(However, you can wish harm for just reasons, which I will go into in the next section).
We must always hope for the best for them, and especially hope for the greatest good – attaining Salvation.
But how do we wish for Salvation for others who hate God and justice? This is where our hate comes in…
Hate The Evil Qualities
The Catholic Dictionary continues:
If the hatred is directed only toward some evil quality that a person has, but does not touch that person, it is not sinful.
Catholic Dictionary
Moreover, St. Thomas Aquinas says:
It is lawful to hate the sin in one’s brother, and whatever pertains to the defect of Divine justice… Now it is part of our love for our brother that we hate the fault and the lack of good in him, since desire for another’s good is equivalent to hatred of his evil.
ST II-II, q. 34, a. 3
Also, the Catholic Encyclopedia says:
[Hating sin] is not a sin and may even represent a virtuous temper of soul. In other words, not only may I, but I even ought to, hate what is contrary to the moral law. Furthermore one may without sin go so far in the detestation of wrongdoing as to wish that which for its perpetrator is a very well-defined evil, yet under another aspect is a much more signal good. For instance, it would be lawful to pray for the death of a perniciously active heresiarch with a view to putting a stop to his ravages among the Christian people.
Of course, it is clear that this apparent zeal must not be an excuse for catering to personal spite or party rancour. Still, even when the motive of one’s aversion is not impersonal, when, namely, it arises from the damage we may have sustained at the hands of others, we are not guilty of sin unless besides feeling indignation we yield to an aversion unwarranted by the hurt we have suffered.
Catholic Encyclopedia
Thus, it is no sin to hate sin. In fact, it is actually an act of love to hate sin in our brother.
“Hate Language”
“Hate language” (which isn’t really a thing) is a relatively new term.
Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. says (of “hate language”):
Few things are potentially more pernicious, especially when governments and institutions get into the business of defining and enforcing it. “Hate language” and freedom of speech are clearly in bloody conflict with each other. The same folks who were once interested in pressing the limits of free speech – such that most anything could be said with impunity – are now the same people who, in control of the culture, want to suppress any speech not to their liking.
Where did this “hate language” business come from anyhow? Its origin was in the now largely successful endeavor to overturn the moral structure of civil society. Generally speaking, this transformation was accomplished through the deft usage of “rights talk.” What was once called, on rational grounds, a disorder or vice became first tolerated, then finally a “right.” Once it became a “right,” then for anyone to call it a sin or evil became a slander, an attack on transformed human dignity and pride.
Human language has a purpose. It is accurately to define, then name, what in reality it designates. If we come to use the same word for two very different realities, we have to deduce from usage to what reality we are referring.
…
We can find ourselves ostracized or put in jail for stating what is true and giving arguments for it. Free speech, which was designed to state the truth of things, is no longer permitted. Truth is now what endangers society.
On Hatred
In other words, what the world calls “hate language” is basically telling the truth about evil.
We must actually use “hate language” if we want to submit to God’s commandment to hate evil.
Putting Hate Into Practice
Now that we have established what we can and cannot hate, let’s talk about how to practice hate, lovingly!
First, we must remember to keep the Second Great Commandment:
Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
Matthew 22:39
As long as we love our fellow man, and want him to achieve Salvation, we are free to practice hate, lovingly.
We do this by publicly calling sin, sin. For instance, practicing sodomy is evil.
So we must hate the act and rebuke all those who support such evil.
Also, baby murder (abortion) is evil. So we must hate that and bitterly oppose any who support such evil.
Moreover, oppression of the poor and defrauding workers of just wages are also grave evils that must be hatefully opposed.
There are many more evils, of course, but these 4 sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance will suffice for this article.
I will end the article with this cliché: “Hate the sin but love the sinner.”
Our Lord asked us to love God with our whole heart, soul, strength, and mind.
We must also hate sin with our whole heart, soul, strength, and mind, in order to love the sinner.
By hating sin, we will help cleanse each other, making us more pure for God (Psalms 50:9/Psalm 51:7).
I hate your sins, and I hope you hate mine too!
Let’s hate each others’ sins for the love of each other and for God!
