When will it be enough? To protest injustice is the obligation of all just men and women. There is a moment when protest can lose its sense of reason. We become irrational and do things that we would not normally condone.
Examples of this demise in reason become obvious when those who begin a protest for a just cause raise it a few notches where they are destroying private property of people who need said property to support their families.
When people are injured, even killed, a protest ceases to be a protest and turns into chaos. Often, innocent children are the victims, as are those who have no guns and panic to find shelter.
Taking a life does not restore the life of a victim. When protest evolves into destruction, we must understand that we have crossed a moral threshold that should never be crossed. Killing in defense of the self, family and other innocent people is a proportionate response to a threat. However, killing out of anger and destroying private property is uncontrolled rage.
Rage does not see the difference between righteous anger and violence. The Apostle St. Paul warned us about this almost 2,000 years ago:
“Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil” (Ephesians 4:26-27)
Anger such as that fails to think first, before acting. We allow ourselves to lose control. We lose our ability to distinguish between right and wrong, good and evil, anger and rage. We lose a piece of our humanity: the ability to discriminate between right and wrong and to choose that which is right. The Apostle St. Peter warned us about this more than 2,000 years ago:
“Beware that you are not carried away with the error of the lawless and lose your own stability” (2 Peter 3:17b)
“Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice,” (1 Peter 4:31)
Our expression of anger must always be justified by absolute moral rules that dictate what is right and guide us away from what is wrong. Let us be careful not to become the demon we are trying to slay.
3.
Franciscans of Life 
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