Shortly after the Covid pandemic started, I read Pope Francis’s recent social teaching encyclical, Fratelli Tutti — “Brothers All” — in which he unpacks from various angles how our aching world can achieve a more open, loving, and fraternal spirit. Because of my intense interest in utopian (and dystopian) literature, the following quote from the papal document caught my eye: “In today’s world, the sense of belonging to a single human family is fading, and the dream of working together for justice and peace seems an outdated utopia.” Francis goes on to name one culprit as regards the cause of our increasingly-dystopian society — a disillusioned isolation, caused by the delusion that “we are all-powerful” as we also fail to realize that “we are all in the same boat.”1 It is easy to take a mostly innocent pride in accumulating historical knowledge in order to avoid future mistakes, while forgetting that pride proper is an ever-recurring mistake, the stormcloud of which has overshadowed humankind since the Fall. Traditionally, pride is one of the seven deadly (or capital) sins, universally regarded as a primary source of interpersonal conflict which militates against social hospitality and harmony. Below, we briefly examine pride and offer an antidote to it.

One could use as a launching pad any of the many topics from Fratelli relating to the theme of what contributes to a hospitable, “mere Christian,” community-conscious ethos.2 However, focusing on pride seems profitable given how easily it poisons everything it touches and seems to be such a core vice, as hinted at by the Psalmist: “Pride goes before disaster and a haughty spirit before a fall.”3 Striving for a moral reform, and accepting our status as “in the same boat” with our neighbors, we would do well to keep our pride in check. The pope suggests that thinking “we are all-powerful” leads to an active avoidance of our brother and sister humans, and “Isolation and withdrawal into one’s own interests are never the way to restore hope and bring about renewal.”4

One obvious contemporary realm where pride rears its ugly head is online on social media. We have probably all at some point participated in an online discussion which escalated and eventually blew right past the debate stage, degenerating into the no-holds-barred, fight stage. Perhaps the artificiality, and sometimes anonymity, of virtual discussions makes people think they can be rude without impunity; but nevertheless, “losing one’s cool” happens innumerable times on ubiquitous social media platforms. If you’re aware of this phenomenon, you will also be aware that it is not exactly amenable to the fraternal spirit of love and acceptance that should pervade dialogue — especially dialogue about sensitive topics like religion and politics where people feel strongly and can get hurt or offended easily. It is safe to assume that the disintegration of enjoyable, civil conversations into tense ad hominems, sarcastic defensiveness, or petty quarrels, often has its source in pride. After all, one reason pride is called “capital” is because of its capacity to birth further sins.5

Knowledge of the nature of pride can help keep community interaction — on- or off-line — in the Christian sphere of Charity, defined (partly) as wanting and promoting another’s good. St. Thomas, quoting St. Isidore, says “A man is said to be proud, because he wishes to appear above (super) what he really is.”6 Etymologically, this makes sense since pride is superbia in Latin, meaning “above life.” By nature, pride desires not only to be “above” others but above one’s own proper sphere of calling, ability, and influence. Pride can engender a distorted desire to be considered an authority, or a dislike of the possibility of being proven wrong; thus lost in the haze of an inflated self-image or conception, we lose that vision of the “good of the other” — that necessary ingredient in the glue of what St. Paul calls the “unity of the spirit through the bond of peace.”7 Peace is lost, or never achieved, because the good vision of self is lost, which should be humility and intellectual liberality, listening more than speaking and putting others first.

Another angle on pride worth consideration, before addressing solutions, is examining the character Superbia from C.S. Lewis’s The Pilgrim’s Regress. The protagonist, John, along with his companion, Vertue, and their guide (named Slikisteinsauga) embark on the final leg of their journey. Along the way, consistent with the rest of the allegory, they encounter characters who represent particular philosophies. The company heads eastward on a “long straight road, very narrow, and on the left crags rising within a few paces of the road into ice and mist and, beyond that, black cloud: on the right, swamps and jungle, sinking almost at once into black cloud.”8 They soon see on their left a gaunt, thin-skinned, flaming-eyed, skeletal figure scrabbling on a rock that has been scraped so clean as to resemble a mirror. Superbia goes on to state her worldview in a poem, a few pertinent points of which are

I have scraped clean the plateau from the filthy earth, / . . . And though I starve of hunger it is plainly seen / that I have eaten nothing common or unclean. / I have by fasting purged away the filthy flesh, / . . . And now though I am barren, yet no man can doubt / I am clean and my iniquities are blotted out. / I have made my soul (once filthy) a hard, pure, bright / Mirror of steel: / . . . Myself am to myself, a mortal God, a self-contained / Unwindowed monad, unindebted and unstained.9

These poetic fragments convey a bit of the main idea of her verse, which is that she has rejected the living, growing, often messy world of Creation (which was created and declared good) in which she was born. As her Latin name suggests, she is “above” its dirty, fuzzy imperfection. In its place is substituted a cold, hard, predictable isolation in which she does not need anyone’s charity and is her own ruler. It is worth noting that despite her limbs’ vigorous movement atop the polished stone, she remains stationary — “going nowhere fast,” as it were. Her actions recall Dante’s Satan: he eternally flaps his gigantic wings in the Inferno’s ninth circle, keeping Cocytus, the lake in which he’s stuck, frozen forever. Symbolically evident is the perilous paradox of the prideful, believing they are ahead, over, better than others, when in reality they are metaphysically and morally lagging. The consequence of breaking the laws woven into the fabric of reality is that their efforts are counterproductive. As Jesus says: the first shall be last.

It is often thought that virtues have their opposites in vices: courage and cowardice, mercy and wrath, love and hate. Humility is a good candidate for pride’s foil, given that, returning to the Angelic Doctor’s assessment, it comes from humus, or “the earth,” which naturally is beneath our feet. To perpetuate our metaphor, the meaning of humility works on that image of being beneath, contrasting with what is super (above) and there is a concomitant character disposition of putting oneself in that earthward, downward, possibly subordinate position to that of others. St. Bernard concurs, his definition of humility neatly complimenting Aquinas’s: “A virtue by which a man, knowing himself as he truly is, abases himself. ”10 The present cultural milieu values self-assertion so much that self-abasement is probably viewed skeptically. But really, to abase is to lower in esteem, and what is pride if not too much self-esteem (or, self-admiration or respect).

Expanding on St. Bernard’s idea that to be humble is to know oneself as one truly is, probably the best medicine for pride is to live in a constant state of gratitude to our Creator — to thankfully exclaim, “I praise you because I am wonderfully made.”11 If one is thankful for who she is, how could she get lost in the dark of ignorance of Self or seek to become something other than she is? To be thankful for who one is, causes one to press deeper into that essence which has been lovingly placed at one’s core by God. This knowing of one’s deepest truth of being will inevitably be a prompting to humility because of the sheer Joy of it: if I know my true self, why would I need to become something different? Why would I need to compete and subjugate to show a power that I’ve had all along? I wouldn’t.

What better to leaven the dough of the aforementioned “mere Christian” community ethos than humility? Today’s innumerable debates on controversial issues would benefit highly, given that humility seeks first to hear and understand one’s interlocutor in a calm, accepting manner. The result would most likely be that reason, not emotion, will tend to decide the outcome of the exchange and each party comes out more wise and amicable. In debate, it is much easier to set up a “steel man” of an opposing argument when one can listen humbly and reasonably, aiming more for truth than to win an ideological competition. Lewis’s note on pride is apt: it “is competitive by its very nature.”12 Pride would dig furiously for the gem of truth at the mountain’s heart to win it before anyone else and keep it for oneself. The noble pursuit, however, is to accompany a friend on the quest for this gem and upon discovering it together, joyfully and freely share it with the rest of the world. As Pope Francis writes, “it is closeness; it is the culture of encounter” that heals pride-caused wounds; not avoidance and isolation.13

Notes:

1 Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti, The Holy See, 3 October, 2020, sec. 30, https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20201003_enciclica-fratelli-tutti.html.

2 This particular ethos happens to be the theme of An Unexpected Journal’s present issue: “During a 2014 address at Oxford’s University Church, Dr. Diana Glyer popularized the term ‘intellectual hospitality’ — a concept rooted in C.S. Lewis’s ‘Mere Christian’ ethos,” https://anunexpectedjournal.com/submissions/.

3 Proverbs 16:18 (NABRE).

4 Francis, Fratelli Tutti, sec. 30.

5 John Paul II, Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed., (Washington DC: United States Catholic Conference), sec. 1866, accessed August 1, 2024, http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/para/1866.htm.

6 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (Christian Classics Ethereal Library), II.II.162.1, 4229, https://www.ccel.org/ccel/a/aquinas/summa/cache/summa.pdf.

7 Ephesians 4:3 (NABRE).

8 C.S. Lewis, The Pilgrim’s Regress (DPC, 2015), 281, Retrieved from https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20150649.

9 Ibid., 293-294.

10 Arthur Divine, “Humility,” New Advent, accessed August 3, 2024, https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07543b.htm.

11 Psalm 139:14 (NABRE).

12 C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Pymble: HarperCollins e-books, 2009), 122, Retrieved from https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4c4NxBlBtXTcWw2ZV94ZzV6VTg/edit?resourcekey=0-XK3XdM0eYfxqpM9nXZQOxw

13 Francis, Fratelli Tutti, sec. 30.