- by Father Andrew M Greeley- by Father Andrew M Greeley
Pride is often presented to us as a "strong" vice, one that only really great men can attain. The proud man, like the devil in John Milton's Paradise Lost, is thought to be at least a noble man, whatever his other faults might be. Sins motivated by pride are taken to be more dignified than sins springing from other vices, such as lust.
Humility, on the other hand, is understood to be a "weak" virtue - a virtue for pious contemplatives and sweet young ladies. The humble person is one who lets others push him around; humility is essentially something negative - the absence of strong will and strong feelings.
Actually, the opposite holds true: Pride is not the vice of the strong; it is the vice ©f the blind. The proud man is not the cold-headed realist who has the will power to forge ahead in the world. He is rather a starry-eyed dreamer who plunges blindly toward disaster in a world of fantasy he has fashioned for himself.
The proud man deceives himself, believing that he is the master of his own destiny - that he can do anything he wants and can claim credit for whatever he has done.
The first sin ever committed by any man is a good example of this. Adam knew that all he had was from God; he realized that if he disobeyed God he ran the risk of losing everything. Yet the dream of making a decision for himself, of being for a few moments at least free from God's control, blinded him to reality and made him an easy victim of the serpent's fantasy that disobedience would make him like God. The proud man sees himself as the center of the universe and God and his fellow humans as mere satellites revolving around him. In fact, the proud man makes himself a god.
We have grown accustomed to think the proud person is one who continually talks about himself or his accomplishments; but this is not the real essence of pride. Such boasting might be the result of the less serious vice of vanity or merely of some kind of emotional insecurity. The proud man is not necessarily given much to talking about himself to others - he really cares little what others think. Only one person's opinion is valuable: his own. If he reveals this opinion to others he does not intend to convince them; he merely wishes to inform them.
That pride is blindness is not always as obvious as in Adam's case. The very nature of his vice makes the proud man blind even to his own pride. He refuses to admit in himself the tendency to pride which haunts all of us. He is misunderstood, persecuted, unappreciated and cheated by hostile forces around him. The world envies his superiority and seeks to destroy it. Pride is a spiritual persecution complex.
The proud man will have no part of active participation in the Church's worship since he sees no reason why a man of his success and accomplishments should have his prayers disturbed by those who are not strong enough to stand on their own two feet. He is quick to criticize and to judge others since he knows that they cannot be motivated by ideals as pure as his own - that somewhere along the line they have compromised with evil or they wouldn't be as successful as they are.
He is harsh with those under his authority because this is the only way to bring them up to the standard he demands. He sees the world as a mixture of black and white - with very little gray. He cannot compromise or adjust himself to others' peculiarities; and, of course, he can never see another person's side of the argument. He may not know whether the other is stupid or in bad faith, but he is certain that his opponent is wrong.
There are degrees of pride and hence degrees of humiliating experiences which are needed to bring us back to normal. In the average person pride has not reached such a degree that extraordinary medicine is needed. The jolts and bumps of everyday life impede lengthy escape from reality. We are not so indifferent to the opinions of our fellow men that we can ignore the possibility that their criticisms may be right. We are perceptive enough to be aware of our dependence on others at almost every stage of our existence. Unfortunately, we do not make sufficient use of this humiliating and realistic information. We fail to devote sufficient time to meditating on our own dependencies and our own proper place in the universe. We do not achieve that kind of humility which would give us a deep insight into reality and bring with it a wisdom and a peace reserved for the saints.
A man steeped in pride, however, needs far more than the rough treatment of everyday life to be shaken out of his fantasy. Only a truly shattering experience can destroy his illusions. An overpowering sorrow, a great physical suffering, a tragic failure, a love which has conquered him before he can steel his heart against it - only these soul-rending human emotions can knock the proud man off the pedestal on which he has placed himself.
We see, then, the point behind the Lenten penances on which the Church insists. They are a mild form of bodily suffering intended to recall to us our creaturehood, a moderate version of the shattering awakening Father Adam received when God summarily ejected him from his dream world, the Garden of Eden, into the harsh world outside.
- from the book Seven Roads to Hell and 'Ave Maria' magazine