“Pride Month” disappeared into the rearview mirror a month ago, so it’s easy to wonder whether it ever really arrived at all, so muted was the celebration this year. Over at Daily Wire, my colleague Matthew Petrusek wrote a perceptive piece on the fading of the pride rainbow, a trend observed not only by conservatives but also in the mainstream media, from Newsweek to CNN to CNBC.
Needless to say—if anyone was in doubt—for corporations, it was clearly always about the money, and when the bottom line took a massive hit, so did their pride.
Yet the movement remains a key battleground in the campaign to “develop” the Catholic Church’s sexual teaching and vindicate that which the Church has always condemned. Pope Francis’s emphasis on mercy and inclusion emboldened many Catholic progressives to embrace the rainbow flag, and some Catholic priests—and in at least one case a bishop—have even celebrated “Pride Masses.” As the movement continues to drain cultural cachet and a new pope takes hold of the helm, in what direction should the barque of Peter move?
To answer that, it behooves us to spend some time with the new pope’s favorite saint: Augustine of Hippo. After his election, Leo XIV introduced himself on the loggia as “a son of Saint Augustine,” and indeed, since May, he has quoted this great Doctor of the Church at a rate of at least once every 1.5 days. What might an Augustinian approach to the pride movement look like? If the Doctor of Grace—who skewers the sexual immorality of decadent pagan Rome in the first part of the City of God—were transplanted into 2025 and given a brief tour of the culture, what would he say?
At America magazine, Kathleen Bonnette, a theologian at Georgetown and onetime fellow at the Augustinian Institute of the pope’s alma mater, proffers a perplexing answer. She admits that, in Augustine, we find a thinker oriented toward “certainty and stability,” and “a hierarchy that orders and maintains reality”—in short, “an unchanging order of truth . . . amidst the chaos of the world.” Augustine saw that this eternal truth can “only be found through community because God, truth itself, is communal.” So far, so good.
But from here, Bonnette turns this recognizably Augustinian paradigm on its head. Truth risks becoming “an abstract, stagnant principle,” an effort “to find (or impose) certainty,” used to “oppress those who do not have a say in discerning its meaning.” Thus, truth needs to evolve in community—not so much for the sake of the former, it seems, but for the sake of the latter. She cites first, as an example, “the pink smoke set off in Rome by the Women’s Ordination Conference during the conclave to protest the exclusion of women from the process.” From there, she argues that the perspectives of “L.G.B.T. individuals and other historically marginalized people” should be included “in the development or interpretation “ of the Church’s teaching, later adding that, according to Augustine, “the particular moral norms that express love can and should change.” In sum, the stability inspired by the Augustinian tradition is specifically one of “communal support, service and humility,” and an ordering of reality through “evolutive interconnection.”
A surprising inversion like this is possible only through the conspicuous absence of a theme relentlessly emphasized by Augustine—namely, human sin and divine grace. Augustine did not, as his later Jansenist and Calvinist interpreters held, teach a “total depravity” of human nature, but he did very much underscore human wretchedness. This included, of course, a very clear and consistent condemnation of sexual immorality. To offer just one of many examples: “Those sins which are against nature, like those of the men of Sodom, are in all times and places to be detested and punished. Even if all nations committed such sins, they should all alike be held guilty by God’s law” (Confessions 3.8).
In light of this central theme of Augustine’s—as well as his deep love of Scripture (the starry firmament to guide us; see Confessions 13.15) and his talents as a rhetorician—we should turn instead to the saint’s emphasis on the “threefold concupiscence” first defined by Saint John: “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world” (1 Jn 2:16). This was an organizing principle for Augustine, one that got past the surface arguments over particular sins and down to the deeper reality of sin itself.
This threefold lust features prominently in the Confessions, where Augustine maps the disorders against Plato’s tripartite soul: the lust of the flesh corresponds to our appetitive part (our physical needs and desires); the lust of the eyes corresponds to our rational part (our intellectual insights and pursuits); and the pride of life corresponds to our spirited part (or our passionate emotions and drives). In 1.10, he laments his past love of “play” (lust of the flesh); of the theater, games, and shows (lust of the eyes); and of “the vanity of victory” (pride of life). And in 5.3, he writes that the philosophers “do not slaughter their self-conceits like birds [pride of life], nor the curiosities—by which they voyage through the secret ways of the abyss—like the fish of the sea [lust of the eyes], nor their carnal lusts like the beasts of the field [lust of the flesh].”
Then, in a lengthy section of book 10 (30–41), which runs about twenty pages, Augustine painstakingly analyzes the way this threefold lust continues to assail him even after his conversion, including the temptation toward sexual immorality that besets him in sleep. “Under the heads of that threefold concupiscence,” he concludes, “I have considered the damage wrought in me by my sins, and I have called Thy right hand to my aid. For in my wounded heart I have seen the shining of Thy splendour” (10.41). Even the very structure of the Confessions, one commentator notes, reinforces the same theme: books two through four look at the disordered state of these three parts of the soul, while books six through eight look at their proper ordering.
This theme of the threefold lust isn’t limited to the Confessions; it recurs throughout Augustine’s writings, including on marriage and grace. In Sermon 162, Augustine ties John’s admonition to Paul’s in 1 Corinthians 6:18:
It is only by the evil of fleshly and general lust that the soul fornicates away from God in every way. As though bound hand and foot to bodily and temporal desires and enjoyments, it sins against its own body; becoming in every respect the slave of its lust, it bows down to the world and is estranged from God; which is the meaning of The beginning of the pride of man is to apostatize from God [Sir. 10:12]. In order to beware of this evil of general fornication, the apostle John admonishes us . . .
Then, in a sermon on First John itself, he preaches,
The river of temporal things hurries one along: but like a tree sprung up beside the river is our Lord Jesus Christ. . . . Are you rushing down the stream to the headlong deep? Hold fast the tree. Is love of the world whirling you on? Hold fast Christ. . . .
By not having concupiscence of the world, neither shall the lust of the flesh, nor the lust of the eyes, nor the pride of life, subjugate you: and you shall make place for Charity when she comes, that you may love God. Because if love of the world be there, love of God will not be there. Hold fast rather the love of God, that as God is for ever and ever, so you also may remain for ever and ever: because such is each one as is his love. Love earth, you shall be earth.
Christian sexual ethics, Hans Urs von Balthasar once wrote, ought to “keep to the quite simple outline of the New Testament. For this is as unchangeable as the nature of the divine love which has become flesh in Christ.” And when it comes to the pride movement, the Church faces a simple question: What do we see in it, ultimately? Do we see an expression of that simple, unchangeable outline in the Gospels and Saint Paul, rooted in the Torah? Or do we see, on the contrary, a pronounced expression of the threefold lust that Scripture so clearly condemns?
The question answers itself. Despite the good intentions of those involved, the melodious emphasis on love, and the noble aims of diversity and inclusion, the pride movement, ultimately, is a celebration of the behaviors, the spectacles, and—quite literally—the pride of life that Scripture warns against.
There’s no wounded heart in which the divine splendor cannot shine, and so the Church must always reach out to todos, todos, todos—with love, mercy, and compassion. This, too, is an elemental truth of Scripture. But when it comes to pride as a movement, the only real question is whether the Church will stop letting the world position the Word of God, and again let the Word—and its ablest defenders, like Augustine—position the world.
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We have a sex drive to ensure that the human race continues, but it might be better, if it was not so strong. It does seem to get us into trouble again and again. Learning to control it is key, which gets easier as you get older. One of the nicer things about getting old.
Church should simply follow the Scriptures. This is a no brainer. Not complicated. See Saint Paul:
Romans 1:26-27
New International Version
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
1 Corinthians 6:9-11
New International Version
9 Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men[a]
10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
11 And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
About the insidious nature of “lust”, St. Augustine gives more cause for reflection.
Three points:
FIRST, “But, to return to the word ‘lust.’ As lust for revenge is called anger, so lust for money is avarice, lust to win at any price is obstinacy, lust for bragging is vanity. And there are still many other kinds of lust, some with names and some without. For example, it would be difficult to find a specific name for that lust for domination which plays such havoc with the souls of ambitious soldiers and comes to light in every civil war” (“The City of God,” Book XIV, ch. 16).
SECOND, perhaps the missing “name” for “lust for domination” is clericalism—as in the edict Fiducia Supplicans, or the edict dismissal of three lay theologians in Detroit? Or, maybe the overall premium placed on a synodal “process” over content, or the invention of an “inverted pyramid” church (analogous to “bottoms-up” LGBTQ!) displacing the “hierarchical communion” (Lumen Gentium) attentive to both communio (as an “ecclesial assembly”) and the Apostolic Succession commissioned by the incarnate and historical Jesus Christ?
THIRD, the pride flag and an undeclared “civil war” within the Church: the clericalism of a cardinal’s Fiducia Supplicans as posturing der Synodal Weg against all of St. Augustine’s continental Africa, plus Poland, Hungary, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, the Coptic Church, parts of France, Spain and Argentina, and many other vocal or silent (silenced?) voices still in “walking together” with the Magisterium. And, with authentic human nature: “The Church is no way the author or the arbiter of this [natural law and moral absolutes] norm” (St. John Paul II, the encyclical Veritatis Splendor, 1993, n. 95).
SUMMARY: St. Augustine writes of “fantastica fornicatio”: the prostitution of the mind to its own fancies. Rather than seeming to peripheralize sexual lust, should recent clericalist voices have noticed this indulgence as more of a gateway sin?
It is sad and tragic that the gay Catholic community is too frequently associated with lust. That living a responsible gay life grounded in the Gospels is seldom considered as possible. I believe it is accurate to state that the first gay couple legally married in the U.S. was a female Boston couple together for over 40 years, taking care of each other in old age. Is this lust? These Pharisaic commentaries sneering at gay Catholics who are “breaking the law of Moses” should bow low and see what Jesus is writing in the sand with his finger.
I judge no one but feel obligated to point out that you “cherry pick” the example of one lesbian couple and seem to want that to serve as the example of homosexual relationships in the U.S. And yet this is far from the real experience of homosexual men in America and elsewhere. The example of gay men in committed lifelong monogamous relationships is an urban myth. I will be honest in admitting that there are always exceptions with regard to human behavior.
We read: “Is this lust?” No, certainly not the caring for 40 years, but rather conflating this with the physical/sexual expression otherwise oriented toward complementary unity and fecundity. Same ascetic standard applies equally to unmarried men and women cohabiting to the extent of sexual expression.
So, what is it exactly that Jesus actually said to the prostitute as he was adding something by writing in the sand? Christ who—of the Law of Moses—said something about fulfilling the law rather than abolishing it, and even about retaining jots and tittles. Maybe his jots and tittles revealed the night visits of the, yes, Pharisaic accusers, and for some perhaps their visits with each other or dallying with a neighbor’s sheep? So, yes, the sneering of “Pharisaic commentaries” be damned. And, maybe a better term than (heterosexual) “lust” is “total moral/intelligent incoherence,” or, whatever.
And, what does it mean, too, for homosexuals to be “legally married”—as if the totality of real marriage can be civilly redefined into only a civil arrangement with an open-ended definition? Luther presumed as much when he demoted marriage as no longer a sacrament (while marrying a nun, once said by friend Erasmus to be nine months pregnant). And, as when Luther also snapped the apostolic succession of valid Holy Orders, when he replaced sacramentally ordained and uncooperative bishops with lay administrators.
In our tragically post-Christian and increasingly unnatural world, the hour is late…
Dr. Behrman,
Your fight is with Sacred Scripture and Tradition.
We cannot change the Word of God, Jesus Christ. This is Good News, because the Word of God can change us!
Why lash out at those who teach the Word of God?
Pax et bonum.
Theology tickles the mind, the Gospel pierces the heart.
“Theology deserves to be called the highest wisdom, for everything is viewed in light of the first cause.” – St. Thomas Aquinas
Theology in the true sense starts not merely with certain formal authoritative propositions about God but from this personal relationship. The task of theology is not merely to improve our scientific understanding of dogmas but to deepen and enlighten our personal relationship with God in the Church.” — Thomas Merton
“Theology is based upon a new beginning in thought which is not the product of our own reflection but has its origin in the encounter with a Word which always precedes us. We call the act of accepting this new beginning ‘conversion.’ Because there is no theology without faith, there can be no theology without conversion.” — Joseph Ratzinger
A dynamic of Christ revealed to the world in contrast to the world recasting Christ. Homosexuality the ultimate disfigurement of nature, Man created male and female in God’s own image now inverted to its opposite. Beneath the abomination is Man’s lust for absolute freedom. Freedom, modernity’s golden calf, a heresy venerated by academia, jurists as unprincipled liberty.
We’ve disfigured beauty and violated truth. A moral leprosy, the great danger subverting the Church now that it has conquered the world. A movement against this pestilence within the Church can deter. Only a Roman pontiff who has the authority can cleanse both Church and world.
Leo XIV introduced himself on the loggia as “a son of Saint Augustine. “
We can know through both Faith and reason that because the sexual relationship is disordered, in every case the sexual acts are disordered,and not ordered to Life-affirming and Life-sustaining Salvational Love.
“God is love.” Therefore, love is not sin. To call sin “love” is a sin. God saves us from our sins to eternally unite us with His Love. That fact alone should compel us to repent and believe the Word of God.
Let us follow the example of St. Augustine to “take and read” Sacred Scripture, repent of our sins, receive God’s healing grace and rest in the peace of God which is “beyond all understanding.”
Lust, sensuality at its worst can be, at least hypothetically attributed to Archb Weisenburger’s dismissal of three prominent, conservative faculty at Sacred Heart Major Seminary. First, lust as defined by Aquinas is not the initial attraction to women, however strong men experience. It’s the willful, clearly acknowledged assent.
How does lust relate to Weisenburger’s dismissals. He describes the basis in his admiration of Pope Francis who he says ‘spoke from the heart’, calling things as he perceived them. It’s a difference between reasoned judgment [the virtue prudence] and emotive decision making – as if what I, regardless of what Christ says or the Apostles taught, am convinced is right. What I feel.
In doing so, making decisions on interior feelings makes oneself the arbiter of good and evil, rather than God who instructs us through Christ.
“Evolutive interconnection”? I don’t know which is most appropriate — 🤣, 😢, 😒, or 🤪.
Lust, because it sexually objectifies the human person, and denies the Sanctity and Dignity of every beloved son and daughter, is devoid of Love, and is thus a denial of God’s Universal Call to Holiness.
Break in the action!
I don’t know if it is still there but, once upon a time, aka late 50s early 60s, there was a drive-in-theater on the road (can’t remember the number) between Baltimore and Washington , D.C.
The name of it? (I thought you’d never ask) – the Sidney Lust Drive-In. I am NOT making this up.
We now return you to the profound ponderings, at the same time begging your pardon for interrupting them.
Pride, in its most general terms, is both the justification and championing of sin. Pride rejects any notion of God or any authority over it. Humility, the virtue opposed to pride, leads one to recognize and acknowledge one’s own sinful behavior before God. The truly proud willfully refuse, a key word here, to acknowledge that their behavior is either sinful or wrong in any context. Through the pride of Adam and Eve, original sin became a reality for all of humanity.
It is bad enough for a single human being to fall into the sin of pride via the countless mechanisms available to us by way of free will. As Jesus said, woe to the one who leads others to sin.
A millstone awaits the proud. Mercy awaits the humble.
We pray for the conversion and salvation of the proud, before they encounter the fall that awaits them.
“Moses came down the mountain with the two tablets of the commandments in his hands….tablets that were made by God having inscriptions that were engraved by God himself.” (Exodus 32:15)
And the people said: “We will do everything that the Lord has told us.” (Ex 24:3,4)
I just read the little book Platonism and mystical theology by Jean Danielou, SJ. “We are above and beyond natural knowledge in a person to person relationship between the soul and God.” “I betrothed you to one husband to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ” (2 Cor 11:1,2). “The one who has the bride is the divine Bridegroom” (St John the Baptist). “…so that they may all be one, as you Father are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us…(Jn 17:20). “The union of each soul with the Logus is but one aspect of the first and prior union (Communion) of the Word with human nature…” (26). ” It is a great mystery.” Jean Danielou writes about Saint Gregory of Nyssa and the monks gathered by Saint Basil singing praises of virginity, perfect purity and love by observing the commandments of God. “Let the soul cleanse itself of this mud, and the divine beauty will shine in it at once.” (19) “Singing praises of virginity as a return to MAN’S TRUE NATURE and a prerequisite for contemplation and the ascent towards God.” “Fleeing from evils….to achieve likeness with God. Let us flee then to the beloved Fatherland.” (86). That human pleasure that becomes a trap for many, just a tiny spark from the love and union with God. I experienced mystical encounters with Jesus Christ for three decades and one time the Son of God streamed this divine delight through me that I lost my mind. He had left me but I wanted to go back there but I ran into an invisible wall. The Sacred Heart of Jesus is my devotion and adoration every day. HE is a lover God, a lover of the human hearts, and HE is Love forever and all eternity. Holy Saints pray for us that we too will be welcomed by the God who is LOVE.