Satisfaction with one’s achievements confidence and self-respect consciousness of one’s own dignity the best state of something. The modern world defines pride differently. Therefore it is evident that pride denotes something opposed to right reason, and this shows it to have the character of sin, because according to Dionysius ( On Divine Names 4:4), “the soul’s evil is to be opposed to reason.” Therefore it is evident that pride is a sin.

Now right reason requires that every man’s will should tend to that which is proportionate to him. Pride is so called because a man thereby aims higher than he is wherefore Isidore says: “A man is said to be proud, because he wishes to appear above ( super) what he really is” for he who wishes to overstep beyond what he is, is proud. Because of our gifts (which, if God gave them, we deserved), we expect to be put first. Once again, we turn to Joseph Delaney and the old Catholic Encyclopedia to learn that Pride is “the excessive love of one’s own excellence.” At its worst, “the creature refuses to stay within his essential orbit he turns his back upon God, not through weakness or ignorance, but solely because in his self-exaltation he is minded not to submit.” Even when no intent to shake off God’s dominion exists, the sin causes us to make too much of ourselves. It is the sin that would rather reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.

It is the sin that values self-righteousness over compassion, dignity over humility, autonomy over society. For Pride is not merely self-interest but self-assertion. Pride could be called “the sin of taking yourself too seriously.” Chesterton quipped that “Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly,” while “Satan fell by the force of gravity.” While my definition may seem flippant, I think it captures the difference between the self-respect which objects to being ruled badly and the arrogance which objects to being ruled at all. Indeed, it does of all the seven capital (“deadly”) sins, Superbia is the most flexible and the most elusive, attacking us in ways we hardly recognize. “Pride - it gets ’em every time,” chortles Satan (Al Pacino) at the end of the 1997 film The Devil’s Advocate.

Deadly sins prey for me transcript