Pride

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Reply to Objection 2: Just as the orderly assembly of virtues is, by reason of a certain likeness, compared to a building, so again that which is the first step in the acquisition of virtue is likened to the foundation, which is first laid before the rest of the building. Now the virtues are in truth infused by God. Wherefore the first step in the acquisition of virtue may be understood in two ways. First by way of removing obstacles: and thus humility holds the first place, inasmuch as it expels pride, which “God resisteth,” and makes man submissive and ever open to receive the influx of Divine grace. Hence it is written (James 4:6): “God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.” In this sense humility is said to be the foundation of the spiritual edifice. Secondly, a thing is first among virtues directly, because it is the first step towards God. Now the first step towards God is by faith, according to Heb. 11:6, “He that cometh to God must believe.” In this sense faith is the foundation in a more excellent way than humility. Reply to Objection 3: To him that despises earthly things, heavenly things are promised: thus heavenly treasures are promised to those who despise earthly riches, according to Mat. 6:19,20, “Lay not up to yourselves treasures on earth . . . but lay up to yourselves treasures in heaven.” Likewise heavenly consolations are promised to those who despise worldly joys, according to Mat. 4:5, “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.” In the same way spiritual uplifting is promised to humility, not that humility alone merits it, but because it is proper to it to despise earthly uplifting. Wherefore Augustine says (De Poenit. [*Serm. cccli]): “Think not that he who humbles himself remains for ever abased, for it is written: ‘He shall be exalted.’ And do not imagine that his exaltation in men’s eyes is effected by bodily uplifting.” Reply to Objection 4: The reason why Christ chiefly proposed humility to us, was because it especially removes the obstacle to man’s spiritual welfare consisting in man’s aiming at heavenly and spiritual things, in which he is hindered by striving to become great in earthly things. Hence our Lord, in order to remove an obstacle to our spiritual welfare, showed by giving an example of humility, that outward exaltation is to be despised. Thus humility is, as it were, a disposition to man’s untrammeled access to spiritual and divine goods. Accordingly as perfection is greater than disposition, so charity, and other virtues whereby man approaches God directly, are greater than humility.

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  There was a certain pleasure in confounding such folk by my indifference. The sorriest lot of all were those who tried to win me with talk about literature. The technique which I was obliged to develop in those unimportant early posts has served me in later years for my imperial audiences: to give oneself totally to each person throughout the brief duration of a hearing; to reduce the world for a moment to this banker, that veteran, or that widow; to accord to these individuals, each so different though each confined naturally within the narrow limits of a type, all the polite attention which at the best moments one gives to oneself, and to see them, almost every time, make use of this opportunity to swell themselves out like the frog in the fable; furthermore, to devote seriously a few moments to thinking about their business or their problem. It was again the method of the physician: I uncovered old and festering hatreds, and a leprosy of lies. Husbands against wives, fathers against children, collateral heirs against everyone: the small respect in which I personally hold the institution of the family has hardly held up under it all. It is not that I despise men. If I did I should have no right, and no reason, to try to govern. I know them to be vain, ignorant, greedy, and timorous, capable of almost anything for the sake of success, or for raising themselves in esteem (even in their own eyes), or simply for avoidance of suffering. I know, for I am like them, at least from time to time, or could have been. Between another and myself the differences which I can recognize are too slight to count for much in the final total; I try therefore to maintain a position as far removed from the cold superiority of the philosopher as from the arrogance of a ruling Caesar. The most benighted of men are not without some glimmerings of the divine: that murderer plays passing well upon the flute; this overseer flaying the backs of his slaves is perhaps a dutiful son; this simpleton would share with me his last crust of bread. And there are few who cannot be made to learn at least something reasonably well.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  In the point of deficiency there may be inordinate attachment in two ways. First, through a man’s neglect to give the requisite study or trouble to the use of outward apparel. Wherefore the Philosopher says (Ethic. vii, 7) that “it is a mark of effeminacy to let one’s cloak trail on the ground to avoid the trouble of lifting it up.” Secondly, by seeking glory from the very lack of attention to outward attire. Hence Augustine says (De Serm. Dom. in Monte ii, 12) that “not only the glare and pomp of outward things, but even dirt and the weeds of mourning may be a subject of ostentation, all the more dangerous as being a decoy under the guise of God’s service”; and the Philosopher says (Ethic. iv, 7) that “both excess and inordinate defect are a subject of ostentation.” Reply to Objection 1: Although outward attire does not come from nature, it belongs to natural reason to moderate it; so that we are naturally inclined to be the recipients of the virtue that moderates outward raiment. Reply to Objection 2: Those who are placed in a position of dignity, or again the ministers of the altar, are attired in more costly apparel than others, not for the sake of their own glory, but to indicate the excellence of their office or of the Divine worship: wherefore this is not sinful in them. Hence Augustine says (De Doctr. Christ. iii, 12): “Whoever uses outward things in such a way as to exceed the bounds observed by the good people among whom he dwells, either signifies something by so doing, or is guilty of sin, inasmuch as he uses these things for sensual pleasure or ostentation.” Likewise there may be sin on the part of deficiency: although it is not always a sin to wear coarser clothes than other people. For, if this be done through ostentation or pride, in order to set oneself above others, it is a sin of superstition; whereas, if this be done to tame the flesh, or to humble the spirit, it belongs to the virtue of temperance. Hence Augustine says (De Doctr. Christ. iii, 12): “Whoever uses transitory things with greater restraint than is customary with those among whom he dwells, is either temperate or superstitious.” Especially, however, is the use of coarse raiment befitting to those who by word and example urge others to repentance, as did the prophets of whom the Apostle is speaking in the passage quoted. Wherefore a gloss on Mat. 3:4, says: “He who preaches penance, wears the garb of penance.” Reply to Objection 3: This outward apparel is an indication of man’s estate; wherefore excess, deficiency, and mean therein, are referable to the virtue of truthfulness, which the Philosopher (Ethic. ii, 7) assigns to deeds and words, which are indications of something connected with man’s estate.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Moreover. Though the name of God is applied to holy men, on account of indwelling grace, none of the things that belong to God alone, such as the creation of heaven and earth, and the like, are ever ascribed to any saint by reason of the grace dwelling in him. Yet the creation of all things is ascribed to the man Christ. For it is said (Heb. 3:1, 2): Consider the apostle and high-priest of our confession, Jesus Christ, who is faithful to him that made him, as was also Moses in all his house. Now these words refer to the man, and not to the Word of God, both because as we have shown, the Word of God, according to the view of Nestorius, cannot be called Christ, and because the Word of God was not made, but begotten. And the Apostle continues: This man was counted worthy of greater glory than Moses, by so much as he that hath built the house, hath greater honour than the house. Hence the man Christ built the house of God: wherefore the Apostle goes on to prove this: For every house is built by some man: but he that created all things is God. Accordingly, the Apostle proves that the man Christ built the house of God, from the fact that God created all things. But this argument would prove nothing unless Christ were God the Creator of all. Thus then the creation of all things, which is the work of God alone, is ascribed to this man. Therefore the man Christ is God in Person, and not merely by God dwelling in Him. Further. It is quite clear that the man Christ ascribes many divine and supernatural attributes to Himself. For instance (Jo. 6:40), I will raise him up in the last day: and (Jo. 10:28), I give them life everlasting. And it would indicate the highest degree of pride, if the man who spoke thus were not God in Person, and merely had God dwelling in Him. But this accusation cannot be brought against the man Christ, who says (Matth. 11:29): Learn of me, because I am meek and humble of heart. Therefore this man and God are one and the same Person. Moreover. Just as the Scriptures state that this man was exalted: Being exalted … by the right hand of God (Acts 2:33), so do they say that God was emptied: He emptied himself (Philip. 2:7). Wherefore, even as sublime things may be ascribed to the man by reason of the union—for instance, that He is God, that He raises the dead to life, and so forth—so may lowly things be attributed to God, for instance that He was born of the Virgin, that He suffered, died, and was buried.

• From Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

  But she accepted my three hundred a month, and that’s how I knew she was desperate. I didn’t make a lot of money myself—probably a thousand dollars a month after taxes, though the Marines gave me a place to stay and food to eat, so that money went far. I also made extra money playing online poker. Poker was in my blood—I’d played with pennies and dimes with Papaw and my great-uncles as far back as I could remember—and the online poker craze at the time made it basically free money. I played ten hours a week on small-stakes tables, earning four hundred dollars a month. I had planned to save that money, but instead I gave it to Mamaw for her health insurance. Mamaw, naturally, worried that I had picked up a gambling habit and was playing cards in some mountain trailer with a bunch of card-sharking hillbillies, but I assured her that it was online and legitimate. “Well, you know I don’t understand the fucking Internet. Just don’t turn to booze and women. That’s always what happens to dipshits who get caught up in gambling.” Mamaw and I both loved the movie Terminator 2. We probably watched it together five or six times. Mamaw saw Arnold Schwarzenegger as the embodiment of the American Dream: a strong, capable immigrant coming out on top. But I saw the movie as a sort of metaphor for my own life. Mamaw was my keeper, my protector, and, if need be, my own goddamned terminator. No matter what life threw at me, I’d be okay because she was there to protect me. Paying for her health insurance made me feel, for the first time in my life, like I was the protector. It gave me a sense of satisfaction that I’d never imagined—and how could I? I’d never had the money to help people before the Marines. When I came home, I was able to take Mom out to lunch, get ice cream for the kids, and buy nice Christmas presents for Lindsay. On one of my trips home, Mamaw and I took Lindsay’s two oldest kids on a trip to Hocking Hills State Park, a beautiful region of Appalachian Ohio, to meet up with Aunt Wee and Dan. I drove the whole way, I paid for gas, and I bought everyone dinner (admittedly at Wendy’s). I felt like such a man, a real grown-up. To laugh and joke with the people I loved most as they scarfed down the meal that I’d provided gave me a feeling of joy and accomplishment that words can’t possibly describe. For my entire life, I had oscillated between fear at my worst moments and a sense of safety and stability at my best.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  As these relationships develop, parents and children often become more like peers than separate generations, which in turn can make the children more independent and responsible. They are justifiably proud of their achievement. Many of our efforts to understand the impact of divorce on children have assumed incorrectly that the child is a passive vessel who is shaped by the changes ushered in by a divorce. But the child is an active agent. (This is a theme I will develop in depth in a later chapter.) No one asked Karen to step forward. She did it on her own. Her role in the postdivorce family was entirely different from her role in the predivorce family. In some homes, everyone benefits from the child’s new role. Adults gain needed help. Children gain maturity and self-confidence. They also show a moral sensibility and compassion for others far beyond their years, which they can draw upon later in their adult relationships and often in their career choices. Karen’s decision to study public health and to develop programs for crippled children was by her own account rooted in the early responsibility she took as a child. For the fortunate parent who is able to rely on the child to get through the extended divorce crisis, the child’s availability may tip the balance between chronic dysfunction and recovery. Of course, caregiving by a child can occur in intact families when a parent is ill or troubled. I recall one little girl, Martha, the oldest of three siblings, who took over running the household for a year when her mother was recovering from a serious car accident. Martha and her father shared in parenting the younger children and in taking care of Martha’s mother. The difference was that although the mother was in a wheelchair for many months, she maintained close touch with what was going on in the home. Both parents maintained adult responsibility for all their children at home. Martha matured as a result of her experience and was rewarded by both parents with appreciation and praise. In many immigrant families one of the older children often is responsible for helping the adults to understand the new language and strange culture. Here, too, the child performs vital functions that enable the family to keep going, but the adults maintain their responsibility at the head of the family. In contrast, in a postdivorce family, the child often takes responsibility for the one or both parents who are temporarily or lastingly overwhelmed by the crisis. This situation can be compounded by the adult’s subsequent disappointments in relationships. A formerly competent mother or father is unable to carry on as before.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  There are, of course, children who never break free from caring for their parent, husband, or other needy person. There are many dangerous traps along the way for the caregiver child who places others’ interests far ahead of her own. Karen could have remained in her unfortunate cohabitation with a man who needed her ministrations and stood in for her needy parents. Several caregiver children went on to marry men who were dependent on their caregiving, and, in fact, that was their appeal. Karen, too, might have remained at home sitting in the cinders like the well-known fairy-tale child waiting to be rescued by a fairy godmother and a prince. So the role of caregiver imposes a corollary task of freeing oneself and moving out and up because there is no one to rescue or even help her. Inarguably the role of caregiver is tricky. If it lasts during adolescence, it provides the young person with a sense of pride and satisfaction, of having been a virtuous person who helped her family. If it extends too far and there are no limits, then the child begins to feel responsible for keeping the parent alive. It becomes an impossible burden. And if it extends into adulthood and becomes the dominant pattern of relating to people, it’s a serious detriment to enjoying one’s own life. The other great hazard is that the child forever feels deprived of her own childhood and as an adult tries to make up for the playtime she has lost or for the nurturance she never received when she was young. Whether a caregiver child can shed her role as she reaches adulthood or remains tied emotionally and sometimes physically to her parents or to her own unsatisfied needs is the single most important key. As our meeting ended I realized that Karen had provided me with an intimate portrait of what it’s like to grow up in a divorced family where parenting collapses and the child takes over adult responsibilities. She had shown me how she finally broke free of the demanding caregiver role and went on to create her own family. And she had been remarkably candid about divorce-related residues that she struggled with almost daily. As I drove away from her house, I marveled that she was upbeat not only about herself but also about the future of her generation. She said, “Divorce makes you grow up very fast. I resented this when I was young, but as I grew older, I realized it could be a good thing. Some kids were so angry at their parents’ divorce, all they could do was get into drugs and an unhappy lifestyle. Even now I know people who have not recovered. But I have. And I’ll tell you why. Somewhere in my twenties I stopped wanting a lost childhood.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  Of course, anything remoter from the vulgus than the arty pornography of Henderson and Staines would have been hard to imagine; but it was telling that in his euphemism Charles made the connection, as though his taste for them somehow joined him with the crowd. It was the crowd in the sense of the little clan , the gathering of half a dozen queens, that I joined when I went to Ronald Staines’s, feeling for the first time restored and randy, and enjoying the breeze that set the chestnuts and cherry trees along the pavements sighing. Bobby answered the bell. ‘Jolly good,’ he said, letting me in and then conducting me across the hall with a heavy arm around my shoulder, a kind of gentlemanly muffling of eroticism which also disguised his need for support: he was already extravagant and slow with drink. ‘Jolly glad you could come,’ he said. ‘Not brought your little friend this time, then?’ ‘I’m not sure he has a career as a model.’ Bobby laughed tremendously at this. ‘I liked him, I must say,’ he confessed, as if discussing with colleagues an underqualified applicant for a job. In the white, selfconscious drawing-room Staines sprang up when I entered. He had on blue, baggy workman’s trousers but with a very high, belted waist that gave him the look of someone in a Forties film; a checked camp shirt, the sleeves tightly rolled up around wiry biceps, the pale hairless arms somehow improperly revealed; and blue, rubber-soled sailing shoes, which completed the fantasy image of the man prepared for action. ‘My dear, how perfectly perfect of you to come,’ he welcomed me. ‘We’re all so relieved that you’re better.’ I came forward sheepishly but proudly, like an injured games hero at school, almost expecting sporting applause. Bobby only let go of me to move towards the drinks table. There was a perceptible conflict of claims on me as Charles, seated monumentally on the sofa, slower on the uptake, half turned to see me and then reached out his left hand for his unconventional and friendly greeting. ‘Ah, William. Let me see the worst. Let me see what they’ve done to my Boswell.’ He wore an elderly, Aschenbachish cream linen suit, not unstained. I went and sat beside him, and he took my hand again as he searched my face, appraised it as he had before. He offered no verdict, except ‘Well, at least I saw it before they spoilt it.’ ‘Is it really so bad?’ But he only patted my hand and then threw it away. ‘How’s the great work?’ he wanted to know. Staines, unprepared for Charles’s possessiveness, cut in here with instructions that we must drink. ‘And then there’s Aldo,’ he said, swivelling with extended hand and producing a small, curly-haired young man in graphic jeans from behind his armchair.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  I’m not sure for how long, but definitely until she gets into elementary school. My career means a lot to me, but I felt I had to make a choice. The truth is, and I had to face it, that if I wanted to stay and play the game at the top, I would have had only six weeks leave after Maya was born and then I would have had to go back to work full-time. So I bit the bullet and got off the ladder. I’m working half-time.” “Will you be able to get back where you left off? I know how important that program was and how you built it yourself.” “No. Judy, there’s no returning for me. It’s a major life decision. I’ve decided to do it because of all that I want for Maya and for another child. I’m trying very hard to get pregnant again.” “It took a lot of courage to make that decision.” “Yes, it sure did. It was hard and it made me sad but it was right. Lots of my friends have held on to their jobs, and I respect that. But this is what I want for me. You might say I also remade my marriage decision. Working half-time means that I absolutely rely on my husband, and as you know, that’s not easy for me.” “And how did Gavin feel?” “Judy, I lucked out. He said, do whatever makes you happy.” Most children of divorce think long and hard about parenthood before taking the plunge. At the twenty-five-year mark, only one-third of the people in our study had children. 2 A small number said that they were planning to have children in the future once their careers were more established and they could afford it. Both men and women were extremely proud of their sons and daughters. They were grateful for the good fortune that had finally come their way. They spoke movingly about how a baby has the redemptive power to undo their past suffering. By having a child, they could erase old tapes and run new episodes in which the new child is protected. As if in unison, they said, “No child of mine is going to experience what I went through.” Their unanimity in saying this was probably the most telling statement about their past. As they talked about plans for their children, all the seemingly small parts of a child’s world that they had missed came tumbling out—swimming lessons, time to ride a bike, free play after school. All of the pleasures that had been absent from their past were apparently long remembered and were endowed with new importance. Recalling their many moves, they wanted to raise their children in one stable home in one neighborhood.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  She keeps hoping and she keeps getting disappointed. Paradoxically the hope and longing—the expectation that things can’t be all dark—are also what kept Carol emotionally alive and eager to be a good person. She always maintained the sense that she could do better. But as we’ll shortly see, her move into adulthood was beset with troubles. Unlike Larry, she did not receive a wake-up call from seeing her parents in a new light. Nothing at home changed. W NINE Order Out of Chaos hen I saw Larry five years later, he was twenty-two years old and showed signs of turning his life around; he was struggling to assume a new identity as a fair-minded, responsible adult. Had we stopped our conversations just a few years earlier, I would have pegged him as a lost boy who would become an angry young man likely to install violence in his relationships. But I was oh so wrong. On this visit, I got my first glimpse of his turnaround, which, like Karen’s conquest of the caretaker role, gave me a whole new perspective on the long-term consequences of divorce on children. Along with working at night and going to school during the day, Larry had begun to rework his relationships with his father and his mother, essentially coming to grips with their divorce. For me, this remains one of the most interesting interviews in the entire study. I still feel privileged to have seen this process unfold before my astonished eyes. We met in a sandwich shop down the street from the gym where Larry now worked out regularly. I hardly recognized this stocky, muscular, and blatantly handsome young man. The red eyes and sickly complexion were gone, along with all drugs, cigarettes, and alcohol. “By drinking and carrying on, I was trying to be the man of the house,” he said matter-of-factly. “I was my alcoholic father.” I listened with amazement as he said, “I’m proud to look back with a different perspective. I finally realized how much my mother has done for me and I now appreciate how hard she works. I feel very bad about the way I’ve treated her. She’s had a very difficult time. I was very selfish.” “What caused this great change?” I asked, wondering to myself whether to believe him and if he was talking to impress me. His answer was straightforward. “I didn’t have any great vision all of a sudden. No religious conversion. I didn’t wake up in the middle of the night screaming or sweating. A few years ago, when I was nineteen, I just stopped. I looked at my friends and saw what was happening to them and I dropped them. I looked at myself in the mirror and I hated what I saw.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  His office was thickly cluttered with blueprints, government reports, periodicals, newspapers, and countless stacks of loose papers. Larry grabbed a set of blueprints off a chair near his desk so I could sit down and then brought his chair around so that the desk didn’t separate us. I looked around admiringly at the professional surroundings. “You’ve come a long way. Congratulations!” “You mean since the first time we met? I was what, about seven?” He laughed. “That’s exactly how old you were.” “Those were not good years. I was a brat.” “You were a very unhappy brat.” “You’re right. I was a pretty miserable brat for a long time.” Larry looked around his office. “Lots of times I can’t believe that I’m sitting here.” He relaxed a little and smiled. “Do all the kids in your study agree to see you twenty-five years later?” “Since you’re an engineer, I’ll give you the numbers. So far, one hundred percent.” “What will you do with your conclusions?” “Publish them for people to read. If you want, you’ll be among the first to see them. I promise to send you a copy.” “Will anyone be able to recognize me?” I assured him, “If they do, then I will have failed badly. I promise that I’ll protect your privacy. Your identity will be carefully disguised.” Larry nodded and turned brusquely to the business at hand. “What exactly do you want to know?” “I want to know how you got from where you were at twenty-two, which is the last time I saw you, to where you are today. What were the steps along the way?” Larry frowned. “Well, it was no piece of cake. I’ll start with the easy part. I got married four years ago. My wife’s name is Grace. We have a son, Alex, who is three and another baby is due in September. Grace is a school psychologist but she’ll probably take a year off after the new baby arrives. We figure we can afford it now. As for this,” he said, waving his hand at his paper-strewn office, “this is a new firm started by two young guys. I had just graduated from engineering at San Jose State and landed my first job here. That was three years ago and it’s been great. I may stay here forever.” Larry smiled briefly and then his mood turned somber. He had decided to tell the full truth. “I got this job through a lucky break and not because I was some kind of whiz kid. When I graduated, I didn’t have any self-confidence. I had to put myself through school and started out with a D grade point. So much for M.I.T. But after a while I did better at community college and finally transferred to San Jose. It’s a good school but not in the big leagues.

• From The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us (2017)

  This evolutionary model implies that the human pair bond did not evolve through the assertion of coercive male control over female reproductive freedom, as some cultural theorists propose. In other words, the human pair bond does not constitute a male harem size of one. Rather, it evolved through a distinct evolutionary advance of female interests in their sexual conflict with males over paternal investment. Ultimately, the human pair bond is an aesthetically coevolved social relationship through which females and males have advanced their mutual reproductive interests. Of course, human pair bonds have never been absolute or inviolate. This is not a theory of the evolution of monogamy, till death do us part. To have evolved, pair bonds need only persist long enough to have a decisive positive impact on offspring development and survival. At some point in the evolution of male reproductive investment, cultural evolution began, and a whole new set of social complexities and variations arose. To put it plainly, the evolution of human paternal care is a really big deal. Male investment in parenting is rare in primates, and in mammals generally. Paternal care has been especially important in human evolution because human offspring require so much care and investment, take longer to mature, and have many more complex social, cultural, and cognitive developmental challenges than other primates face. After the infanticide problem was solved, I think the next most important evolutionary challenge in the origin of human cognitive and cultural complexity was the origin of paternal care. Interestingly, this second major evolutionary transformation also involved the expansion of female interests in sexual conflict. I think a very powerful case can be made for the role of female mate choice in the evolution of the human species. Solving the evolutionary challenge of male sexual violence, coercion, and infanticide through an aesthetic remodeling of maleness would certainly have given females much greater sexual autonomy. But male deweaponization could also have been the key innovation responsible for the subsequent evolution of human social, cognitive, and cultural complexity. Less aggressive, more cooperative males living in ongoing relationships with females would have created an environment of greater social stability for their developing offspring, which in turn would have made possible the longer development times and greater investment in each offspring that were required for the evolution of all the qualities we prize as evidence of our humanness—intelligence, social cognition, language, cooperation, culture, material culture, and ultimately technology. This new view of human evolution requires much work to test, but the stakes couldn’t be higher.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  On the other hand, to desire to do good to one’s neighbor is in itself praiseworthy, and virtuous. Nevertheless, since considered as an episcopal act it has the height of degree attached to it, it would seem that, unless there be manifest and urgent reason for it, it would be presumptuous for any man to desire to be set over others in order to do them good. Thus Gregory says (Pastor. i, 8) that “it was praiseworthy to seek the office of a bishop when it was certain to bring one into graver dangers.” Wherefore it was not easy to find a person to accept this burden, especially seeing that it is through the zeal of charity that one divinely instigated to do so, according to Gregory, who says (Pastor. i, 7) that “Isaias being desirous of profiting his neighbor, commendably desired the office of preacher.” Nevertheless, anyone may, without presumption, desire to do such like works if he should happen to be in that office, or to be worthy of doing them; so that the object of his desire is the good work and not the precedence in dignity. Hence Chrysostom* says: “It is indeed good to desire a good work, but to desire the primacy of honor is vanity. For primacy seeks one that shuns it, and abhors one that desires it.” [*The quotation is from the Opus Imperfectum in Matth. (Hom. xxxv), falsely ascribed to St. John Chrysostom.] Reply to Objection 1: As Gregory says (Pastor. i, 8), “when the Apostle said this he who was set over the people was the first to be dragged to the torments of martyrdom,” so that there was nothing to be desired in the episcopal office, save the good work. Wherefore Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xix, 19) that when the Apostle said, “‘Whoever desireth the office of bishop, desireth a good work,’ he wished to explain what the episcopacy is: for it denotes work and not honor: since {skopos} signifies ‘watching.’ Wherefore if we like we may render {episkopein} by the Latin ‘superintendere’ [to watch over]: thus a man may know himself to be no bishop if he loves to precede rather than to profit others.” For, as he observed shortly before, “in our actions we should seek, not honor nor power in this life, since all things beneath the sun are vanity, but the work itself which that honor or power enables us to do.” Nevertheless, as Gregory says (Pastor. i, 8), “while praising the desire” (namely of the good work) “he forthwith turns this object of praise into one of fear, when he adds: It behooveth . . . a bishop to be blameless,” as though to say: “I praise what you seek, but learn first what it is you seek.”

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  I spun on my heel and went directly to the judge’s chambers, and the prosecutors followed me. When I explained to Judge Norton that McMillian’s family and supporters had been told that they couldn’t come into the courtroom, even though the State’s supporters had been let in, the judge rolled his eyes and looked annoyed. “Mr. Stevenson, your people will just have to get here earlier,” he said dismissively. “Judge, the problem isn’t that they weren’t here early. The problem is they were told they couldn’t come into the courtroom.” “No one is being denied entrance to the courtroom, Mr. Stevenson.” He turned to his bailiff, who left the room. I followed the bailiff and saw him whisper something to the deputy outside the courtroom. McMillian’s supporters would be let into the courtroom—now that half the courtroom was already filled. I walked over to where two ministers had assembled all of Walter’s supporters and tried to explain the situation. “I’m sorry, everyone,” I said. “They’ve done something really inappropriate today. They’ll let you in now, but the courtroom is already half filled with people here to support the State. There won’t be enough seats for everyone.” One of the ministers, a heavyset African American man dressed in a dark suit with a large cross around his neck, walked over to me. “Mr. Stevenson, it’s okay. Please don’t worry about us. We’ll have a few people be our representatives today and we will be here even earlier tomorrow. We won’t let nobody turn us around, sir.” The ministers began selecting people to be representatives in the courtroom. They told Minnie, Armelia, Walter’s children, and several others to go on in. When the ministers called out Mrs. Williams, everyone seemed to smile. Mrs. Williams, an older black woman, stood up and prepared herself to enter the courtroom. She took great care in fixing her hair just right. On top of her gray hair she wore a small hat whose placement she precisely adjusted. She then pulled out a long blue scarf that she delicately wrapped around her neck. Only then did she slowly begin to make her way to the courtroom door where the line of McMillian supporters had formed. I found her dignified ritual riveting, but when the spell was broken I realized that I needed to get going myself. I hadn’t spent the morning preparing for witnesses as I had intended but had instead been drawn into this foolish mistreatment of McMillian’s supporters. I walked past the line of patient people and went inside to begin preparing for the hearing. I was standing at counsel’s table when out of the corner of my eye I saw that Mrs. Williams had made it to the courtroom door. She was quite elegant in her hat and scarf.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  7. Lastly, the duty of religiously defending the truths divinely delivered, and of resisting those who dare oppose them, pertains to philosophic pursuits. Wherefore, it is the glory of philosophy to be esteemed as the bulwark of faith and the strong defense of religion. As Clement of Alexandria testifies, the doctrine of the Saviour is indeed perfect in itself and wanteth naught, since it is the power and wisdom of God. And the assistance of the Greek philosophy maketh not the truth more powerful; but, inasmuch as it weakens the contrary arguments of the sophists and repels the veiled attacks against the truth, it has been fitly called the hedge and fence of the vine. For, as the enemies of the Catholic name, when about to attack religion, are in the habit of borrowing their weapons from the arguments of philosophers, so the defenders of sacred science draw many arguments from the store of philosophy which may serve to uphold revealed dogmas. Nor is the triumph of the Christian faith a small one in using human reason to repel powerfully and speedily the attacks of its adversaries by the hostile arms which human reason itself supplied. This species of religious strife St. Jerome, writing to Magnus, notices as having been adopted by the Apostle of the Gentiles himself; Paul, the leader of the Christian army and the invincible orator, battling for the cause of Christ, skillfully turns even a chance inscription into an argument for the faith; for he had learned from the true David to wrest the sword from the hands of the enemy and to cut off the head of the boastful Goliath with his own weapon. Moreover, the Church herself not only urges, but even commands, Christian teachers to seek help from philosophy. For, the fifth Lateran Council, after it had decided that “every assertion contrary to the truth of revealed faith is altogether false, for the reason that it contradicts, however slightly, the truth,” advises teachers of philosophy to pay close attention to the exposition of fallacious arguments; since, as Augustine testifies, “if reason is turned against the authority of sacred Scripture, no matter how specious it may seem, it errs in the likeness of truth; for true it cannot be.”

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  Recognizing my intensity, State Senator Jack Perry keeps me on past May into July until the legislative session ends to continue on as an aide, and his invitation is further promise that the universe will always find ways to take care of me as long as I’m doing my part: In July I go back to living rent-free in Southampton and coaching gymnastics again. Heading into the fall of my senior year at New Paltz, I’ve done my best to plan for the day in November when I turn twenty-one, for the day when I’ll no longer be a ward of the state or a foster child and for the day when the Medicaid card that’s covered my health care for the last seven years will be void, and the four hundred twenty dollars I receive for rent and expenses each month will just stop showing up in my mailbox. There’s only one choice: to keep working. For the fall semester I move into an off-campus apartment with my high school friend Jeanine, who transferred to New Paltz last year. “Yeesh!” she says. “Waitressing, the science lab, studying . . . do I have to get you a job with me at the Wallkill farm stand in order to actually see you on weekends?” “I’ve worked a cash register before,” I jibe back. “Get me an application.” Soon we’ve begun our autumn Saturday routine, peddling warm apple cider and mums then hitting the town hangouts where Jeanine’s charm scores us free beers. She introduces me as her geeky sidekick, referring to me as “Miss Constitution” because I can proudly recite all seven articles and twenty-seven amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Before Thanksgiving break, the debate team coach approaches me as I’m studying in the lounge next to the political science department. “I’d like to speak with you about joining my team of students for the Harvard Model United Nations,” he says. “We’re one of a handful of schools competing that’s not Ivy League, and I need a tough debater on my team.” “Uh . . . sir?” I look around. “Are you sure you’re talking to the right person?” “Regina Calcaterra? Sure I am. I need someone with a strong backbone, somebody bright and assertive. Professor Brownstein recommended you.” Bright and assertive. I choose global warfare as my debate topic. My peers and I take the train to the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan when our debate coach sends us to meet with the actual Zimbabwean delegates. We spend winter break preparing for the final debate forum in Boston. We don’t place in the rankings, but our whole team cheers when I’m nominated for an award alongside students from Columbia and Harvard. “Don’t lose any sleep over the fact we didn’t win,” our debate coach tells me on the bus ride home. “I was in the elevator with coaches from the Ivies who were talking about the tough girl from New Paltz.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  We may not have won, but you helped us make an impact.” In May I receive my BA in Political Science in front of hundreds of my classmates’ families. Addie, Pete, and their daughters come for the ceremony, and Pete takes a photo of Addie and me. “Hold up your diploma!” she says. “You’ve earned this.” Later that week I pack my car and head back to Long Island after Addie extends an offer for me to live rent-free in her basement for two months while I search for a job. Immediately I take her up on it, intending only to buy a little time to make a transition on my own. Unsure of where I’ll go after the summer, again I reach out to the only other family connection I have besides my siblings: Cookie’s parents, Mike and Rose. “If you ever need a place to stay or just want to spend time with us,” Grandma Rose says, “your grandfather and I want you to know that you always have a home here.” “Grandma . . . thanks.” “You’re the first family member ever to graduate from college,” she continues. “Would you like to join Grampa Mike and me for dinner to celebrate?” “Of course,” I say. “Just tell me when.” The following night, in her kitchen, Grandma Rose takes a break from tending to an oven of pasta and baked clams to open the collar of her quilted pink robe and expose the bruises on her chest. “The cancer in my lungs is getting worse, the doctors say. Between this and my multiple sclerosis, I don’t know how much longer I can go on.” At dinner, I’m glancing at the bruises that appear on her neckline and Grandma puts down her fork. “Regina,” she says, fighting back tears, “our door has always been open to you. We could never understand how your mother turned out the way she did, or why you kids suffered so much with her.” This is my one chance to try and understand. I lean across the table toward my grandmother. “What happened to her when she was young that’s made her so angry?” Grandma Rose shakes her head. She and my grandfather go back to eating. Weeks later, in early July, Grandma Rose passes away. I tend to Grampa Mike with hot dogs and steaks from the butcher and two jugs of Ernest & Julio Gallo wine, his favorite. Cookie shows up with Norman for the funeral, announcing that the two of them will be staying at Grampa Mike’s house to take care of him. Norman carries their bags behind Cookie. “You must be numb with grief,” she insists to my grandfather, pushing her way through the door and pouring herself a glass of wine. “Don’t mind if I make myself at home.” Looking up from lighting a cigarette, she acknowledges me, as though she hadn’t seen me sitting there since she walked through the door. “Well, congratulations for graduating,” she grunts.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  But the silence is more deafening than that. In comparison with other cultures, Roman ideology placed vir- tually no emphasis on the prostitute’s lust. Prostitution was a bios, a condi- tion of life, not necessarily a result of the woman’s interior constitution. In parallel, the Roman ideology of slavery was equally underdeveloped. Aris- totle’s natural slave theory had little purchase in the Roman Empire. Slav- ery was a fact; it was “an economic and po liti cal necessity, and that was that.” Th e prostitute, similarly, required no deep or elaborate psychopathol- ogy. She was an ill- starred creature, like the faceless victim sacrifi ced for Leucippe.  What is notable about female sexual morality in the Roman Empire is its resolute constancy. Primitive expectations of the woman’s body endured with little questioning. A woman’s sexual behavior was an organic expres- sion of the role she was assigned in the economy of desire and reproduction. Th e principal novelty in the imperial era is a heightened awareness of the deep association of social status and moral expectations. Th is awareness seeped into ordinary consciousness. It is evident, for instance, in an oft- quoted series of rhetorical exercises preserved by the elder Seneca. Th ese ephemera of the Roman schools, such an important organ of socialization in the empire, transmit some of the most primitive and most progressive sentiments to have reached us from the ancient world. One elaborate series revolves around the imaginary dilemmas of a virgin enslaved in a brothel who escapes unstained and wishes to become a priestess. Some orators ar- gued that the mere placement of the girl’s body in the brothel shamed it; others argued that her invincible chastity was all the greater for having tri- umphed over bad fortune. It would be inadvisable to extract any of these dicta and treat them as the Roman attitude. Th e exercise was aimed, with pinpoint accuracy, at the fundamental but unstable assumption that status and behavior were aligned. Th e tension, and even more so a consciousness of the tension, is specifi cally Roman.  Th e imagination that produced these rich socio- legal riddles is not far at all from the literary spirit that informs the romances. Th e contemplation of the possible disjuncture between essence and circumstance is identical. In THE MORALITIES OF SEX IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE  Leucippe and Clitophon, this disjuncture is a constant source of dramatic energy. In a touching scene near the end of the romance, a priest of Artemis tries to dissuade Leucippe from submitting to the harrowing, and fearfully inerrant, divine virginity test. He assumes that the girl, in professing her purity, has tried to save face out of necessity and pride, but he wants to spare her, quietly. She confi dently persists in the protestations of her inno- cence, and he realizes that she is indeed uncorrupted. “I rejoice with you in your chastity and your fortune.”

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Then, my first real semester, I took English, psychology, and political science and I got an A in everything. You have no idea how that felt. Next fall I’ll be transferring to Hayward State, which is a four-year university. I’m going to get a degree in landscape architecture.” “Did your dad do what he said he’d do?” “Oh, yes. We’ve been getting along better since he came back and helped out. He came through with shining colors. He was not always a good father but he’s a very good grandfather. Dad loves spending time with Racer. He’s making up with my child for all that we missed doing together. They go fishing, see movies, eat at Racer’s favorite restaurant, which is the Red Lobster.” Paula laughed and then grew serious. “I love my dad now all over again and I’m grateful for what he gives us. I say to him, ‘I love you now but I can only try to forgive you for the past.’” “Should you forgive him?” “I don’t know. I used to love him a lot and I think he loved me. People do things. I don’t know whether you can hold them responsible. I’ve learned to accept a lot of things and I’ve stopped being upset so much. Dad’s finally acting like the parent he was before they broke up. He was a wonderful father when I was a real little kid. He wants Racer and me to go live with him but I won’t. I need to stand on my own two feet.” As children of divorce move into their late twenties and thirties, relationships with their parents can change unexpectedly. Both generations have another chance to reexamine their interest in one another, to do things differently. Each developmental stage in adulthood offers the potential to grow as a person, to enhance one’s closest relationships that have gone awry, and to correct past mistakes and poor judgment. Several of the fathers came through with new interest and money for college when their children, especially their daughters, were still drifting in their late twenties. Sometimes it was in response to the birth of a grandchild in or out of wedlock and sometimes it reflected the stabilization in the older man’s life. It was not that they had more money. They never denied that they could have supported their child’s higher education. But their own life had become more stable in a second or third marriage or in their own decision to give up drinking.

• From Untrue (2018)

  Rae’s response as an artist was to tilt into the wind. In this post-breakup period, she decided, her main character would go through a “ho phase.” She explained it this way: “A ho phase is…it could be a rite of passage that women go through, but it’s basically the sexual liberation of exploring your options…‘I just want to get my number up. And see what’s out there.’ It’s really just about, like, pleasure at the end of the day. Pleasure and exploration.” Turning the dark mark of ho-dom on its head, Rae reclaims the term and reframes it as nothing more and nothing less than an adventure women are entitled to if they want it. That doesn’t mean double standards melt away and dangers don’t exist, of course. The internet buzzed with outrage that Issa the character had betrayed a “good black man.” And when Wilmore observes that “a guy’s ho phase is called his life,” Rae concurs. “I feel like [for] guys, it’s not a phase—it’s just ho…It’s just ho-ery and that’s it. And that’s accepted. Even that language, like women have to have a phase…you can’t be a ho for the rest of your life, and men…that’s expected of them…George Clooney just got married…nobody’s calling him a ho!” Pioneers and ProvocateusesSexologist and sexuality educator Frenchie Davis, a master of education in human sexuality candidate, lives to discuss and dissect precisely these types of contradictions. Being a black woman who is openly, professionally, and personally interested in sex, she told me when we talked—first on the phone and later over lunch when she was visiting New York from Washington, DC—is a high-wire act. All her life, Davis says, she received messages—from family, friends, and her religion—about who and how to be as a black woman. Eventually, she realized she wasn’t going to be that woman. “I wasn’t going to be a mother, I might never be a wife. And I won’t be a ‘good girl.’” Davis, who studied at Howard University and is pursuing her MEd at Widener University, founded Libido Talk, a sex education media events company, in order to push her sex-positive message out online, at conferences, at intimate talks in people’s homes, even in bars. She hosts a monthly event called Sip.n.Sketch in DC, where men and women come together to drink cocktails, chat, and sketch nude models. “Why are we able to simply appreciate the model’s body in this context,” she asks the men who attend the event to wonder, “when we might objectify her in short shorts on the street?” These are just some of the “hypocrisies of the world,” as Davis described them when we spoke, that drive her to engage again and again with her community on the topic of sex, and female sexuality in particular.