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an ordinate or rational way, which means to
love self inasmuch as and after the manner in which one is loved by God. God loves every human
being that He has created; this means that God desires the happiness and salvation
of each one and directs all His laws and all his providence and all His gifts and graces to these
ends. A rightful love of self is really reducible to the love of God, because it means seeking what
God seeks, conforming self to God's will, fulfilling God's plans in regard to one's destiny.

An inordinate love of self or of one's excellence means setting oneself against God and above
God. For example, it means attributing to one's own judgment a higher value than to the
wisdom of God. It means thinking that one can find and follow a better road to happiness than that
made known by the all-wise God. It means rebelling against God because it is assumed that God does
not know what is best for one's body and soul.

It stands to reason, therefore, that pride is in some way responsible for every deliberate sin
that is ever committed. If a person sins through lust or indulgence in forbidden sense pleasure,
it is fundamentally because he believes he can find some happiness in that, whereas by
keeping God's law happiness
could not be attained. If a person sins through malice, i.e., by deliberately
breaking a law like that of hearing Mass on Sunday, it is radically because he thinks that God
made a useless law. If he sins through fear of poverty or pain, then it is because he will not
admit that God can take care of those who keep His law. So with every kind of sin: in some way it
signifies pride, assuming that the sinner knows more than God or can do more than
God or can find greater happiness in rebellion against God than by remaining subject to His
authority and by keeping His law.
 

For this reason it is difficult to enumerate
mortal and venial sins that are sins of pride alone. Pride usually reveals itself in the breaking
of some specific law that God has made. However, in order to trace the in­
fluence of pride in our lives, it is well to examine our minds for the motives of various sins,
because it will quickly be found that pride is a major factor in all. Thus sins already contained
in previous examinations of this series will be repeated here, with special reference to the form
of pride that causes them. The list will not be exhaustive but representative of how pride works.

Of course, the only remedy for pride is humility. Humility is the fundamental virtue by which a
person remembers his utter dependence on God and God's laws and God's providence, and the utter
folly of any action or any judgment or any self-glorification that is contrary to the will of God.

I. MORTAL SINS

1. Have I considered myself capable of reading forbidden books without permission
- books dealing with things contrary to my
faith or destructive of 'morals - because I thought my judgment about these things was better than
that of God and His Church which forbids such reading?

2. Have I decided that it could do me no harm to attend non-Catholic services even though God's
law and the law of His Church forbid it?
3. Have I made light of or even ridiculed certain doctrines or laws of the Catholic religion, as if
I knew more than Christ or His Church?
4. Have I, with but a shallow and mediocre training in religious teaching, presumed to make quick
judgments about doctrines I hardly even understood?

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