Last June, a friend invited me to attend Mass at a parish I had never visited before on the same weekend as the Los Angeles Pride parade. Before attending, I went online and researched whether the parish was a welcoming one. For LGBTQ+ Catholics like me, this is a very important question.
I decided to join her, and during Mass the deacon preaching the homily was very charismatic. He invited us to think about the practical applications of the gospel, which intrigued me. Having caught my attention, he started talking about Adam and Eve, their sin, and what he called the “biggest sin” of all: pride.
Over the next 15 minutes, he mentioned the words sin and pride at least 20 times. As seasoned as I am in LGBTQ+ ministry and as good as I think I’ve become at not getting triggered easily, I couldn’t help but wonder where he was going with the homily. I feared his insistence on talking about pride was purposeful and related to the June festivities. I feared his sermon would end up in condemnation of the LGBTQ+ community. My heart pounded for 15 minutes, and my body activated an involuntary fight-or-flight stress response: “Should I stand up and leave? I really don’t need this today.”
I still don’t know where he was going with the first part of his homily.
During the second part of his homily, however, he got more specific. He talked about how, in a theological sense, pride is defined as an excessive love of one’s own perceived excellence and a disregard for the gifts of others. The Pharisees in the gospels are a good example.
The sin of pride leads someone to believe that they know more than others and possess the absolute truth. It causes them to believe themselves better than others and, in the Pharisees’ case, to condemn those they believe to be wrong, including Jesus.
Yet, of the seven deadly sins, pride is the only one with a virtuous side. An example of virtuous or godly pride comes in the Magnificat, the prayer of Mary: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (Luke 1:46–47).
Virtuous pride exists when there is a consciousness of one’s own dignity. It is a victory over the social and cultural forces that seek to make some people believe they are not worthy of God’s love because of belonging to a marginalized community. Godly pride is the celebration of a paradigm shift: “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty” (Luke 1:52–53).
Similarly, when the LGBTQ+ community celebrates Pride, it celebrates the triumph of virtuous love and the recognition of our own God-given dignity, a triumph over the shame we have been told to embrace. We celebrate the small steps forward that allow our dignity to be reflected and appreciated in societal structures and our human rights to be respected.
Years ago, a bishop told me, “There is no need to have LGBTQ+ groups. Jesus came for everyone; we all know that.” The thing is, we don’t all know that. Efforts to exclude LGBTQ+ Catholics have been very specific for many years, so efforts to include will have to be equally specific, or more so.
It is not the deacon’s fault that my heart was racing, because it seems he was not talking about the LGBTQ+ community, but the stress response is a result of very specific exclusionary language that has been uttered in pulpits and other Catholic circles too many times.
There is sacredness in inclusion, and it is OK to be proud.
This article also appears in the September 2024 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 89, No. 9, page 9). Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
Image: Unsplash/Miguel Bruna
Add comment