By Oscar Méndez Oseguera
June once again offers us the public spectacle of "Pride": streets, flags, music, slogans, institutions, brands, and public authorities united under a single celebration. This is no longer a marginal phenomenon or merely the demonstration of a particular social group; it has become a true civil liturgy of late modernity. The calendar does more than commemorate; it educates. It does more than organize dates; it proposes symbols. It does more than allow crowds to march; it teaches society what it should look at, what it should celebrate, and what it should call freedom.
For this reason, Christians should not remain on the surface of the phenomenon. The issue here is not to judge the dignity of persons, but rather to examine the adequacy of a cultural promise of happiness. So-called gay pride, considered as the spiritual sign of an age, claims that human beings are liberated when they transform their desires into a public identity. St. Thomas compels us to ask whether such an operation can give the soul the peace that is born only from the order established by virtue.
The question, therefore, is not whether "Pride" has achieved visibility. That is obvious. The question is whether visibility is enough for happiness; whether public recognition can replace virtue; whether an identity founded upon desire can give the soul the rest that is attained only when the appetites are ordered toward the true good.
Before proceeding further, it is necessary to clarify a few terms. When the word "anthropology" is used here, it does not refer to the academic discipline that studies cultures, peoples, or customs. Rather, it refers to something more fundamental and decisive: an understanding of the human person. Every culture possesses an anthropology, even if it never explicitly states it. Every legal system presupposes one. Every educational system transmits one. Every public demonstration proclaims one. To declare what should be celebrated in humanity is, in effect, to declare what one believes the human person to be.
It is equally important to clarify the word "appetite." In the classical tradition, appetite does not refer merely to bodily hunger. It signifies every interior inclination toward something perceived as desirable: pleasure, affection, power, recognition, rest, companionship, possession, revenge, tenderness, domination, belonging. Human beings are filled with appetites because they are filled with movements toward goods, whether real or merely apparent. The moral problem does not arise because human beings desire; it arises because they can desire wrongly, they can desire in a disordered manner, and they can mistake a partial good for their ultimate good.
This is something everyone knows, even before opening the works of St. Thomas. No one educates a child by telling him that all of his impulses are equally good. No one calls surrendering to anger "freedom." No one calls addiction "fulfillment." No one believes that a lie becomes noble simply because someone feels it intensely. No one considers revenge to become justice merely because the offended person desires it with all his heart. There are desires that must be governed because not everything that arises within us perfects us.
This common intuition is the gateway to the thought of St. Thomas. The Christian tradition does not artificially invent an opposition to desire; rather, it recognizes that human desire requires form, measure, and direction. The stable disposition by which our inclinations are ordered toward the good is called virtue.
Virtue is not a decorative word. Nor is it merely outwardly good behavior. Virtue signifies an interior strength brought into order. It is a habitual perfection of the soul that enables a person to act well—not through passing enthusiasm, but with stability. The virtuous person is not someone who lacks passions, temptations, or wounds. Rather, he is one who refuses to allow them to occupy the throne. His greatness does not consist in being free from struggle, but in knowing toward what end that struggle must be directed.
Here we arrive at the decisive point: St. Thomas does not begin moral theology by asking what a person feels, but by asking toward what end a person must be directed in order to be happy. His first great moral question is not what is permitted or forbidden, but what constitutes the ultimate end of the human person. Every agent acts for an end. Every human being seeks something he regards as good. Every human being—even when mistaken—desires, in one way or another, to be happy.
Yet precisely because human beings desire happiness, they can also be mistaken about what happiness truly is.
They may seek it in pleasure and remain empty. They may seek it in applause and remain restless. They may seek it in fame only to discover that fame cannot quiet the soul. They may seek it in wealth, in power, in social approval, in absolute independence, in mastery over their own bodies, or in the reinvention of their own identity. They may even mistake happiness for what merely offers relief, intensity, or protection against an ancient wound.
This is the truth our age finds difficult to accept: sincere desire does not guarantee the true good.
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The modern world has been taught to believe that authenticity consists in affirming whatever one feels. Yet psychological sincerity is not sufficient for moral rectitude. A desire may be sincere and still fail to lead toward the good. An inclination may be intense and yet fail to bring order to the soul. An identity may be defended with great passion and still be incapable of giving peace.
The question of "gay pride," considered as a cultural phenomenon, must be situated precisely at this point. It is not merely a demand for civil tolerance. Nor is it simply the pursuit of respect in the face of genuine humiliations or concrete injustices. Its deeper claim is something else: that a particular form of desire reveals the identity of the person and that this identity ought to be publicly celebrated as a path to liberation.
St. Thomas would ask: Liberation toward what?
For not every liberation truly liberates. Some chains are broken so that a person may walk toward the good, while others are broken only to deliver him into the hands of another master. Desire without virtue appears to be freedom while it tears down limits; afterward it reveals itself as a tyrant once it no longer allows the soul to rest. Disordered passion requires no external prison: it is enough for a person to learn to call it "me."
Here we encounter one of the gravest operations of modernity: transforming desire into identity. As long as desire remains simply desire, it can be examined, educated, ordered, purified, overcome, or elevated. But once desire becomes identity, every correction appears to be an act of aggression. If a person says, "This is something I experience," he can still ask what ought to be done about it. But if he says, "This is who I am," then every call to order seems like a denial of his very person.
This transformation alters the entire moral life. What was once the proper matter of virtue becomes untouchable. What could once be judged by reason is shielded from all judgment. What was once to be ordered toward a higher good is now presented as the very center of human dignity. Inclination ceases to be something a person experiences and becomes that by which he seeks to define himself completely.
Here lies the decisive substitution: virtue is replaced by identity.
Virtue asks: Does this desire lead me toward the good?
Modern identity asks: Does this desire express who I am?
Virtue asks: Should this inclination be brought into order?
Modern identity answers: This inclination must be recognized.
Virtue asks: What perfects the human person?
Modern identity answers: That the individual be affirmed in his own self-perception.
Yet self-perception does not create truth. The mere fact that someone perceives himself in a particular way is not enough to make that perception the ultimate measure of reality. We recognize this in every other area of life. The proud person perceives himself as superior. The resentful person sees himself as an absolute victim. The envious imagine themselves to be champions of justice. The addict believes himself to need precisely what destroys him. The angry person feels entitled to wound others. No reasonable person would argue that such perceptions ought to govern the moral life simply because they are deeply felt.
The point is not to equate different realities as though they were identical. Rather, it is to establish a principle: the human person is not perfected merely by obeying everything he feels. He requires a criterion higher than his own interior impulses. He needs reason. He needs virtue. He needs truth.
For this reason, human nature must not be understood as a rigid, merely biological, or brutal concept. Here, nature means that the human person is not an indeterminate substance capable of assuming any form whatsoever without consequence. He possesses a structure. He possesses powers. He possesses ends. His intellect is made for truth. His will is made for the good. His body is not a mute object but an integral part of his personal being. His freedom exists not to invent the good arbitrarily, but to adhere to it.
When a culture denies this, it does not liberate the human person.
It leaves him without a map.
And a person without a map does not become freer.
He becomes easier to manipulate.
If there is no human nature, then only the will remains.
If there is no objective good, then only preference remains.
If there is no virtue, then only subjective authenticity remains.
If there is no ultimate end, then only partial projects remain—projects that promise much and deliver little.
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Modern pride belongs within this same logic. It tells man: do not seek a standard outside yourself; affirm what you feel. Do not ask whether your desire ought to be ordered; make it your name. Do not accept that your life has a received end; construct yourself according to your own will. Do not admit that virtue may require renunciation; call every limit violence.
The result appears liberating, yet it impoverishes. For man is not set free when every desire is authorized. He is set free when he becomes capable of rightly willing the good. Freedom is not merely the absence of obstacles. Nor is it the ability to do whatever one wishes with oneself. True freedom is the interior mastery that enables one to choose what perfects the human person. Whoever cannot resist his passions is not free, even if no one outside prevents him from acting.
For this reason, chastity—so incomprehensible to the contemporary imagination—is not a gloomy denial of love. It is a lofty form of freedom. It is not hatred of the body, but the defense of the body against its reduction to a mere instrument. It is not contempt for affection, but the safeguarding of affection lest it degenerate into possession. It is not the sterility of the heart, but the education of desire so that one may love without devouring.
Contemporary culture has become so successful that almost no one is able to understand this anymore. It has identified limits with repression, norms with hatred, virtue with trauma, nature with oppression, and mercy with unconditional affirmation. In doing so, it has deprived man of one of the noblest possibilities of his existence: to struggle against himself for the sake of a greater good.
For there are struggles that do not destroy a man; they ennoble him. There are renunciations that do not impoverish; they purify. There are limits that do not imprison; they save. There are acts of obedience that do not humiliate; they bring order. There are wounds that should not become identities, but should instead be opened to a higher hope.
Here the word "mercy" must recover its Christian meaning. Mercy does not consist in confirming a person at the precise point of his disorder. Neither does it consist in humiliating him because of that disorder. Rather, it consists in loving him so deeply that he is never reduced to it. False mercy says, "You are what you desire; celebrate it." True mercy says, "You are more than what you desire; bring it into right order."
There are real sufferings in many human lives. It would be unjust to deny this. There is loneliness, abandonment, mockery, rejection, broken families, distorted affections, early wounds, sincere searching, and painful confusion. No one who thinks as a Christian can turn such suffering into an occasion for contempt. Yet neither can he accept that compassion consists in canonizing the wound.
A wound is not healed by turning it into a flag. An inclination is not brought into order by declaring it sovereign. Suffering is not redeemed by transforming it into an ideology. Human pain deserves truth, companionship, patience, justice, and grace—not a civil liturgy that tells it it no longer needs healing but only celebration.
This is why pride cannot give what it promises. It can offer visibility, but visibility is not truth. It can offer belonging, but belonging is not communion. It can offer recognition, but recognition is not virtue. It can offer legal protection, but legal protection is not beatitude. It can provide language, but language does not change the nature of things. It can provide celebration, but celebration cannot substitute for the peace of the soul.
Crowds may fill the avenues. Music may cover, for a few hours, the unrest within. Flags may color the city. Institutions may repeat their formulas of support. Corporations may turn the cause into a marketing campaign. The calendar may bestow civic solemnity upon what an age chooses to celebrate.
But after every march comes silence.
After every slogan, the soul remains.
After every celebration, one question still endures:
Am I happy?
Not: Am I visible?
Not: Am I applauded?
Not: Am I recognized by the law?
Not: Do I belong to a group?
Not: Do I possess words with which to name my desire?
Not: Have I learned how to defend myself?
The more serious question is this:
Does my soul rest in the good?
St. Thomas would answer that the soul does not find rest in the affirmation of itself, but in the possession of the true good. It does not rest when the world confirms its desires, but when its desires are rightly ordered. It does not rest when it transforms its wounds into its identity, but when those wounds no longer govern it. It does not rest when it proclaims absolute autonomy, but when it recognizes its ultimate end.
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The culture of pride says, "Accept yourself."
St. Thomas would say, "Order yourself toward the good."
The culture of pride says, "Affirm your desire."
St. Thomas would say, "Discern whether that desire perfects you."
The culture of pride says, "Make your inclination your name."
St. Thomas would say, "Do not confuse what you experience with that for which you were created."
The culture of pride says, "Peace will come when everyone celebrates you."
St. Thomas would say, "Peace will come when your faculties rest under the order of reason and grace."
That is the irreducible difference.
Either man possesses a nature and an end, or he is nothing more than material for self-construction.
Either desire must be ordered toward the good, or the good itself must be redefined according to desire.
Either virtue perfects freedom, or freedom consists in emancipation from every virtue.
Either mercy leads man toward the truth, or it becomes nothing more than the emotional affirmation of what leaves him incomplete.
Our age has preferred a mercy without truth—a mercy that accompanies but does not call, that embraces but does not raise up, that listens but does not correct, that avoids every immediate wound at the cost of abandoning man to a deeper one. It is a comfortable compassion because it refuses to bear the cost of speaking the truth.
True mercy is more demanding because it loves more deeply. It is not satisfied that a person be recognized by the world; it desires that he be reconciled with the good. It is not content that he cease to be rejected; it desires that he cease to be divided within himself. It does not offer pride as an anesthetic; it offers virtue as a path.
Here we return to the significance of this month and its marches. When a society publicly celebrates pride, it is not merely celebrating people who desire not to be humiliated. It is celebrating an idea: that man finds freedom when his desire is recognized as identity, and his identity becomes a source of pride.
That idea deserves to be examined.
It is not enough to repeat that it is inclusive, modern, compassionate, or inevitable.
One must ask whether it is true.
Above all, one must ask whether it is capable of making man happy.
For there are apparent happinesses.
There are forms of relief that are not fulfillment.
There are kinds of belonging that are not communion.
There are forms of recognition that are not peace.
There are identities that, though they appear emancipating, become prisons.
A person believes he has escaped an external oppression only to discover, too late, that he has become enclosed within an interior definition.
He is no longer permitted to say, "This is happening to me."
He is expected instead to say, "This is who I am."
He is no longer offered a vocation.
He is handed a label.
He is no longer proclaimed a call to conversion.
He is assigned a sense of belonging.
Christianity, however, does not reduce man to his label.
It does not reduce the soul to its wound.
It does not reduce a life story to its dominant inclination.
It does not identify dignity with self-affirmation.
On the contrary, it proclaims that the human person is a rational creature, ordered toward the good, capable of virtue, wounded by sin, in need of grace, and called to a happiness that infinitely surpasses every sensible satisfaction or political recognition.
For this reason, there is a happiness that cannot fit within pride.
It cannot fit because pride bends back upon itself, whereas true happiness requires going out of oneself toward the good.
It cannot fit because pride must constantly assert itself, whereas true happiness must be received.
It cannot fit because pride renders the wound untouchable, whereas true happiness begins when the wound consents to cease governing.
It cannot fit because pride makes desire into a closed identity, whereas virtue opens the soul toward its proper end.
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The final word, then, should not be hatred.
It should be a warning.
Not a bitter warning, but a grave one; directed not against persons, but against the falsehood that confines them.
You are not your desire.
You are not your inclination.
You are not your wound.
You are not the slogan your age has given you.
You are not the flag beneath which you learned to defend yourself.
You are not the political name assigned to your sorrow.
You are a creature called to the good, capable of virtue, in need of grace, and ordered toward a happiness that cannot be manufactured in the streets, decreed by law, or attained through the public celebration of one's own fragility.
Pride may fill the avenues.
It may gather multitudes.
It may win over institutions.
It may color the civic calendar.
It may persuade everyone to repeat the slogans of the age.
But it cannot give the soul what is born only when desire ceases to rule and consents to be brought into right order.
Only then does freedom cease to be noise.
Only then does desire cease to be a tyrant.
Only then does identity cease to be a prison.
Only then does the soul no longer need pride as a defense.
Only then can peace begin.
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