I have been spending some time meditating on (okay, let's be fair, more just thinking about) the virtue of purity this week, and I find myself somewhat hung up on language.
In English, the literal and concrete meaning of "pure" is "unmixed, unadulterated, uncontaminated." But most of the time, when the virtue of purity is discussed, the word is being used to mean something like "chastity" or occasionally "virginity." I almost wonder if it has come down this way as a sort of euphemism, so that people say "purity" when they really mean a more specific sort of purity, i.e., sexual purity, or moral purity in sexual matters. An online etymology dictionary (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=pure&allowed_in_frame=0) indicates that the metaphorical meaning of the English word "pure," the connotation of "free from moral corruption," first appeared as a reference to mixing of bloodlines — an ugly reminder of humanity's age-old confusion between moral guidelines and lines of race and class.
The language is poorer for it, if we have lost a general notion of "pure" because the word is exclusively applied as a synonym for "chaste." (Impure thoughts would better be called unchaste thoughts, for example.) Because I keep wanting to go back to a metaphorical application of the more usual concrete meaning of "purity," that idea of "unmixed, unadulterated."
Consider the English phrase "mixed motives."
Its opposite, literally speaking, would be "pure motives."
I am in a time in my life when the usually-meant kind of purity — sexual purity or chastity in thought and behavior — is not a big problem for me, thanks be to God. I am deeply infatuated and head-over heels in love with my lawfully wedded husband. I have a passel of little kids. I am one of those weirdo NFP true believers. I am too busy in the chaos of a fundamentally satisfying life to be distracted by illicit temptations to unchastity. Though I hope I retain some sympathy and compassion for people for whom temptations to unchastity are a serious cross, it is pretty obviously not my cross at this time.
But I find I need to beg for the grace of moral purity on a daily basis. Not moral sexual purity, but purity of motive, purity of intention.
I realize it is probably a false etymology to think this way — the miscegenation taboo is probably the real route by which "purity" became a synonym for chastity — but it seems to me that chastity is a type of "unmixed-ness" of motives, intentions, and acts, and so the idea that it can be encompassed by a broader virtue, one in which "purity" stands for all kinds of "unmixed" motives, appeals to me.
A young man offers assistance to an attractive young woman in some mild distress. We the observers may speculate: are his motives "pure" or "impure?" We say that meaning "Are his motives chaste, or is he hoping to score?" but we could just as easily mean, "Are his motives purely charitable, or is he partly motivated by selfishness?" In the first, conventional usage, we assume all the young man's motives are either chaste ("pure") or unchaste (which we call "impure"). But if we had a full appreciation of the literal meaning of the word "purity" to call on, we can give him some of the benefit of the doubt. Most young men are not all bad. We wonder instead, are his motives entirely charitable, or charitable mixed with some selfishness? He is doing the right thing, and we assume he does it for the right reasons. The question is whether some of the wrong reasons are mixed in, too.
Not so much in matters of chastity, but I know very well that it is a royal pain to deal with mixed intentions, especially when trying to figure out how to act in even slightly complicated moral territory. Which course of action is most prudent? I have good and just and moral reasons to choose a certain path, but I also have selfish reasons to prefer it to the alternatives. Can I still choose that path? Can I be sure of my own judgment? Maybe my "real" motives are the selfish ones and the apparently good and just reasons to go down the path I want to go down are only illusions, rationalizations. Maybe I should recognize the baseness of my selfish motives and flee from them by choosing another path, so as not to be tricked into sin. But wait — then I will be deliberately choosing what I already believe to be wrong, just to avoid being sullied myself! Maybe that is another kind of selfishness. And around and around it goes, until the soul is unable to commit any decisive act at all without an uneasy feeling of having screwed up somewhere. If only I could be pure of heart, I could see my way to good, so much more clearly.
This is why a broader purity is a great grace. And whenever a prayer for purity is called for — as it is for me this the second week of the Montfortian consecration, dedicated to achieving greater knowledge of the virtues of the "Virgin most pure" — correctly or incorrectly I find myself thinking of my need for purity in this broader sense. I do wrong things lots of the time, yes. But not all the time; often I do good things, mostly the easy ones, occasionally tough ones. But even those, even my most outwardly virtuous actions are sullied by my own mixed motives. I know this so deeply that I can feel it. What it feels like is, well, dirty — yucky, for want of a better word. It is a place where the abstract concept of "original sin" is realized in me as something sensible (sense-able) and, frankly, kind of gross. Tainted. And in need of the precise word to pinpoint what is wrong with them. And that word is "impure."
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