Common Misunderstandings About Temperance

A Word That Now Means Only Deprivation

Few words have faded so much. In ancient language, temperare meant to harmonize, to bring into accord, to dose rightly: one tempers steel to make it both hard and flexible, one tempers an instrument so it sounds true, one tempers the climate when it is neither freezing nor scorching. Temperance, in this original sense, is the art of right measure—not the least, but the right point. The temperate person is not the one who has little, but the one who has found the measure where the created good truly serves.

Contemporary culture hears none of this. It has reduced "temperate" to "one who deprives himself", and "depriving oneself" to "missing out on life". The error is seductive because it is based on a partial truth—temperance does indeed involve a limit, and thus a certain renunciation—which it immediately distorts by seeing only the limit. But to limit is not to impoverish: the riverbed that narrows the river does not weaken it, but gives it strength and direction. In the same way, temperance does not mutilate desire, it restores its fruitfulness.

A Virtue Confused with Its Excess

The second source of misunderstanding is more subtle: temperance is confused with its caricature by defect. Because figures of rigor—skeletal ascetics, pinched puritans, moralizers who suspect every pleasure—sometimes claim temperance as their own, people end up believing that to be temperate is to be like that. It is exactly the opposite. Saint Thomas is crystal clear here: there are two ways to miss temperance, and they are contrary to each other.

“The motive of intemperance is the love of bodily pleasures; that of insensibility is the hatred of these pleasures. That is why sins of this kind are not only different in species, but are also contrary to each other.” — Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 72, a. 8^[5]

In other words, the rigorist who hates pleasure is no more temperate than the pleasure-seeker who pursues it without restraint: both miss the virtue, one by defect, the other by excess. Temperance is the summit between these two valleys—and most of the errors that follow arise from mistaking one of the two slopes for the summit itself.

“Temperance is about depriving oneself and renouncing joy”

This is the root error, from which all the others derive. People imagine the temperate person as someone who says no: no to a drink, no to dessert, no to pleasure, no to celebration. Virtue is then placed on the side of sadness, and a joyful life on the side of laxity. The error is seductive because it flatters a simple logic: what gives me pleasure belongs to life, what restrains me belongs to death.

But this confuses asceticism, which is a means, with temperance, which is the art of enjoying goods rightly—and thus truly. The Catechism places self-control not among sorrows but among the fruits of the Spirit, alongside joy:

“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” — Saint Paul, Letter to the Galatians 5:22-23^[6]

Self-control thus appears in the same list as joy and peace: it is not their enemy, but their condition. The intemperate person does not enjoy more; he enjoys less, for craving dulls the taste, excess disgusts, and pleasure pursued without measure turns into revulsion, dependence, and emptiness. Temperance does not take away celebration: it makes it possible without a bitter aftermath. “To live well is nothing other than to love God with all one’s heart,” writes Saint Augustine, and it is this love that temperance “keeps whole”^[7].

“Temperance is lukewarm moderation, a soft middle ground”

A more refined variant: it is granted that temperance is not sadness, but it is then made into a golden mediocrity—neither too much nor too little, a petty-bourgeois prudence that avoids extremes for comfort, never commits, and remains lukewarm in everything. People readily invoke Aristotle’s “golden mean” to dress up this timidity with philosophical nobility.

This is a grave misunderstanding of what the “mean” of virtue is. The virtuous mean is not an arithmetic mean—a lazy average between two quantities—but a mean of reason (medietas rationis): the exact point, sometimes demanding, sometimes heroic, that right reason designates here and now. For a man seated before abundance, moderation may mean stopping early; for another tormented by scruple, it may mean daring to enjoy a legitimate good. The “mean” can thus fall very close to an apparent “extreme”: it is not lukewarm at all. So true is this that Saint Thomas recognizes in temperance a difficulty of its own, even greater than that of justice:

“It is more difficult to restrain desires and pleasures of touch than to correct outward actions.” — Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 141, a. 8^[8]

A virtue that requires holding firm, day after day, against the most daily pressure of the senses, is not a lukewarm virtue. Lukewarmness, in fact, is an absence of temperance: it lets things go, it holds nothing.

“To be temperate is to despise the body and pleasure”

Here is the oldest and most persistent error: to make temperance a mistrust of the body, as if matter, flesh, and pleasure were in themselves suspect, and holiness consisted in tearing oneself away from them. This is the old Manichaean temptation, which resurfaces in a thousand forms—encratism of the early centuries, Jansenist rigorism, spiritualist disgust for the body.

The Church has condemned this with unwavering firmness, for it wounds the very doctrine of Creation: God made all things good, and the body along with them.

“For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving; for then it is made holy by the word of God and by prayer.” — Saint Paul, First Letter to Timothy 4:4-5^[9]

Paul specifically targets those who “forbid marriage” and “command abstinence from foods, which God created”^[10]: the false asceticism that demonizes created goods is not an excess of temperance, but a mistake of faith. True temperance never says that pleasure is bad; it says that it is good, and precisely too good to be spoiled by pursuing it wrongly. It is the guardian of the body, not its enemy. For the specifically sexual aspect of this same error—the idea that chastity is a contempt for the body—see Common Errors Concerning Chastity.

“Temperance is holding one’s passions in check by sheer willpower”

This is the error of the strong-willed person, often admirable: he conceives temperance as an inner arm-wrestling match, where reason strengthens the will to crush passions seen as enemies. At heart, this is the Stoic ideal: to attain apatheia, the absence of passions, by extinguishing sensitivity. The error is seductive because it appears manly, heroic, demanding.

But Christian perfection is not the suppression of the passions: it is their right order. The Catechism is here precise in a way that overturns the Stoic ideal:

“In themselves, the passions are neither good nor evil. They receive moral qualification only insofar as they are effectively taken up into reason and will.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1767^[11]

And further: “Moral perfection consists in man being moved to the good not by his will alone, but also by his sensitive appetite.”^[12] The accomplished temperate person is therefore not the one who eternally represses a rebellious desire, but the one whose very desire has learned to will the good—who loves soberly, who desires with measure, even in his flesh. Temperance is not a tourniquet tightly bound around the passions: it is an education of the passions, until they are wedded to reason. This is why it requires a work “of long duration”^[13] and, as will be seen, a grace—not merely an effort of will.

“Temperance Only Concerns Eating and Drinking”

A very widespread reduction: temperance would be a matter of the table. To be temperate would simply mean not drinking or eating too much—a dietitian’s virtue, useful but narrow. This error is based on a real fact: temperance does indeed have its primary domain in the most intense and common pleasures, those of drinking, eating, and sexuality, because these are the most difficult to regulate^[14]. The Catechism itself illustrates sobriety by reference to the abuse “of food, alcohol, tobacco, and medicine”^[15].

But to reduce temperance to this is to confuse the root with the tree. Temperance is a cardinal virtue, that is, a hinge under which gathers a whole family of virtues that moderate other desires: sobriety (drink), abstinence (food), chastity and continence (sexuality), but also gentleness (which moderates anger), humility (which moderates the desire for greatness), modesty in dress and behavior, right measure in the desire for knowledge, in play, in the use of money and screens. Wherever a legitimate appetite can run wild, temperance keeps watch. The details of this family of virtues are addressed in How to Grow in Temperance; for moderation of anger, see Common Errors Concerning Gentleness.

“Temperance Is for Monks, Not for Ordinary Christians”

Another narrowing, this time social: temperance would be a virtue for specialists—monks, hermits, ascetics—admirable but out of reach and irrelevant for those who live in the world, work, raise children, eat at the cafeteria. The ordinary person believes himself excused: these austerities are “for them.”

Yet Saint Paul grounds the call to temperance not on a particular state of life, but on the grace of baptism, offered to all:

“The grace of God has appeared for the salvation of all men, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and to live sober, upright, and godly lives in this world.” — Saint Paul, Letter to Titus 2:11-12^[16]

“Sober lives” (in Greek sōphronōs, literally with temperance): this is the ABC of Christian life, not a monastic extra. The form changes according to one’s state in life—the monk and the father of a family do not practice abstinence in the same way—but the virtue itself binds every baptized person. In fact, it is “every day” that pleasures to be regulated present themselves, notes Saint Thomas, whereas the danger of death that calls for fortitude is rare^[17]: temperance is thus the most everyday of virtues, and the least reserved for heroes.

“Once Major Excesses Are Avoided, Temperance No Longer Concerns Me”

A reassuring form of the previous two: “I am neither an alcoholic nor a glutton, so I am temperate.” Temperance is relegated to the realm of pathologies—drunkenness, bulimia, addiction—and one believes oneself exempt as long as these spectacular pitfalls are avoided. The error is seductive because it sets the bar very low and immediately puts us on the right side.

But temperance does not begin at the threshold of grave excess: it governs the ordinary use of goods. It is at play in the second glass one could have done without, the extra hour of screen time, the impulsive purchase, the sharp word one allows oneself, the curiosity one does not discipline. The Catechism explicitly places temperance on the side of the positive balance to be built—“to ensure the balance in the use of created goods”^[18]—and not merely in the avoidance of disasters. Saint Peter, moreover, places it at the heart of a continuous growth, where each virtue calls forth another:

“Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, virtue with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with perseverance, perseverance with godliness.” — Saint Peter, Second Letter 1:5-7^[19]

Self-control is not a minimal threshold not to be crossed: it is a degree to be climbed continually, a link between knowledge of God and perseverance.

“The more one deprives oneself, the more virtuous one is”

This is the symmetrical error to the pleasure-seeking error, and appears much more pious: if temperance moderates pleasure, then suppressing it entirely would be the height of virtue. The most austere would be the holiest; fasting more, sleeping less, refusing all enjoyment would always be better. This is rigorism, and it has caused as much harm in the history of the Church as laxism.

Saint Thomas is unequivocal: to refuse pleasures necessary for life and health is not a virtue, but a vice—the vice of insensibility.

“If someone were to flee enjoyment to the point of neglecting what is necessary for the preservation of nature, he would be committing a sin, for this would be to oppose the natural order. This is what constitutes the vice of insensibility.” — Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 142, a. 1^[20]

Thomas immediately clarifies that it is “sometimes praiseworthy or even necessary” to abstain for a purpose—health, a task, penance, contemplation: the athlete, the soldier, the penitent, the contemplative legitimately abstain^[21]. But what distinguishes asceticism from insensibility is that it deprives itself for a good, not out of “contempt for pleasures as evil in themselves”^[22]. The criterion, therefore, is love, not the amount of deprivation. Saint Paul, in fact, denounces ascetic practices that admire themselves:

“These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, humility, and severity to the body, but are of no value in checking the indulgence of the flesh.” — Saint Paul, Letter to the Colossians 2:23^[23]

A rigor that does not serve love, that only contemplates itself, is “of no value”—even if it is spectacular.

“Each person sets the measure according to their own feelings”

A very modern error, heir to relativism: since temperance is a “measure”, and everyone is different, the measure would be subjective—what is temperate for me would be what I feel as such, my comfort, my personal balance, with no objective reference. “I know what is good for me.” The error is seductive because it frees one from the judgment of others and flatters autonomy.

But it dissolves virtue into mood. The measure of temperance is not set by feeling, but by right reason enlightened by faith—and it is prudence that judges it. The Catechism defines temperance as that which “keeps desires within the limits of what is honorable”^[24]: there is therefore an objective measure, rooted in human nature and the end of each good, which reason discovers and does not invent. Entrusting the measure to feeling alone is precisely the definition of intemperance, which “does not let itself be led to follow the passions of its heart” in reverse^[25]. The true freedom of the temperate person is not to decree their own measure, but to recognize the right measure and freely consent to it. On the role of discerning reason, see How to grow in prudence.

“One can be temperate by sheer force of character, without grace”

The last error, more discreet, affects strong natures and wise pagans: temperance would be a matter of human discipline, of good upbringing and strong will, where God has no part. And indeed, there exists a purely acquired temperance: the ancient philosophers praised it, and many virtuous people practice it without faith.

Christianity does not deny this natural temperance; it acknowledges it, but knows it to be fragile and incomplete. For man, wounded by sin, cannot long maintain his measure by his own strength alone. The Catechism states clearly: human virtues “are purified and elevated by divine grace”^[26]. More than that, self-mastery is a fruit of the Holy Spirit (Gal 5:23)^[27]: not a product of the will, but a gift received, which presupposes prayer. This is why Saint Paul, a man of the strongest character, does not rely on his own energy alone but treats himself “harshly” in a lifelong struggle:

“Every athlete exercises self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable crown, but we an imperishable one. […] I discipline my body and keep it under control.” — Saint Paul, First Letter to the Corinthians 9:25, 27^[28]

Christian temperance is therefore both more humble and higher than the temperance of the wise: more humble, because it does not rely on oneself but on grace; higher, because it aims for a “crown that does not fade”. The most perfect temperance thus blossoms in the gift of living in the Will of God, where the soul no longer moderates itself by tense effort but receives God’s own measure—a theme developed in How to grow in temperance.

The table below summarizes the misunderstandings discussed: on the left, the error in its common formulation; in the center, what makes it false; on the right, what the Church actually teaches, with its source. It is read line by line, as a quick antidote to common misconceptions.

Many errors simply come from vague vocabulary, where a part is mistaken for the whole. A few classic distinctions are enough to clear the fog. Temperance is the general cardinal virtue: the right measure of all pleasures. Sobriety is the part that governs drinking; abstinence, the part that governs food. Chastity is the part that orders sexuality according to one’s state of life; continence more precisely refers to the firmness of will that resists disordered desires (one is continent when one struggles and prevails, temperate when the desire itself is calmed and ordered). Gentleness moderates anger, humility moderates the disordered desire for one’s own greatness, modesty moderates outward appearance.

These words are therefore not synonyms: they name applications of the same virtue to different matters. To confuse temperance with one of its parts—to reduce it to sobriety, or chastity, or dietary abstinence—is precisely the error of scope already encountered. The details of this family of virtues, with their own means, are developed in How to Grow in Temperance.

Once the counterfeits are set aside, the virtue appears in its true light. Temperance is not the highest of the virtues—Saint Thomas honestly acknowledges that prudence, the theological virtues, justice, and fortitude surpass it, for they serve the common good more directly, whereas temperance “only moderates individual desires and pleasures”^[39]. Yet it retains its own propriety, a discreet radiance: it is temperance that makes a person presentable, harmonious, free before created goods instead of being their slave. According to Saint Ambrose, as quoted by Thomas, it is the virtue that “most seeks concern for honor and consideration for propriety”^[40].

Above all, temperance is a form of love. This is its deepest definition, given by Saint Augustine and taken up by the Catechism: to love God is to “preserve for Him an undivided love—by temperance—that no misfortune can shake”^[41]. In this sense, temperance is love kept intact, not allowed to be nibbled away bit by bit by a thousand little attachments until there is nothing left to give. The intemperate person scatters himself and ends up empty; the temperate person gathers himself and remains available—to love, to give, for God.

It is also a form of freedom. The kingdom of God, Saint Paul reminds us, “does not consist in food and drink; it is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit”^[42]. The temperate person is no longer ruled by his table, his glass, his screen, or his mood: he uses them, but they no longer hold him captive. This is the promise, the exact opposite of the dullness often attributed to temperance: not less life, but a life finally free, flavorful, and given—“balance in the use of created goods”^[43], so that all things serve, and nothing enslaves.

“Temperance moderates the attraction of pleasures and provides balance in the use of created goods.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1838^[44]

• What do the saints say about temperance — the anthology: the voices of the Fathers, Doctors, and mystics on right measure.
• How to grow in temperance — the practical guide: nature, parts (sobriety, abstinence, chastity, continence, gentleness, humility), concrete means and fruits.
• Common errors concerning chastity — the part of temperance that orders sexuality, and its own misunderstandings.
• Common errors concerning gentleness — the part of temperance that moderates anger.
• How to grow in prudence — the virtue that judges, in each case, where the right measure lies.