The Windmills of Certainty

R eading The Inferno can be either very interesting or very confusing. I never read it in the context of an academic course, to tear apart the meaning behind Dante's visions. However, I have read it through the lens of being a Catholic at Heart, meaning I have tried to discern the spiritual message in his work. At the very beginning, after Dante is ruminating about finding himself lost in the middle of his life, we find him encountering three beasts who guard an alluring path, after finding his way out of a thick, dark wood. But Dante feels and knows this path is where "no one ever left alive." The leopard, the lion, and the she-wolf; all are avatars for the three most deadly self-medications people use to manage their life on their own (Catholics call them sins): anger, pride, and lust.  Now in Catholic lore, pride is the worst of them all, because it is the hook into all the other sins. Pride fuels one to indulge in "disordered love" as Aquinas calls it. But