Is it OK to be rich?

Forgotten Christian teachings on money

A young man asks, ‘For Catholics, when does the pursuit of money and wealth become perverted? Is it wrong to want to be a millionaire someday? Is it wrong to desire nice cars, a nice house, etc.? When do these desires become disordered? How much of one’s income should be donated to the church, donated to charity, invested for the future, or spent on yourself? Is it true that a rich man can’t get into heaven? What about having expensive hobbies like golf or eating at nice restaurants – does that become wasteful / reckless at some point?’

Money causes a lot of confusion among Christians, but Scripture describes such figures as Abraham, Joseph, David, and Job as both wealthy and righteous. Indeed, the Book of Sirach says,

‘Blessed is the rich man that is found without blemish… He that could have transgressed, and hath not transgressed: and could do evil things, and hath not done them: Therefore are his goods established in the Lord, and all the church of the saints shall declare his alms.’ (31:8,10-11, Douay-Rheims)

So wealth in itself is not evil.

Nevertheless, Christianity cautions against the spiritual dangers of wealth for good reasons. Rare is the rich man ‘without blemish.’

How avarice nourishes evil

We can see why if we review the seven deadly or capital (head) sins, which direct all the others like the head directs the body.

• The vice of pride moves us to the disordered pursuit of the goods of the soul, such as praise and honor

• The vices of lust and gluttony move us to the disordered pursuit of the goods of the body

• The vice of avarice moves us to pursue and unduly love external goods (money, land, possessions)

• The vice of sloth hinders us from sufficiently wishing our own good

• The vices of envy and anger hinder us from sufficiently desiring our neighbour’s good

Of these seven deadly sins, two are traditionally said to have principality over the others. Pride is the beginning of all sin because what impels the sinner is always some inordinate desire for his own personal excellence. And avarice is the root of the nourishment of all sin because money affords the opportunity for satisfying every base desire. As Tony Montana says in Scarface,

This country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women.

This is why avarice, although it’s not the worst sin in terms of deformity, has a pre-eminence among the seven deadly sins in regard to its influence. The disordered love of riches is one of the most prolific of sins. As Aquinas explains, ‘avarice seeks abundance of things adapted to human use,’ and it enables the execution of sin after sin originates in pride.

The shamefulness of avarice

Avarice is not only particularly influential but also particularly shameful. This is because vices become more disgraceful as the created goods they pursue become less valuable. And the external things the miser sets his heart on are the lowest of all goods — lower than the goods of the body (health) and of soul (education).

Yet the miser prefers them even to divine goods, so he is seen as more contemptible than other sinners even though avarice is not in itself as sinful as, for example, atheism, murder or theft. And the different forms of avarice are traditionally ranked according to their shamefulness:

• Parsimony or penuriousness is the fear to consume or expend for our own necessary uses

• Stinginess or niggardliness is an unwillingness to give to others

• Sponging is the willingness to live at the expense of others

• Miserliness, the worst of all, is being unable to bear parting with our possessions either for our own sake or for the sake of others, find our happiness in mere possession.

In itself, avarice is only a venial sin because it’s only an excess in the love of a thing that’s indifferent and lawful. Yet the ranking above shows how it can become mortal if the affection for money inteferes with serious obligations. For example, a man might choose to stay away from church for fear of losing the opportunity to make more money, or he might never give to the poor.

Avarice is neither merely carnal nor merely spiritual. Riches aren’t a spritual object, but avarice isn’t only concerned with bodily pleasure either. It stands between the spritual and carnal vices. Profit as a goal is morally indifferent, but since money-making can encourage avarice we know it has the appearance of evil.

Evil rich characters in books and movies are thus more common than good ones are. Dickens, for example, describes the effects of avarice on Scrooge in the prime of his life, after some years of business success. Belle, his fiancee, breaks off their engagement because Scrooge’s love for money has become more important to him than his love for her:

He was older now; a man in the prime of life. His face had not the harsh and rigid lines of later years; but it had begun to wear the signs of care and avarice. There was an eager, greedy, restless motion in the eye, which showed the passion that had taken root, and where the shadow of the growing tree would fall.

He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young girl in a mourning-dress: in whose eyes there were tears, which sparkled in the light that shone out of the Ghost of Christmas Past.

“It matters little,” she said, softly. “To you, very little. Another idol has displaced me; and if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve.”

“What Idol has displaced you?” he rejoined.

“A golden one.”

“This is the even-handed dealing of the world!” he said. “There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!”

“You fear the world too much,” she answered, gently. “All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion, Gain, engrosses you. Have I not?”

“What then?” he retorted. “Even if I have grown so much wiser, what then? I am not changed towards you.”

She shook her head.

“Am I?”

“Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were both poor and content to be so, until, in good season, we could improve our worldly fortune by our patient industry. You are changed. When it was made, you were another man.”

“I was a boy,” he said impatiently.

“Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you are,” she returned. “I am. That which promised happiness when we were one in heart, is fraught with misery now that we are two. How often and how keenly I have thought of this, I will not say. It is enough that I have thought of it, and can release you.”

“Have I ever sought release?”

“In words. No. Never.”

“In what, then?”

“In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another atmosphere of life; another Hope as its great end. In everything that made my love of any worth or value in your sight. If this had never been between us,” said the girl, looking mildly, but with steadiness, upon him; “tell me, would you seek me out and try to win me now? Ah, no!”

He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition, in spite of himself. But he said with a struggle, “You think not.”

“I would gladly think otherwise if I could,” she answered, “Heaven knows! When I have learned a Truth like this, I know how strong and irresistible it must be. But if you were free to-day, to-morrow, yesterday, can even I believe that you would choose a dowerless girl—you who, in your very confidence with her, weigh everything by Gain: or, choosing her, if for a moment you were false enough to your one guiding principle to do so, do I not know that your repentance and regret would surely follow? I do; and I release you. With a full heart, for the love of him you once were.”

Scrooge makes the whole purpose of his existence the acquisition of gain, and it makes his heart as cold and hard as his money. His ‘nobler aspirations’ all give way to it.

Avarice and anxiety

Belle is especially perceptive when she tells Scrooge, ‘You fear the world too much.’ We’re all drawn to happiness, and money seems to secure the conditions for it. Scripture is therefore full of warnings about the lengths men will go to get it:

• men will become hard of heart (Matthew 23:14; Luke 16:21)

• become carnal and restless in mind (Sirach 14:9; Matthew 13:22)

• and have recourse to deeds of violence (III Kings 21:2)

• of deception (Acts 24:26)

• of perjury (Matthew 28:12)

• of fraud (Luke 16:4)

• and treachery (Matthew 26:15).

We’re therefore warned that avarice is one of the most dangerous of sins because it can induce a man to sell even his own soul (Sirach 10:10) and to commit any sin, no matter how terrible (I Timothy 6:9).

It’s also exceptionally difficult to eradicate because the miser never has enough (Proverbs 30:15-16), and the miser is always able to rationalise his avarice as prudence or some other virtue (Wisdom 15:12). Thus Scrooge deflects Belle’s reproach by saying he is ‘wiser’ now and the man she fell in love with was merely a ‘boy.’

Ironically, however, Scrooge’s miserliness is less mature — less masculine — than was his previous trust in ‘patient industry.’ As St Jerome said, ‘work must be attended to, but worry must be banished,’ yet the ‘restless motion’ in Scrooge’s eyes shows that he’s now consumed by worry or what Belle calls ‘the hope of being beyond the chance of [the world’s] sordid reproach.’

Solicitude and security

This worry is socilitude: an inordinate carefulness about temporal things or about the future. And Our Lord condemns it:

“Be not solicitous therefore saying: ‘What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewith shall we be clothed?’ ... Be not solicitous for the morrow, for the morrow will be solicitous for itself. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof” (Matthew 6:31-34).

It seeks external goods without the moderation that reason requires and doesn’t confide in Divine Providence. Temporal things become the goal of life so that the spiritual is made to suffer: ‘The cares of this world choked up the word’ (Matthew 13:22). Some men, for example, might use contraception to escape the burden of supporting a family, preferring to invest the money saved.

Of course moderate solicitude is a duty dictated by prudence. Providence for the future is necessary:

• Scripture praises the ant, which gathers its food in the summer against the winter (Proverbs 6:6).

• Joseph stored up a reserve of grain (Genesis 41:48)

• Our Lord appointed Judas to act as treasurer for Himself and His followers (John 12:6)

• The Apostles kept for future expenses offerings made from the sale of fields (Acts 4:34-35)

But we musn’t become, like Scrooge, too absorbed in money-making or too anxious about our financial affairs. Temporal things mustn’t become idols. And when we have sufficient means, we shouldn’t deprive ourselves of peace and health to be wealthier in the future.

How much money is enough?

Having reviewed the Christian teaching on avarice, we are now in a position to answer the young man’s questions. In their handbook Moral Theology, Fr McHugh and Fr Callan outline the necessary principles:

• ‘As to external goods of fortune (i.e., wealth and possessions), one must aim to acquire as much as is necessary for one’s subsistence and the fulfillment of duties to others.’

• ‘Necessaries of life are the goods one must have to provide food, clothing and home for oneself and one’s family. Among necessaries of life we may include what one has to set aside for old age, sickness, increase of family, and the future sustenance of dependents who will need it (II Corinthians 12:14).’

• ‘But they should not be extended to include imaginary cases, or all the possible cases of personal need that may arise in the future; otherwise, one is guilty of that exaggerated solicitude for the morrow which our Lord forbids (Matthew 6:34).’

• ‘Necessaries of state are the goods a person must have to keep up his position and that of his family according to the standard of living of his class. This includes provision for the education and advancement of one’s children, for hospitality, adornment of home, and the care and improvement of one’s business; but it does not include provision for excessive pleasures or luxuries, or improbable future opportunities of bettering one’s condition; otherwise, even the wealthiest person might say that all his money was tied up and that he had no superfluous goods.’

• ‘Charity to self does not demand that one aspire to reach the top of the ladder in the financial world or to accumulate a very large surplus.’

• ‘One may indeed lawfully seek to become a millionaire, or to become so wealthy as to be able to retire with leisure, if one goes about this lawfully; but there is no obligation to strive after more than is reasonably necessary.’

It is not wrong, then, to want to be a millionaire someday. In fact, providing a moderate lifestyle for a large family — including setting aside money for retirement, kids’ education, sickness, etc. — would in some parts of the world likely necessitate being a millionaire. And there wouldn’t be a lot of money left over afterwards. For that husband, being a millionaire is very different from a single guy in his early twenties being a millionaire.

Nice cars and a nice house aren’t wrong to want either. A businessman might need a $130,000 car — the price of a new Mercedes S-Class, for example — to keep up his position according to the standard of living of his class: his associates might all drive one, for example, and expect to be picked up in one by him. If he splurged on a $500,000 Rolls Royce, however, they might rightly judge his expenditure to be excessive. The same goes for expensive suits, golf, fine dining or, in some circles, even private jets.

But these desires become disordered when the external goods are prioritised above the spritual, involve the sacrifice of more important duties or affect one’s peace and health when one already has enough.

And there is no fixed percentage of income that should be donated to the church or charity, but we must be generous with what remains after all necessaries of life and state have been accounted for, which might be a very high sum in some cases. St. Alphonsus recommended 2%.

Overall, a rich man certainly can get to heaven, but money might make getting there harder. He’ll have to take great care not to allow his money to become an idol. And he’ll have to resist the temptations to satisfy his base desires that his money provides. Proverbs 30:8 thus advises, ‘Give me neither beggary, nor riches: give me only the necessaries of life.’

Most of us lack the virtue to face the spiritual dangers of either poverty or luxury.