AVARICE. - Avarice is an excessive love of riches, that is, a love that goes beyond the rule of reason, which requires that means be subordinated to the end and therefore that man seek riches insofar as they are necessary to his condition in life. The excessive love of riches is a sin; and a special sin, because this love concerns riches, that is, the useful good, distinct from the honest good and from the pleasurable good.
Although it is frequently opposed to justice, because the avaricious man often desires to take possession of and to retain, indeed he takes possession of others' riches and retains them, avarice is always and directly opposed to liberality, since the excessive love, desire or pleasure of riches does not necessarily aim at others' riches, but also at one's own riches; it is therefore opposed to liberality by defect, just as prodigality is opposed to it by excess. As contrary to justice, the sin of avarice is mortal ex genere suo, on a par with theft and robbery. But as opposed to liberality, it is only a venial sin, since, if it is true that someone can love riches to the point of placing in them his ultimate end - and therefore sin mortally -, he can also love them, albeit excessively, without preferring them to the love of God, that is, without wishing, on their account, to do anything against God or his neighbor.
But even when it constitutes a mortal sin, avarice is not the most grave of sins. The gravity of sins is in fact inferred from the dignity of the good of which they directly deprive one, and it is clear that those sins which, like infidelity, blasphemy, etc., are directly against God, or, like murder, directly against the very person of man, directly deprive one of a greater good. Avarice, however, is a viler sin, inasmuch as the enslavement of the soul to lower goods brings greater shame; now riches are goods inferior to the divine good, to the goods of the soul and to those of the body. St. Gregory (Moralia, XXXI, 37) enumerates avarice among the spiritual vices, since it is consumed, rather than in the pleasure or sensation of the flesh - like gluttony and lust - in the pleasure or perception of the soul. The same Saint (ibid.) then places it among the capital vices, that is, among those from which other sins are born, and lists seven daughters of avarice: obduratio contra misericordiam, inquietudo mentis, violentia, fallacia and periurium, fraus and proditio, because from the excessive love of them man is led to retain those riches that he ought to give to the needy, to seek them out, to take possession of them, whether with too much anxiety or by illicit means, that is, by violence and by deceit in word or in deed.
