AVARICE. — Avarice is an inordinate love of wealth, that is, a love which exceeds the rule of reason, which requires that means be subordinated to the end, and therefore that man seek wealth only insofar as it is necessary for his condition of life. An excessive love of wealth is a sin; and it is a special sin, because this love concerns wealth, that is, the useful good, distinct from the honourable good and the delectable good.
Although avarice is frequently opposed to justice, because the miser often desires to appropriate and retain, or even does appropriate and retain, another’s wealth, it is always and directly opposed to liberality, since the excessive love, desire, or pleasure in wealth does not necessarily aim at another’s wealth, but also at one’s own; 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, while it is true that one may love wealth so much as to place in it his ultimate end—and thus sin mortally—he may also love it, though inordinately, without preferring it to the love of God, that is, without wishing, for its sake, to do anything against God or neighbour.
Yet even when it constitutes a mortal sin, avarice is not the gravest of sins. The gravity of sins is indeed deduced from the dignity of the good of which they directly deprive, and it is clear that those sins which, like infidelity, blasphemy, etc., are directly against God, or, like murder, directly against the person of man, directly deprive of a greater good. Avarice, however, is a baser sin, inasmuch as it involves a greater shame in the enslavement of the soul to lower goods; now wealth is 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 consummated, rather than in the pleasure or sensation of the flesh—as gluttony and lust are— in the pleasure or perception of the soul. The same Saint (ibid.) then places it among the capital vices, that is, those from which other sins arise, and lists seven daughters of avarice: *obduratio contra misericordiam*, *inquietudo mentis*, *violentia*, *fallacia* and *periurium*, *fraus* and *proditio*, because from excessive love for wealth man is led to withhold what he ought to give to the needy, to seek wealth, to appropriate it, whether with too much anxiety or by illicit means, that is, through violence and deceit in word or deed.