Common Mistakes Regarding the Battle Against Avarice

A vice thought to be reserved for misers

The first misunderstanding is one of portrait. Avarice is filed among spectacular faults: the miser of comedy, the skinflint who skimps on everything, the old man glued to his strongbox, Molière's Harpagon crying "my money!" Since almost no one recognizes themselves in this caricature, everyone concludes that avarice is the vice of others — and believes themselves exempt. The error is relieving: it shelves the battle as a problem one does not have.

But the avarice defined by the Fathers and doctors is not first a stingy behavior: it is an inner movement. Saint Thomas calls it "immoderate love of possessing" (immoderatus amor habendi)^[4] — an attachment that does not need to be stingy to exist. It lives just as well in the spendthrift who spends to impress but would give nothing to a poor person, in the well-to-do man who weighs every act of generosity, in the worker who sacrifices everything to "put aside." The skinflint is only a coarse and minority variety of avarice; its most widespread form is discreet, and all the more tenacious for disguising itself as wisdom. Believing that avarice is recognized by visible stinginess is confusing the disease with one of its rarest symptoms.

A battle thought to be secondary

Second misunderstanding: avarice would be a minor flaw, a thrifty quirk beside "serious" sins. One fights pride, impurity, anger; avarice, on the other hand, would pass for almost a quality — a sign of foresight, realism, responsibility. The error is seductive because it removes guilt and flatters: who reproaches themselves for being "thrifty"?

But Scripture and tradition hold avarice to be one of the gravest vices. Saint Paul gives it a terrible primacy:

"For the love of money is the root of all evils. In their attachment to it, some have strayed from the faith and have pierced themselves with many pains." — First Letter to Timothy 6:10^[5]

He even elsewhere qualifies it as "idolatry"^[6], because it places in wealth the trust and love due to God alone. The Church ranks it among the seven capital sins^[7], not out of severity, but because it begets a lineage of sins: Saint Gregory the Great assigns it seven "daughters" — "treachery, fraud, deceit, perjury, restlessness, violence and hardness of heart against mercy"^[8]. It was avarice that armed the hand of Judas^[9]. To minimize this vice is not to neglect a harmless quirk: it is to leave intact a root from which injustice, lying and hardness of heart grow.

"Avarice is hoarding like a miser"

This is the fundamental error, the matrix of all the others: avarice would be the act of being stingy, keeping everything, refusing the slightest expense. It is imagined as visible, measurable by the degree of miserliness. The error is seductive because it is convenient — it makes the vice external, therefore easy to avoid, and easy to recognize… in others.

But the object of avarice is not the way one spends: it is the disordered love of having, whether it translates into retention or any other disorder. Saint Thomas distinguishes two faces of the same vice: a disorder toward neighbor, when one acquires or retains goods in contempt of justice; and an inner disorder, the disordered affection for riches, when the heart cleaves to them more than is fitting^[10]. This desire takes a thousand forms that do not resemble the miser: covetousness for what one does not have, anxiety about losing what one has, calculation that weighs every gift, hardness that no longer sees the poor. One can be outwardly generous and deeply avaricious within; the vain patron who would give nothing without return is as avaricious, in his way, as the miser with his strongbox. Reducing avarice to stinginess is hunting only its caricature and leaving free its most common form: the one that hides.

"It is a sin of the rich: being poor, I risk nothing"

A direct variant, and particularly deceptive: since avarice would be attachment to great fortunes, he who possesses little would by definition be sheltered from it. The vice is measured by the quantity possessed. The error is seductive because it transforms material poverty into a spiritual guarantee.

But avarice is not in the purse, it is in the heart: one can be rich without being avaricious, and poor while being so. Saint Francis de Sales fixed this forever with the image of the apothecary:

"There is a difference between having poison and being poisoned. Apothecaries have almost all kinds of poisons to use on various occasions, but for that they are not poisoned, because the poison is not in their body, but in their shops. So you may have riches without being poisoned by them: it will be so if you have them in your house or in your purse, and not in your heart." — Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, III, 14^[11]

The goal Francis de Sales proposes to all, rich and poor, is to be "rich in fact and poor in affection." A man can manage a great fortune with a free heart, ready to lose everything without being torn apart; another, who possesses almost nothing, can be consumed by avarice for the little he has — clinging to his few savings, devoured by envy for another's good, unable to give a single coin. The criterion is not the amount in the bank account, but the place of the heart: am I master of money, or its servant? By this measure, the destitute can be more avaricious than the rich, and avarice spares no condition.

"Money is evil: to be pure, one must flee it"

The opposite error, frequent among fervent souls: if the love of money is "the root of all evils," then money itself would be evil, and holiness would consist in despising it, refusing to manage it, holding all wealth as suspect. The error is seductive because it sounds radical and disinterested — but it mistakes the target.

Saint Paul did not write that money was the root of evils, but the love of money — philargyria^[12]. Money is a neutral instrument, a real but subordinate good, made to serve life and charity. Sin lies not in the thing, but in the disordered affection borne for it. Proof: Saint Thomas does not make fleeing money a virtue, but its right use — liberality, which holds the mean between avarice (which retains) and prodigality (which squanders)^[13]. To despise money on principle, to refuse to manage it or to hold the rich as damned in advance, is not evangelical poverty: it is often another way of being obsessed with it, negatively. Christ himself had rich friends, accepted being helped with their goods, and condemned neither the converted Zacchaeus nor Joseph of Arimathea for their fortune, but the attachment that closes the heart. Holiness is not having nothing, but having a free heart — free enough to acquire justly, keep with measure, and give with joy.

This is the heart of the subject, and the ground where the most damage is done. For fear of avarice, upright souls condemn in themselves perfectly healthy acts — saving, providing, managing carefully — and lock themselves in scrupulosity; while others, reassured at not being stingy, do not see the real avarice that inhabits them in the form of indifference. One fights well only what one has first correctly identified — and avarice is neither foresight, nor saving, nor mere possession.

"Saving and being provident is already avarice"

A frequent error among scrupulous souls: every amount put aside, every act of foresight, every attention to tomorrow would be suspect; to be detached, one would have to live day by day without reserving anything. Foresight is confused with hoarding. The error is seductive because it seems more generous — keeping nothing seems more evangelical than providing.

But Scripture enjoins care for one's own as a duty, not a vice: "And whoever does not take care of their own, especially those closest, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever" (1 Tim 5:8)^[14]. Providing for necessities, securing children's future, keeping a prudent reserve against illness or unemployment, is not avarice: it is justice and rightly ordered charity. Saint Thomas is clear: wealth, foresight, reasonable saving fall under virtue as long as they remain measured by reason and ordered to a right end^[15]. Avarice does not begin with foresight, but with excess: when concern for securing the future becomes anxiety, when a prudent reserve becomes accumulation without end, when one provides only for oneself forgetting the poor. The boundary is not between "saving" and "keeping nothing," but between a reserve ordered to a real need and an amassing that has no other end than itself.

"Managing one's goods carefully, refusing waste, is avarice"

A variant of the previous: counting expenses, refusing waste, keeping accounts, not throwing money out the window would pass for signs of avarice. In the name of detachment, disorder, impulsive spending, negligence would come to be valued. The error is seductive because it confuses liberality with prodigality.

But tradition holds prodigality — squandering without measure what should be preserved — to be a vice, exactly like avarice: they are the two opposite excesses between which liberality holds the mean^[16]. The liberal man is not a spendthrift: he "acquires justly, uses with measure, gives with joy." Managing one's goods well, avoiding waste, making what one has last, is not hoarding out of avarice: it is respecting goods that are also destined for neighbor, for money squandered is no longer available for alms. The criterion, again, is not care taken in management, but the anchoring of the heart: one can manage rigorously in order to give better, or spend without counting out of pure vanity. Good stewardship in service of charity has nothing avaricious about it; and squandering, far from being proof of detachment, is often a headlong flight that ruins one's own capacity to give.

"Possessing goods is already being their slave"

A radical error: mere possession would already be a compromise; to have a free heart, one would have to have nothing at all. Possession is identified with attachment. The error is seductive because it seems purer — but it confuses an external state with a disposition of the heart.

Yet poverty of heart — the first beatitude — is not material destitution, but the inner freedom of one who places security only in God:

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 5:3^[17]

The Catechism specifies: all the faithful are called to regulate their affections so as not to be hindered, by the use of goods, from attaining charity — which supposes that one can possess honestly without sinning^[18]. Abraham was rich in flocks; Job, before and after his trial, possessed great goods; so many lay saints used considerable fortunes without attaching their heart to them. It all comes down to where one has placed treasure: "For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be"^[19]. Possession enslaves only those who cling to it; held with an open hand, ready to give or to lose, it leaves the heart free. On this freedom with regard to goods, see Common mistakes regarding detachment.

"I give from time to time: so I am not avaricious"

An opposite error to the previous ones, and just as harmful: since one gives alms on occasion, is not stingy, sometimes helps, one believes oneself quit of avarice. It is measured by the absence of visible stinginess. The error is seductive because it takes a few gestures for a disposition of the heart.

But the most fearsome of the "daughters" of avarice is not retention: it is the hardening of the heart against mercy^[20] — the indifference which, without stealing anything, no longer sees the poor. It is the sin of the rich man in the parable: he committed no striking crime, he simply feasted each day without seeing Lazarus lying at his gate (Lk 16:19-31)^[21]. Avarice is therefore not measured by the occasional gift, but by what one refuses to see: surplus kept while another lacks, alms calculated to never cost, the poor become invisible. More subtly still, avarice can hide under the very clothes of charity: Judas protested against perfume "wasted" in the name of the poor, "not because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief"^[22]. Giving sometimes proves nothing; the test lies elsewhere: what costs me most to give? The poor person I meet — do I still see him? Avarice unrecognized is that of the closed heart that believes itself generous.

Once the enemy is identified, one can still mistake the weapon — and avarice is so cunning that several spontaneous "remedies" are precisely what leaves it intact. Its trick is to make one believe it has been overcome when one has only changed pretext.

"To conquer avarice, one must sell everything and become poor"

An error of generous souls: since the rich young man was invited to sell everything, the only true remedy for avarice would be total destitution; as long as one possesses, one would have done nothing. The counsel of perfection is confused with the common precept. The error is seductive because it is radical — but it discourages those who cannot leave everything, and sometimes flatters those who could.

Yet the call to the rich young man — "go, sell what you have"^[23] — is an evangelical counsel addressed to those who seek perfection through destitution, not a commandment imposed on all. Christ does not ask Zacchaeus to sell everything, but to give half and make restitution for injustices; he praises the widow who gives two small coins, not because she ruins herself, but because she gives with a free heart. What avarice requires to be relinquished is not first money, but attachment to money — and this attachment can be kept after having sold everything, or be freed while managing goods. Poverty of heart is exercised in every condition: "abandonment to the providence of the Father in heaven frees us from anxiety about tomorrow"^[24]. Material destitution can be a powerful remedy, and even a vocation; but to make it the only way out is to confuse the external means with inner healing, and to forget that one can be barefoot and avaricious about one's very destitution.

"It is enough to think less about money"

An inner error: combating avarice would consist in turning one's mind away from money, in "thinking about it less," cultivating good thoughts of detachment. One works on mental disposition. The error is seductive because it is convenient and invisible — it costs nothing and is not verifiable.

But one does not free oneself from attachment to money by thinking about it less, for "thinking about it less" is still looking at it, in negative. The saints' remedy is not mental, it is concrete: the open hand. Christ said it without detour: "But as to what is within, give alms, and behold, everything will be clean for you"^[25]. Avarice is healed by loosening one's fingers one by one, through real gifts: each alms loosens the grip, each gift proves to the heart that it can live without what it thought indispensable. Scripture attributes to almsgiving a power of purification: "Prayer and fasting are good, but better than either is almsgiving accompanied by righteousness […]. Almsgiving saves from death and purges all sin" (Tob 12:8-9)^[26] — not that money redeems, but that the gesture of giving concretely breaks avarice where mere thought fails. Deciding to "think less about money" without giving anything is treating a clenched hand by merely thinking about it. On the practice of giving as true remedy, see Common mistakes regarding almsgiving.

"I will be generous when I have enough"

The most widespread error, and the most cunning: one is not against generosity — one postpones it until the day one is finally secure, when one has "enough" to be able to give without risk. The error is seductive because it seems reasonable: prudence first, charity later.

But this "enough" never comes, for avarice is by nature insatiable:

"He who loves money never has enough money, and he who loves abundance reaps nothing. This also is mere vanity." — Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes) 5:9^[27]

Saint John Cassian observed this among monks: unlike hunger or thirst, which have a natural limit of satiety, avarice is a vice "from without," without end — Cassian describes it as a true tyranny which no abundance satiates: as soon as one yields a little, it soon demands everything^[28]. The threshold of security recedes as one approaches it: the more one possesses, the more one fears losing, and the more one must possess again. That is why postponing generosity until one has "enough" amounts to never giving. The saints reverse the logic: one does not become free first to give afterward, one becomes free by giving. The Gospel widow does not wait for comfort; she gives "out of her poverty," and it is she whom Christ declares richest. The right time for almsgiving is never tomorrow: it is today, with what one has.

"Almsgiving is only optional generosity"

An error of justice: giving to the poor would be a bonus of the soul, a gesture of kindness left to choice, meritorious but not obligatory; not giving would not be a sin, only a lack of generosity. The error is seductive because it soothes conscience cheaply.

But the Fathers teach that surplus retained is due to the poor in strict justice. Saint Ambrose reverses the very idea of almsgiving:

"It is not from your own goods that you give to the poor: you are giving back to him what is his. For what was given in common for the use of all, you appropriate to yourself alone. The earth belongs to all, not to the rich." — Saint Ambrose of Milan, De Nabuthe^[29]

Saint Basil had said it with the same force:

"The bread you are holding back belongs to the hungry; the cloak you keep in your chest belongs to the naked; the shoe that rots in your house belongs to the one who has none; the gold you bury belongs to the needy." — Saint Basil of Caesarea, Homily on these words of the Gospel: "I will pull down my barns…"; and against avarice (on Lk 12)^[30]

And Saint John Chrysostom, quoted by the Catechism itself, goes to the end of the logic: "Not to share our own goods with the poor is to rob them and to deprive them of life"^[31]. The Church draws from this a demanding rule: "Love for the poor is incompatible with immoderate love of riches or their selfish use"^[32], and ranks almsgiving not among optional good sentiments, but among works of justice pleasing to God^[33]. Holding the gift to be optional is precisely the "hardness against mercy" that tradition gives as a daughter of avarice. On the misunderstandings specific to the gift and the duty of justice toward the poor, see Common mistakes regarding almsgiving and Common mistakes regarding justice.

"The slightest attachment to money is a grave sin"

An error that tortures delicate souls: since avarice is the root of all evils, the slightest pleasure in possessing, the slightest satisfaction in having put aside, the slightest worry about money would prove that one has already gravely sinned. Temptation is confused with fault, and one sinks into scrupulosity. The error is seductive because it takes sin seriously — but it places it too early.

Yet the Church carefully distinguishes degrees. Avarice itself can be venial or mortal sin according to its gravity: it is mortal when love of riches prevails over love of God or drives one to seriously harm neighbor; it remains venial when attachment exceeds measure without going that far^[34]. And for mortal sin to exist, three conditions are together required: "grave matter, full knowledge and deliberate consent"^[35] — "mortal sin requires full knowledge and complete consent"^[36]. The first movement of covetousness, the satisfaction that rises before any deliberation, the spontaneous worry about tomorrow are therefore not yet sins: they become so only if the will takes delight in them and consents. As one can be tempted without sinning, one can feel the attraction of having without consenting to it. Scrupulosity that sees grave sin in every worry about money confuses the matter of temptation with consent of the will; instead, this first movement should be seized as the occasion for battle — the instant when, spotting it, one refers it to God and opens the hand.

"Once I have given, avarice is conquered"

A final error, and the most convenient: the battle against avarice would be a stage one crosses once and for all — a great gift, a generous alms, and one would have "become detached," safe, dispensed from watching. One believes oneself arrived after a gesture — and it is precisely the moment when the vice reforms. The error is seductive because it transforms a permanent battle into an acquired title.

But avarice is insatiable, and its return is its very nature: the heart that opened once can close again the next day, and generous souls in a great impulse have been seen to become tight-fisted again in the daily routine of small expenses. The vice is not uprooted at once, because it disguises itself ceaselessly as prudence and is reborn under new pretexts. That is why the saints make it a battle of a whole lifetime: not a battle won, but a hand that must be relearned to open each day. The generosity of one day does not dispense from liberality tomorrow; and he who believes himself healed because he once gave much exposes himself to letting avarice return through the door of "small" retentions. Avarice is not a state one leaves: it is a slope to be watched until the last day — all the more since "we brought nothing into the world, just as we shall not be able to take anything out of it"^[37], and the only treasure that crosses death is the one given away.

The table below recaps the misunderstandings covered: on the left, the error in its common formulation; in the center, what makes it false; on the right, what the Church and the saints really teach, with their source. It reads line by line, as a quick antidote to received ideas.

Many errors come from a fuzzy vocabulary, where one word is taken for another. A few classic distinctions suffice to dispel the mist. Avarice is the immoderate love of possessing, retaining or acquiring goods beyond measure and neighbor's need — the heart of the vice, that movement which makes having an end and places in wealth the security due to God alone^[51][52]. Prodigality is its opposite vice: not a virtue, but the contrary excess, which squanders without discernment what should be preserved^[53]. Between these two excesses, liberality holds the mean: the virtue of one who acquires justly, uses with measure and gives with joy, because "God loves a cheerful giver"^[54].

Beside these three, two healthy realities must not be confused with the vice. Rightful foresight and reasonable saving — providing for necessities, for duties of state, for dependents — are not avarice but part of justice: "if anyone does not provide for relatives…"^[55]. And poverty of heart is not material destitution, but the inner freedom of the poor who place security only in God, compatible with honest possession^[56]. These words are therefore not synonyms: only avarice and prodigality are vices to be fought; liberality is the virtue to be acquired; rightful foresight is a duty to honor; and poverty of heart, the disposition to keep in every condition. Confusing them risks fighting an innocent duty — prudent saving — or letting avarice triumph under the reassuring name of "realism."

Once the misunderstandings are set aside, the battle against avarice appears in its true light. Far from being a fight against mere stinginess, or a contempt for money, or the duty to sell everything, it is the restoration of goods to their right place: servants and not masters, instruments of good and not idols. To conquer it is not to strip oneself by calculation nor to torture oneself with scruples; it is to open the hand — to loosen the heart's grip on what it holds, to receive it from God and let it pass toward neighbor.

That is why the end of the battle is not sad impoverishment, but a new freedom and peace: he who no longer serves two masters is no longer at the mercy of fear of lacking. The miser was a slave — to his goods, to the anguish of losing them, to perpetual calculation; the freed heart breathes, possesses without being possessed, can lose everything without collapsing, because its treasure is no longer where rust and thieves destroy^[57]. And the sweetest fruit is the joy of giving, this paradox that avarice never suspected:

"It is more blessed to give than to receive." — Acts of the Apostles 20:35^[58]

Such is the truth that caricatures had masked: the battle against avarice is not a war against money, but the path by which a heart ceases to seek in having the security that God alone can give. The remedy is at hand — it is in the hand, precisely, which need only be opened. Where avarice closes and parches, liberality opens and expands; where avarice isolates in anxiety, almsgiving makes one brother to the poor. "You cannot serve both God and Money": the whole battle lies in uprooting this love to redirect it to God and neighbor — and in discovering, by giving, that one does not impoverish oneself, but expands toward the freedom of the children of God.

• How to grow in the battle against avarice — the practical guide: nature of avarice, its roots (distrust, pride, inner emptiness), its "daughters," biblical figures, and concrete means (confession, almsgiving, liberality, trust, gratitude, detachment, remembrance of death) to the joy of giving.
• What the saints say about the battle against avarice — the anthology: the voice of the Fathers, doctors and mystics, from Cassian and Basil to Ambrose, Chrysostom, Thomas Aquinas and Francis of Assisi.
• Common mistakes regarding almsgiving — misunderstandings about the gift, the proper remedy for avarice: almsgiving as optional, calculated, or reduced to surplus.
• Common mistakes regarding detachment — misunderstandings about freedom of heart with regard to goods, of which avarice is the negation.
• Common mistakes regarding justice — giving each his due: surplus retained is a debt to the poor (Ambrose, Chrysostom).
• Common mistakes regarding abandonment to God — trust in Providence, which removes avarice's root of distrust.
• Common mistakes regarding the battle against pride and Common mistakes regarding the battle against acedia — twin articles in the same series on battles against capital sins.