Greed

+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
5 Oct 2008

The enormous crisis which has battered the U.S.A financial markets will have long term effects, rippling out around the world.  Government budgets will be affected. Spending on other priorities, including real or imagined global warming, will be seen in a new light.

The next U.S. president will be faced with the consequences of the crisis and the need to clean up the mess.  Both presidential candidates have said little so far that has been helpful, although both have claimed that greed was partly responsible.

They are right on this and it will help their approval ratings, because everyone is opposed to greed, although almost no one admits to being greedy.

The very rich are easy targets and receive little sympathy when they burn their fingers.  Indeed it is too easy to blame greed for the melt-down, unless we define greed by separating it from legitimate profit making.  After all, isn’t a form of greed the principal motivator of the market economy which has brought new prosperity to billions, including most of the Australian people?  For better and worse, most countries, even the ex-Communist rulers of China and Russia, favour a market economy.

The Catholic Church does not believe money making is sinful, does believe in private property, and acknowledges that inequalities are part of the human condition.

But the Church also explicitly claims that the tenth commandment forbids greed, the passion for riches which leads people to commit injustice and harm their neighbours.

Money is a useful servant, especially when we gain it to obtain natural goods like food, clothing, education, a home, transport.  But the love of money can become a tyrannical master.  St. Paul spoke of the greed that becomes idolatry, the worship of a false god.  Amassing money can become all consuming, fueling self-centredness and reckless risk taking.

Jesus himself extolled the poor and the poor in spirit and often spoke of the danger of riches.  He even claimed it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven!  He was no apologist for greed in any form.

The thirteenth century produced Thomas Aquinas, an Italian and the greatest Christian thinker on things religious in 2000 years.  He was also a Dominican priest and has been declared a saint.

He followed tradition in regarding greed as one of the seven deadly sins, bringing with it misery, not happiness, for the greedy.  He recognized greed’s evil consequences which he described as the “daughters of avarice”:- hardness of heart, an absence of mercy, constant anxiety and worrying because enough is never enough, violence and deceit.

The fact that someone is rich does not mean that others must be poor, because wealth creation is real and in societies like Australia the situation of the most disadvantaged has improved.

But aggressive over-acquisition makes us mean.  Those who are prosperous should be regular donors to prevent greed slowly capturing our hearts.