Avarice: attachment to money and material security

Avarice appears when money and possessions cease to be instruments and begin to occupy the center of life. The problem is not saving or building security, but the attachment that turns every loss into a threat and makes no amount seem sufficient.

In this article, you will understand what avarice is, why it can generate other behaviors, and how it differs from financial prudence, prosperity, ambition, and materialism. You will also recognize the influence of the fear of scarcity and the consequences of this attachment in relationships, work, and spirituality.

Continue reading to notice when money stopped serving your projects and began to control your choices. By the end, you will be able to distinguish responsible planning from disordered accumulation and understand how generosity helps return possessions to their proper measure.

What is avarice?

Avarice is the disordered desire to acquire, preserve, or increase material possessions. It may involve money, real estate, objects, resources, investments, and everything that can be converted into property or economic power.

Thomas Aquinas defines avarice as an excessive love of possession. He recognizes that desiring external goods is not a problem in itself, because these resources are necessary for maintaining life. Vice appears when acquisition or preservation exceeds a proper measure and begins to disrupt our emotions and choices.

This means that avarice cannot be identified only by the amount of money a person possesses. A wealthy person may manage their resources responsibly and generously, while someone with few possessions may develop an intense attachment to the little they have.

The main issue lies in the inner relationship established with resources. Money has a legitimate function when it serves life. It becomes an object of attachment when life begins to be organized exclusively to protect, increase, or display it.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church connects avarice with the desire to accumulate earthly goods without limits and with the passion for wealth and the power that may accompany it. It also associates this vice with a willingness to harm other people in order to obtain material advantages.

Why is avarice considered a deadly sin?

A vice is called capital, or deadly, because it can produce other sins and behaviors. It works as a central motivation from which different decisions arise.

Avarice can generate lies when a person wants to hide their earnings. It can produce fraud when they seek to increase profit through unjust means. It can also feed exploitation, violence, corruption, betrayal, and indifference to the needs of others.

Thomas Aquinas explains that wealth has a particular characteristic: it can be used to obtain many other temporal goods. For this reason, a disordered desire for money can sustain numerous behaviors, because resources expand the possibilities of satisfying other desires.

When discussing the consequences traditionally attributed to avarice, Thomas mentions behaviors such as fraud, falsehood, perjury, violence, restlessness, betrayal, and insensitivity to mercy.

This does not mean that every person concerned about money will commit these acts. It means that when wealth becomes the predominant goal, other values may gradually be sacrificed to protect it.

Vice is also strengthened through repetition. The more a person chooses money over justice, solidarity, and relationships, the more natural this choice may seem. The Christian tradition states that vices obscure judgment and create inclinations that favor further repetitions.

How did avarice enter the list of deadly sins?

Avarice already appeared in the earliest Christian classifications of the main obstacles to spiritual life. In the fourth century, Evagrius Ponticus included the love of money among the eight thoughts that threatened the discipline and contemplation of monks.

John Cassian transmitted this tradition to Western Christianity. In his list of the eight principal vices, he placed philargyria, a Greek word meaning love of money, alongside gluttony, fornication, wrath, sadness, acedia, vainglory, and pride.

Avarice had a particular meaning within monastic life. A monk had chosen to abandon property and organize his existence around prayer, work, and community life. The desire to accumulate resources threatened this commitment.

This desire could appear with prudent justifications. A monk might imagine that he needed to save money for a future illness, old age, or an emergency. An apparently reasonable concern could grow until it produced restlessness and estrangement from his spiritual choice.

With Gregory the Great, avarice remained among the principal vices. Thomas Aquinas later deepened its definition and explained why it should be considered a capital vice.

The current list in the Catholic tradition preserves avarice alongside pride, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth or acedia. These vices are called capital because they can generate other vices and sins.

Having money or desiring prosperity is not avarice

Money allows people to meet their needs, protect their families, develop projects, study, care for their health, and help others. A person is not avaricious merely because they want to improve their material conditions.

Thomas Aquinas states that external goods are means intended for particular purposes. The desire for these resources remains ordered when it respects a measure compatible with the needs and responsibilities of life.

A person may want to increase their income because they need to pay debts, acquire a home, care for their children, or build savings for old age. These goals do not, by themselves, demonstrate disordered attachment.

It is also unnecessary to give up everything to prove generosity. Responsible management requires preserving resources, anticipating expenses, and avoiding impulsive decisions that could produce future dependency or suffering.

The problem begins when prosperity no longer has a purpose. Earning more becomes a permanent demand, even when a person no longer knows what they intend to accomplish with the increase.

In this state, money ceases to serve a life project. Life itself begins to serve the growth of wealth, without any point at which the person considers that they already possess what is necessary to live, share, and use their resources.

What is the difference between financial prudence and avarice?

Financial prudence organizes resources according to real needs, defined goals, and concrete responsibilities. It seeks to balance the present and the future.

Avarice turns financial security into a promise of absolute protection. A person believes that by accumulating enough, they can avoid every loss, need, dependency, and unforeseen event.

The difference can be observed in purpose. A prudent person saves to use the money when necessary. A person ruled by attachment finds it difficult even to use it for the purpose for which it was saved.

They may have the resources to care for their health, improve their living conditions, or have important experiences, yet continue refusing every expense because reducing their wealth produces anxiety and a sense of threat.

Prudence considers reality and can adjust a plan when conditions change. Avarice tends toward rigidity. Even when resources are abundant, the person continues behaving as though a catastrophe were always near.

Saving is an action. Avarice is a disordered relationship with what has been saved. Financial reserves can provide freedom, but attachment to those reserves can create a new form of imprisonment.

Can fear of scarcity feed avarice?

Avarice does not always arise from the desire to display wealth. In many cases, it is connected with the fear of losing, becoming dependent, or once again facing deprivation.

A person who has experienced financial instability may develop a great need for control. Saving money brings relief because it seems to create a barrier against the return of past suffering.

This care can be healthy and necessary. The difficulty appears when no amount of savings can produce sufficient security. The person continues increasing their wealth, but their sense of threat remains practically unchanged.

In a catechesis devoted to avarice, Pope Francis presented this vice as an improper attachment to wealth and a distorted relationship with reality. He recalled the interpretation of the Desert Fathers, according to whom accumulation could also function as an attempt to avoid awareness of death and human fragility.

Money offers protection against many real problems, but it does not eliminate human vulnerability. It cannot completely prevent illness, separation, economic change, aging, or death.

When it receives the impossible task of removing every uncertainty, it never seems sufficient. The problem no longer lies in the amount available, but in the expectation that possessions will provide a security that no property can completely guarantee.

How does avarice appear in daily life?

The best-known manifestation is the constant refusal to spend. A person avoids necessary expenses even when they can afford them and even when this saving causes suffering for themselves or those who depend on them.

Another manifestation is difficulty sharing. Lending, donating, or contributing causes discomfort because every departure of resources is felt as a loss, even when it does not threaten financial stability.

Avarice can also appear as an obsession with prices, account balances, and wealth. A person repeatedly checks their resources, continually thinks about money, and evaluates every situation only in terms of gain or loss.

In relationships, it can turn gifts and favors into investments. A person offers something while expecting a return, recognition, obedience, or a future advantage.

There is also the need to gain an advantage in every negotiation. Completing a fair exchange is not enough; the person needs to feel that the other party received less or that they could have charged more.

The Catechism mentions as examples of disordered desires those situations in which someone waits for scarcity, impoverishment, or another person's need in order to buy for less, sell for more, or increase their own profit.

Another sign appears when a person considers everything that does not produce an immediate financial return to be a waste. Rest, culture, leisure, companionship, and care may be devalued because they do not directly increase wealth.

Can avarice appear in poor people?

Avarice does not depend exclusively on the amount of possessions. It can affect people in different economic circumstances because it is related to attachment and the importance given to possessions.

A person with few resources may have a legitimate and urgent concern about money. When income does not meet basic needs, saving, controlling expenses, and avoiding donations may be a matter of survival, not a vice.

For this reason, we should not accuse of avarice those who need to protect scarce resources to feed their families, pay rent, or maintain medical treatment. The concrete situation needs to be considered.

Disordered attachment can arise when money becomes the absolute measure of value and when the desire to possess begins to justify injustice, regardless of a person's economic condition.

In the same way, possessing great wealth does not automatically prove that someone is avaricious. The assessment depends on the way resources were acquired, managed, used, and shared.

A document by Pope Paul VI states that both rich and poor people, individuals, families, and nations can be affected by avarice and materialism.

Wealth expands the possibilities for this vice to manifest, but it does not create it by itself. The problem does not lie simply in having much or little, but in allowing possessions to determine consciousness, relationships, and moral criteria.

Avarice in family relationships

Within a family, money can become an instrument of control. Whoever concentrates the resources begins to decide alone how everyone should live, even when other people also participated in building the family's wealth.

Financial help may be conditioned on obedience. A person does not offer support as an expression of care, but as a way to control choices, relationships, and decisions.

Conflicts related to inheritance can also arise. Assets that should be divided according to agreements or rights begin to be hidden, disputed, or appropriated, destroying relationships built over many years.

In some homes, saving exceeds prudence and deprives family members of legitimate needs. Health, education, food, and basic comfort are sacrificed even when resources are available.

Avarice can also produce inequality within the home. A person spends freely on what they want but considers every need presented by others excessive.

Another manifestation occurs when the value of each family member is measured by their financial contribution. Elderly, sick, unemployed, or dependent people begin to be treated as burdens because they do not produce income.

Money is necessary to organize family life, but it cannot replace affection, justice, and dialogue. When it receives absolute power, it turns care into negotiation and belonging into debt.

Avarice at work and in business

The desire for profit is part of economic activity. A company needs to generate resources to pay expenses, compensate workers, invest, face risks, and continue operating.

Avarice appears when profit ceases to respect ethical limits. To increase earnings, a person accepts deceiving customers, exploiting workers, hiding information, or deliberately harming other people.

It can also arise in the attempt to always pay the lowest possible amount, even when compensation is unfair for the work performed. The savings obtained become more important than the dignity of the worker.

The Catechism connects economic justice with respect for the rights of others and mentions practices such as commercial fraud, improper retention of goods, payment of unjust wages, corruption, and price manipulation to gain an advantage over other people.

Avarice can also prevent an organization from growing. The person in charge wants better results but refuses to invest in structure, training, safety, or proper working conditions.

In other cases, a person works continuously to accumulate resources that they never manage to enjoy. They sacrifice health, relationships, and rest, imagining that they will live in the future, after reaching a goal that keeps being postponed.

Earning money honestly is not incompatible with spiritual life. The problem lies in considering any means capable of producing profit acceptable, or in turning financial growth into the only purpose of work.

What is the difference among avarice, ambition, and materialism?

Ambition is the desire to achieve results, positions, or accomplishments. It can encourage study, work, discipline, and development.

Ambition becomes disordered when achievement loses its limits and begins to justify harm to others. At that point, it may approach avarice, especially when success is measured only by money and wealth.

Materialism, in the moral and everyday sense, is a view in which material goods receive predominant importance. Personal value, happiness, and success begin to be assessed mainly by what someone possesses and consumes.

Avarice focuses on acquiring and preserving possessions. An avaricious person may not even enjoy consuming; their pleasure lies in possessing, accumulating, and controlling.

On the other hand, someone may be materialistic and spend excessively to display status. In this case, the relationship with possessions remains disordered, but it is closer to ostentation or prodigality than to avaricious withholding.

Thomas Aquinas places avarice in opposition to liberality and recognizes prodigality as another extreme. A person can use money improperly both by refusing to employ it and by spending it without measure.

Balance lies neither in accumulating everything nor in spending everything. It lies in acquiring, preserving, and using resources according to needs, responsibilities, and conscious purposes.

What is spiritual avarice?

Avarice can also appear in the fields of knowledge and spirituality. A person accumulates classes, books, initiations, titles, and experiences but finds it difficult to transform what they have received into practice or contribution.

Knowledge begins to function as property. Instead of being used to teach, serve, or deepen one's own consciousness, it becomes a way to build superiority.

Another manifestation occurs when someone withholds information simply to remain indispensable. A person fears that by teaching what they know, they will lose authority, position, or recognition.

There can also be attachment to spiritual experiences. Visions, intuitions, meditative states, and perceptions are collected as signs of personal importance without producing real changes in conduct.

Thomas Aquinas mentions a broader use of the term avarice, in which excessive pursuit can also be directed toward knowledge and elevated positions. In a specific sense, however, he reserves the vice for a disordered love of goods that can be measured in money.

Spiritual avarice does not lie in studying a great deal. It lies in turning knowledge into a possession, refusing its circulation, or using it exclusively to increase power and distinction.

The more knowledge is treated as an object of accumulation, the less capable it may become of transforming life. Knowing a great deal does not replace generosity, coherence, and willingness to share.

What are the consequences of avarice?

The first consequence is permanent dissatisfaction. Because there is no clear measure of what would be enough, each achievement produces only temporary relief before a new goal arises.

A person may achieve financial stability and continue feeling threatened. Their wealth increases, but inner freedom decreases because every possibility of loss receives disproportionate importance.

Avarice also impoverishes relationships. Friends and family notice that every gesture is calculated and that money occupies a position above care and reciprocity.

Another consequence is the reduction of life to what can be bought or sold. Time, knowledge, attention, and relationships are evaluated only according to their ability to produce a return.

This vice can also encourage injustice. When gain becomes the main purpose, another person's suffering appears only as an obstacle or an opportunity.

The Christian tradition understands that respect for human dignity requires temperance in our attachment to possessions, justice in recognizing the rights of others, and solidarity in the use of resources.

Finally, avarice may prevent the use of wealth itself. A person spends their life accumulating resources for protection but cannot transform them into care, experience, development, or contribution.

Generosity is the virtue opposed to avarice

The virtue traditionally opposed to avarice is liberality or generosity. It consists in using possessions in a balanced way, recognizing both personal needs and the needs of other people.

Being generous does not mean giving away every resource or ignoring our own responsibilities. A donation that compromises food, housing, or essential care does not necessarily represent balance.

Generosity requires discernment. It considers how much can be offered, to whom, at what moment, and for what purpose.

It is also not limited to money. A person can share time, attention, knowledge, contacts, opportunities, and skills.

Generosity begins when possessions cease to be treated as extensions of identity. A person recognizes that what they possess can circulate and fulfill purposes without diminishing their dignity.

The Catechism connects the use of goods with temperance, justice, and solidarity. These virtues moderate attachment, protect the rights of other people, and direct resources beyond exclusively individual interests.

A generous person can also set limits. Virtue does not require sustaining abuse, manipulation, or dependency. Sharing consciously is different from allowing others to use resources irresponsibly.

How can attachment to money be transformed?

The first step is to identify the purpose of money. Why is a person working, saving, or investing? Which needs and projects do they intend to meet?

When there is no answer, accumulation may have become an independent goal. Defining what would be enough helps prevent every goal from being postponed indefinitely.

It is also important to observe the emotions produced by spending. Does using money for a legitimate need cause guilt, fear, or a sense of failure even when it has been planned?

Another practice is to analyze the hidden costs of accumulation. How much time, health, rest, and companionship are being sacrificed to increase wealth?

Generosity can be developed gradually. Setting aside an amount compatible with one's financial reality to help people or projects makes it possible to weaken the feeling that every outflow represents a threat.

Sharing knowledge and opportunities is also a way to work with this attachment. A person learns that contributing to someone else's growth does not automatically reduce their own security.

We also need to distinguish prudence from absolute control. Planning is possible; eliminating every uncertainty is not. Financial freedom depends not only on possessing resources, but on being able to use them without being ruled by fear.

Finally, it is worth observing whether money remains an instrument or has already become the main criterion for evaluating choices, people, and events.

Money should serve life

Avarice is not defined simply by the desire to have money. It appears when possession becomes disordered and begins to occupy a position above justice, dignity, and relationships.

Money can provide protection, freedom, and opportunities. These functions are legitimate. The problem begins when we expect it to eliminate every vulnerability and offer definitive security.

No amount of wealth can completely remove the uncertainty of existence. When a person tries to achieve this absolute protection through accumulation, the point of sufficiency continually moves farther away.

Overcoming avarice does not mean abandoning financial planning. It means recovering the freedom to acquire, preserve, use, and share resources without turning every decision into a struggle against the fear of scarcity.

True security lies not only in what we possess, but also in the ability to deal with change, build relationships, cooperate, and use resources consciously.

When money becomes a means again, a person can manage their possessions without worshiping them, grow without exploiting, save without becoming paralyzed, and share without abandoning their responsibilities.

Frequently Asked Questions About Avarice

What is avarice? ›

Is having money or desiring prosperity a form of avarice? ›

What is the difference between financial prudence and avarice? ›

Can avarice appear in poor people? ›

How can attachment to money be transformed? ›

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About the author

Prof. Tibério Z has more than 30 years of experience teaching spirituality, metaphysics, holistic therapies and consciousness development.