72 



SIN 



isfy one's greed. Avarice leads to mendacity, 

 deceit, perjury, treason, theft, and every other 

 kind of injustice. 14 St. Paul no doubt had these 

 consequences in mind when he censured avarice 

 as "the root of all evils." 15 



Among the consequences of covetousness are insatia- 

 bility, discontent, fear of persecution and poverty, 16 and 

 that "infatuation of self-love," as Blair calls it, which so 

 often ends in impenitence. 17 



Ordinary sins of covetousness are in themselves venial, 

 but become mortal if they lead to the transgression 

 of precepts that bind under pain of grievous sin. Al- 



Kvplov- (Ed. 2a, F. X. Funk, p. 

 308). 



i4Cfr. Gen. XXXI, 7; Ecclus. 

 XXXI, 5-7; Is. V, 8; Jer. XXII, 

 17; Am. VIII, s-6; John XII, 4-6. 



15 1 Tim. VI, 10.— Cfr. St. 

 Thomas, Suinma Theol., ia 2ae, qu. 

 84, art. 1. — Sophocles, Antigone, 221 

 sq. 



16 Cfr. Matth. XIII, 22.— Ps.-Au- 

 gustine, Append. Serm., 293 (al. 250 

 de Temp.), n. 1: "Contemnenda 

 est, inquam, avaritia, quae velut 

 ignis, quanto magis acceperit, tanto 

 amplius quacrit." (Migne, P. L., 

 XXXIX, 2301). — Horace, Carm,, III, 

 16, 17: "Crescentem sequitur cura 

 pecuniam." — Idem, Satyrae, I, 1, 28 

 sqq. — Juvenal, Satyrae, XIV, 28-29. 

 — When these pages were being pre- 

 pared for the printer, the Fort- 

 nightly Review (St. Louis, Mo., 

 Vol. XXIV, No. 9) published the fol- 

 lowing: "Mrs. Hetty Green, who died 

 not long ago, leaving an estate of 

 about $100,000,000, according to tes- 

 timony filed in a surrogate's court by 

 her son, lived under at least six as- 

 sumed names, and probably many 

 others, hoping thus to elude sche- 



mers who might be seeking her 

 money, and murderous cranks, such 

 as the one who tried to kill her 

 friend Russell Sage. She never 

 owned in New York so much as a 

 three-legged stool in the way of fur- 

 nishings for what men call a home, 

 and moved from one $10 to $15 

 boarding-house to another, in con- 

 stant fear that her fellow-board- 

 ers would learn her identity. 

 This immensely wealthy woman, 

 who possessed the means to gratify 

 her every whim, lived almost 

 like a criminal dreading arrest. 

 She dreaded to lose the very wealth 

 which oppressed her, and the world's 

 richest woman was perhaps more 

 familiar with the fear of poverty 

 than many a penniless clerk on the 

 pay-roll of her estate. ... If she 

 had labored to reduce her own for- 

 tune by wise and unselfish giving, 

 her journey might have been more 

 cheerful, for thus she might have 

 escaped the limitations of poverty 

 and at the same time divested herself 

 of the heaviest burdens of wealth." 

 17 Cfr. Luke XII, 15-21; 1 Tim. 

 VI, 9. 



