Greed: How to Break the Love of Money

1. What Is the Sin of Greed?

Greed is a disordered love of money and material things. The Church's traditional name for it is avarice, and it is one of the seven capital sins (CCC 1866). The Catechism says the tenth commandment "forbids greed and the desire to amass earthly goods without limit. It forbids avarice arising from a passion for riches and their attendant power" (CCC 2536).

Greed rarely looks like a cartoon miser counting gold. It looks like a man who cannot stop checking his investments. A woman whose shopping cart fills itself every time she feels low. A family that keeps upgrading and never feels it has enough. A business owner who quietly underpays his staff. A believer who means to give to the poor, someday, once things are more secure. Most of us carry some of it.

If you recognize yourself here, take heart. Jesus spoke about money often, because he knew how tightly it grips good people. He said it with love, wanting us free: "Take heed, and beware of all covetousness; for a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions" (Luke 12:15).

2. What Does the Church Teach About Greed?

The Church teaches that greed is a form of idolatry, that detachment from riches is necessary for salvation, and that possessions are entrusted to us for the good of others as well as ourselves.

The Catechism links avarice directly to the worship of false gods: "Avarice, like fornication, originates in the idolatry prohibited by the first three prescriptions of the Law" (CCC 2534). It lists money among the things people make into idols (CCC 2113), and it quotes Jesus: "You cannot serve God and mammon" (CCC 2424, from Matthew 6:24). It quotes the Roman Catechism on how greed works: "Our thirst for another's goods is immense, infinite, never quenched. Thus it is written: 'He who loves money never has money enough'" (CCC 2536, citing Ecclesiastes 5:10).

The Church's teaching on detachment is strong. "The precept of detachment from riches is obligatory for entrance into the Kingdom of heaven" (CCC 2544). All Christ's faithful must "direct their affections rightly, lest they be hindered in their pursuit of perfect charity by the use of worldly things and by an adherence to riches which is contrary to the spirit of evangelical poverty" (CCC 2545).

Is it a sin to be rich, or to want more?

Owning property is legitimate, and wanting to provide well for your family is good. The Catechism says "it is not a violation of this commandment to desire to obtain things that belong to one's neighbor, provided this is done by just means" (CCC 2537). Saving, earning, building a business and owning a home are all compatible with holiness. What the Church asks is that we hold wealth as stewards: "The ownership of any property makes its holder a steward of Providence, with the task of making it fruitful and communicating its benefits to others, first of all his family" (CCC 2404). Greed begins when the money owns the person.

Is greed a mortal sin?

Greed is often venial, a matter of small stinginess or excess attachment. It becomes grave when it leads to serious injustice, such as theft, fraud, cheating workers of their wages, or refusing help to someone in real need when you could easily give it. Mortal sin requires grave matter, full knowledge and deliberate consent (CCC 1857). St. Thomas Aquinas, who treats covetousness in the Summa Theologiae (II-II, q. 118), lists the sins it tends to produce: treachery, fraud, falsehood, perjury, restlessness, violence, and insensibility to mercy.

3. What Jesus Said About Money

Jesus told the parable of a rich man whose barns overflowed, so he planned bigger barns and a long, comfortable retirement. God said to him, "Fool! This night your soul is required of you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?" (Luke 12:20). The man's mistake was simple. He planned for everything except death and God.

A rich young man asked Jesus what he must do to have eternal life. He had kept the commandments since his youth. Jesus looked at him with love and invited him to sell what he had, give to the poor, and follow. "He went away sorrowful; for he had great possessions" (Matthew 19:22; see Mark 10:17-22). His wealth stood between him and the One who loved him.

Then there is Zacchaeus, a wealthy tax collector, a man everyone in Jericho knew to be greedy. Jesus called him by name and stayed at his house, and Zacchaeus changed on the spot: "Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have defrauded any one of anything, I restore it fourfold" (Luke 19:8). Jesus answered, "Today salvation has come to this house" (Luke 19:9). Greed can end in a single afternoon when it meets the love of Christ.

4. Why Greed Matters: What It Does to the Soul

Greed matters because it moves your heart away from God. "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also" (Matthew 6:21). Every hour of worry about money is an hour your trust is resting somewhere other than the Father.

Greed also blinds us to the poor. The Catechism is blunt: "Love for the poor is incompatible with immoderate love of riches or their selfish use" (CCC 2445). It says Christ will recognize his chosen ones "by what they have done for the poor" (CCC 2443). The rich man in Luke 16 is never said to have harmed Lazarus. He simply ignored the poor man lying at his gate (Luke 16:19-31).

And greed makes us anxious and unhappy. It never arrives at enough. Families fight over inheritances. Marriages strain under debt and secrecy about spending. People work themselves sick for things they barely enjoy. The Catechism offers the cure in a single sentence: "Abandonment to the providence of the Father in heaven frees us from anxiety about tomorrow" (CCC 2547).

Greed also has public forms. The Catechism warns that "the disordered desire for money cannot but produce perverse effects" in economic life (CCC 2424), and among the sins that "cry to heaven" it lists "injustice to the wage earner" (CCC 1867). Some preachers even dress greed up as faith, promising wealth to the faithful; our guide to the prosperity gospel answers that teaching. This guide is about the quieter greed in our own hearts.

5. How to Overcome Greed: Practical Steps

Greed is broken by giving. Generosity is the opposite virtue, and every act of it loosens money's grip on the heart. Here is a practical plan.

1. Give first, and give proportionately. Decide on a percentage of your income to give to your parish and the poor, and give it at the start of the month rather than from whatever is left. Scripture's tithe, a tenth, is a good benchmark to aim for (Genesis 14:20; Malachi 3:10). The Church's precept asks the faithful to provide for the needs of the Church "according to his abilities" (CCC 2043). "God loves a cheerful giver" (2 Corinthians 9:7).
2. Give to a person, face to face. Almsgiving is one of the three classic forms of penance (CCC 1434). Hand food to someone hungry, help a struggling neighbor, volunteer with Catholic Charities or the St. Vincent de Paul Society. Greed shrinks when the poor have faces and names.
3. Make a budget, and pray over it. A budget is a moral document. Look at where your money actually goes, and ask God what he thinks.
4. Simplify. Before any non-essential purchase, wait a few days. Give away something you own each week for a month. Ask, "Do I need this, or do I need to feel better?"
5. Avoid the near occasions. Unsubscribe from shopping emails, delete shopping apps, stop browsing listings for fun, and stay away from gambling of every kind if it pulls at you.
6. Make restitution. If you have cheated anyone, underpaid anyone, or kept what was not yours, repair it as far as you can. The Catechism says "one must do what is possible in order to repair the harm (e.g., return stolen goods ...)" (CCC 1459). Zacchaeus is your model.
7. Keep the Lord's Day. The Catechism calls Sunday rest "a day of protest against the servitude of work and the worship of money" (CCC 2172). One day a week, stop earning and spending.
8. Confess it. Name the specific forms your greed takes. See our guide to confession.

Our stewardship tools can help you track your giving and set a generosity goal.

An examination of conscience on greed

• Have I cheated, stolen, or been dishonest in business or taxes?
• Have I paid workers or contractors fairly and on time?
• Have I given to the Church and the poor in proportion to what I have?
• Have I spent compulsively, or gone into debt to buy things I did not need?
• Have I gambled with money my family needed?
• Does worry about money crowd out my trust in God?

6. Saints Who Broke Free From Money

• St. Matthew was a tax collector, a trade known for greed and fraud. When Jesus said, "Follow me," "he rose and followed him" (Matthew 9:9), leaving his money table behind.
• St. Francis of Assisi was the son of a wealthy cloth merchant. He renounced his inheritance publicly and spent his life rejoicing in poverty. See his life.
• St. Vincent de Paul organized the charity of seventeenth-century France for the poor and the sick, together with St. Louise de Marillac. The worldwide St. Vincent de Paul Society carries his name. See his life.
• St. Elizabeth of Hungary, a royal princess, used her wealth to feed the hungry and build a hospital. See her life.
• The poor widow in the Temple put in two small coins, and Jesus said, "she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, her whole living" (Mark 12:44). The Catechism holds her up as the model of detachment (CCC 2544).

7. Hope, and When to Get Help

Greed can be healed, often faster than people expect. Many people find that the first generous gift that truly costs them something brings a joy they have not felt in years. God is never stingy with those who turn back to him. The same Jesus who warned the rich young man ate dinner with Zacchaeus, and he will sit at your table too.

Some money problems go deeper than ordinary greed and need practical help.

Greed is one of the seven deadly sins, and it has close neighbours. Envy resents what others have, and pride wants the status money brings. Generosity and gratitude heal all three.