You are welcome; I tried — as I said, to at least give a way to look at it. I certainly think there is room for poverty, and some are called to that vocation. It is a virtue, but like what St Maximus the Confessor pointed out (and used in a recent article by me) we must follow the “middle path of virtues” which recognizes that the good for one, even if it is a higher good, must not be used to judge lesser goods.

Bill is also correct; it is easy to discount the human side, to almost gnostically reject the world and its luxuries. Consider the kinds associated with Jesus, including the oil used to anoint him. The dignity of the human person is involved with this, imo.

Thanks for the recommendation. I have ordered a copy of the book — the 400th Anniversary Edition!

Thanks also to Henry Karlson and Bill Bannon.

I have been raising this question for 40 years without getting any answers that seemed to me to come to grips with the seriousness of the question. And now, thanks to Vox Nova, I have three.

“I know indeed how to live in humble circumstances; I know also how to live with abundance. In every circumstance and in all things I have learned the secret of being well fed and of going hungry, of living in abundance and of being in need.”

For most human beings and apparently for Paul to some degree, that which is beyond the necessary keeps people interested in being alive. Try it. Give everything you have to the poor and monitor in the coming months if you like being alive on the planet. Most of us would not so we don’t do it but we commit to consistent giving of part of our above necessary assets. Benedict has a grand piano, Prada or personal cobbler shoes, Serenghetti sunglasses, several maids and chefs and he just ended a meeting this week with world figures who gathered to ask the rich countries to give more toward the hunger problem (like the rich countires are feeling rich right now). How does he get the hutspa to ask while he has non necessities of a costly nature? Probably because he has few such non necessities…but he has them and every Pope does.

The question still remains — no matter what one’s interpretation of that particular story is, or even setting aside the whole New Testament — how can I justify having so much when there are some who have nothing? How can I justify luxuries when some people don’t have necessities?

Henry – feel better.

David – I’ll take it off your hands if it’ll make you feel better ;)

Most people not that Jesus’ answer here is in context with the young man himself; his answer was the medicine for that young man himself and his improper association with his goods. He was called to be something others were not, one of Jesus’ close disciples — which did require much and the giving up of much. However, his failings and weaknesses are not the same as with others; we do see Jesus does not condemn others who have money; indeed, Zacchaeus is shown to have a better understanding of his possessions, which is why he was willing to give of it to others, without it necessarily meaning he had to give it all up. Perhaps the young man, for his own greed, had to give it all up to overcome his improper attachment to his goods, while Zacchaeus did not suffer the same affliction, so the solution is not the same.

I think we have to look at it in this way — we all have spiritual maladies, we all have various temptations and sins which afflict us more than others, and it is those which we need to deal with for our own perfection. Goods as a whole are ours only in the sense of stewardship; if one does not grasp that, then their association with their wealth is off. If they do, then they can be called to continue to possess and even increase it (as per the parable of the talents) to use it even better and help even more because of their proper association with their wealth.

I hope that helps. I’m still recovering from an illness, so I’m writing this fast without edits, and so I might have some typos/ grammatical mistakes as my thought changes mid sentence /etc, which is common when I write fast like this.

We all know this story from the Gospel of Mark:

Now someone approached him and said, “Teacher, what good must I do to gain eternal life?” He answered him, “Why do you ask me about the good? There is only One who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” He asked him, “Which ones?” And Jesus replied, ” ‘You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; honor your father and your mother’; and ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” The young man said to him, “All of these I have observed. What do I still lack?” Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to (the) poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” When the young man heard this statement, he went away sad, for he had many possessions.

I have seen arguments that basically say nobody’s perfect, so we are not called to sell everything and give it to the poor, but a footnote in the NAB points out that Christians are called to perfection. (There are a number of fascinating things about that passage that I can’t try to cover here.) In any case, it seems to me to strongly imply that following Jesus requires giving up all material possessions.

As a slight aside, I got to know someone quite well who was in a religious order and had taken vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. While he owned practically nothing himself, the community he belonged to was far from ascetic. They had beautiful cars to drive, they ate very well, they were given tickets to all the hot sporting events. There were many “benefactors” of the order whose donations guaranteed a lifestyle to which people experiencing real poverty could only dream about.

So how much should a devout Catholic opt out of American society? And particularly for the very affluent, how seriously should Jesus’s words be taken about it being easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom? And should I have foregone the pound of rugelach I bought yesterday for $14 at Andre’s Hungarian Bakery and given the money to the poor?