>>729692
>Money, and the goods purchasable with money, have value only insofar as they are conducive to a good life. To pursue them beyond this point is irrational. Thomas Aquinas put it in the Summa Theologiae with his usual dry clarity: “The desire for material things as they are conducive to an end is natural to man. Therefore it is without fault to the extent that it is confined within the norms set by the nature of that end. Avarice exceeds these limits and is thereby sinful.” He adds that avarice “darkens the soul” by “putting love for money above love for God,” and compares it to idolatry…
Yes, ambition is evil when it does violence to the conditions fixed by our own station in life, the standard of a good life for us. Here the sins are of avarice and covetousness.
>Nowhere does Aquinas (or any of the authors he draws on) suggest that avarice might be redeemed by its beneficial social effects. Not only did he not perceive any such effects, but even if he had, he could not have accorded them any moral significance.
This means it would still be evil to pursue a course of action characterized by avarice or covetousness even if thereby one ultimately intends to do good. Genuine Christianity is marked by an entirely different attitude toward one's fate and circumstances:
>Until the advent of the democratic age, it was taken for granted that men found themselves in different stations in life, some better and some worse. Whereas modern sociologists fret a great deal about why people find themselves in particular social classes, this sort of question did not trouble the medievals; how a man arrived at his station was not as important as whether or not he lived up to his station. The providence that placed men in different stations was exemplified in the Middle Ages by the "Wheel of Fortune", which basically was an artistic way of depicting the apparent mystery of why some are born poor and some rich, a mystery that was only resolved in God's providence and which medieval man was content to marvel at. This side of heaven, the best one could do was to accept one's station in life, whatever it was, and attempt to live up to the demands of that station.
>This view was necessarily hierarchical, as it accepted differences in social standing as a fundamental part of the order of the world. The poor were with us always, and while many Christians, motivated by charity, sought to alleviate the suffering of the individual poor, little thought was taken towards ameliorating poverty itself.
This is also not to mention the slow poison of nihilism that animates these so-called first-world countries, the cultural and ethnic betrayal and rejection implied by such a plan, and the subsequent virtual, if not actual, rootlessness of its fulfillment.
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2011/05/the-emancipation-of-avarice
http://www.unamsanctamcatholicam.com/social-teaching/moral-issues/93-social-teaching/moral-issues/307-humility-and-station-in-life.html