Section — Vermeersch, Theologia Moralis
§ 3. Concerning Avarice
— Notion. 1. Avarice is the inordinate appetite of temporal things. Venial from its kind, it becomes mortal if because of it grave violations of the law are committed.
It is a capital vice insofar as it begets: hardness of heart, or too great an application to acquiring or conserving riches, with an empty and vain fear lest they not be acquired or be lost; violence; fallacy, which is deceit in words; fraud, which is deceit in deeds; betrayal, which is a harmful deception contrary to faith given. Persons, goods, secrets can be betrayed. Fraud and betrayal are mortal from their kind.
The opposite vice of prodigality is defective in conserving goods and excessive in expending them: it is venial from its kind.
— Opposite virtue. Liberality, midway between both vices, uses riches well, especially by expending them for others.