Wealth, weddings, and sin

Thanks to Robert Brennan for his Aug. 21 column in AngelusNews.com (“This $600 million wedding doesn’t compare to my parents’ nuptials”) on the simplicity and sincerity of his parents’ wedding prompted by an extravagant wedding of two super-rich persons. 

His references to the opulence portrayed in “The Great Gatsby” were spot on. U.S. billionaires do not have a monopoly, in the words of the economist Thorstein Veblen, on “conspicuous consumption.” Rulers and oligarchs from Solomon through Louis XIV have created spectacles of individual and family wealth, manifesting that cardinal sin: pride. 

But there have been rich saints such as St. Louis of France, St. Charles Borromeo of Milan, and St. Thomas More of England. Each of us, whatever our wealth, should reflect on our resources to identify what more we can do in light of Matthew 25:31–46.

— Phil Argento, Pasadena