The Billionaire Class
Jesus had more to say about extreme wealth than about almost any other subject. He said it plainly, repeatedly, and without apology: the hoarding of vast resources while neighbors suffer is not a neutral lifestyle choice. It is a moral emergency.
The Answer
There are currently over 2,700 billionaires in the world. The combined wealth of the world's ten richest people is greater than the GDP of most countries. In the United States, the top 1% owns more wealth than the bottom 90% combined. This concentration of wealth has accelerated dramatically in the past four decades.
What does Jesus say about this?
He says quite a lot, actually — and none of it is ambiguous.
"Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." (Matthew 19:24) When his disciples, astonished, ask "who then can be saved?", he doesn't soften the statement. He says the impossible is possible only with God.
"You cannot serve both God and money." (Matthew 6:24) — The word translated as "money" here is Mammon — not merely wealth but the personified, idol-like attachment to wealth that displaces God as the organizing principle of a life.
The Rich Young Ruler (Mark 10:17-22): a wealthy, law-abiding, sincere man asks what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus tells him to sell everything, give it to the poor, and follow him. The man goes away sad, "because he had great wealth." Jesus does not call him back and say "I was speaking hyperbolically." He lets him go.
The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31): a wealthy man lives in luxury while a beggar named Lazarus suffers at his gate. Both die. The rich man goes to torment; Lazarus goes to Abraham's side. The rich man's sin is not specified — it is the coexistence of his luxury and Lazarus's suffering that apparently constitutes his damnation.
These are not edge cases or difficult passages. They are central to Jesus's teaching, repeated across multiple Gospels, stated directly and plainly. The question is what to do with them.
The Jewish Reformer's Lens
The Hebrew tradition has always understood extreme inequality as a communal failure, not merely a personal moral issue.
The Torah's economic legislation was designed to prevent permanent concentration of wealth. The Jubilee Year (Yovel) — every 50 years — required the return of land to its original families and the release of debt-slaves. The Shmita (Sabbatical Year) — every seven years — required the forgiveness of debts and the release of Hebrew indentured servants. These were structural mechanisms designed to prevent the permanent entrenchment of inequality across generations.
They were also laws with limited enforcement, which is why the prophets spent so much energy condemning their violation. Amos (8th century BCE) thundered against merchants who "trample the needy" and "do away with the poor of the land," who were so impatient for the Sabbath to end that they could get back to cheating buyers with false scales. Micah condemned wealthy landlords who "covet fields and seize them, and houses, and take them." Isaiah warned that those who "join house to house" and "add field to field" until they are "alone in the land" are courting divine judgment.
The concept of Tzedakah — often translated as "charity" but literally meaning justice-giving — treats providing for the poor not as voluntary generosity but as a legal and moral obligation. Maimonides's famous eight levels of Tzedakah (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Gifts to the Poor) rank giving in ways that address root causes over giving that merely manages symptoms — the highest form being giving someone the means to become self-sufficient. The billionaire who donates to a hospital or an arts center while actively lobbying against the taxes and regulations that would address the systemic poverty producing the need for that charity is not practicing Tzedakah at any of Maimonides's eight levels.
Catholic Social Teaching
Catholic Social Teaching contains among the most developed critiques of extreme wealth concentration in any major religious tradition.
The principle of the Universal Destination of Goods — stated in the Catechism (§2402) and repeatedly in papal documents — holds that "the goods of creation are destined for the whole human race." Private property is a legitimate institution that serves human flourishing — but it is not an absolute right. When accumulated private wealth begins to work against the flourishing of the majority, it has exceeded its legitimate function. This is not socialism. It is the consistent teaching of the Church since at least Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum (1891).
Pope Francis, in Evangelii Gaudium (2013, §53), wrote one of the most direct papal critiques of contemporary capitalism in modern history: "Just as the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say 'thou shalt not' to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills."
In Laudato Si' (2015) and Laudate Deum (2023), Francis links extreme wealth concentration directly to environmental destruction: the same extractive systems that produce billionaires also produce the climate emergency that will primarily devastate the world's poor.
The Church explicitly supports progressive taxation as a legitimate mechanism for redistributing resources toward the common good. Pope Francis has endorsed Universal Basic Income. The Church's teaching does not treat tax avoidance by the ultra-wealthy as a personal right — it treats it as a moral problem for the common good.
The concept of Preferential Option for the Poor — perhaps CST's most distinctive teaching — holds that in every economic and political decision, the primary question must be: how does this affect the most vulnerable? Not: how does this grow the economy overall? Not: what do the investors think? The bottom line is the bottom.
Sources & Citations
- Mark 10:17–31 — The Rich Young Ruler (New Testament) One of the four Gospels. The full account of Jesus's encounter with a wealthy, sincere, law-observant man who asks about eternal life. Jesus tells him to sell everything and give to the poor. He walks away sad. Jesus then says the camel/needle line. When the disciples ask who can be saved, Jesus says "With man this is impossible, but not with God." The passage does not soften the standard; it acknowledges its severity while maintaining it.
- Luke 16:19–31 — The Rich Man and Lazarus (New Testament) One of the four Gospels. The parable in which a wealthy man and a poor beggar both die. The rich man ends in torment; Lazarus is comforted. Notably, the rich man's sin is never named. He is not described as wicked, cruel, or fraudulent. He is simply described as having lived in luxury while Lazarus suffered at his gate. The coexistence of extreme wealth and visible suffering, without action, appears to be the indictment itself.
- Leviticus 25:1–55 — The Jubilee Year (Hebrew Bible) The Torah. The complete legislation for the *Yovel* (Jubilee Year) — the 50-year resetting of land ownership and release of debt-bondage. This is the structural economic legislation that Jesus quotes in his first sermon (Luke 4:18–19): "to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor" is a reference to the Jubilee. It establishes that the prevention of permanent inequality was built into the foundational legislation of the tradition Jesus came from.
- Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium (2013), §§52–60 Latin for "The Joy of the Gospel." These sections contain Francis's direct critique of contemporary economic systems — "trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power." One of the most direct papal statements on economic inequality in the modern era.
- Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Gifts to the Poor, 10:7–14 The Mishneh Torah (the great legal code of Maimonides, 12th century) contains the famous eight-level hierarchy of *Tzedakah* (justice-giving). The lowest level: giving reluctantly. The highest level: giving in a way that makes the recipient self-sufficient (a job, a loan, a business partnership). Philanthropy that maintains dependency while hoarding the structures that create poverty would not register on Maimonides's scale as meaningful giving.
- Oxfam International, Inequality Report (2024) Annual report on global wealth inequality published by the international development organization Oxfam. The 2024 report documents that the world's five richest men doubled their wealth since 2020 while five billion people became poorer. Provides the factual foundation for understanding the scale of contemporary inequality and the mechanisms — tax avoidance, labor exploitation, monopoly power — that produce it.
What Should We Do?
For everyone: The passages about wealth in the Gospels are not addressed only to billionaires. They are addressed to everyone who has more than they need while others have less than they need to survive. In a global economy, that includes most people reading this article.
That does not mean the answer is guilt. Guilt without action is useless. The question is: what does your actual financial behavior — spending, giving, investing, voting — communicate about your priorities? Does it reflect the preferential option for the poor, or does it reflect the preferences of the comfortable?
Concretely: give at a level that costs something. Not a percentage that rounds down to zero on your budget, but a percentage that changes how you live. Advocate for tax policies that require the ultra-wealthy to contribute proportionally to the society that made their wealth possible. Support labor rights, union organizing, and living wage legislation — mechanisms that distribute the gains from economic activity more broadly. Invest in financial institutions (credit unions, community banks, CDFIs) that lend to communities rather than extracting from them.
For Catholics specifically: Rerum Novarum (1891) established the just wage as a Catholic moral requirement — not a nice bonus, but an obligation. Quadragesimo Anno (1931) introduced the principle of subsidiarity. Centesimus Annus (1991) addressed the failures of both unregulated capitalism and socialism. Laudato Si' (2015) connected economic and environmental exploitation. The Church's social teaching over 130 years has consistently arrived at the same conclusion: unbridled accumulation of wealth by the few, at the cost of the many, is incompatible with the Gospel. Bring this teaching into your workplace, your parish, and your voting booth.