“Choose God or Money”: More Felt Banner Finger Wagging
So Pope Leo drops his latest encyclical and while introducing it, caps off his speech with the line:
“During this year, we must choose whom to serve—justice or injustice, God or money.”
Cue the thunderous applause from the felt-banner brigade and the acoustic-guitar catechists. Somewhere in a suburban parish hall, Sister Kathy just embroidered that quote onto a rainbow dove banner while humming “Gather Us In.”
But let’s pause for a moment and note what’s going on here. This is a false binary so enormous you could park the Vatican Bank in it. The idea that Catholics must choose between loving God and building wealth is not only bad theology—it’s economic illiteracy dressed up in theological embroidery.
1. The Problem with Felt-Banner Morality
Every time a Pope says “choose God or money,” the 1970s Catholic guilt machine fires back up. You can almost hear the tambourines shaking and the “Be Not Afraid” cassette rewinding itself.
According to this worldview, the holiest person alive is apparently a broke guy wearing a hemp poncho riding a unicycle to Mass and composting his bulletin afterward. Meanwhile, anyone who starts a business, hires employees, or—heaven forbid—earns a profit is one quarterly report away from eternal damnation.
But here’s the reality: wealth isn’t the problem. Disordered love is. The Catechism (CCC 2424) condemns “idolatry of money,” not the moral act of creating it through honest work. The same paragraph goes on to affirm that economic life and human dignity can be harmonized when guided by virtue.
Apparently, someone skipped that section while drafting this year’s papal climate justice poetry slam.
2. St. Joseph Wasn’t a Socialist
If the “God or money” crowd were right, then St. Joseph the Worker would’ve been morally suspect for running a carpentry shop instead of joining the first-century equivalent of a Jesuit NGO.
But St. Joseph worked, charged, produced, and provided. He served God through his craft—not by gluing slogans on fish-shaped banners about inclusivity.
And let’s not forget: Christ Himself used money parables—the talents, the vineyard workers, the faithful steward. You’d think if money were so inherently evil, He’d have stuck to stories about pottery and hugs.
3. Virtue Capitalism: The Forgotten Catholic Ideal
Real Catholic social teaching—like Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno—doesn’t condemn capitalism. It baptizes it.
Leo XIII literally wrote that private property is natural and just and that to abolish it would be “an injustice.” That’s not Milton Friedman talking—that’s a Pope.
St. John Paul II doubled down in Laborem Exercens, saying that through work, man “achieves fulfillment as a human being.” Translation: hard work and enterprise are how we sanctify creation, not how we offend it.
So when a Catholic opens a business, employs 20 people, and donates to the local parish, he’s not “serving Mammon.” He’s participating in God’s creative order.
He’s turning sweat into sustenance, not into slogans.
4. The Church’s Awkward Relationship with People Who Pay the Bills
Let’s be honest: every time the Vatican takes another swing at “the rich,” the collection plate feels it.
You want to know who funds Catholic schools, pro-life centers, and the repair of your leaky roof at St. Basil’s? It’s not the seminarians writing encyclicals about economic humility—it’s the “evil capitalist” who owns a plumbing business and tithes 10%.
If the Church keeps alienating the people who actually produce things, eventually all that’s left will be the circle of progressive theologians arguing over pronouns while wondering why the lights won’t turn on.
Spoiler: you can’t pay the electric bill with moral outrage.
5. “God or Money”? How About “God with Money”?
The correct Catholic answer isn’t either/or. It’s both/and—the favorite phrase of actual theology.
You can love God with money when you use it rightly:
to support your parish,
to hire justly,
to create beauty,
to fund the next generation of saints instead of the next generation of slogans.
Virtue capitalism isn’t about greed—it’s about ordered prosperity, where your success fuels charity, not envy. As Aquinas put it, “The goods of fortune are instruments which may be used for virtue.” (ST II-II q.118).
But sure—let’s ignore the Angelic Doctor and keep listening to the felt-banner brigade sing “They’ll Know We Are Christians by Our Hashtags.”
6. A Message to the Holy Father (with Respect)
Your Holiness, we get it. You want justice. So do we. But justice isn’t achieved by dunking on entrepreneurs who dare to build. Justice is when the baker, the roofer, and the tech startup founder all use their God-given talents to provide for others.
Please—leave room in your next encyclical for the Catholics who actually pay the bills. We’re trying to feed families, not the revolution.
And we’d appreciate not being scolded for having a 401(k).
Final Benediction
So yes, we will choose whom to serve—
God.
But we’ll serve Him while managing payroll, designing software, and paying tuition for three kids.
We’ll honor Him with profit used for good, not with hashtags and hollow virtue signals.
We’ll continue building wealth—not because we worship it, but because you can’t serve the poor with poverty.
And when the parish council unfurls another pastel felt banner that reads “Justice = Sharing!” we’ll smile politely… and then go write the check that keeps their lights on and buys the felt.