The Church used to quantify things and humbly seek to bring God’s wisdom to those who wished to be saved. Theft was analyzed. Clearly, St. Thomas teaches that desperation can justify what would otherwise be theft. A starving man stealing a loaf of bread from one who can easily afford the loss to keep his family is only guilty of mortal sin in the minds of the most self-righteous.
In the mid 1800s, Catholic theologians suggested that a reasonable dividing line between mortal and venial sin in a theft that didn’t involve dire necessity was twenty dollars. Some Protestant clergy, when presented this quantification, snickeringly asked: “What if a man stole twenty dollars and a half-cent? Would that half-cent make him so guilty that he would spend eternity in Hell?” Some do think that God will nit-pick when judging His children, and the denominations that thought so have either disappeared or are doing so at a rapid rate.
At that time, an ounce of gold sold for twenty dollars. Today, inflation makes an ounce of gold sell for about a thousand dollars, about two weeks’ average pay. So, adjusted for inflation, we may reasonably see that today’s theft may be considered to be mortal sin if it’s over one thousand dollars, or taking two weeks from someone’s life.
Question: If a drug addict steals nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine dollars worth of goods and is only able to sell it for $999.00, is he guilty of mortal, rather than venial, sin? Answer: If his addiction caused him to do what he would not have done, his responsibility is diminished by the degree that his free will was diminished and the punishment of those who caused his addiction is increased by the appropriate amount.
Question: If the actual replacement cost of the goods is $999.00, is the thief guilty of mortal or venial sin? Answer: Venial.
Question: If the person who’s been robbed inflates the value of his loss when making an insurance claim, is he, too, guilty of a mortal sin if he inflates the value by more than a thousand dollars? Has the thief, by his action, caused another to commit mortal sin, thereby putting him into a whole new category of punishment? Answer: Yes, but responsibility also extends to those who set the sin in motion. If public officials have made drugs illegal in order to increase their own power, and that action drove the price so high as to cause the addict to have to steal, which provided the insurance cheat with an opportunity he might otherwise not have had, those responsible for the laws cannot escape punishment. However, the public officials’ own addiction to fame, popularity, or public office may be a mitigating factor.
Question: If Bernard Madoff steals forty billion dollars, is his punishment the same as that meted out to a man who willingly and knowingly steals over a thousand? Answer: Both are in different places in the same Circle of Hell.
Question: Does the “sliding scale” of Hell, as Dante teaches, describe placement that makes for the appropriate punishment? Answer: Yes. The longer and more painful the sentence, the more careful the judge is when it is imposed.
Part II. Government theft.
When a Fidel Castro steals an entire country and turns it into his personal property, there is great punishment coming to willing participants in those endless thefts of life, joy, and property.
Those outside the country who justify and praise such thefts are equally guilty, and all will be punished. The man who want to sin and does not only because he lacks opportunity is a thief at heart. In America and Europe, many who are “thieves at heart”, mostly on the left, look at Castro as some kind of “hero”. They praise him at every opportunity, excusing the theft of life and property by saying “He has improved education and medical care.” In actual fact, he has done neither, but for those who seek approval from earthly powers, the actual fact means nothing. The praise, of course, only cements their own desires for stolen money.
In most countries, thieves have taken control of government. Using the laws and regulations that they, themselves, pass, they find approval for their thefts, and proceed to fatten their holdings far beyond those who avoid sinking into such a trap. This process is allowed to exist for one reason, to separate sheep from goats.
The desire to steal from their neighbors attracts the goatish souls. They have been drawn to possessing ever more programmed entities, rather than choosing to get closer to He Who programmed them. When their desire for programmed entities outweighs their desire to obey The Programmer’s Operating Instructions, they immediately tell the biggest, and most dangerous, lie of all: “I am interested in something more important than truth. I am interested in helping people.” For that reason, no leftist can ever admit that the cruel dungeons in which Castro has imprisoned hundreds of thousands of starving people are far worse than the air-conditioned prison at Guantanamo that they excoriate at every opportunity.
We, who can see this dichotomy between their words and the bloody reality of what they ignore, have a chance to be saved by choosing The Programmer over the entities He has programmed. Goatish souls have very little chance of that, wrapped as they are in growing layers of lies that hide whatever remnants of good that are remaining within.
It is dangerous to try to save such souls. They will lash out at those who make such attempts, driven by the hordes of demons that realize that love of God and neighbor are their deadliest enemies. Still, even institutionalized thieves, swaddled in seemingly impermeable layers of laws, lies, and blinding self-righteousness, have souls, and it is our duty to do what we can for them.
