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Rich Man, Poor Man: Altruism and Agency

Rich Man, Poor Man: Altruism and Agency

Last updated on: October 2, 2026 at 6:49 am by Dennis Knapp

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Rich Man, Poor Man: Altruism and Agency 2026-10-02T06:49:33-06:00 Dennis Knapp

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In my previous article, I challenged a way of speaking about poverty that emphasizes what everyone owes the poor while hesitating to discuss what the poor themselves owe to others. My concern was not that the poor deserve less assistance. Rather, when we reduce people merely to their needs, we risk diminishing their moral agency.

As often happens in my comments section, that argument received considerable pushback. But the discussion led me to an unexpected realization: we may make the same mistake with both the poor and the very rich, only from opposite directions.

At one end of the economic spectrum, we reduce the poor to their needs. We emphasize what everyone else owes them while expecting little or nothing from them. At the other end, we reduce the rich to their wealth. We focus on how much they should surrender and increasingly look to government to take and redistribute it. In the first case, we treat the poor primarily as recipients of other people’s moral action. In the second, we treat the rich primarily as sources of wealth to redistribute rather than as people who can choose generosity, sacrifice, and stewardship for themselves.

In both cases, we allow a person’s economic category to overshadow the person.

Catholicism demands something more. Rich and poor alike remain moral agents, and both must answer for how they use what God has given them. Their circumstances radically change what their responsibilities require of them, but those circumstances never erase the responsibility itself.

Is Wealth Being “Hoarded”?

In some of the comments, a theme emerged that the ultra-wealthy “hoard” their wealth. I encountered a similar sentiment in a recent article by a fellow Patheos writer who argued that billionaires possess more wealth than they could ever personally use. Such language can suggest that wealth functions like a finite pile of resources, with the wealthy keeping an excessive share for themselves while leaving less for everyone else.

But personal consumption is not the only use of wealth.

Cash does not necessarily equal income, income does not equal net worth, and net worth does not equal capital. Someone worth $10 billion, for example, generally does not possess $10 billion in cash hidden underground in a vault. Much of that net worth may represent ownership of productive enterprises.

Consider Elon Musk. After succeeding with ventures such as PayPal, Musk risked substantial capital on Tesla and SpaceX, two companies pursuing technologies with no guarantee of success. Whatever one thinks of Musk personally, his early investments did not sit unused. They financed businesses, engineers, factories, technological development, electric vehicles, and rockets.

Notice the key distinction: consumption concerns what wealth can buy for its owner; capital concerns what resources can produce. Wealth invested in productive enterprises should not automatically count as hoarded wealth. Just as importantly, one person’s growing wealth does not automatically make someone else poorer.

Wealth Magnifies Moral Agency

Another thread about the ultra-wealthy that I want to pull concerns whether wealth itself creates more opportunities to sin. Granted, enormous wealth gives people the means to commit certain wrongs unavailable to those without it—for example, bribery, political corruption, exploitation, and extravagant self-indulgence. But wealth also creates greater opportunities to practice virtue.

With vast resources, billionaires can fund hospitals, schools, scientific research, charities, and religious communities, or provide direct assistance on a scale unavailable to most people.

Consider St. Katharine Drexel. Her wealth gave her an extraordinary capacity to do good. She could have devoted her fortune to luxury and self-indulgence. Instead, she devoted it to serving others, particularly through schools and missions for Black and Native American communities. In doing so, she exemplified Jesus’ words in Luke 12:48: “Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required…”

Great capacity creates great responsibility.

Can Government Create a Katharine Drexel?

I hope we all admire St. Katharine Drexel. I also hope that others who possess her level of wealth follow her example. But now allow me to introduce another Katharine Drexel—one who lived in an alternate universe.

In this universe, the government imposed aggressive inheritance taxes and confiscated most of Katharine’s inheritance. Fortunately for those whom Drexel would have served, the government used precisely the same amount of wealth to educate precisely the same children.

Notice what remains the same and what changes. The material outcome remains identical. Something morally significant, however, has disappeared: Drexel’s choice.

In this alternate universe, the government denied Katharine Drexel the opportunity to perform that particular act of heroic generosity because it made the decision about her wealth for her. The government can compel redistribution. It cannot compel generosity.

Please don’t mistake this imaginary Katharine Drexel for an argument against taxation itself. Catholic teaching recognizes legitimate taxation and the government’s obligations toward the common good. Rather, the point is that although justice may require compulsory contributions, compulsory transfer and virtuous giving remain different moral acts.

Catholicism concerns itself not merely with where material goods end up but also with what happens to the person who possesses them.

The Poor Person Is Not Just a Need; the Rich Person Is Not Just a Resource

I hope the reader now sees the parallel as I do.

Concerning the poor, we can become so focused on what society owes them that we grow uncomfortable discussing what they may owe others. The poor person becomes primarily a need that someone else must meet.

Likewise, concerning the wealthy, we can become so focused on what society ought to extract from them that the wealthy person becomes primarily a source of resources for someone else to allocate.

In both cases, we allow economic circumstances to overshadow moral agency. We increasingly look to government to decide what one person should receive, what another should surrender, and where those resources should go.

The poor person becomes a need to meet. The rich person becomes a resource to redistribute. In both cases, we risk losing sight of the person.

The Widow and the Heiress

Finally, let’s place another exemplar of generosity beside St. Katharine Drexel: the poor widow in Luke 21:1–4. In this passage, Jesus watches the rich place their gifts into the offering box. He then sees a poor widow contribute two small copper coins. Jesus declares:

Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.

The widow gave more not in absolute terms, but because she gave out of her poverty while the rich gave out of their abundance.

Now consider St. Katharine. Christianity presents both the widow and the heiress as moral agents. Their circumstances, however, gave them radically different capacities. The widow lacked the resources to establish schools across the country as St. Katharine did. St. Katharine, possessing enormous wealth, could not make the widow’s particular sacrifice of giving while already possessing almost nothing.

Their material circumstances changed what each could give and what we could reasonably expect from each. They did not eliminate the responsibility of either one.

Both possessed moral agency. Both faced obligations according to what they possessed. The difference was one of degree, not the existence of responsibility itself.

Final Thoughts… Preserve the Person

I recognize the legitimate concern over economic inequality. But that concern can lead us to mistake invested capital for hoarded wealth and, more importantly, compulsory redistribution for the fulfillment of personal moral responsibility.

Catholicism should resist reducing people at either end of the economic spectrum to categories. The poor person is not merely a need for someone else to meet. The rich person is not merely a resource for someone else to redistribute. Both are persons, and both possess moral agency.

The widow had two coins. Katharine Drexel had a fortune. Their radically different circumstances placed radically different responsibilities upon them.

But both had to answer the same Christian question: What will you do with what God has given you?