Money Mania—and other false idols

By Fr. Jerry Pokorsky ( bio - articles - email ) | Sep 22, 2025

In It’s a Wonderful Life, George Bailey and Clarence (the angel) are in Martini’s bar. George is despondent over the lost funds of his savings-and-loan, and mutters, “You don’t happen to have 8,000 bucks on you?” Clarence is cheerfully detached from earthly concerns. “Oh, no, no. We don’t use money in Heaven.” “Well, it comes in pretty handy down here, bub.”

True enough. However, as St. Paul says, the love of money is the root of all evil. Money Mania is a false God, violating the First Commandment. First Commandment violations come in all sizes.

COVID Mania not only transformed us into a culture of hypochondriacs; it destroyed friendships and trust in our institutions. Countless old people died in isolation because of COVID Mania. We abandoned the reasonable—if risky from a health standpoint—celebration of the Mass to obsess on our worship of the Demon COVID.

Health Mania, always simmering, boiled after COVID. Relentless Internet and TV health ads inflame obsessive health concerns with disturbing medical conditions. Many years ago, the incomparable William F. Buckley, Jr. quipped: “If I don’t die from a heart attack, what will I die from?” Good point. An old-fashioned heart attack doesn’t look so bad when considering the alternatives! When we hear that harvesting organs from poor people promises to keep elites alive, we see the unmistakable false worship of health that displaces hope in eternal life.

Glamour Mania has been with us since the Old Testament, accented in our time by Hollywood and the media. Glamour and beauty are not synonyms. Authentic beauty is a metaphysical transcendental aspect of the good and the true. Women who radiate virtue are beautiful, even if they are not glamorous. Mother Teresa was beautiful, but not glamorous. Every woman can be beautiful because beauty is not superficial. Glamour easily becomes a false god, with obsessive vanity and shallow (and often obscene) personal relations. (Let’s defer to the ladies to identify masculine forms of obsessive vanity.)

Violence Mania has become a cultural norm. We have become obsessed with reports of violence. We may need to mobilize political movements for better law enforcement and build higher fences. But salvation by the force of law alone violates the First Commandment. God desires that we live in His freedom. Violence is a “righteousness and virtue” wake-up call.

Physical Security Mania derives from Violence Mania. Basic security procedures are perfectly reasonable: Lock those doors, and reinforce emergency preparedness drills. Be vigilant. But civil and Church authorities alike are scrambling to replace our worship of God with unholy excesses that “the experts” (read: insurance companies) recommend, such as isolating school children from the adults at Mass. Physical Security Mania—salvation by barbed-wire fences alone—subverts our focus from faith, family, and personal relationships.

Devil Mania has emerged throughout the Catholic world in recent years. Authentic diabolical disturbances are well known. Catholic dioceses appoint qualified exorcists to deal with those disturbing incidents. But Devil Mania has driven many of our experts to feed the Devil’s narcissism with their own. The celebrity exorcist has become all too common. We see them on websites and podcasts.

Who is the opposite of the Devil? If you answered Jesus, you are susceptible to Devil Mania. We are not Manichaean heretics, believing that a God of Good is opposed by a God of Evil. The one God does not have opposites. He has dominion. Devil Mania replaces the worship of God with diabolical obsessions. God alone is the author of life, and He gives us hope.

St. Therese of Lisieux had visions of demons. But they comically tumbled as she strolled by because she was in the state of grace. The most effective way to combat the wiles of the Devil is to be normal. Celebrate Mass. Go to Confession. Say our prayers. Live an upright and generous life, and the Devil will flee.

Priest Mania is a common form of religious fixation. We tend to view ecclesiastical authorities—from pope to priest—as entertaining high divers. We observe their leaps from the springboard as they dive into a deep chlorinated pool. Perfection is elusive. That’s part of the fun. We rate them from one to ten with those imaginary little placards. Occasionally, the cleric suffers a rhetorical belly flop—often to the impious glee of the spectators. (But I’m not bitter.)

There is a malignant side to Priest Mania, with a tendency among many immature Catholics to hold the faith hostage to the weaknesses of priests, real or imagined. “In 1965, a priest grew impatient with me in the confessional, so I never returned.” “All the priest talks about is money” (or fill in the blank). If it makes you feel any better, most priests only talk about two things: 1) about God; and, 2) about ten minutes. Get over it. The Liturgy of the Eucharist perfects and completes the Liturgy of the Word.

Our many and unexpected false gods tend to crowd out our worship of the one God. However, every faithful priest confronts every obsession by presenting the Sacred Liturgy with integrity. During the celebration of the Sacraments, by office, he is the mediator in Christ. Like honor guard soldiers reverencing the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, priests solemnly offer Mass. Catholic ritual keeps priests on track as they recite the words of the Mass and perform the prescribed gestures.

As he tends to his Sacramental duties, the personal worthiness of a priest remains a mystery. Of course, the personal devotion of a priest is necessary for his salvation. But like the honor guard at the Tomb, his job is to deliver the Mass as the Church intends. Regardless of his homiletic remarks, when we leave Mass after receiving Jesus in Holy Communion, we have received far more than we deserve.

Shallow, worldly, and hopeless obsessions that place God’s good creation before Divine worship violate the First Commandment. Our list of obsessive manias is ever-expanding. That’s the point. “You cannot serve God and mammon.” (Mt. 6:24)