945. It is different however with women who have been born to the enjoyments and pleasures of life and who have been brought up with those things since early childhood, as queens and members of the aristocracy are, and as the wealthy are too. If while living in luxury, grandeur, and splendour, they have at the same time lived in faith in the Lord and in charity towards the neighbour, they are among the happy in the next life. For the idea that heaven is merited by renouncing the enjoyments of life and by renouncing power and wealth, and so by suffering hardship is untrue. What the Word means by such renunciation is rating pleasures as well as power and wealth as nothing in comparison with the Lord, and the life of the world as nothing in comparison with heavenly life.