The Culture of Consumerism: A Catholic and Personalist Critique

In addressing the apostles about the nature of our calling to Christian discipleship, Jesus raises this penetrating question that speaks now more than ever to the heart of our culture of consumerism. This culture is preoccupied with acquiring, consuming, and possessing materials, goods, and services, in short—things. One author expands on this meaning of consumerism as follows: “Consumerism implies foolishness, superficiality, triviality, and the destruction of personal and social relationships by means of selfishness, individualism, possessiveness, and covetousness.” ¹ This preoccupation, Jesus’ question suggests, involves a fundamental misunderstanding of one’s stance before God and, in effect, a lack of true self-understanding and significant confusion about the nature of the human person. Further, this is not only foolishness but also idolatry, because at the root of this preoccupation is covetousness, which is idolatry, according to Saint Paul (cf. Col. 3:5). At its religious root, the culture of consumerism involves the false worship of another god, the god of consumption; in short, of materialism. And recall, in this connection, Jeremiah’s prophetic warning (Jer. 13:1–11) that the fate of idolaters (“those who follow the dictates of their hearts, and walk after other gods to serve them and worship them”) is ruin, becoming just as worthless as the gods they worship (“which is profitable for nothing”). Consumerism, then, is ultimately a form of idolatry. ²

This essay addresses the question of how we got to the point of adopting this new form of idolatry. Our goal is to present an understanding and critique of consumerism in the tradition of Christian social thought that is both Catholic and personalist. The paper is organized as follows. In section 1, we consider various approaches to the problem of consumerism. Is consumerism simply the necessary result of the modern capitalist economy? Is it, from another perspective, simply a reflection of our culture’s overall understanding of life, its worldview? We will examine briefly five approaches to consumerism, that of John F. Kavanaugh, S.J., David F. Wells, Christopher Lasch, Gabriel Marcel, and John Paul II. ³ Each is critical of consumerism, but their approaches bring out different aspects of the problem of consumerism. In section 2 we sketch an anthropology of Christian Personalism. We do so because the culture of consumerism betrays significant confusion about the nature of the human person. ⁴ Section 3 provides an account of the concept of consumerism. Section 4 seeks to clarify a personalist understanding of the relation between consumerism and the market economy.

Does the capitalist economic system itself necessarily lead to consumer-ism? Or is consumerism an effect of the excesses of that system? Later in this paper, we tackle the question of how consumerism relates to market activities. For now, we raise these questions because how one answers them determines, in part, one’s approach to the problem of consumerism. In this connection, consider the ongoing debates among certain Roman Catholics regarding John Paul II’s 1991 Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus.

How does the pope understand the relationship between consumerism and the capitalistic system? In reply, Father Richard J. Neuhaus rejects the view that the pope’s critique of consumerism is essentially a critique of the capitalist system. He writes: “[The pope] is not so much criticizing an economic system as he is warning against the excesses that the efficient working of that system makes possible.” ⁵ “The question [of consumerism] is not,” adds Neuhaus, “certainly not most importantly, a question about economics. It is first of all a cultural and moral problem requiring a cultural and moral remedy.” ⁶

Other critics of consumerism, such as David Schindler, disagree; these critics hold that there is something inherent to the capitalistic system that makes consumerism its necessary complement. Schindler argues, in particular, that the market system itself actually presupposes cultural and moral presuppositions. He explains, “Any actual market system will always-already embody, however implicitly, some definite notion of self-interest, of the self’s relation to the other, of the self in terms of a primacy of ‘being’ or ‘having’—and thus, some definite disposition toward what the pope calls ‘consumer-ism.’” ⁷

Would Neuhaus disagree that these notions are at work in some interpretations of the capitalist system? In making the distinction between the economic order, on the one hand, and the cultural-moral order on the other, does Neuhaus claim that the former is neutral with respect to a definite cultural-moral order and its philosophical presuppositions? Of course not; the difference between Neuhaus and Schindler is a matter of emphasis. The subtle disagreement between them, in our judgment, is not that Neuhaus denies the role of definite cultural and moral presuppositions in the actual market system but, rather, that Schindler holds there to be something about the market system as such that disposes it toward consumerism and thus, the market requires criticism and necessary correction. In this regard, Schindler argues that a free economy, the profit motive, economic freedom, and human creativity, which are all characteristics of a market economy, must be ordered to the proper end of love of God and neighbor. ⁸

In his book Following Christ in a Consumer Society, John Kavanaugh argues that consumerism is a “Commodity Form” of life. It is “a system of reality (a philosophy of what is most real and valuable) and a religion (a belief in what saves us and gives us ultimate meaning).” ⁹ As a Commodity Form of life, consumerism is “a total worldview” that “affects the way we think and feel, the way we love and pray, the way we evaluate our enemies, the way we relate to our spouses and children.” ¹⁰ The Commodity Form of life disposes us to view everything—ourselves, others, nature, and religion—as a commodity, as replaceable and marketable commodities. ¹¹ “We consume what is marketable and we are marketable according to our powers of consumption. ‘You are what you eat.’ ‘More is better.’ ‘What does your car say about you?’ We consume ideas, junk food, news, the latest unneeded plastic gadget, or other persons. Anything has the potential for being sold, once a need can be artificially created and then identified with a marketable commodity.” “The Commodity Form,” adds Kavanaugh, “reveals our very being and purpose as calculable solely in terms of what we possess. We are only insofar as we possess. We are what we possess. We are, consequently, possessed by our possessions, produced by our products. Remade in the image and likeness of our own handiwork, we are revealed as commodities.… We are robbed of our very humanity.” ¹² In short, the Commodity Form of life is a total way of perceiving, valuing, and behaving.

We perceive others and ourselves as replaceable objects whose value is dependent on, indeed reduced to, the qualities of commodity: quantifiably measurable, nonunique, price-valued, replaceable objects. For example, says Kavanaugh, “Our bodies, like ourselves, are objects, packages, tools, and instruments. Commodification splits sexuality from selfhood. And sexuality, no longer the embodied expression of our now repressed personhood, itself becomes a thing for exchange and price, a battleground for competition, a stage for aggression and self-infatuation.… The body is a commodity. The body is a thing.” ¹³ In sum, the Commodity Form of life has dispossessed us of our very humanity:

Father Kavanaugh seems to hold that capitalism, with its inherent values of marketability and consumption, necessarily leads to the Commodity Form of life. For example, he groups together “consumerism and liberal capitalism” ¹⁵ and asks whether “there are economic conditions that foster the breaking of the Ten Commandments?” ¹⁶ In another place, Father Kavanaugh argues that the problem with the Commodity Form of life is not a problem with what is marketed but with “marketability.” ¹⁷ Consumerism, then, on this perspective is simply the necessary complement, from the viewpoint of consumption, to the capitalist market economy. It is largely brought about by the sellers of products and is the effect of the artificial stimulation, chiefly by means of media manipulation, of an ever-increasing need for mass-produced consumer products. This criticism of consumerism as a necessary complement of capitalism is drawn, to some extent, from Marx. Father Kavanaugh writes that “The notion that an economic way of life might serve as a religious surrogate was first suggested to me when I read Karl Marx.” ¹⁸ In particular, Kavanaugh is drawn to Marx’s claim that we relate to material possessions in an idolatrous manner, treating them with a “fetishism of commodities” wherein material possessions become substitute gods, giving us meaning and purpose.

In Father Kavanaugh’s writing, it is not always how far he goes with Marx on this point. As a materialist, Marx held that the fundamental problem of human life can be understood in material terms. If we were to abandon the system of capital, Marx thought that we could then solve the basic problems of human life. Given this materialism, Marx’s critique is fundamentally an objection to an economic system: capitalism. As noted, Father Kavanaugh seems to share Marx’s claim that capitalism leads necessarily to the fetishism of commodities. Father Kavanaugh describes capitalism as the principal cause of the Commodity Form. ¹⁹ He writes, “If capitalism is unchecked by any other universe of values but its own, however, it necessarily leads to the Commodity Form.” However, the relation between capitalism as an economic system and the Commodity Form as a philosophy and religion seems more complicated for Father Kavanaugh than for Marx. First, Father Kavanaugh is not a materialist, and so, on his account, the world of spirit and ideas can have some power. Second, there are places in his writing where Father Kavanaugh draws helpful distinctions. He writes, “Productivity, marketability, consumption, technique, and scientific method are not evil themselves. They are beneficial to the well-being of humanity and, as such, are ‘graced’ values. It is only when the relation of persons to production is reversed, when the instrumentalities become the measure of the persons, that the Commodity Form of life rules and ruins us.” ²⁰ In short, Father Kavanaugh seems to hold two views on the relation between consumerism and capitalism. Sometimes, he seems to hold with Marx that the problem is capitalism, since it causes the Commodity Form. For example, in one place, Father Kavanaugh describes his project as “a critique of capitalism” and of “the very nature of our economic system,” ²¹ but in other places, Father Kavanaugh seems to direct his criticism against a widespread moral and religious ethos, one in which the dignity and irreplaceable worth of the human person is undermined because human beings are treated as a commodity.

In Losing Our Virtue, David F. Wells provides an analysis of the relation between the contemporary quest for self-fulfillment and consumerism. This connection is captured in the new attitude: “I shop, therefore I am.”22 According to Wells, we live in a definite cultural-moral order that makes this search possible. In a word, our self-understanding as human beings created, fallen, and redeemed by God, has vanished, leaving us with a sense of emptiness, of depletion. We now lack a substantive self-identity of human beings that Christian theism made possible. This is the view, as Wells puts it, “that beneath all of the surface particularities of gender, ethnicity, age, education, occupation, and culture there was a shape to human life that was the same in all places and times.” ²³ Thus, the notion of a common human nature, that all human beings are created in the image of God, logically excluded believing that man is the chance product of matter-in-motion, or simply the product of his circumstances, gender, and ethnicity.

Many factors have contributed to the phenomenon of the empty self. Tradition is no longer normative, defining our moral and religious self-understanding, our relationships, careers, and lifestyle choices. In addition, social and cultural pluralism, the reality of change, given our highly mobile society, has been uprooted from place, community, and family and has thrown us back on ourselves with the idea that we now have multiple options, that we can choose to change ourselves, because who we are is a matter of individual choice. This includes even transforming our fundamental bodily identities as men and women.

The idea of the self that is emerging, says Wells, is of “a self that can adjust and transform its public presentation as circumstance requires. And it excites the thought that even the self could be different from what it has been. The self can be liberated.” ²⁴ But, liberated for what end?—Liberated for unlimited self-expression, self-gratification, and self-fulfillment. As Wells notes, “As the self emptied out it became a receptacle to be filled with the impressions of others. Thus, the freedom to ‘be one’s self’ was soon held hostage by the views of others, the world of fashion, and the pressure of social trends.” “Standards became blurry,” Wells adds, “and without a religious framework of meaning to give sense to reality, people began to experience a troubling and painful sense of dislocation.” ²⁵

Indeed, with the crisis of moral truth brought on by the increasing cultural acceptance of moral relativism came a shift from the view that the self must be understood in terms of character, of virtues to be acquired and practiced, of moral inwardness, to personality, to the image, which needs fashioning and that came along with the newly won freedom of self-invention. Wells explains: “A liberated self, it turns out, is no longer tethered to what used to be thought a virtue: [moral] consistency. [Moral] [c]onsistency, in this new, postmodern framework, becomes the hobgoblin of foolish minds. If consistency was once the hallmark of firm, rooted character, it is now the major impediment to the successful construction of the self. A flexible biography, a self that can adapt as needed to different environments, that can remake itself, refurbish itself, reinvent itself, reimagine itself and even remake its body, is the obvious psychological counterpart to our market-driven economy with its plethora of choices and required adaptation.” ²⁶

The upshot is this: We have been transformed from moral actors into consumers, from created beings made in the image of God and grounded in the order of truth and good proper to the human person into consumer beings driven by the need for self-fulfillment. And hence, says Wells, “We also find that we must become patients, for the sense of well-being that we seek and that we think can be bought, remains elusive. The very emptiness of the modern self sustains both our psychologists and our merchants.” ²⁷ Father Kavanaugh makes a similar point when he writes that “friendship, intimacy, love, pride, happiness, and joy are actually the objects that we buy and consume, much more so that the tubes, liquor bottles, Cadillacs, and Buicks that promise them and bear their names. And since none of these deepest human hopes can be fulfilled in any product, the mere consumption of them is never enough; ‘more’ of the product, or a ‘new improved’ product, is the only relief offered to our human longings.” ²⁸ We have become consumer beings, whose pursuit of the good life has been replaced by the pursuit of the good things in life, says Wells, and who hope to be fulfilled through purchase and consumption of goods and services. Wells writes, in a passage that deserves to be quoted in full:

The full picture then is this: The self is liberated from history, tradition, society, nature, and God, but this freedom has been purchased at the price of emptiness, and sensing this emptiness, consumption is offered as a means to fill the emptiness of the modern self.

In The Culture of Narcissism, Christopher Lasch offers an historical account of the culture of consumption. In a section titled “The Propaganda of Commodities,” Lasch begins his account with the rise of industrial capitalism. While the early capitalists saw the worker merely as a producer, after World War I some saw that the worker might be useful to the capitalist, not just as a producer but also as a consumer. Industrial mass production prompted manufacturers to educate the masses in the culture of consumption. Advertisers began to promote consumption as a way of life.

On this account, the maturing of industrial capitalism brings with it cultural changes, including the rise of a new “culture of consumption.”

Lasch claims that the culture of consumption serves two functions: First, it encourages the tired worker to despair of the possibility of changing the conditions of work. Instead, renewal is to be found in the consumption of new goods and services. Second, the new culture of consumption turns alienation into a commodity.

Mass production succeeds not only by producing high quantities of material but by selling dissatisfaction as a means to create expanding markets.

Finally, Lasch argues that the culture of consumption aligns itself with the progressive forces of modern society: public education, free speech, and the circulation of ideas. The cult of the avant-garde, with the continual desire for what is new, is central to this new cultural attitude. It favors fashion rather than family, since the family inherently tends to promote custom and living for others while the fascination with fashion tends to promote the desire for something new merely because one’s old possessions have gone out of style. It favors immediate gratification rather than temperance. It claims to side with women and children, encouraging them to be liberated from patriarchal structures, but “only to subject them to the new paternalism of the advertising industry.” ³²

Although the writings of the Catholic philosopher Gabriel Marcel (1889–1973) do not include an extended analysis of consumerism, some of his ideas have proved seminal for later thinkers, including Pope John Paul II. In particular, it is helpful to consider Marcel’s writings on being and having as a background to understand some of John Paul II’s comments about consumerism. There are several initial difficulties in understanding Marcel’s thought. First, his ideas are not presented in a clear and systematic manner. For example, much of what he wrote about the relation between being and having is presented in the form of diary entries. While these entries are often rich, they are not systematized. Second, Marcel was consciously opposed to certain kinds of systematization. In particular, he held that the effort to gain a detached, systematic understanding of the being of the human person did violence to the mystery of the person. The philosopher can try to show the mystery of being, but any effort to reduce that mystery to quantifiable categories misses the richness of being and the person. Given this about Marcel’s writing and his thought, it is difficult to offer a systematic summary of his ideas, but even recognizing these difficulties is one way of beginning a presentation of his philosophy.

In Being and Having, Marcel aims to gain a metaphysical understanding of being through a phenomenological analysis of having. He does not think there is a simple distinction between being and having, as if being is related to the spiritual and having is related to the physical. Having implies being, since having is a mode of being. Hence, one way to come to a fuller understanding of being, which is Marcel’s goal, is to gain a fuller understanding of having. He writes “A phenomenological analysis of having would constitute a useful introduction to a renewed analysis of being.” ³³

The text of Being and Having includes a diary with entries from the late 1920s and early 1930s, as well as several essays, including one with the title “Outlines of a Phenomenology of Having.” His approach is phenomenological in that he provides a description of concrete human existence, especially of the relation between human acts and their real objects. The human person is not an instrument “had” by others, since we exist in our own right as persons. Neither is the human person a pure being that exists without any dependence on other things or other persons. The human person needs to have things in order to be a person. Human reality, then, is a combination of being and having.

The experience of having involves treating something as an “it,” not as a “thou.” ³⁴ In having something, there is a desire to take it in, to possess and contain it, to hold on to it and accumulate more of it, never letting it go. For this reason, there is a basic tension between the possessor and the thing possessed. The thing possessed is initially an alien to the possessor, and there is a vain attempt to incorporate the thing possessed into the self of the possessor. This leads to a dialectic where the possessor, by becoming attached to the thing, gives power to the possession, the power to absorb the self of the possessor in the thing possessed. As Marcel writes, “I hug to myself this thing that may be torn from me, and I desperately try to incorporate it in myself, to form myself and it into a single and indissoluble complex. A desperate, hopeless struggle.” ³⁵ Hence, the things that one has are not only external, “They are seen to exercise a power over me which my attachment confers upon them, and which grows as the attachment grows.” ³⁶ In this way, “our possessions eat us up.” ³⁷

While this description of having reveals one mode of being a person, the main point of Marcel’s distinction between having and being is to draw attention to the irreducible character of the person. The fixation on having leads first to the desire to consume evermore. Next comes the trap of feeling consumed by the very thing that one has, but this trap of despair can also reveal another mode of being. Instead of becoming trapped within oneself, self-preoccupied, and self-enclosed, it is possible for a person to become vulnerable to the other, to open oneself up to the other, and to give of oneself unreservedly. This way of being as a person, which Marcel considers to be a more authentic expression of human personhood, he terms “disposability” or “availability.” ³⁸ It includes the capacity to be open to the being of others, dwelling in an intersubjective union in which one makes responsible commitments.

Marcel sees the modern emphasis on having to the neglect of authentic being as a symptom of the rationalist and idealist weakening of the ontological sense. By focusing only on problems that can be solved following a quantifiable technique to the neglect of mysteries in which we dwell, there is a sense of loss, alienation, and despair. To respond to these, we attempt to have more, but this leads instead to an increased sense of enslavement to our possessions and a neglect of the authentic mystery of the human person in which we dwell. While Marcel does not explicitly take up an analysis of the concept of consumerism, his writing on being and having prefigures some of the central aspects of the idea of consumerism—ideas that have been developed by later thinkers, including John Paul II.

According to John Paul II, consumerism is one of several problems, indeed dangers, emerging within the more advanced economies of Western culture. ³⁹ The modern self is left with a “ radical dissatisfaction,” as John Paul II calls it, because “the more one possesses, the more one wants, while deeper aspirations remain unsatisfied and perhaps even stifled.” ⁴⁰ Hence, consumerism is contrary to the order of truth and good proper to the human person.

The pope draws a clear distinction between capitalism as an economic system and consumerism as a moral and cultural attitude. He writes: “These criticisms are directed not so much against an economic system as against an ethical and cultural system. The economy, in fact, is only one aspect and one dimension of the whole of human activity. If economic life is absolutized, if the production and consumption of goods become the center of social life and society’s only value—not subject to any other value—the reason is to be found not so much in the economic system itself as in the fact that the entire socio-cultural system, by ignoring the ethical and religious dimension, has been weakened, and ends by limiting itself to the production of goods and services alone.” ⁴¹ This criticism of consumerism calls attention to the vital importance of religious, moral, and cultural foundations for an adequate account of the whole of human activity. Consumerism endangers man rather than helps him experience his personhood in an authentic way, which is according to the order of truth and good proper to the human person.

The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council wrote: “It is what a man is, rather than what he has, that counts.” ⁴² The failure to honor the fundamental distinction between “being” and “having” is at the heart of John Paul’s criticism of consumerism. This distinction means that the choices we make should be based on the nature of the human person and human action rather than on the covetous desire of accumulating or consuming, grasping, and possessing as much as we possibly can of material goods and services. The pope makes clear that his criticism is not aimed at those who want to have good things in life, who want to live better, and to have a qualitatively more satisfying life through the quality of goods and services enjoyed, as well as the quality of the environment and, generally, of life. Rather, says John Paul, “What is wrong is a style of life that is presumed to be better when it is directed toward ‘having’ rather than ‘being,’ and which wants to have more, not in order to be more but in order to spend life in enjoyment [of things] as an end in itself.” ⁴³ It is wrong precisely because “to ‘have’ objects and goods does not in itself perfect the human subject, unless it contributes to the maturing and enrichment of that subject’s ‘being,’ that is to say, unless it contributes to the realization of the human vocation as such.” ⁴⁴ “It is therefore necessary,” adds the pope, “to create lifestyles in which the quest for truth, beauty, goodness, and communion with others for the sake of common growth are the factors that determine consumer choices.” ⁴⁵ Truth, beauty, goodness, communion—these are goods essential for realizing man’s basic human vocation.

This claim brings us to the related point that consumerism is the effect of artificial stimulation, chiefly through media manipulation, of new needs and new means to meet them. The danger here is that manipulative advertising ensnares people in a web of false and superficial gratification. Recall, in this connection, Wells’ point that such advertising is not just informative about the goods for sale, but they also offer up a vision of life, an alternative lifestyle. ⁴⁶ What is more, these new needs arise and are defined in terms of a concept of man and of his supposed true good, ultimate goal. As John Paul notes, “A given culture reveals its overall understanding of life through the choices it makes in production and consumption. It is here that the phenomenon of consumerism arises. In singling out new needs and new means to meet them, one must be guided by a comprehensive picture of man that respects all the dimensions of his being and that subordinates his material and instinctive dimensions to his interior and spiritual ones.” ⁴⁷ Yet this is precisely the problem. Consumerism reflects a culture of materialism and secularism, which results either in reductionist fallacies that ignore all the dimensions of the human person, or in the subordination of everything—ourselves, others, nature, and religion—into a commodity, as replaceable and marketable commodities. Insightfully, John Paul likens the affluent society or the consumer society of the Western world to Marxism for, like the latter, our society reflects a pure materialism “insofar as it denies an autonomous existence and value to morality, law, culture, and religion.” In this respect, like Marxism, our consumer society “totally reduces man to the sphere of economics and the satisfaction of material needs.” ⁴⁸

Thus, consumerism rests on a reductionist philosophy of man: reducing the totality of man’s being to the sphere of economics and the satisfaction of material needs. In this light, we can well understand John Paul’s critical point that (a) an economic system in itself does not possess criteria for distinguishing basic human needs from artificial needs, and (b) there are qualitative human needs that escape the logic of the market mechanism. Human goods satisfy these human needs, says John Paul, that “by their very nature cannot and must not be bought or sold.” “Certainly,” adds the pope, “the mechanisms of the market offer secure advantages: They help to utilize resources better; they promote the exchange of products; above all, they give central place to the person’s desires and preferences, which, in a contract, meet the desires and preferences of another person. Nevertheless, these mechanisms carry the risk of an ‘idolatry’ of the market, an idolatry that ignores the existence of goods that by their nature are not and cannot be mere commodities.” ⁴⁹ Friendship, intimacy, community, love, pride, happiness, virtue, solidarity, goodness, truth, knowledge, and last but not least, the reality and vocation of man seen in his totality, namely, according to his interior dimension, called to share in the truth and the good that is God Himself—the nature of these goods are such that they are not and cannot be mere commodities. Consumerism fails to recognize this basic truth because it absolutizes the economic dimension of human activity, regarding man as a producing or consuming being rather than as a subject who produces or consumes in order to live and experience his personhood in an authentic way.

At the root of the choice to absolutize the economic dimension of human existence is a reversal of the hierarchy of values. Says John Paul, “There are some people … who do not really succeed in ‘being’ because, through a reversal of the hierarchy of values, they are hindered by the cult of ‘having’; and there are others … who do not succeed in realizing their basic human vocation because they are deprived of essential goods. The evil does not consist in ‘having’ as such, but in possessing without regard for their quality and the ordered hierarchy of the goods one has. Quality and hierarchy arise from the subordination of goods and their availability to man’s ‘being’ and his true vocation.” ⁵⁰ The point about quality is simply this: There are basic human goods that cannot be reduced to mere commodities without inhibiting the realization of man’s true vocation.

Finally, John Paul’s allusion to the hierarchy of values or goods is important because knowledge of the proper order and hierarchy of goods is basic for the choices that man makes in order to realize his true vocation. Put differently, the decisions he makes as consumer are relative to the supreme good of human life, its ultimate goal: true happiness. This brings us back to John Paul II’s critique of the dialectic of having and being that is at the root of consumerism. “A person who is concerned solely or primarily with possessing and enjoying, who is no longer able to control his instincts and passions, or to subordinate them by obedience to the truth, cannot be free: Obedience to the truth about God and man is the first condition of freedom, making it possible for a person to order his needs and desires and to choose the means of satisfying them according to a correct scale of values, so that ownership of things may become an occasion of growth for him.” ⁵¹ The pope is making three points here: (1) Obedience to the truth is the very source and condition of authentic freedom; (2) The knowledge of this truth orders a person’s needs and desires, so that they are subordinated to the last, supreme good of human life, its ultimate goal; and (3) Only under these conditions may possessing things become an occasion of authentic human development.

In sum, consumerism is a form of man’s self-alienation, because the economic dimension loses its necessary relationship to the human person and results in alienating and dispossessing him of the order of truth and good proper to the human person. What we need is a Christian anthropology, a comprehensive concept of the human person, that recognizes and respects the hierarchy of the true values of human existence in order to help man to experience and develop his personhood; in brief, his being, in an authentic way.

John Paul II supposes that we have an understanding of universal human nature and its basic needs. ⁵² By “needs” the pope does not mean merely biological mechanisms or psychic impulses that are instinctive and inferior, or blind and compelling. This understanding of human nature would ignore the reality of the human person as intelligent and free, but human nature exists only in persons, and a person, precisely qua person, is rational and free, endowed with independent existence, is inviolable, inalienable, is an end in itself and not only a means, and created in the image of God. Against this background, we can easily see that in speaking of needs he has in mind natural, that is, creational, human needs that actually belong to the human person. What needs belong to human beings? Is there a hierarchy of needs with some needs being more basic than others? John Paul urges us to respect man in the totality of his being, but his understanding of the human person subordinates man’s material and instinctive dimensions to his interior and spiritual ones such as inclinations to truth, goodness, and life in society. Consequently, the need to satisfy our thirst is not as basic as the needs to know and understand the truth, to contemplate, and to create. This understanding of the human person and his basic needs is necessary, he claims, in order to live a fully human life, indeed, as the conditions for human flourishing.

John Paul II and, along with him, Dominican scholar Father Benedict Ashley, follow Saint Thomas Aquinas by developing their understanding of human needs in light of the human good. Basic needs define a human being as such in terms of what he lacks, suggesting his distinctive incompleteness. These human needs are fulfilled by human goods, and the most basic needs by the most basic goods, according to Father Ashley. Aquinas, says Father Ashley, proposed four basic needs and the goods that satisfied them: “ life (health), reproduction, society, and truth.” ⁵³ Elaborating on these, Father Ashley writes: “(1) Life, bodily and spiritual; (2) The propagation of the human race; (3) God-centered community life with other created persons; and (4) Truth about reality, above all, about God, ourselves, and other persons.” ⁵⁴ “These four needs are interrelated,” adds Ashley, “and form a hierarchy. Truth is the supreme value, since with wisdom comes all other goods and particularly the knowledge and worship of God. But the fullness of truth is attainable only as the common good of a human community (society) and such a community cannot exist and function without the reproduction of its membership and the health that makes this possible. Thus, integral human fulfillment requires health, family, and society and culminates in wisdom.” ⁵⁵

In other words, life, indeed, and self-preservation is necessary in order to strive for these other goods. We need sexual union and the rearing of offspring because human community cannot be preserved without the propagation of the human race. We cannot attain the knowledge and understanding of the truth, nor indeed share our achievements with others, without community and, hence, the human need to live in society. ⁵⁶ Finally, as Ashley puts it, “We need truth, because it is necessary to guide our lives and to give them their ultimate meaning in the knowledge and love of God, ourselves, and other persons in the kingdom of God.” While Aquinas held that each of his four basic goods—life, reproduction, society, truth—is a good in itself and not a mere means, says Ashley, he “also believes that they are mutually ordered in the way just indicated, so that the first three are subordinated to the last, supreme good. Thus, the ultimate goal of human life to which all other goods are ordered is friendship with God in his kingdom, which includes all other persons who are God’s friends.” ⁵⁷

Finally, this account of the human good is based on the priority of happiness as the ultimate end of integral human fulfillment. This natural desire for happiness is of divine origin. God created man with this desire in the human heart in order to draw us to himself, because God alone can fulfill this desire. “Man is created by God and for God”—in the words of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (no. 27). God has sought man out, a search that is biblically spoken of as the finding of a lost sheep (cf. Luke 15:1–7), and something that is attested in the Incarnation of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of Man. True God made true man, Jesus Christ reveals God’s true nature to man but also shows him the path by which God may be reached. Christ is the answer to this desire in the heart of man, says John Paul II, “the only response fully capable of satisfying the desire of the human heart.”58 Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). God calls us to his own beatitude, which is the perfect happiness of eternal life with him, promised us through the grace of Christ. “God put us in the world to know, to love, and to serve him, and so to come to paradise. Beatitude makes us ‘partakers of the divine nature’ (2 Pet. 1:4) and of eternal life. With beatitude, man enters into the glory of Christ and into the joy of the trinitarian life. Such beatitude surpasses the understanding and powers of man. It comes from an entirely free gift of God: Whence it is called supernatural, as is the grace that disposes man to enter into the divine joy.” ⁵⁹ Friendship with God in his kingdom is sharing the life of the Holy Trinity. “For our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3). We are brought into this fellowship through the grace of Christ in conversion and baptism. And this fellowship is brought to its fulfillment, indeed, its eternal fullness in the Trinity’s intimate revelation of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the beatific vision. In short, this is our true happiness, our beatitude, which is the perfect happiness of eternal life with God, promised us through the grace of Christ. As Father Ashley puts it,

The implication that follows from believing that beatitude is the ultimate end of human existence is foundational for the Christian in dealing with the dialectic of being and having that is at the root of consumerism. Let us be clear that consumerism is finally about human sinfulness because it involves exchanging the truth about God for the lie. We suppress the truth about God in unrighteousness and worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator (Rom. 1:18–23). As a result, we are inclined to be immoderately attached to the goods of this world. Beatitude frees man from his disordered attachment to the world’s goods, having now been freed from the covetous desire of accumulating or consuming, grasping and possessing as much as he can of material goods and services. ⁶¹ This is the teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “The beatitude of heaven sets the standards for discernment in the use of earthly goods in keeping with the law of God.” ⁶²

“Man is divided in himself”—so states the Second Vatican Council in its pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes. The root of this internal conflict is original sin. According to the teaching of the Catholic Church, the doctrine of original sin has the following four features. First, original sin is universal sinfulness, which includes tendencies that incline us to sin. The Council of Trent called this inclination to sin, concupiscence, and held it to be contrary to God’s will, because it is at odds with his holiness. Concupiscence is present in all men and in all areas of their lives; it is born of original sin but is not itself a sin. Second, original sin is natural sinfulness: It belongs to the nature of man in a real sense, and is present from birth; in short, we are born with a fallen human nature. Third, original sin is inherited sinfulness: This fallen human nature is inherited, resulting in human beings who are born in a state of hereditary moral weakness and alienation from God. Fourth, original sin is Adamic sinfulness: It stems from Adam, whose transgression provides a historical beginning for original sin, and which has left its consequence in every descendant of Adam, so that the sinful situation of man is connected with the fault of Adam, the first man and progenitor of the race. ⁶³ “Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ’s grace, erases original sin and turns a man back toward God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle.” ⁶⁴

It is in the context of this spiritual struggle against concupiscence that we can best understand the disorder of covetous desires such as greed, avarice, and envy. What is the general relationship between concupiscence and disordered desires? The Catechism of the Catholic Church gives the following definition of concupiscence: “Etymologically, ‘concupiscence’ can refer to any intense form of human desire. Christian theology has given it a particular meaning: the movement of the sensitive appetite contrary to the operation of the human reason. The apostle Saint Paul identifies it with the rebellion of the ‘flesh’ against the ‘spirit.’ Concupiscence stems from the disobedience of the first sin. It unsettles man’s moral faculties and, without being an offense, inclines man to commit sins” (no. 2515). Suppose, then, that I have an intense desire to acquire, consume and/or possess material goods. In itself, this desire is neither good nor evil. This concupiscent desire requires taming and discipline, however, for without asking ourselves about what and how much to consume, and why this desire may spawn greed, avarice, and envy. The ninth and tenth commandments of the Decalogue (Ex. 20:17; Deut. 5:21) forbid these covetous desires. Greed is the vice of amassing earthly goods without limit. Avarice arises from a passion for riches and their concomitant power. And envy is the immoderate desire to acquire another’s goods, even unjustly. ⁶⁵

The Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms that “in economic matters, respect for human dignity requires the practice of the virtue of temperance, so as to moderate attachment to this world’s goods” (no. 2407). What is a virtue? Briefly, a virtue is an acquired and stable character trait or disposition enabling the whole person to do well what is morally good. It is primarily concerned with intelligently disciplining our feelings, desires, and emotions, or rightly ordering them, to the purposes or goals of a virtuous life.66 Temperance is the moral virtue that helps us to live moderately and it may be expressed by making important changes in established lifestyles, as John Paul II suggests, with the aim of developing one that is consistent with the purposes and character of God. ⁶⁷ Christ’s gift of salvation offers us the grace necessary to carry out this aim. In particular, the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity are a gift of God’s grace, the basis of the whole Christian moral life, directing it as well as giving life to all the moral virtues (cf. no. 1813). Father Ashley gives a practical application of the pope’s suggestion. He writes, “We … need to moderate the pleasure we take in being well-dressed and in our houses, automobiles, and other external possessions. The way we use goods also expresses moral attitudes and no doubt influences them.” ⁶⁸ “Thus, with a touch of dry humor, the Bible indicates the three purposes of clothes,” adds Ashley, “protection of the body, moderation of sexual attraction by modesty, personal beauty, and dignity. The most common moral failing in the use of clothing regards the second two purposes when people dress immodestly, or when they dress ostentatiously and extravagantly. What is true of our clothing is true of our homes: We need shelter, privacy, and a pleasant environment worthy of human dignity.” ⁶⁹

Temperance includes an apprenticeship in self-mastery and self-possession that we call Christian asceticism. Man is “the only creature on earth that God has wanted for its own sake,” which means that God created each human person as a being of his own, existin