As we look ahead to recovery from the present financial and economic crisis, we must ask ourselves: Do we return to business as usual? Or is this a moment when a re-envisioning of the economy is both possible and necessary? Some would argue that President Obama is already trying to change the social compact from an emphasis on opportunity to an emphasis on fairness. Others, however, look at the economic team the president has gathered and conclude that it includes the same Wall Street professionals who got us into this mess. Still others, myself included, think that the world will never be the same. The consumer-led growth of the past is not viable in a world where every country wants to have the same consumer society, because the demand on natural resources and the environmental strain would be too great. There is no single Catholic response to all of these issues, but Catholic social thought provides guidance for distinctive Catholic responses.

Beyond Consumption

Catholic social thought is rooted in a commitment to certain fundamental values—the right to human dignity, the need for human freedom and participation, the importance of community and the nature of the common good. These values are drawn from a belief that each person is called to be a co-creator with God, participating in the redemption of the world and the furthering of God’s kingdom. From these values emerge two central principles: a special concern for the poor and powerless, which leads to a criticism of political and economic structures that oppress them; and a concern for certain human rights against the collectivist tendencies of the state and the neglect of the free market.

Among the reasons to be concerned about consumption-driven growth are three prominent points in Catholic social thought. First, excessive consumption by some individuals and nations while other individuals and nations suffer from want is morally unacceptable. A passage from Pope Paul VI illustrates the point: “...the superfluous wealth of rich countries should be placed at the service of poor nations.... Otherwise their continued greed will certainly call down upon them the judgment of God and the wrath of the poor....” (Populorum Progressio, No. 49).

Second, excessive consumption threatens the earth’s environment, which is also morally unacceptable. Pope John Paul II has written: “Equally worrying is the ecological question which accompanies the problem of consumerism and which is closely connected to it. In his desire to have and to enjoy rather than to be and to grow, man consumes the resources of the earth and his own life in an excessive and distorted way” (Centesimus Annus, No. 37).

Third, treating material consumption as the primary goal of life—that is, focusing on having instead of being—is seen as detrimental to human dignity. Pope John Paul II has written that “all of us experience firsthand the sad effects of this blind submission to pure consumerism: in the first place a crass materialism, and at the same time a radical dissatisfaction because one quickly learns...that the more one possesses the more one wants, while deeper aspirations remain unsatisfied and perhaps even stifled” (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, No. 28).