In thinking about a way beyond the neo-Thomist-Lubacian impasse, Edward Oakes suggested that the term “desire” is “still spoken of too abstractly, without a due allowance being made to the phenomenology of desire in the light of original sin – with its legacy of the fomes peccati , that is, of temptation and concupiscence.” 1 This chapter argues that atten-tion to concrete subjectivity protects against the temptaatten-tion of too easily equating the natural desire for being with the natural desire for God with-out simultaneously acknowledging the widespread distortion of desire in human life – the very misdirection of human loves to false and deviated transcendence. I examine distorted desire in the form of contemporary consumerism and do so through the prism of Lonergan and Girard – the very line of conversation that has animated part 3 of this book. 2
Though our living is artistic and dramatic, though we participate in our own self-making, we are also limited as concrete subjects in the degree to which we fully shape our lives. We are “already constituted biologically in a particular way,” and in large part human identity and self-understanding is a product of “a multifaceted process of socializa-tion.” 3 The facticity of our lives – the already given, the already consti-tuted – is the material out of which we “shape our drama”; it is within the “already constituted horizon of meanings and value that the drama of human living unfolds.” 4 With a sense of historical consciousness, this chapter takes seriously “hermeneutic interiority” and the communal and cultural formation of our concrete subjectivity in the world. Human receptivity involves the meanings and values handed on to us in our communities. 5 Attentive to concrete subjectivity, this chapter notes our vulnerability to the all-pervasive cultural moods that shape the very meaning and meaningfulness (or lack thereof) of the question of God.
Distorted Desire and Love of Deviated Transcendence 185 It is important to note that I do not address the very difficult ques-tions related to political economy. I am more concerned with the forma-tion of human subjectivity in an age of global consumerism. A socially dominant vision of the human being in our culture is, in Nicolas Boyle’s terms, the self as consumer – an anonymous, identity-less generator of a “never-ending series of new wishes demanding instantaneous sat-isfaction.” 6 In Alasdair MacIntyre’s characterization, persons are edu-cated “to regard themselves primarily as consumers whose practical activities are no more than a means to consumption.” “Unsurprisingly,”
MacIntyre comments, “ pleonexia , the drive to have more and more, becomes treated as a central virtue.” 7
A Civilization of Consumption: The Challenge of Catholic Social Teaching
Pope Francis in Evangelii Gaudium emerges not so much as an enemy of capitalism as a prophetic critique of some of the deleterious effects of global consumerism: “The great danger in today’s world, pervaded as it is by consumerism,” he writes, “is the desolation and anguish born of a complacent yet covetous heart, the feverish pursuit of frivolous plea-sures, and a blunted conscience.” 8 When our interior lives are marked by egoism, “there is no longer room for others, no place for the poor.
God’s voice is no longer heard, the quiet joy of his love is no longer felt, and the desire to do good fades” ( EG 2). Francis explicitly uses the language of idolatry in his diagnosis of some of the challenges of today’s world. “The worship of the ancient golden calf (cf. Ex. 32:1–35) has returned in a new and ruthless guise in the idolatry of money and the dictatorship of an impersonal economy lacking a truly human pur-pose” ( EG 55). In light of Francis’s indictment of the idols of consumer-ism, I turn briefly to selected themes from Catholic social teaching, with special attention to the writings of John Paul II.
The first theme I highlight is the problem of superdevelopment. A phenomenon not unrelated to the massive challenge of underdevelop-ment, superdevelopunderdevelop-ment, John Paul II has noted, is the “excessive avail-ability of every kind of material good for the benefit of certain social groups.” 9 Superdevelopment enslaves us to immediate gratification of desire, and confines us to a narrow horizon marked by the multiplica-tion or continual replacement of things. This civilizamultiplica-tion of consumpmultiplica-tion exhibits both a “crass materialism” and a “radical dissatisfaction.” The deeper aspirations of the human heart remain unsatisfied ( SRS 28.2).
Second, Catholic social teaching highlights the distinction between
“having” and “being” ( SRS 8.3). Employing the language of human subjectivity, John Paul writes, “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 contrib-utes to the realization of the human vocation as such” ( SRS 28.3). This is, in part, a question of individual authenticity and the dialectic of the subject, but is situated within the dialectic of the social and cultural life.
The unjust distribution of goods and services creates the following sce-nario: the few who possess much do not grow in being because they are stifled by by the cult of having . And those who have little cannot realize their basic human vocation because they are deprived of basic goods ( SRS 28.5). If our deepest desire is to engage in the “dramatic artistry of living,” then the neglect of vital needs by oppressive social structures
“remove[s] the conditions of the possibility of satisfying the deeper desire and the pattern of experience in such a way that the prosecution of this desire becomes impossible.” 10 In SRS , John Paul II introduces his notion of “structures of sin” and encourages us to analyse consumerism as a form of modern “imperialism.”
Third, in light of the priority of being over having, Catholic social teaching challenges us “to create life-styles” that prioritize “the quest for truth, beauty, goodness and communion with others” for the sake of the common good. 11 As we identify new needs and the new means to meet them, we must be guided by a comprehensive understanding of the human person. An economic system as such “does not possess criteria for correctly distinguishing new and higher forms of satisfying human needs from artificial new needs which hinder the formation of a mature personality” ( CA 36.1). This requires significant cultural and educational work. 12
Finally, the historical experience of the West has shown that the so-called good life, with its emphasis on unsustainable superdevelopment, on having over being, on an unrestrained use of the earth’s resources, has created the conditions for widespread alienation and the loss of meaning. This loss of authentic meaning is precipitated by consumer-ism, which confines human beings to a web of superficial gratifications instead of an experiencing personhood in authentic and concrete ways, that is, in solidarity and communion with others ( CA 41). A society is alienated, a culture distorted, if “its forms of social organization, pro-duction and consumption make it more difficult to offer this gift of self and to establish this solidarity between people” ( CA 41.2). Benedict XVI,
Distorted Desire and Love of Deviated Transcendence 187 in his important contribution to Catholic social teaching Caritas in Veri-tate , identifies the continual emergence of a consumerist and utilitarian view of the world, which distracts us from the anthropological cen-trality of gift and gratuity ( CV 34). The good life, in reality, involves the contemplative space for nurturing a “disinterested, unselfish and aesthetic attitude that is born of wonder in the presence of being and of the beauty which enables one to see in visible things the message of the invisible God who created them” ( CV 37.1).
Idolatry and Deviated Transcendence: Consumerist Practice in the Realm of the “Sacred”
Contemporary Catholic social teaching has diagnosed some of the del-eterious effects of consumerism and has exposed its anthropological, ecological, and ontological deficiencies. If human beings are oriented by nature to truth, goodness, and beauty – if indeed human beings are made for gift – then a consumerist culture at its worst offers only simu-lacra of the realities that truly satisfy the deepest desires of the human heart. Though we intuitively frame consumerism as a secularism to be resisted, I want to suggest that consumerism is in fact a more like a sacralization to be resisted – a deleterious form of idolatry. Of course, the terms “secularization” and “sacralization” are fluid, and it is there-fore useful to examine two terms central to this chapter – “idolatry”
and “false” or “deviated transcendence” – and highlight some sacral, liturgical dimensions of consumer culture.
One of the central questions guiding Aquinas’s treatment of idolatry – a treatment that is deeply Augustinian – is whether it should be con-sidered as a species of superstition or unbelief. 13 This question is perti-nent here because it reorients the question of idolatry, shifting it from what we believe to what we love, that is, what we worship, the object of what we desire as ultimate. For Aquinas, idolatry is a species of superstition. Superstition involves the distortion of worship, and this is done chiefly when “divine worship is given to whom it should not be given.” Aquinas contrasts the act of superstition with the virtue of
“religion,” which is marked by worshipping “the most high uncreated God alone.” 14 Hence, Aquinas writes, “superstition is a vice contrary to religion by excess, not that it offers more to the divine worship than true religion, but because it offers divine worship either to whom it ought not, or in a manner it ought not.” 15 Aquinas also distinguishes superstition and heresy; heresy is a species of unbelief, belonging to