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Christianity is not about feeding yourself. Christianity begins with what people do with the leftovers." So spoke Professor Megan McKenna, whose field is social ethics, alluding to the biblical miracle of the sharing of the loaves and the admonition that the leftover fragments be gathered (Mt 14:20)
Faces fell. A certain religious complacency was pierced, giving way to a degree of consciousness-raising. It is startling to be told, in a culture as wasteful as ours that Christianity begins with what we do with our leftovers. Just visit a typical school lunch program and see the mounds of garbage. "Waste not, want not" means little to children brought up to believe that if something does not meet your taste or adhere to the current fashion, toss it.
A familiar statistic in this context begins to ring true: The industrialized countries, with only one-fifth of the world's population, consume two-thirds of the world's resources and generate 75 percent of all the pollution and waste products. The disparities between human beings who live in squalor and those who have everything money can buy are glaring in a world brought closer together through amazing advances in communication. This great disparity denies social justice, leads to ecological tragedy, and most of all creates a misperception of what the good life really is, which ultimately makes excessive consumption a religious question.
What and how much we consume manifest our conception of who we are and why we exist. The spiritual and cultural impoverishment that are the natural by-products of consumerism are evident everywhere. Money talks, but, as they say, "it has such a squeaky voice and has so little to say." How can our Catholic faith help us to find a more satisfying life for ourselves and at the same time make us more socially responsible in achieving it? I suggest three ways: the cultivation of the natural virtue of temperance; the gospel admonitions about the dangers of over-consumption and the fundamental requirement of love of neighbor; and, finally, the recent social teachings of the Church based upon the order of nature and the higher demands of gospel living. I will also provide some indications of what the good life might be like for us all.
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