Question 9.142

9.142 In this same apostolic exhortation, the pope often mentions the idolatry of money that runs through the history of mankind but that has seemed to reach distressing levels in recent years. How do you react to his reflection?

Francis considers it important to recall that “the culture of prosperity deadens us; we are thrilled if the market offers us something new to purchase. In the meantime all those lives stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to move us. One cause of this situation is found in our relationship with money, since we calmly accept its dominion over ourselves and our societies” (EG 54-55).

Christ himself possessed nothing and unceasingly denounced worship of the golden calf as well as the vendors in the Temple. The missionary must be the enemy of easy money, for which he has little use in carrying out his work. Of course some financial means are necessary for day-today life. But the privileged instrument of mission work is still grace.

From her origins, the Church has always fought so that money might be at the service of man. I am extremely shocked to see how often industrial and financial groups exploit in Africa, with no moral principles whatsoever, the natural resources of countries where people live in dire poverty. They do not care at all about the misery of the populations. The Church’s social doctrine, however, has always maintained that justice applies to all phases of economic activity, because it always concerns man and his needs. The discovery of resources, financing, production, consumption, and the other phases of the economic cycle inevitably have moral implications. And so every economic decision has consequences of a moral character and involves the demands of justice.

The pope wished to denounce once again the cynicism of materialistic societies that reduce the human being to one function-consumption-and try to limit man’s spiritual development by all the means of domination in their possession. The powers that rely on money inaugurate the reign of a horizontal world in which transcendence is denied, disparaged, or ridiculed.

A society that takes material development as its only guide inevitably drifts toward slavery and oppression. Man is not born to manage his bank account; he is born to find God and to love his neighbor.