Bodies for Sale: The Inhuman Face of Industrialism
GUEST COLUMN
“You are worth about $5.50,” gloats the statistic-monger. “If you were cremated, the chemicals in your body wouldn’t be worth as much as a ticket to a first-class concert.”
“Four dollars an hour,” says my boss, equally pleased.
I do just enough unskilled factory work (for Manpower) to cover my room and board. The money itself doesn’t affront me, as if I had gotten a low bid at the auction block. But what does affront me is the suggestion that the money could in any way compensate me for my body, my life, my time, myself.
Raw materials went into the factory and came out ennobled and man went in and came out degraded (Pope Pius XI).
You May Also Enjoy
He dissents from a basic moral principle of Judeo-Christian, Catholic social teaching: that superfluous wealth must be shared with the poor.
A good mother teaches her children but knows that her teaching will not be well received if she does not also love her children with a vigorous and generous love.
Since consumerism inverts every Christian priority, Christianity can only respond by inverting consumerism, by putting material things last.