Faith and Consumerism: Negotiating Catholic Commitments in a Materialist Culture

The paper explores how Catholic Clergy and laity negotiate their religious commitments within consumer-driven culture, focusing on the tensions between counter-consumerist teachings and lived practices. Drawing on qualitative research involving interviews and questionnaires with thirty-five Catholic respondents, comprising clergy, religious, seminarians, and laypersons from South India now working in various parts of India, the study investigates how participants reconcile their faith with consumerist behaviours. While most respondents affirm the Church’s teachings against materialism, many justify their consumption through moral reasoning grounded in ministry, family, and asocial values. The findings reveal that instead of wholly rejecting consumerism, Catholic individuals often reinterpret it through ethical frameworks such as altruistic sociality and communal well-being. Such strategic renegotiation of religious values within consumer culture demonstrates that religion, rather than being eclipsed by consumerism, adapts and rearticulates itself in complex and sometimes paradoxical ways. The study contributes to the discourse on lived religion, suggesting that consumerism may serve both as a challenge to and a vehicle for religious expression in contemporary Catholicism.