Document Type
Article
Abstract
[First paragraph]
In 1997, the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Social Communications published a brief handbook entitled Ethics in Advertising. Beginning by acknowledging that "advertising, using media as its vehicle, is a pervasive, powerful force shaping attitudes and behavior in today's world" (sec IVc), the council proceeds by addressing ethical and moral problems raised by advertising, chief among them, the encouragement of the "phenomenon of consumerism." In regards to this phenomenon, Pope John Paul II writes "It is not wrong to want to live better; what is wrong is a style of life which is presumed to be better when it is directed toward "having" rather than "being," and which wants to have more, not in order to be more but in order to spend life in enjoyment as an end itself" (sec IIIa).
Repository Citation
Vandenberg, Kathleen. "Twentieth Century American Advertising and the Sacred." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 10, no. 1, 2010, pp. 1–12. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol10/iss1/10