luxury and poverty



If there is any indication of the present degeneration of society better than another it is the excess of luxury in the modern world. When men begin to forget their souls, they begin to take great care of their bodies. There are more athletic clubs in the modern world than there are spiritual retreat houses; and who shall count the millions spent in beauty shops to glorify faces that will one day be the prey of worms. It is not particularly difficult to find thousands who will spend two or three hours a day in exercising, but if you ask them to bend their knees to God in five minutes of prayer they protest that it is too long. Added to this is the shocking amount that is yearly spent, not in the normal pleasure of drinking, but in its excess. The scandal increases when one considers the necessary wants of the poor which could have been supplied by the amount spent for such dehumanization. The Divine judgment upon Dives [the imagined name of the rich man in Luke 16] is bound to be repeated upon many of our generation, who will find that the beggars for whose service they refused to interrupt their luxuries, will be seated at the Banquet of the King of Kings, while they, like Dives, will be the beggars for but a drop of water.
~Fulton J. Sheen preaching on gluttony in 1939 

 How Americans spend their money 

 Americans spent a whopping $33.3 billion on cosmetics and other beauty products in 2010, up 6% from 2009,

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