Are we really mindless victims of consumerism and advertising run amok?

The pontiff certainly thinks so. In his 2015 encyclical “Laudato si,” a blazing indictment of capitalism, Pope Francis proclaimed, “Since the market tends to promote extreme consumerism in an effort to sell its products, people can easily get caught up in a whirlwind of needless buying and spending. Compulsive consumerism is one example of how the techno-economic paradigm affects individuals.”