Theology of Clothing

  

It’s how most of us begin our morning: we put on clothes. We dress for work or school before a closet of choices, colors, and labels. Clothes can be our most intimate possesions, but we know so little about them. Where did they come from? Who made them?

 

We sometimes have deeper relationships with things than with the people who make them. In our globalized economy, our consumption of goods brings us into invisible relationships with people around the world. Yet, the marketplace hides these connections and the consequences of our consuming choices. As a result, we have become unwitting participants of what Pope Francis called the 'globalization of indifference,' which  "makes us all ‘unnamed’, responsible, yet nameless and faceless." 

 

The Joy of the Gospel (Evangelii Gaudium) exposes the globalization of indifference in a throw-away culture of mass consumerism. Pope Francis makes the connection between “slave labor,” such as of those working in the garment industry, and our own lifestyle of prosperity which continues, in part, because we can buy cheap clothing:

 

"Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, … as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own. The culture of prosperity deadens us; we are thrilled if the market offers us something new to purchase. In the meantime all those lives stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to move us.” (Evangelii Gaudium, #54.)

 

As baptized members of the body of Christ, we are called to enter into solidarity with one another, or to be “clothed with compassion” (Col. 3:12). Saint Pope John Paul II declared:

 

“Solidarity helps us see the ‘other’…not just as some kind of instrument, with a work capacity and physical strength to be exploited at low cost and then discarded when no longer useful, but as ‘our neighbor,’ a ‘helper’ to be made a sharer, on a par with ourselves, in the banquet of life to which all are equally invited by God.” (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 39). 

 

The Gospel challenges us to overcome moral blindness and to open our eyes to the needs of others: "Lord, when did we see you naked?" When the Good Samaritan saw the victim lying by the side of the road to Jericho, he did not remain indifferent. "His heart was moved with compassion," and he began to do something about the plight of that person: he committed himself to change the victim’s situation. As market relations dominate ever-more dimensions of life, we are morally bound to remove the scales from our eyes to see the faces of and "be neighbor to" the suffering brothers and sisters who work and sweat for us so we can put on the clothes they produce.

 

Catholic Social Teaching began with Pope Leo XIII’s concern about the exploitation of workers in Europe (Rerun Novarum). Its concerns are still valid today. We are called to reclaim Catholic

Social Teaching in a way that contributes to a revitalized Catholicism in action. If we are to be "clothed with compassion," we can no longer act as if we've clothed ourselves. As members of the Body of Christ, we are called to be in communion with all people of the world. The best way we can say "Amen" to those who produce our clothing is to work to make their living situation better. By doing so, all will know we are Christians in the ways we try to love these neighbors as ourselves. Wouldn’t we want them to do the same if we were in their shoes?