God in Things and People: Commodity Fetishism and the Eucharist

12:00 PM ET Wed., Jul. 10, 2024

In 2022, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) announced that the Church in this country would undertake a Eucharistic Revival, as a way to bolster Catholics’ belief in the real presence of Christ–body, blood, soul, and divinity–in the Eucharist. This Eucharistic Revival will culminate in a nationwide pilgrimage to the city of Indianapolis in July 2024. In the months leading up to this pilgrimage, the McGrath Institute for Church Life is contributing to this revival by underscoring the intrinsic connection between the Eucharist and Catholic social teaching.

Why are we concerned about the link between Eucharistic devotion among Catholics and our commitment to social justice? Because the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that “the Eucharist commits us to the poor” (CCC, n. 1397). Because Pope Benedict XVI declared in his encyclical Deus Caritas Est that “A Eucharist which does not pass over into the concrete practice of love is intrinsically fragmented” (Deus Caritas Est, n.14. ). And because we have it on good authority that whenever we feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, shelter the homeless, welcome the stranger, we encounter Christ, Who assures that whatever you have done to the least among you, you do for me (cf. Matthew 25:31-46). Thus our devotion to the Body of Christ in the Eucharist must be accompanied by our equally fervent devotion to serve the entire human family, especially the poor and those who are in any way oppressed.

This theme will be taken up by the Office of Life and Human Dignity at the McGrath Institute for Church Life in an eight-part series of The Eucharist and Catholic Social Teaching. One of the pathologies that produce poverty in the current economic system is the simultaneous deification of things and reification of people: we invest divinity in material things, while people are treated as instruments toward profit. In this final session of the series, William T. Cavanaugh explores the Eucharist as an antidote to this idolatry. The Eucharist provides a better, sacramental way of seeing God’s presence in the material world, while simultaneously offering an identification of people, especially the poor, with God in Christ.

Speakers:
William T. Cavanaugh, Ph.D., Professor of Catholic Studies and Director of the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology at DePaul University

Jenny Newsome Martin, Ph.D., Department of Theology, University of Notre Dame

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In a rich and provocative lecture, Dr. William T. Cavanaugh delivered a profound theological response to the spiritual distortions of modern capitalism, exploring how Christian sacramental imagination can rehumanize both people and material things. Drawing on Karl Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism, biblical critiques of idolatry, and the Catholic tradition, Cavanaugh exposed how capitalist economies animate inanimate things while rendering real human labor invisible. In such a system, things become gods—smiling Amazon boxes, brand mascots, and lifestyle aesthetics—while people, especially the poor and exploited, are reduced to expendable components.

But Cavanaugh does not stop at critique. Instead, he turns to the Eucharist—the central act of Christian worship—as a radical counter-practice. Far from being an escape from material concerns, the Eucharist is, he argues, a deeply material and communal participation in the divine. The bread and wine become the body of Christ, not to glorify things, but to reveal God’s presence in and through creation. This sacramental worldview doesn’t idolize matter but elevates it, orienting it toward love, community, and God.

He draws heavily from Catholic Social Teaching, especially the writings of Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis, to show that the deification of commodities is not simply bad economics—it’s idolatry. And this idolatry has a cost: discarded workers, poisoned rivers, and a culture of spiritual loneliness masked by consumption. Cavanaugh emphasizes that Pope Francis’s idea of “integral ecology”—which binds environmental care to human dignity—is inseparable from Eucharistic practice. Practices like Sabbath rest, Eucharistic contemplation, and shared table fellowship help reweave the frayed bonds between God, people, and the earth.

The Eucharist, then, is not merely a ritual—it is a reordering of desire, a space where exploitative systems are interrupted and replaced with gift, reverence, and recognition. For St. Paul, this meant including the hungry in the communal meal. For today’s Church, it means refusing to separate adoration from justice, or prayer from solidarity. In Cavanaugh’s vision, Eucharist is both mystery and mission—uniting heaven and earth, body and spirit, the altar and the marketplace.

1. Commodities as Deified Things | [00:04:00 → 00:06:00]
Capitalism doesn’t just celebrate material things—it spiritualizes them. Cavanaugh highlighted Marx’s insight that commodities seem to possess power and agency, hiding the labor behind them. This resembles religious idolatry, where people unknowingly worship the work of their own hands.

2. The Inversion: People Become Things | [00:08:00 → 00:09:00]
Through examples like Amazon’s labor practices, Cavanaugh illustrated how workers are turned into objects—monitored, overworked, and rendered invisible. This reification of persons is the dark mirror of commodity fetishism.

3. The Eucharist as Counter-Economy | [00:25:00 → 00:31:00]
Rather than removing God from matter, the Eucharist inserts God into creation. Bread and wine become sites of divine presence—not idols, but sacraments. They reframe material goods as gifts meant for communion, not consumption.

4. Eucharist vs. Consumerism | [00:30:00 → 00:32:00]
Francis’s term “integral ecology” insists that you can’t care for nature without caring for people. Cavanaugh connected this to Sabbath rest and Eucharistic worship: practices that break the rhythm of consumerism and root us in community.

5. From Exploitation to Participation | [00:34:00 → 00:38:00]
In Paul’s theology, to receive the Eucharist is to be transformed into the Body of Christ—a community where “the weakest members are indispensable.” Eucharist becomes an economy of gift, not of domination.

Sacramental Materiality: “The Eucharist… is simultaneously transcendent and deeply implicated in the material world.”
— William T. Cavanaugh [00:02:40 → 00:02:50]

Misunderstood Marxism: “We misunderstand Marx’s idea of commodity fetishism if we think it’s materialism. For Marx, it’s the opposite of materialism.”
— William T. Cavanaugh [00:04:30 → 00:05:00]

Commodity Illusion: “The commodity is dematerialized by the market… a very strange thing abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.”
— Karl Marx via William T. Cavanaugh [00:05:55 → 00:06:10]

Labor as Discarded: “Commodities… appear as the purchasers of persons… the conversion of things into persons and the conversion of persons into things.”
— William T. Cavanaugh [00:08:00 → 00:08:15]

Economic Sacrifice: “The economic model which is idolatrous… needs to sacrifice human lives on the altar of money and profit.”
— Pope Francis via William T. Cavanaugh [00:18:45 → 00:19:00]

Divine in Matter: “The word who became flesh imbues matter with a saving potential which is fully manifest in the sacraments.”
— Pope John Paul II via William T. Cavanaugh [00:26:00 → 00:26:30]

Presence in Poverty: “Christ becomes vulnerable in both the bodies of the poor and in the humble form of bread and wine.”
— William T. Cavanaugh [00:39:00 → 00:39:30]

Communal Transformation: “Eating it means worshiping it… so that my ‘I’ is transformed and opens up into the great ‘we’.”
— Joseph Ratzinger via William T. Cavanaugh [00:40:45 → 00:41:00]

Liturgical Resistance: “The Eucharist de-centers and undeifies commodities, restoring both material creation and human persons to sacraments of God’s presence.”
— William T. Cavanaugh [00:42:00 → 00:43:00]

Exploitative Systems: “Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor.”
— Karl Marx via Michael Baxter [00:45:25 → 00:45:35]

Spiritual Emptiness: “Commodities become zombie-like—undead, no longer alive, yet still walking around with power.”
— Michael Baxter [00:46:30 → 00:46:45]

Justice and Beauty: “As Charles Péguy reminds us, beauty must not be separated from justice. The Eucharist must lead us to the poor.”
— Michael Baxter [00:49:10 → 00:49:35]

Liturgical Consequences: “If the Eucharist is truly the Body of Christ, what are the consequences for how we structure our economy, our politics, and our lives?”
— Michael Baxter [00:50:20 → 00:50:45]

God in Things and People: Commodity Fetishism and the Eucharist

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