While addressing members of the International Association of Jesuit Business Schools, on ethics in business and advertising during a mass in Loyola, Spain, Vatican official Archbishop John Foley said the evils of advertising make people believe “having is more important than being.” Foley offered three principles to counter the temptations of advertising. – “being is better than having”; “each person must be treated with respect”; and “work for the common good.”
He commented or the moral dilemmas business people face each day while trying to weigh the importance of the business with the importance of family and individual. Foley wasn’t completely down on advertising saying it can provide “honest and ethically responsible competition which contributes to economic growth, to the possibility of choice, and to authentic human development, to wider knowledge, lower prices and, usually, to more jobs.”
