the middle class

"At one time the middle class style of life had its virtues and served a purpose.  It was always threatened and it was also always a potential danger because it allied itself with human e=weakness and ran the risk that the possessions man hoarded, and which he needed for his task and mission, would end by mastering him.  This was his particular form of numbness and hardening; the sense of duty died out and what remained was middle class gluttony, idleness, comfort, ease and all that went with material possessions.  Dividends, stock, shares, bank balances -- these were the symbols of respectability, the ideals men strived for.  There arose a type of man to whose hearts one might almost say God himself could find no access, because they were so hedged around with security and insurance.  This type still flourishes.  It laid down the lines on which our present progress is developing.  The type has not been overcome because all the counter-movements have failed to negative the type -- they merely object to the exclusion of sections of humanity from the type.  Most modern movements set off with the object of enabling their adherents to live in the best possible material style.  And even where the times and the spiritual connections have here and there carried the movements on they have still clung to the old middle class mould in middle class imperialism." (p. 173)

 - Fr. Alfred Delp SJ, “The Prison Meditations of Father Alfred Delp”, 1963 Herder and Herder New York
See also: The Prison Meditations of Father Delp