Soon after moving to central Minnesota in the summer of 2011, I visited one of the region’s landmarks, the Mall of America: a four-million-square-foot collection of more than five hundred stores that includes an amusement park, a hotel, and twelve thousand parking spaces. As I roamed the mall’s crowded corridors, a set of half-forgotten phrases crashed around in my mind. I vaguely recalled that they came from something Pope John Paul II had said or written, but I couldn’t remember the precise source. Once home, I found the passage I had in mind. It could hardly have been more appropriate to the occasion:

The mere accumulation of goods and services, even for the benefit of the majority, is not enough for the realization of...