Parents are damaging their children by showering them with presents, the Archbishop of Westminster says.

Children need security and love, not “huge amounts of money”, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the spiritual leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, has told The Times in an interview published today.

The recession was a wake-up call to a Britain that had become a “me, me” society addicted to consumerism and fuelled by debt. The Archbishop also said that shopping tended to fill a void. “If you have one car, you need two. Everyone wants the latest trainers and clothes.”

He added: “It is awful to go to a house and see in a corner hundreds of unused toys. It’s so profligate.”

The Archbishop suggested that the economic downturn could offer the advantage of helping people to reassess their priorities, leading to a new moral strength. “One feels very sorry for those losing their jobs but in times of recession people have to rely on friends and neighbours and families and things that really matter to them. That may be a good thing.

“I think people did lose their way a bit. It has been difficult to bring up children with the kind of values we want.”

Although the recession was not a punishment of God it was a consequence of living a certain way of life, he said. “If you live a life that is consumed by overindulgence and greed, you eventually pay a price.”

He said that the economic downturn meant the end of a “certain kind of selfish capitalism” and must lead to more regulation in the City and a new sense of morality in the country. The banks, he said, were trying to make profits “but in ways that were rash and they thought they could continue without querying their excesses”.