Blueprint for an Economic Revolution
Professor Robert Gahl, Associate Professor of Ethics at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome
With his third encyclical, Caritas in Veritate (“Charity in Truth”), released earlier this month, Pope Benedict XVI subverts and reverses the common understanding of “economy” as a parsimonious reduction in costs or a miserly (re)distribution of resources. For this counter-cultural Pope, “economy” is principally a question of charity, of love.
With his penetrating analysis of economic affairs, within the framework of human freedom and his recommendation that our activity be done out of love, often for free, and always in accord with the truth, Benedict surpasses the stale commonplaces of much current political debate between left and right, progressives and conservatives, communism and capitalism. Like the Gospels themselves, Benedict's message is revolutionary.
About the Speaker
Father Robert Gahl is an Associate Professor of Ethics at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome. He studied chemical engineering at Washington University. After studies in graduate philosophy at the University of Navarre, Spain, he finished his doctorate in Rome and did postdoctoral research at the University of Notre Dame. Fr. Gahl, was ordained to the priesthood by Pope John Paul II. He has published on natural law theory, sexual ethics, moral action, and the narrative structure of the moral life. Interviews and comments by Father Gahl have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The National Catholic Reporter as well as Fox News, CNN, CBS, BBC World, EWTN, and Vatican Radio.
Details
When: Wendesday, July 29, 2009, 7:30 - 8:45 AM
Where: Boston Private Bank, Ten Post Office Square