New Financial Horizons

Reviews

“Gold examines the origins and substance of a promising alternative to the current globalized economy. During a 1991 trip to Brazil, Chiara Lubich challenged Focolare members to launch businesses that could create jobs and opportunities. Almost twenty years later, Benedict XVI cited the Economy of Communion in Caritas in Veritate as a promising form of intermediate activity between for-profit business and classic non-profit institutions.”

John L. Allen Jr.

“What Gold has provided … is a theologically grounded understanding of a robust culture that has the capacity to engage the whole human person as a unity to overcome the divisive effects of a fragmented and divided self in economic life. It not only tells the story of the Economy of Communion, but it provides a model for entrepreneurs and managers who are interested in building communities of work and not merely nexuses of exchange. It is a book that should be widely read in the U.S., especially in the academy, which too often lacks such integrative and interdisciplinary analysis between theoretical visions and practical experience.”

Michael J. Naughton,
Moss Chair of Catholic Social Thought, University of St. Thomas, MN

“Rather than merely describing, praising, or criticizing, it sets out to answer questions such as, Is the EOC a new model of the firm? Is it a workable model? Can it guide us in the current debate on how to overcome the models based on self-interest? New Financial Horizons is a very readable book that will interest many educated readers, even those who have no specialized knowledge of economics, theology, or business ethics. All the information they need in order to understand the history and messages of the EOC is provided.”

Antonio Argandoña,
IESE Business School, University of Navarra, Spain in Journal of Markets & Morality, Vol 14, No.1 (2011)

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Gold [describes] the challenges faced by the world at the dawn of our new millennium as a nexus of crises: economic recession, social inequality, environmental threat, and political instability … Gold traces their problems to the assumption that a human being is best described as homo oeconomicus. This positing of “rational economic man” at the core of human existence marks a definitional exclusion of trust and relationality, making it difficult to imagine an alternative reality … Gold reclaims ways of imagining human existence that do not assume self-interested rational choice at their core, taking Focolare and its EoC networks – launched in Brazil in 1991 but now spread around the world – as her primary example … One need not subscribe to the movement’s social trinitarianism in order to see such work as vitally important.

Brett McCarty,
The Living Church

About the Author

Lorna Gold currently works as Policy and Advocacy Manager with the Irish Catholic Agency for International Development, Trócaire. Before joining Trócaire, she received a Ph.D. in Economic Geography from the University of Glasgow and worked in the Department of Politics in the University of York. She writes extensively on global economic and social development, with a particular focus on the contribution of Christian social thought in addressing the challenges of ethical globalization.