New Financial Horizons

Stories of businesses demonstrating their positive role and the possibility of being agents of transformative change.

The Economy of Communion involves a worldwide network of solidarity among some 800 firms that together constitute a vibrant business community based upon the values of sharing, caring and justice. Drawing on the experiences of an international sample of business and community leaders, particularly from the United States and Brazil, Lorna Gold explains the historical and philosophical origins of this fascinating global community.

"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."

"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."

"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."

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.