Theological Seminar.
Madrid, Monday, May 8
On Monday, May 8, with an intense day of work the Seminar of the International Theological Commission (“Towards an Economy for all”) began in Madrid, on the premises of the ESIC University. The day was a novel experience and a bit of a gamble, because it consisted of full day of conferences with six external speakers (entrepreneurs and academics), organized together with ESIC. They were called upon to illumine the theme from different angles and to offer participants insights and keys to the seminar work.
In the ESIC conference room, the participants traveled through the grand narratives that sustain the dominant (neo-liberal) economic model to the many signs of a deep and irreversible crisis in which the economy finds itself. The promise of growing prosperity that had underpinned the economy has been overturned by the growing evidence of injustice (with more and more people excluded and impoverished), accompanied by a dramatic threat to the planet (subjected to intensive resource exploitation and increasing pollution) and the growth of a troubling individualism.
Within this framework, speakers were required to offer the construct that is, the theories and concrete experiences that in different parts of the world are beginning to shape alternative economic models: from the management of the so-called commons (Giraud), to a different vision of doing business born of charisma (Hernando); from the need to give back to labor its primacy and dignity (Gasda) to the gamble of “open source” economies (Gomez Olmedo) and finally to the primacy of relationality (Madondo) and the indispensable role of ethics in an economy at the service of humanity, to each and all (Fernandez).
In the coming days the participants will work around these themes and from the work of the Theological Commissions
