Economy, Community, and Moral Theology

Wednesday, October 11, 2023 8:00 am EST

Today the Ethics at Work Crew chats with Fr. Gilbrian Stoy, C.S.C.’13, ’19 MDiv. Fr. Gil has a variety of interests: economy, technology, ecology, and communion theology. Interestingly, Fr. Gil tells us that communion and community should be at the forefront of the way we think about economy.

In today’s episode, we set the scene for understanding community through the lens of The Road by Cormac McCarthy to begin to unpack how economy involves relationships and meaning. This book gives us an image of communion, which structures everything about the Christian faith. Fr. Gil views the economy as a means for relationships. He pushes us to see each other at the ends of economic exchange and invites us to remember our relationships and human dignity in these exchanges. Looking at the messy human relationships across economic communities, Fr. Gil highlights how technology obscures the relationships that drive the economy. He reminds us that the common good can only be achieved in the collective, so setting up communities of virtue require relationships and common deliberation. Justice starts with an internal disposition of charity toward the other met by systems that enable the common deliberation. Just technologies encourage us to see each other more clearly and to act with charity towards each other.

Fr. Gilbrian Stoy, C.S.C., is Holy Cross Priest and doctoral student in Moral Theology in the School of Theology and Religious Studies at The Catholic University of America. His research interests focus on the intersection of economics, ecology, and ethics. He has received both a B.S. and MDiv from the University of Notre Dame, as well as an MST in Christian Ethics from the University of Oxford.

We invite you to consider with us the social concerns at the heart of economic exchange and to consider the people inside and across our economic endeavors.

The Ethics at Work Podcast is edited and produced by Nat Todaro and Megan Levis.