2/An Interview with Sister Alessandra Smerilli, Professor at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart
On the sidelines of the first conference-seminar of the series “Dialogues for the Family,” promoted by the Pontifical Council for the Family, which was held on Wednesday, April 17th, on the topic “The Family: the first enterprise,” in collaboration with the Union of Italian Catholic Jurists and in the presence of a large audience, Emanuela Bambara took an interview with the speakers exclusively for our Dicastery.
Sister Alessandra Smerilli, economist, professor at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart
Question: The family is an enterprise, not only in the sense of simple economics, of an entity that produces and consumes goods, but as a complex organization, guided by an economy of gratuitousness and communion, in which the law of love predominates over everything else. How can it be an economic model on a large scale?
Answer: The family is a complex organization, in the center of an economic system that sees civil society, as an expression of communion and gratuitousness, its motive. The family is an enterprise, an economic complex that not only consumes and saves; it also produces, and not only material goods but also intangible capital, such as children and education, and education for cooperation. This is one way in which the family contributes to the development of the economic system. Also the activity of care within the family is a way to contribute, sometimes even to replace the work that the state should do to contribute to the common good. The next Social Week of Italian Catholics will talk about the family as the future and hope of Italian society, as a source, and as an economic resource, which is perhaps difficult to assess for what it really is.
Question: How can the family be a model for the national government and transnational ruler?
Answer: , that bases its development on these values and not on personal interests.
The video of the interview with Sister Alessandra Smerilli.If the law that governs the relationships within the family is, in fact, the law of gratuity and reciprocity, the production of relational goods as well as social and civic capital, of values such as cooperation and trust, which are the basis of economic development, then the family is a model for a healthy economy, for a good economy that bases its development on these bases and not on a personal interest.
The video of the interview with Sister Alessandra Smerilli.
