The Human Person, Economics & Catholic Social Thought
Francis Cardinal George, OMIArchbishop of Chicago
Mary HirschfeldUniversity of Notre Dame
Jesus Fernandez-VillaverdeUniversity of Pennsylvania
Rachel E. KrantonDuke University
Russell HittingerLumen Christi Institute
“The current financial crisis can make us overlook the
fact that it originated in a profound human crisis:
the denial of the primacy of the human person!”
– Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium
The human person is a contested terrain. Within the fields of Economics and Catholic Social Thought, each maintain distinct conceptions of and emphases on the human person that impact their respective diagnoses of contemporary crises and proposed solutions. Drawing together economists, bishops and scholars, this symposium will explore fundamental convergences and divergences in the conception of the human person in Economics and Catholic Social Thought.
This program is part of the Lumen Christi Institute’s Sixth Annual Conference in Economics and Catholic Social Thought, a continuing exchange between research economists, bishops, and scholars.
Co-sponsored by the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought, The International House Global Voices Program, The Seng Foundation Program for Market-Based Programs and Catholic Values, & The Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts at the University of Notre Dame.
Francis Cardinal George, OMI (1937-2015) served as Archbishop of Chicago for seventeen years. A member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Cardinal George assumed a prominent position among U.S. Cardinals, serving as the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops from 2007 to 2010. He earned a PhD in Philosophy from Tulane University and a Doctorate of Sacred Theology from the Pontifical University Urbaniana in Rome. His other books include The Difference God Makes: A Catholic Vision of Fath, Communion and Culture and God in Action: How Faith in God Addresses the Challenges of the World.
Mary Hirschfeld is Associate Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. Dr. Hirschfeld holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard and a Ph.D. in Theology from the University of Notre Dame. She works at the boundary between both disciplines, specifically by developing an approach to economics that is grounded in the thought of Saint Thomas Aquinas, with applications to questions of consumption economics, economic justice, the common good, the nature of practical reason, and economic methodology. She is the author of Aquinas and the Market: Toward a Humane Economy (Harvard, 2018) and her writings on economics have been published in the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Economic Education, and History of Political Economy.
Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde is Professor of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. He serves as a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Penn’s Population Studies Center, and the Centre for Economic Policy Research. His research focuses primarily on the computation and estimation of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models. He is co-author ofMacroeconomics: A Dynamic Approach (Forthcoming from Princeton University Press).
Rachel E. Kranton is the James B. Duke Professor of Economics at Duke University and a Fellow of the Econometric Society. She was awarded a Chaire Blaise Pascal from the Paris School of Economics from 2011-2012 and has held fellowships at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Her research focuses on how institutions and the social setting affect economic outcomes. She is author of Identity Economics: How our Identities Affect our Work, Wages, and Well-Being.
Russell Hittinger is Senior Fellow at the Lumen Christi Institute, Research Professor Ordinarius in the School of Philosophy and Senior Fellow Institute for Human
Ecology at the Catholic University of America, and Professor Emeritus of Catholic Studies and Law at the University of Tulsa. He is also Ordinarius of the Pontifical Academy of the Social Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas. Hittinger is the author of many books, including A Critique of the New Natural Law Theory, The First Grace: Rediscovering Natural Law in a Post-Christian Age, Thomas Aquinas and the Rule of Law, and most recently Paper Wars: Catholic Social Doctrine and the Modern State (forthcoming).
