Episode # 25 - Technology, Modernity and the Wisdom of Catholic Tradition - with Sr Helen Alford OP

Al Roxburgh and Jenny Sinclair talk with Sr Helen Alford about her Damascus Road experience as an engineering student and how it led her to discover Catholic Social Teaching and subsequently to take orders as a Dominican nun.  Out of this intellectual vocation, she shares in easy-to-understand language the story of modernity and the changes it has brought to society and the church. She explores the meaning of human freedom, the exercise of personal choice and how this has given rise to the phenomenon of widespread loneliness. Addressing the significance of economics and its impact on society and relationships, she notices the beginnings of a reconstruction of economic thought centered around the flourishing of human beings. Echoing Pope Francis’s assertion that we’re not in an era of change but in a change of era, she says there are opportunities now for us to recognise that God uses “the little people” to change society for the common good.

Sr Helen Alford OP is Dean of Social Sciences at the Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas - known as the Angelicum - the Dominican Order’s centre of Thomist theology and philosophy in Rome. Last year she was appointed by Pope Francis as President of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences in the Vatican. Sr Helen teaches economic ethics, the history of technology, labour politics, and Catholic social thought. Originally from London, Sr Helen is a sister of the Dominican Sisters of Saint Catherine of Siena of Newcastle, Natal. She is the author of numerous publications on management theory and corporate social responsibility and has been an advisor to Blueprint for a Better Business since 2012.

- Links -

For Alan J Roxburgh:

http://alanroxburgh.com/about

https://www.themissionalnetwork.com/author/alan-roxburgh/

https://journalofmissionalpractice.com/alan-roxburgh

Twitter: https://twitter.com/alanjroxburgh?lang=en

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alan.roxburgh.127/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecommonsnetwork

Joining God in the Great Unraveling https://www.amazon.ca/Joining-God-Great-Unraveling-Learned/dp/1725288508/ref=sr_1_

Leadership, God’s Agency and Disruptions https://www.amazon.ca/Leadership-Gods-Agency-Disruptions-Confronting/dp/1725271745/ref

Joining God, Remaking Church, Changing the World: The New Shape of the Church in Our Time https://www.amazon.ca/Joining-Remaking-Church-Changing-World/dp/0819232114/ref=sr_1_3?crid=2NHGW8KB7L0SQ&keywords=Alan+J+Roxburgh&qid=1687098960&s=books&sprefix=alan+j+roxburgh%2Cstripbooks%2C130&sr=1-3

For Jenny Sinclair:

Website: www.togetherforthecommongood.co.uk/from-jenny-sinclair

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenny-sinclair-0589783b/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/T4CG

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TogetherForTheCommonGoodUK

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/t4cg_insta/

For Sr Helen Alford:

www.pass.va/en/academicians/ordinary/alford.html

www.globalsistersreport.org/news/catholic-social-teaching-has-values-world-needs-dominican-says

www.togetherforthecommongood.co.uk/leading-thinkers/social-justice-and-evangelisation

www.togetherforthecommongood.co.uk/news/lincoln-lecture-series

www.blueprintforbusiness.org/blogs/common-good-presentation/

www.blueprintforbusiness.org/podcasts/

www.op.org/sr-helen-alford-op-idi-interview/

www.gov.uk/government/case-studies/holy-see-the-moral-dimension-of-work