Faith broadens reason and the virtue of poverty key to Christian life

NEW YORK (CNS) — Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete told a recent gathering at Columbia University that faith broadens reason, making “it more powerful, wider in scope and, in fact, stronger in courage.” “This ‘broadening of reason’ achieves its highest expression in what (Msgr. Luigi) Giussani called ‘the virtue of poverty.’ And this is the proposal we make to the world, to people concerned about economic justice,” the New York priest said in a talk on “Faith & Money: Do They Add Up?” But “the virtue of poverty doesn’t create a bunch of idealists running around,” he said. “If we know history, (we know) people who had been called to a life of poverty … created the great institutions of Western civilization — hospitals, universities, works for the poor, refuges, schools.” Msgr. Giussani, to whom Msgr. Albacete referred, is the late Italian clergyman who founded the Catholic lay movement Communion and Liberation in 1954. A theologian and an author, Msgr. Albacete is the national director of the Communion and Liberation movement in the U.S.