February 17, 2026
Poverty and economic exclusion are not failures of God or fate, but failures of human responsibility. Businesses, markets, and public life must be shaped by moral obligation, not profit alone.
That was the message from Rev. Albino Barrera, O.P., STL, Ph.D., Professor, Economics and Theology, Providence College, during his lecture, “Business, Economic Life, and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition.” Fr. Barrera was the fourth speaker in the 2025–26 Vincentian Chair of Social Justice Lecture Series, and his talk, held February 9 in the D’Angelo Center on St. John’s University’s Queens, NY, campus, continued the series theme, “The Catholic Intellectual Tradition.”
Fr. Barrera referenced the passage in Matthew’s Gospel that essentially states that God will provide. “It’s very difficult to take this particular passage at face value,” he observed, positing how one explains it to a mother trying to feed her family, a family facing eviction, or an unhoused person. “The poverty that we witness reflects human, rather than divine, failure,” he noted. “We do not live up to our divinely ordained economic obligations. We are averse to them. We fail to live up to our responsibilities because we do not appreciate how these are, in fact, stepping-stones to reaping for ourselves the gift of divine providence that even now are already available for us for the taking.”
He added, “We are wary of taking on obligations because they demand our attention, time, and resources, and take us away from our own bigger life projects.”
People, communities, and nations have been walking away from their obligations precisely when living up to them is most needed, Fr. Barrera explained, noting that the Scriptures demonstrate that healthy communities are built through economic obligations. He said that the Hebrew bible stressed debt forgiveness, freeing enslaved people, land restoration, prohibitions on charging interest, and leaving crops for the poor to gather.
“It is Deuteronomy who assures us that there will be no poor among them if only they heed and treat one another with care, and treat each other as equals,” Fr. Barrera said. “This is the promise given to the chosen people.”
He added, “Failure to live up to obligations degrades and ultimately ruins communities, as in the case of the divided kingdoms of biblical Israel and Judah.”
The crisis of the chosen people was not due to a “stingy divine providence,” Fr. Barrera stressed, but due to biblical Israel’s failures.
Fr. Barrera noted that a tension between profit-driven business culture and moral responsibility has always existed. The marketplace, he offered, by design, is geared toward attaining allocative efficiency, growth, and stability.
“In contrast to the marketplace, extra market mechanisms are the primary venues by which we can pursue equity, harmony, and sustainability,” he said. “We need extra market mechanisms for this.”
Moral excellence is how we communicate and reflect the goodness and perfection of God to all creation, Fr. Barrera explained. “Through moral excellence, we properly use our reason and freedom. You can see how economic obligations fit in within this moral excellence. You can’t really have moral excellence without having lived up to your moral obligations.”
Fr. Barrera noted that when companies ignore the harm they cause, notably pollution, society pays the price. Moral responsibility means accounting for those costs before regulators have to step in.
“In living up to our moral obligations, we are essentially communicating and reflecting to the rest of creation that element of God’s goodness and perfection that we embody in our creation, in our being, and in our moral excellence,” he said. If God provides through people, then business decisions, public policy, and everyday economic choices become moral acts.
Reflecting on Fr. Barrera’s lecture, junior Liam Bolobanic, a theology major, said, “Platforming Fr. Barrera and other speakers like this really helps St. John’s emphasize its Vincentian mission and how it pertains to the Catholic identity. It really demonstrates for myself and other attendees the richness of the Catholic intellectual tradition.”
“Fr. Barrera began his presentation with the foundational affirmation that God provides for us through each other,” noted Rev. Patrick J. Griffin, C.M. ’13HON, Executive Director, Vincentian Center for Church and Society. “With that powerful statement, he spoke on how people live up to their moral duties through regard for the blessings of the earth and the care of one another.
“He spoke clearly and forcefully of the need for a just approach to economics as one follows the Catholic Intellectual Tradition. Offering a clear counterargument that the only purpose of economics is profit, he stressed that economic obligations are building blocks for friendship with God.”