MEDIA RELEASES

Dominican University’s Siena Center will open its spring lecture series on The Common Good with a program titled “The Common Good: Responsibility for the Public Square” on Wednesday, February 20 at 7:30 p.m. in the auditorium of the Priory Campus, 7200 W. Division Street, River Forest.

Albino Barrera, OP, professor of economics and theology at Providence College, will explore contemporary understandings of the common good, highlighting foundations drawn from Thomas Aquinas and Catholic social thought. He will reflect on how to take a stand on difficult social issues, a task essential for responsible action.

A Dominican friar, Barrera has written extensively on Catholic social doctrine. His books include Globalization and Economic Ethics: Distributive Justice in the Knowledge Economy (2007); Economic Compulsion and Christian Ethics (2005); God and the Evil of Scarcity: Moral Foundations of Economic Agency (2005); and Modern Catholic Social Documents and Political Economy (2001). He has published articles in numerous journals of economics, business, theology and law.

The Siena Center will continue its examination of The Common Good with a lecture by University of Notre Dame law professor Vincent Rougeau on Wednesday, March 12. The series is designed as a dialogue between the practical and the philosophical, relevant to the political decision-making of both leaders and ordinary citizens. The series tackles such questions as what do we mean by the common good, how do people of faith make political decisions and how can we make our political voices heard?

Admission for the lecture is $10. For more information on Dominican’s Siena Center, please call (708) 714-9105 or visit www.siena.dom.edu.

Dominican University established the Siena Center to engage the critical issues of church and society in the light of faith and scholarship. The center was named for St. Catherine of Siena, a 14th century laywoman who worked for the reform of the church and justice in the world. Her passionate devotion to the central issues of church and society inspires the work of the center in its schedule of lectures, symposia, workshops, retreats, research and seminars.