Bishop Barron on fraud as a violation of Catholic social teaching and the common good
Matthew Petrusek interviews Bishop Robert Barron on the Word on Fire Show about the epidemic of government fraud in the United States.
Summary
Matthew Petrusek and Bishop Robert Barron discuss the epidemic of fraud in the United States, with particular focus on Minnesota, where up to $9 billion may have been lost across 14 state-run social programs. Bishop Barron grounds the moral case against fraud in the Seventh Commandment and natural law, arguing that theft from public coffers is not a victimless crime but a direct violation of the preferential option for the poor. He connects the scale of institutional fraud to a broader moral and spiritual drift in American society, arguing that declining church attendance has eroded the shared moral framework that once constrained such behavior. He also outlines the Catholic social thought "third way" between libertarianism and socialism, and pushes back against arguments that fraud prosecution is either partisan politics or unfair to the economically disadvantaged. The episode concludes with a listener question from Eli Isaac of Bradenton, Florida, asking what advice Bishop Barron would give to young people heading off to college; Bishop Barron's primary counsel is to stay close to the Church and remain connected to God and the great moral sources.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction and Bishop Barron's recent travels
Matthew Petrusek: Welcome back to the Word on Fire Show. I'm Matthew Petrusek, Senior Director of the Word on Fire Institute and the host of the Word on Fire Show. Thank you for joining us. One of the biggest political stories of this year can be summed up in one word: fraud. Minnesota, where we are recording this show right now, has been an epicenter of the systematic theft of public dollars. But this is not only a problem for us — it's a national epidemic. From California to New York, Arizona to Florida, and even Texas, the US Government Accountability Office estimates that American taxpayers lose between — get this — $233 billion up to $521 billion to fraud a year. On the high end, that is almost double the annual budget of New York State and more than the entire yearly GDP of the country of Denmark. The sheer scope of this swindle is bad enough. The fact that so much of it is taken from those who need the funds the most — through the defrauding of Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs meant to support vulnerable people — makes the issue a national crisis. So how should we respond to this scourge of dishonesty from the standpoint of Catholic social thought? Why is fraud such a grave injustice, especially in its effects on the common good? What does the Bible say about taking what does not rightly belong to you? Here to offer a distinctively Catholic account on why the plundering of the public coffers is one of the greatest social injustices of our time is Bishop Robert Barron.
Welcome back to the studio, Bishop.
Bishop Barron: Thank you, man. Always good to see you. Today we're talking about an unfortunate but also necessary topic — the epidemic of fraud in our country, including, or I should say especially, our home state of Minnesota. But before we get into that, what have you been up to recently?
Matthew Petrusek: Well, this past summer you took two big trips out to the western part of your diocese. So your diocese stretches from Wisconsin to South Dakota, all across the southern part of Minnesota. Some of your diocese is way out by the South Dakota border.
Bishop Barron: Yes, some of these great little towns, and there are some beautiful churches out that way. I've been now to all but three or four of my parishes — we've got 88. It was just a wonderful swing. I went out there and spent a couple of nights in rectories way out west. I often think about my predecessors. Our diocese has had the same configuration since its founding in 1889. So back around the year 1900, the bishop must have gotten on a train or a stagecoach — I don't know what he did — and spent time out there, maybe weeks at a time, confirming kids and all that. I go out and spend maybe a couple of nights in different rectories and do different things — liturgies, confirmation. It was a joy.
Matthew Petrusek: Well, that's remarkable continuity — the same configuration for 137 years. That's amazing. Well, sticking in Minnesota, let's turn to our topic today: the epidemic of fraud in our country and why it undermines the common good.
The scale of fraud and its moral dimensions
To frame our discussion, I want to start with some shocking figures. According to the federal government's own estimates, we lose as a nation between $233 billion and $521 billion per year to fraud. A significant portion of that figure — an estimated $100 billion — is money lost to fraudulent healthcare billing in federal Medicaid and Medicare programs. In Minnesota alone, a federal US attorney has estimated that up to $9 billion may have been lost to fraud across 14 state-run social programs, including the now infamous Feeding Our Future program. It's easy to lose perspective with numbers at this scale. At the high end of the federal estimate, we are losing more money to fraud per year than the entire annual GDP of Vietnam, the Philippines, Colombia, and Denmark respectively. That's a lot of stealing. What's your general reaction to that?
Bishop Barron: It's shock. But when you see it laid out like that, the sheer volume is staggering. And then you wonder what makes that possible. How could larceny at that scale be possible unless there's really massive institutional buy-in that allows this to happen?
Matthew Petrusek: You've been following the culture for a long time as an evangelist. What are some currents that you've detected that might make this kind of mass fraud possible?
Bishop Barron: Maybe it's this moral drift that we've talked about a lot. Maybe it's moral relativism — a loss of a sense of the sacred. I would argue, of course, that morality is ultimately grounded in God. God is the ultimate anchor of the moral system. So if I don't believe in God anymore, or I've drifted away from church, and I never hear the stories of the gospel, never hear about the Ten Commandments — things that people in my generation would have still taken for granted, that everyone in the culture would have had exposure to the Ten Commandments, would know the great parables of Jesus — well, not so much anymore. Now we're fully 25, maybe as much as 30% unaffiliated. That has consequences. One of them would be moral drift, moral relativism, indifferentism. If I can get away with it, why not? If you're still haunted by the Ten Commandments and by the parables and by the Beatitudes, you might not be as willing to say, "Well, yeah, take whatever I can get." But if you rip the flowers out of that ground of the spiritual and the moral, well then why not get what you can?
Matthew Petrusek: Such a powerful metaphor. Well, let's look at the moral issue beneath the headline, getting into moral theology and the Bible as well. Now, it's important to keep in mind that by definition, when we're speaking about fraud, it doesn't just happen — it's a willful act committed by individuals and groups. So let's start there, Bishop. What specific law, moral principle, or commandment is being violated by the problem of fraud?
Bishop Barron: The Seventh Commandment — thou shalt not steal. Thomas Aquinas says, and Moses Maimonides said it before him, that the Ten Commandments are the basic instantiations of the natural law — what C.S. Lewis called the Tao, this basic moral sensibility that everyone has, really around the world. The Ten Commandments give expression to that. So it's universally accepted that stealing what doesn't belong to you is a violation of justice. If justice is rendering to each his due, well, obviously that's not rendering to each his due if you're stealing from him. It violates that basic commandment, which is an expression of justice and which is a foundation for a coherent society. Can you have a real society if we're all stealing from each other all the time?
Matthew Petrusek: No — the society will collapse. Is that what gives an explanation for why theft is among the Ten Commandments?
Bishop Barron: Well, I think so. It's wrong in itself because it's an act of deep injustice, but it has enormous societal implications, and that's a very interesting thing. You could look at all the Ten Commandments under that rubric of how they are guarding certain elements within a society. For example, "Honor your mother and father" — well, if you jettison authority, a society will fall apart. "Don't commit adultery" — if this basic fundamental relationship of marriage and family is undermined, the society is threatened. "Don't kill" — well, if we're just killing each other wantonly, we can't possibly live in society. "Don't steal" — same thing. "Don't covet" — all of them have enormous societal implications. And this is a good example of how Commandment Number Seven, when it's violated institutionally, gives us some serious societal problems.
Matthew Petrusek: From a natural law and biblical perspective, does it matter morally speaking if the theft is taking place from the public coffers versus one individual stealing from another?
Bishop Barron: No. Maybe it feels different. If you walk into a bank with a gun and say, "Give me money" — okay. But let's say through a fraudulent act you are gradually stealing the same amount of money from an institution. There really isn't a moral difference. It might feel better to you because it's less visceral, but no, it's the same kind of thing. Someone just gradually stealing lots of money from a charity or from something — no, it's the same crime. It's taking something which is not yours, which is a violation of justice. Justice is rendering to each what is due. So it's the same moral issue.
Matthew Petrusek: Relatedly, some treat the problem of fraud as a white-collar crime or even a victimless crime because it's nobody's money in particular. Do you think that captures the gravity of what's taking place?
Bishop Barron: Maybe white collar, but certainly not victimless. If you see it as stealing on that massive scale, well, whom are you stealing from? Ultimately taxpayers who have given this money out of a sense of justice — that's why we pay taxes. It's a form of rendering to people what's due to them, distributive justice and so on. If I'm stealing from the coffers of the state, that's a deep violation of justice. It might be white collar, but it's not victimless because you're taking it from those who are owed that money. And as a Catholic bishop — we've been committed for a long time to the preferential option for the poor — you're taking it from the poor. It might not feel as viscerally real to you, but it's robbing from those who are in great need.
Matthew Petrusek: You made a post on this on X some time ago, connecting the problem of fraud to social justice — which is unique. You often don't see that connection made. Say a little bit more about why you made that connection.
Bishop Barron: I think because we tend to see fraud as something more antiseptic. There are the immediate violations of social justice — harming the poor in different ways — but this is more indirect, maybe more antiseptic, yet it's just as real a violation against the poor. I wanted to bring it onto the radar screen, onto the table for consideration under this rubric of social justice, which we've been concerned about for a long time. When we're looking at the preferential option for the poor, often we think about that in terms of things we should do to give the poor more and certain kinds of programs. How does fraud prevention actually relate to that preferential option?
Well, because a lot of this money is designed to go to help people — to lift them up and give them economic opportunities and otherwise. So if I'm stealing in massive quantities, I'm stealing precisely from the people who need it the most. There's a legitimate redistribution of wealth within society — we call it taxation. You don't want to go to the extreme of a communist system of redistribution of wealth, but there's a legitimate form within a capitalist and democratic framework. So when you start exploiting that, and you're taking money that's meant to be distributed to those who need it — that's a high crime.
Matthew Petrusek: What does the Bible say about stealing from the poor in particular?
Bishop Barron: A lot. The Bible, going back to the Hebrew prophets, is very sensitive to how wealthy and powerful people use their power to exploit the poor. The Bible would know about ways we exploit a system to our own advantage — putting weights on the scales, and that sort of thing. It's in a different economic framework, but the same idea: you're fixing and manipulating the system for your own advantage. That's what we're dealing with here — powerful people gaming the system so as to advantage themselves. That's a biblical sort of crime that cries to heaven.
Matthew Petrusek: What does it mean when it "cries to heaven"? That's part of the specific charge against stealing from the poor.
Bishop Barron: That it's something deeply offensive to God, and that God wants to redress it — that he fills his prophets with an indignation about it. I think we need more of that in the church today.
Complicity, oversight, and institutional moral failure
Matthew Petrusek: From a Catholic social thought perspective, we can look at the sin of commission of those who are actually committing the fraud. But what about those who are either allowing it to take place, or those who are simply not being curious enough? Is there moral responsibility there as well?
Bishop Barron: Well, yes. I don't know the details because I'm not involved in the inner workings of government, but when you see fraud on this kind of scale, your mouth is agape. How is this possible unless a lot of people are asleep at the stick? That's to put it mildly, or to put it benignly. Or there are people who are kind of actively looking the other way, or people who are not doing their job of oversight. That's why, when this was being exposed last winter up here in Minnesota, you'd wonder — who wasn't doing his job when some young journalist comes from the outside and just casually reveals corruption after corruption? Isn't there someone who had oversight of this and should have been checking on a regular basis? So yes, you do wonder who dropped the ball, and to what degree it was done out of negligence or out of willfulness. But there was certainly massive moral failure.
Matthew Petrusek: As you know, one way this is being framed politically is as a managerial oversight — a managerial failure. But you're highlighting that there's a deep moral dimension here as well.
Bishop Barron: There might have been a managerial element to it, but no, it reaches the moral level because it involves theft. When you're talking about this scale — if you're saying there were minor things here and there, little problems — maybe you get away with saying, "Oh, it's a managerial oversight." But to my mind, I need this to be proven otherwise. To my mind, there has to be a massive moral failure for this kind of fraud to take place.
The common good and civic trust
Matthew Petrusek: We frequently refer to the common good on this show. Of course, it's a central principle within Catholic social thought, but it's one that can be easily misunderstood or even willfully misused. Could you give us a brief overview of what defines the common good and then connect that back to how fraud is so poisonous to it?
Bishop Barron: The common good might be described as that set of conditions and circumstances that allow for the full flourishing of each individual within a society. There is a primacy to the individual — that's the subject of moral responsibility. The common good is a bit of an abstraction, but I think that's the best way to name it: all those conditions that make possible the full flourishing of all the individuals within a society. That's what politicians are charged with — from the president all the way down to the most local official — to ensure that the conditions are there for the full flourishing of individuals. When there's fraud on this scale, the common good is not being attended to. The conditions are not being met that allow for the full flourishing of individuals. So that's a massive political failure too. We say managerial, okay, but also a political and ultimately a moral failure.
Looking at classical political philosophy — Aristotle, even Plato — we see government life as a kind of friendship. The idea is that there's a high level of trust between those who are ruling and those who are being ruled. What does fraud do to civic trust and the bonds that hold us together in ways that the laws simply can't?
Matthew Petrusek: I've lost a lot of confidence in the political authorities here that have allowed this thing to happen. And yes, it's corrosive to the whole society — the bonds of trust are so loosened by this that the society begins to corrode from the inside. There has to be confidence that the government is indeed attending to the common good, and that's what's being undermined here for sure.
Catholic social thought's response to competing ideologies
Matthew Petrusek: Let's now turn to how we might be able to constructively respond to this very serious problem. Looking at some competing ideologies on this question — first, from a libertarian perspective: how do we respond to those who say, "Look, Bishop, the problem of mass fraud is one and the same as having large-scale social welfare programs. They're hand in glove. You cannot separate them. If you have a large-scale social program, you're going to have mass fraud. Therefore, the government should completely get out of the business of seeking to redistribute the goods of society, and we should go to a kind of individual, all-for-himself, under-contractual-limits understanding of civic life." What's the Catholic social thought response to that critique?
Bishop Barron: That's too strong. Catholic social teaching stands against socialism and communism — it doesn't like that solution, which is too much on the collectivist side. At the same time, it doesn't embrace a kind of libertarian or unfettered capitalism where the market economy is simply allowed to work according to its own inner laws. Catholic social teaching calls for government supervision and oversight of the market. It calls certainly for moral constraint upon the market, and that has to come through preaching and moral example and the vibrancy of churches — which is another reason why, when the churches are weakened, the society is weakened. This disaffiliation is not just a little internal church problem; it's a societal problem.
So Catholic social teaching stakes out a kind of middle ground: yes to the market, it doesn't like the communist or socialist solution, it likes the free market for a variety of reasons — but a free market that is delimited both morally and politically. There's some supervision over it. And I'd say this too, Matt: it's not to limit the market for the sake of limiting it. It's to monitor the market so as to make it healthier. Because a market can collapse if, by its own laws, too many people are being excluded from it — too many people are left on the margins and they can't be entrepreneurs, they can't invest in it, they can't benefit from it. So the monitoring, both moral and political, is meant not to undermine the market but to make it healthier. It's not meant to restrict it so much as to save it from its own worst tendencies. That's Catholic social teaching — somewhere in between. We don't think, "Oh, therefore get rid of all social programs." No — maybe monitor them in a way that you don't have this massive fraud. Have responsible people monitoring them.
Why would you want to lift the poor up so they can participate in the market creatively? Why do you want to give people a good education? So they can be part of this free society and use their skills to invent something and start a business. It's not an either/or — we want to ameliorate the system and protect it from its own worst instincts.
Matthew Petrusek: To continue playing devil's advocate for the libertarian position — how about if you go one level deeper and say, "The issue is ultimately one of original sin. We see in revelation, and confirmed by experience, that human beings have a tendency towards corruption. So when we put this concentration of power into government hands, you are going to get this result time and time again." What's the response to that?
Bishop Barron: Well, no — I quite agree with that, actually. That's why I like the fact that our society in the West has this checks-and-balances thing built into it, both at the government level and in a way at the economic level too — we are meant to watch each other and check each other, and yes, we assume things will go bad. I'm with Thomas Sowell there. The great problem with the left, as he saw it, was utopianism — that with enough social reform or political reform, we can make this thing perfect. No, we can't. We can make things better, but we can't make them perfect. And when you try to make them perfect, that's when the real trouble starts. Go back from Robespierre through Marx to Lenin and Stalin and Mao and everybody else — when you hold that extreme left-wing view, that's when the bodies start piling up. Because you're in the way: this could be perfect if it weren't for people like you, so let's just get rid of you by the millions.
A healthy view, it seems to me, is the biblical one: yes, people go bad, they're sinners, we should expect fraud and misbehavior — so therefore have in place people and institutions to watch each other and provide checks and balances.
Matthew Petrusek: I want to highlight this third way that you're identifying as a representative of Catholic social thought, because I think it gets missed so frequently. On the one hand we have those who argue we need extensive government restrictions of the economy, and then you have the other side saying we should have no restrictions. But you're saying there's this third way that includes some restrictions, and also moral exhortations — a kind of moral power that helps guide things. Say a little bit more about the force of that.
Bishop Barron: I came of age with wonderful Catholic parents who took us to Mass every single Sunday. From the time I was a little kid, I heard the gospel. I heard the Hebrew prophets. I heard priests preaching on the importance of love and justice and all the great biblical norms. I took that in. Most people when I was a little kid went to church on Sunday. That's one of the biggest changes in my lifetime. Things were closed on Sunday for one thing — Sunday had a whole different feel, a whole different character when I was a kid, because statistically most people went to church.
Now most people don't go to church, and Sunday is just like another Saturday. That is not a trivial thing. That has had, in my judgment, a hugely deleterious impact on society. People don't hear the words of the gospel. They don't hear the Ten Commandments. They don't hear the Beatitudes. They don't hear the Hebrew prophets anymore. It's not the common parlance. In the 19th century, when Abraham Lincoln spoke, he assumed everybody knew the Bible — and he was right, they did. So he could make liberal reference to the Bible knowing his audience would understand it. Not true today. That's a real loss. The church in its teaching kind of assumes there'll be moral direction given to a society in that sort of indirect, non-governmental way — from the pulpits. Tocqueville saw everything. He saw in the early 19th century that America was flourishing because, though it had this kind of individualistic democratic polity, it was filled with churches and enthusiastic religious people. Take that away — which is happening more and more — and there's serious trouble for a liberal democracy.
Matthew Petrusek: Now looking at the other side of the political spectrum: what do we make of the argument of those who say, "What we call fraud, what we call corruption, is actually so common in other parts of the world that it's not even considered morally problematic. Therefore, when we have newcomers come to our country and commit these acts, we shouldn't hold them morally responsible — or certainly legally responsible — because they just don't know better"?
Bishop Barron: You shouldn't do evil that good might come of it. Something could be very common but still be wrong. It's certainly true — I don't want to name too many specific countries — but there are places where corruption is just built into the system practically. Sure, that's always been the case and always will be the case because we're fallen, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't militate against it and try our best to overcome it. Where it's kind of assumed — "Oh yeah, you'll get kickbacks, you're going to skim off the top, and no one stopped me so I'll just do it till they stop me" — that doesn't make it right, and it doesn't mean we shouldn't try to battle it.
Matthew Petrusek: What about the argument that uncovering fraud and prosecuting fraud is actually just picking on the poor, because when they committed it, they had no other choice? These are arguments that are circulated in the culture.
Bishop Barron: Sure, I know. But it doesn't justify it. Let's say you're poor and therefore you steal — does that mean stealing is okay? Well, we might say in the most extreme circumstances — if someone's family is dying and a father steals bread to feed his kids — okay, there are those extreme cases. But no, we can't use that as some blanket justification that because I'm economically deprived I have a right to skim all this money off the top of social programs. We just have to recover this sort of moral integrity that should pervade a society. I think, to go back to the beginning of our conversation, that's the fundamental problem — we have lost that keen sense of moral structure and ordering, and so the attitude becomes, "All right, I'll get what I can."
Matthew Petrusek: How about those who claim that uncovering fraud or prosecuting fraud is just partisan politics and we shouldn't get involved with it?
Bishop Barron: No, no. If something's wrong, we should fight it. Period. I don't care what side's doing it or where you land on the political spectrum. If something's wrong, you should fight it. And I think — I'm glad you opened this the way you did with those startling statistics — it's not just a minor little hiccup. It's a major, major injustice. To give it its proper name: thievery at that scale is a blight upon our society. So no, I think the church should speak out against it. Our politicians should be aware of it. I've tried to say that even here in Minnesota to political people I've been in touch with — this should be a top priority.
The bishop's role in speaking on political matters
Matthew Petrusek: And finally, Bishop — this question always comes up anytime we approach anything quote-unquote political — what motivates you to get involved with this topic, not only as a citizen but also as a bishop of the Catholic Church? And what do you say to those who are always saying online, "Stay out of politics, Bishop"?
Bishop Barron: Oh, yeah. That's such a facile remark, because those same people — believe me — if you were saying something that they supported politically, they'd be saying, "Why are you bishops always on the sidelines?" We hear all that all the time. It's so much nonsense. As I've often clarified, God is not a being, but God is the sheer act of to-be itself, which means that the created world participates in the to-be of God. It's a fancy metaphysical way of saying God has to do with everything. Everything has to do with God. It's not as though I can separate these things out neatly — the natural and the supernatural. No, they all have to do with God. And then the moral order has to be pervasive — it governs all aspects of life. So as a moral teacher, of course I have to talk about political matters, because morality obtains there. Those are silly bifurcations used by people when you're saying something they don't like politically. Very opportunistic. I hear both sides all the time — "Why aren't you more involved?" "You're too involved." The answer is: you follow the moral teaching of the Bible and the church and try to apply it to the societal situation.
Matthew Petrusek: And this is not some minor prudential issue of private judgment. This is a massive, massive social problem.
Bishop Barron: I think so. I think so.
Listener question: advice for young people heading to college
Matthew Petrusek: Well, it is time for our listener question. Today we have Eli Isaac from Florida asking for guidance from you, Bishop, on what to tell young men and women going off to college for their first semester.
Eli Isaac: Hello, Bishop Barron. Eli Isaac here from Bradenton, Florida. My daughter and I recently saw you speak at a First Things event at New College here in Sarasota, Florida, and she had a question for you. She will be heading off to college next year and wanted to know what guidance you would give young ladies and young men leaving home to attend college. Thank you very much.
Bishop Barron: Good. Thank you for that. It's a good question. I would say: stay close to church. I'm presuming you're Catholic — I don't know that — but stay close to church. When I was a kid at Notre Dame University many years ago, here we were, these goofball 17- and 18-year-old kids, and there was a Mass at midnight on Saturday — so technically Sunday morning — in our dorm. It was a big dorm, and it was massively attended. I'm envisioning this sunken area as you came into the dorm, and we filled that — probably a hundred kids, maybe more — at Mass every week. We were goofball kids, often coming in from a party or something, but we would gather for Mass. I think that's the most important thing for a college kid: to stay connected to God, to the faith, to the great moral sources. Have a good time at college, cultivate your friendships, have all the adventures you want — but let everything be focused upon God. When college kids say, "Oh, I'm away from home now, I'm going to skip Mass" — I think that's problem number one. So my one bit of advice is: stay close to the church.
Matthew Petrusek: Well, thank you, Eli, for asking us that question. Well, thank you, Bishop, for this conversation. I hope your words reach the halls of government.
Bishop Barron: We'll see. Thanks, Matt.