We've been talking a lot about Credit Cards and the pending legislative repeal of the 13th Amendment via the Barnkuptcy Bill.
There has been some talk about the responsibility of debtors and the like, and it is tempting to let the moral analysis of "promise keeping" frame the issue.
Two quick things at the top-
1 Prospective promises have always been considered contingent, in fact breech of contract whenever slightly profitable to society is encouraged in many respects by the law, Google "
efficient breech of contract".
2 Usurers, which is exactly what Credit Card Companies are, are EVIL
Why is Usury Evil? Wasn't that some silly Inquisition era Catholic docrine? Here's more than you ever wanted to know (
warning, this is from an old law school paper of mine- I've stripped it down a bit, but it may still make your eyes explode):
Usury, from the time of Charlemagne to the present, has almost always been subject to civil or criminal sanction by the state in Roman Catholic Europe and its cultural successors . It is also the concern of any party to an economic transaction who is controlled in conscience by the Divine law revealed in the Judeo-Christian tradition . Given the constancy of the position that usury is a sin that can subject the usurer to spiritual sanction and that it is a wrong of sufficient viciousness that it must be suppressed by the positive authority of the state , it seems unusual that a great deal of scholarly attention has been paid to the initial imposition and supposed abandonment or relaxation of the prohibitions against usury by spiritual and civil authorities. However, it is unfair to characterize scholarly pursuit of the subject as naive to the continuation of the prohibition against usury. The actual attention of historians has been directed at the changes over time in the definition of usury and the tests promulgated by authorities for use by the individual conscience or the state in the detection of usury in a transaction .
The reason for this interest is the reasonable and generally shared conclusion that the unique historical circumstances of the Industrial Revolution and Western cultural hegemony are somehow related to the development of economic practices and thought in the West. The basis for finding a relationship between the prohibition on usury and the emergence of the modern economy is generally set forth as follows; that the emergence of the capital markets necessary for a modern economy was precluded by the prohibition of usury, that a range of transactions not precluded by the prohibition against usury were developed, and that modern capital markets emerged . Conclusions as to why and how this happened have a tendency to reflect the predilections of the person making them. A secular economic historian can find that the Roman Catholic Church developed its position on usury over time to serve its changing economic interests. A Protestant apologist can conclude that casting aside the illegitimate dictates of Rome led to development of the modern economy. A Roman Catholic apologist can conclude that the honest efforts of Church thinkers to facilitate commerce led to the development of forms for economic transactions that were free of the taint of usury and led to the development of the modern economy .
John T. Noonan, Jr., in The Scholastic Analysis of Usury, presents another reason for interest in studying the development of the prohibition against usury. His interest in the development of thought about usury among the Scholastics is based on assuming, for the purposes of the argument, that the purpose of natural law jurisprudence is to make reason a witness for the teaching of the Church. He evaluates Scholastic discussions of usury in this light, measuring their success or failure by their efficacy in making reason stand as a witness for Church teaching. However, even in this limited path of inquiry the historian generally reaches the conclusions he is disposed to find. Some historians have found the development of the Church's teaching on usury to require a conclusion that either prior infallible teaching has been overruled or that the teachings are unsupportable by reason .
Against this conclusion, Noonan raises the point that it rests on a failure to distinguish speculative conclusions drawn from natural law theories of usury posited by Scholastic Theologians and the actual pronunciations of Church teaching on usury. However, the conclusion by some authors that earlier Church teachings on usury have been contradicted by later Church teachings is only disputed by Noonan to a point. In The Scholastic Analysis he only argues that the natural law theories of usury and the teachings of the Church were mutually supportive for a greater period of time than others suppose, but concedes that "...later, in the sixteenth century, economic pressure to modify the usury theory clearly triumphed over logic... " In his later work Noonan provides a more complete defense for the possible legitimacy of a natural law theory of usury that treats all of the Church's teachings on usury as being without internal inconsistency. For the most part, his defense consists of an examination of Church teaching on usury that utilizes a sophisticated understanding of the sources of authority and rules of construction used to determine the teaching of the Church . However, he proposes another defense of the internal consistency of the Church's teachings, implicitly noting the similarity between the circumstances allowed by Aquinas' natural law theory for the proper repeal of a prohibition against a thing in the positive law and the circumstances of the putative repeal of the Church's teachings against usury . In light of that observation, Noonan argues that the "...specific moral rules enacted by the Church may be taken as sure guides for the periods for which they are enacted, but that they are not beyond reexamination and revision to preserve their purpose and protect the permanent goods they safeguard. "
This argument, while not requiring the abandonment of reason by those seeking to provide a natural law theory of usury within the traditional Roman Catholic natural law jurisprudence does contradict without logical explanation Aquinas' conclusion that the "Natural Law is a participation in the Eternal Law... therefore it remains unchangeable. " In the end, it would seem from the point of view of most commentators that the historical development of Church teachings on usury disproves the Scholastic Theologians' contention that natural law jurisprudence demonstrates that reason is a witness to all the teachings of the faith . However, this conclusion is not necessary. It is possible to maintain that Church teachings on usury have been consistent in that nothing is now permitted in good conscience that was once forbidden; that what is prohibited and what is exempted are logically explicable by the natural law theory of usury as it stood prior to the 15th Century ; and that any changes in human law regarding usury and sanctioned by the Church were proper under the requirements for such changes set out by Aquinas. One need not be a Catholic apologist to value such an effort, because an understanding of what motivated the development of Scholastic thought about usury goes beyond providing a defense for the character of long dead churchmen to elucidating the sources of authority and mode of analysis used by the progenitors of modern thought about the nature of justice and law .
Noonan reaches the conclusion, distinct from other commentators, that the development of the natural law theory of usury up to the 16th century was logically sound by means of a distinction between the speculative writings of the Scholastic Theologians and the teachings of the Church derived from authority and embodied in the writings of the Cannonists. Further distinction among the teachings of the Church that formed the basis for the Scholastics' speculative discussions allows the conclusion that the natural law theory can reasonably explain all of the Church's teachings on usury. It is not required to distinguish between the accepted sources of Church authority or their relative weight, only to note the difference between quasi-legislative authority that defines, prohibits and prescribes penalties for usury and quasi-judicial authority that has declared a particular transaction usurious and so subject to specific prohibition and penalties.
II. Quasi-Legislative Church Teachings on Usury.
Authority against usury is abundant in the traditions of the Church and is to be found in "the infallible teaching of the three general councils, ...the highly authoritative teaching of popes, ...the testimony of the Fathers, ...the unanimous agreement of the theologians, ...the absolute moral commandments of the Old Testament, ...[and in] the words of the Lord Himself. " However, authority that provides a definition other than by means of an example of a prohibited transaction is scarce.
Revealed textual authority provides little direct definition of usury, but from the use of the term in context one can impute a minimal definition. The Paris Synod of 829 made use of passages from Psalms, The Pentateuch and the Prophets to demonstrate that usury was prohibited and a mortal sin. The four passages used by the Paris Synod and that refer specifically to usury are all quasi-legislative in that they provide exclusion from salvation as the penalty for usurers . Otherwise a usurer is can only be defined in two ways; circularly, as one who takes usury or engages in a transaction declared usurious or by inference from context and other rules of construction to expand upon the text. Context demonstrates that usury is a thing that can be taken, "Take not usury ;" that it is always wrong to take usury, "...[only] if a man... hath not lent upon usury... he is just ;" that taking usury is related to but distinct from extortion, "...thou shall not be hard on them as an extortioner, nor oppress them with usuries ;" that usury can occur in a loan, "lent upon usury ;" that usury can occur absent a loan, "Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury ;" and that a loan can be sinfully unjust without being usurious, "[a man is just if he] hath not lent upon usury, nor taken any increase. " The New Testament and the Apostolic writings provide authority against usury, but only indirectly through a general condemnation of unjust transactions and the direct positive commandment of Luke 6:35 , "Lend freely, hoping nothing thereby."
The writings of the Church Fathers and the conciliar cannons, originating outside of agriculturist Judea, treat usury more extensively, a treatment one wold expect residents of an economically sophisticated Roman Empire to give to any mortal sin occasioned by an economic transaction. St. Jerome declares the usury may occur in all loans, not just loans of money . St. Augustine declares that usury is occasioned where a party to a transaction "expect[s] to receive something more than [he has] given. " and that the restitution of usuries is required for forgiveness . Beyond these additions to the substantive definition of usury, the Church Fathers introduced the application of Philosophical techniques to the subject. By reducing transactions known to be usurious from prior authority to discrete elements a simple definition can be reached and used to test other transactions. Usury occurs when A alienates a measure of goods to B on the express or intended contingency that B will realienate the same measure of goods and something else of value to A. St. Jerome's declaration that commodity loans can occasion usury is based on a such a test , but none of the Church Fathers provides a definition for usury based on this logic. This may be because they did not perceive the occasion to do so, or because the simple definition that results would encompass many transactions permitted by express authority or unquestioned tradition, such as the lease of a house. If the latter, the Patristic treatment of usury is the first to be affected by the dynamic relationship between the prior teachings of the Church and the introduction of new explanations or interpretations of authority necessitated by the doctrine of infallibility and its precursors.
The development of the Church's teaching about usury in the post-Patristic period is explicitly controlled by an ever-increasing amount of prior authority as to whether or not usury occurs in particular transactions. This made the definition of usury in abstract terms more difficult and the result was that the substantive definitions of usury provided in the authoritative Church teachings of the Carolingian era are simply reformulations of prior authority. For example, Pope Leo the Great's decree that laymen who take usury are seeking shameful gain does not go beyond the definition provided in scripture that anything taken as usury is unjustly taken except perhaps to identify the wrongfulness of usury with avarice more than uncharitableness.
In the twelfth-century, Gratian's Concordia incorporates and gives authority to the palea Ejiciens, a fifth-century attempt to explain the wrongfulness of usury in rational terms, which adds another element to the substantive definition of usury. "Of all merchants, the most cursed is the usurer, for he sells a good given by God, not acquired as a merchant acquires his goods from men; and after the usury he reseeks his own good, taking both his own good and the good of the other. " The good given by God and sold by the usurer is assumed by many commentators, including Noonan, to be time . However, the right to own property is given by God and a charge for more than the acknowledged value of a good lends itself to being described as a charge for the right to own the good just as much as it does as a charge for time. Gratian summarizes the definition of usury provided by Scripture and the analysis of the Fathers as "whatever is demanded beyond the principal. " He also transmits into the authoritative teaching of the Church that usuries are subject to the same requirements of restitution as stolen goods and that the similarity extends to their inadmissibility as charitable offerings . The Third Council of the Lateran confirmed this last teaching .
At the same time, papal authority was also adding to the Church's teachings on usury. Pope Eugene III condemned as usury the practice of taking the fruits of pledges without counting them towards pricipal . Pope Alexander III declared that credit sales at a price higher than cash could be usurious because "God will Judge beyond the form of the contract. " Finally, Pope Urban III interprets Christ's words "Lend freely, hoping nothing thereby " as a prohibition against usury rather than as an encouragement of charity .
The Thirteenth-Century sees the final development of the Church's authoritative teaching on the substantive definition of usury. Pope Innocent IV and Cardinal Hostiensis find that usury is wrong in se because it is motivated by avarice and possibly because of uncharitableness . However, they both add that the prohibition and suppression of usury is required because of the social evils, principally the disappearance of investment capital, engendered by usury . Noonan remarks upon this development because it eliminates concern for distributive justice in transactions as the evil that is inherent in usury. It is also significant because it creates a substantial difference between the mental and actual aspects of usury. Mental usury is wrong in se because it stimulates avarice. Taking usury (while also a manifestation of mental usury) is wrong secundum se because it results in social evil. The social evil caused by actual usury necessitates the positive prohibition and punishment of usury by human law. In order to effectively prohibit taking usury it is permissible for the positive prohibition against usury to encompass transactions that could involve no mental or actual usury but have the potential to be used fraudulently . Once the positive prohibition against taking usury is promulgated as part of the human law, usury becomes malum prohibitum. Thus a person who intends a transaction prohibited by human law prohibition against usury, but without the intent requisite for usury to occur absent the human law, is guilty of the mental sin of usury.
At the time of Innocent IV, a contemporary of St. Thomas Aquinas, the authoritative church teaching about the substantive definition of usury reached its maximum scope. Usury, as a wrong in se, was defined as seeking gain from a loan or more than one had given. To seek or take it is a mortal sin that can only be forgiven if some restitution is made. The social evil engendered by usury, apart from its wrongfulness in se, necessitates human law prohibitions against usury that will necessarily prohibit individual cases where no wrong of usury in se has occurred. The promulgation of an expanded, human law definition of usury, created actual and mental usury as a malum prohibitum. Usury, as a malum prohibitum, was defined by positive human law. To seek or take it may lead to being held infamous or excommunication . The development human law restitution requirements for usury as a malum prohibitum is supportive of the argument that Church Teaching recognizes two categories of usury. Declarations of positive law prohibitions against usury, as by the Third Lateran Council, are accompanied by dictates that usuries be restored as stolen goods . However the restitution requirements for usuries taken before the promulgation of the positive prohibition against usury were limited by allowing an exemption from the requirement for reasons of poverty . Similarly, the Synod of Pavia did not promulgate a human law prohibition against usury and only requires only half restitution be paid to heirs .
The understanding that Church teaching on usury has resulted in the bifurcation of usury into two classes of wrongs and the provision of distinct definitions and sanctions of usury appurtenant to each class is essential to the argument that there is no inherent contradiction within Church teaching. If there is no logical inconsistency it is possible to make reason bear witness to faith through the construction of a Natual Law theory of justice that includes all of the Church's teachings on usury.
III. Church Teachings on Usury Arising From the Consideration of Cases
The need for Church authorities to examine individual cases for the presence of usury and make pronouncements thereon restricted the development of abstract definitions for usury by the Church. At the same time, it provided, through the authority of precedent, the most detailed development of the Church's teachings on usury.
The examination of the authoritative Church teaching on usury that emerges from the actual or prospective consideration of cases shows that many of the sweeping definitions of usury found in Patristic Authority and Scriptural exegesis were neither limited nor overturned by later Church teachings but were meant by their authors to be understood in a limited manner. Borrowing the rule that an interpretation that renders part of a text meaningless is invalid in light of an alternate that does not, and applying it to St. Augustine's simultaneous acceptance of leases and definition of usury as seeking to get more than one has given suggests that his definition of usury was intended to be more subtle than a requirement of strict equivalence in exchange. Likewise, the acceptance or prohibition of particular transactions on a case by case by case basis by all the other sources of authority for seemingly sweeping definitions of usury limits those definitions. Gracian's summary of prior authority, that usury is whatever is demanded beyond principal , must be read in light of his acceptance of leases and charges for money loaned for display (ad pompam). As a result, Gracian's definition of usury must be understood to accommodate those exceptions and therefore stands ready to be unpacked by later authority making determinations about the usurious quality of novel transactions.
Logical inconsistencies seem apparent in these authorities because there is no attempt to craft a comprehensive theoretical ground for explaining the authoritative determination of prior cases. A polemicist might say this must be because it was impossible to do, because the same authorities demonstrate the requisite knowledge of Philosophy in their relation of each case to prior authority. Because the early authorities would think a comprehensive theoretical justification of the Church's teachings on usury would add nothing to the weight of the divine commandment against usury and the authoritative teachings of the Church, they would not have occasion to attempt a systematic theory to explain the Church's teachings on usury .
By the Twelfth-Century, logic and Philosophy were sufficiently familiar to the authorities of the Church that the first attempts at a systematic theory of usury are made. This was not an attempt generate an authoritative definition of usury, justify prior authority nor make reason bear witness for the faith through demonstrating the identity of Church teachings and the requirements of the natural law. Cannonists, who "were concerned mainly with solutions valid for the external forum of the Church; " sought only to craft persuasive arguments from precedent to support individual determinations, not to expand the authoritative definition. For the cannonist each decision, including his own, ultimately derived its authority individually and from Divine origin. Preachers also utilized the persuasive power of a systematic theory of usury; St. Bernadine did this to great effect when he systematically demonstrated that nearly the entire population of Sienna was damned .
While much of the systematic theorization on the subject of usury carried no authority as Church Teaching, it did have great persuasive power over the decisions of Church Authorities. As a result of this, the development of Church teachings on usury begins to conform to the requirements of the systematic theories of usury available. This resulted in decisions that gave additional credibility to the systematic theory of usury upon which it was based. For example, although Pope Innocent III's declarations on usury are based on prior authority and a determination of the type of wrong(s) usury represents, he later repeats the arguments that money is naturally sterile and that the usurer sells time . He does this despite the fact that those arguments contradict his determination as to the type of wrongdoing involved in usury.
Pope Innocent IV's categorization of usury into separate wrongs, as avarice in se and as a social evil secundam se, did not incorporate a systematic theory of usury into Church teachings. However, it did cause future Church authorities to be aware of the context of their declarations on usury and distinguish carefully between their promulgation of human law on usury directed at preventing its attendant social evils and their teachings about usury as a mallum in se directed at pastoral care and proper use of the Sacraments. Although not an example of authoritative teaching, Pope Pious V's alleged response to a private inquiry about whether it was licit to hold a triple contract yielding an effective return of 5% is highly illustrative of how conscious Church authorities were of this distinction. "The, Pope, speaking as a private theologian, had declared this licit. The Pope's approval was not to be publicized, lest it encourage avarice. " In addition, this distinction caused the incorporation of the Church's teachings on usury into Natural Law theory to deal with two distinct sets of teachings, on usury as a mallum in se and on usury as a mallum prohibitum created by human law.
IV. The Natural Law Theories of Usury
Although an oversimplification, it is not unfair to say that the pursuit of the Natural Law is an exercise in demonstrating that the teachings of the Church can be derived from self evident first principles. Naturally, this requires a determination that the teachings of the Church are internally consistent. It also requires that all substantive definitions of usury be reconciled with all authoritative decisions in particular cases. For any given theologian, the attempt to incorporate the Church's teachings on usury into a natural law framework is a success if all available teachings are explicable. Therefore there is no fault in failing to anticipate future teachings. Moreover, if alternate rational theories to explain the teachings of the Church exist there is no need to advocate one over the other.
Natural Law theologians of the Scholastic era begin their analysis of usury as a wrong in se by determining why usury is wrong. Following St. Augustine's definition of usury as asking more than is given, it is suggested that it is contrary to distributive justice . It is distinct from other offenses against distributive justice because it takes place only in transactions. Permitted transactions that have the form of a loan, are in fact separate transactions. Leasing a house is a valid contract for the transfer and retransfer of the house, and the rent is a separate payment for the use of the house . This exception does not apply to the prohibited loans of money and certain commodities because their use and ownership cannot be separated . St. Thomas explains that this is because the use and consumption of consumptables are inseparable , Joannes Andrae argued that fungibles have fixed values in reference to themselves and therefore cannot increase . To explain the validity of lending, at a price, money ad pompam is justified because the return of the money in identical substance demonstrates that there was no consumption, so there was necessarily a use other than consumption that could be legitimately charged for .
There is a supposed difficulty that arises in the explanation of the prohibition on credit sales at a higher price, "[n]one of the principal arguments, however, cover the case of credit sales. " But the analytical method used to distinguish legitimate rental agreements from usurious loans does work in that case. For credit sales to be usurious requires that they be for more than the current price. If the price differential can not be demonstrated as having some legitimate purpose, then it is a premium for credit and usurious. The argument that the usurer unjustly sells something of God's, either time or the right to own property, is the result of no other possible good existing to explain the price difference . This argument holds even in the face of permission for credit sales at a price higher than cash made in anticipation of seasonal fluctuations in the price of commodities , because the right to hold property, even consumables, in anticipation of a price increase is a use distinguishable from consumption.
This is not applied to the provision of money on credit because the idea that money could fluctuate in value is alien to the early Natural Law theologians. William of Auxerre states that "money is nonvendible. " Attempts are made to explain the nonvendible character of money, most following either Aristotle's argument that it is against nature for money to bear fruit or Aquinas' argument that invariability in value is essential to money . However, when the variable value of money as a commodity is apparent, as it is in foreign exchange transactions, a charge for future change in value is unobjectionable until it becomes a device for fraud by usurers . Similarly, Giles of Lessines admits that foreknowledge of official currency devaluation allows a premium that in loans of money that accounts for the devaluation . The development of the ideas and language necessary to explain the variability of the value of money removed the need to resort to strained arguments to justify the distinction between allowable sales on credit and prohibited cash loans.
A viable natural law explanation of the Church's teachings about what constitutes usury as a mallum in se is as follows. Usury occurs when any legitimate transaction is contingent on another, illegitimate, transaction. The latter transaction is illegitimate unless it is separately permissible and reasonable for the parties. This explanation assumes that usury is wrong and prohibited because it is unjust.
Pope Innocent IV's declaration that usury in se, was a sin of avarice while human law against usury was based on the need to suppress the attendant social evils (which did not include injustice,) introduced two issues for those seeking to incorporate Church teachings on usury into a natural law theory. First is whether the identification of the wrong in usury with avarice rather than injustice requires an extensive reformulation of the natural law theory of usury and second, testing the human law on usury against the expectations of Natural Law theory. (Innocent IV's distinction also resolved a problem with the natural law theory of usury based on injustice, the possibility that a transaction could be unjust without being usurious .) If usury is a sin of avarice then the natural law prohibition against usury can be as follows. Usury, as a wrong in se, occurs in any transaction where a distinguishable component of one party's cost is informed only by the usurer's avarice and limited only by the borrower's need. It is particularly repugnant because it makes the sin of avarice manifest in a transaction and then obligates those who are liable or must enforce the transaction to the service of the sin.
That the social evil that requires the human law prohibition of usury is not the distributive injustice suggested by natural law theologians before Innocent IV's declaration is not terribly important. The generally deleterious economic effects of restricting the availability of investment capital actually provides a sounder natural law explanation for human law prohibiting usury because the common good (as opposed to only the good of the poor) is more clearly protected.
Natural Law theologians were not terribly interested in the content or development of the human law on usury for purposes of demonstrating the identity of the reason based natural law with the teachings of the Church because human law may prohibit what is permitted by the natural law . Rather the natural law theologians' interest in the human law prohibitions against usury lies in demonstrating that their content, promulgation, enforcement and repeal by Church authorities was congruent with the Natural Law's expectations . In the period after Innocent IV and extending into the middle of the Fifteenth-Century, the human law against usury developed its most severe approach to usury . The human law on usury was justified according to the natural law because it sought to suppress the social evil caused by usury. To do so efficiently any transaction with the potential for being usurious, despite being sometimes permissible under the natural law, was prohibited to all persons unless it could be irrefutably demonstrated that no usury occurred, as in the case of money lent ad pompam. This too is justified by the natural law . The human law prohibition against usury also resolved for natural law theologians the seeming conflict in prior authority on whether usuries were to be treated as stolen goods. Previously these assertions had been explained by natural law theologians as being because usury, like theft, was a sin of injustice. But this explanation did not account for the distinction between the treatment of usuries and stolen goods allowed by the Synod of Pavia and Pope Alexander III . The lessened penalties described by the Synod and Alexander III are requirements for pennance in the absence of a human law prohibition against usury . Once a human law prohibition against usury is promulgated, usurious contracts are illegal. Because an illegal contract is no contract, anything taken is formally stolen and must be treated as such.
In the period from 1450 to the beginning of the modern era, the Church's human law prohibitions against usury became less severe . The mechanism for the slow repeal of prohibitions against particular forms occurred gradually. The development of the concepts and language describing money and economic transactions allowed the creation of definitions for legitimate interests that could be licitly made a contingency to a loan. Because of the social value inherent in allowing these transactions the human law against usury was repealed , usually in incremental fashion. At first the transactions were permitted only in need or to those who were not manifest usurers. St. Antonius declared that compensation for lost income was legitimate, but that it must always be counseled against because it is a temptation to usury . In the case of the 5% return paid on Florentine bonds, St. Laurentius de Ridolfis declared that there was no usury because the payments were legitimate compensation for the bondholders lost income . However, this transaction was foreclosed to manifest usurers because of the potential for fraudulent use . In similar fashion legitimate interests that could result in non-usurious titles to payments beyond principle led to the limited or partial repeal of human law prohibitions against usury .
Eventually the human law restrictions on usury are limited to profit qua profit on a loan and detectable fraudulent use of permitted transactions. In the words of the Codex iuris canonici: "If a fungible thing is given someone, and later something of the same kind and amount is to be returned, no profit can be taken on the ground of this contract; but in lending a fungible thing it is not itself illicit to contract for payment of the profit allocated by law, unless it is clear that this is excessive, or even for a higher profit, if a just and adequate title be present. " This is not an abandonment of the teaching that usury is profit on a loan because the use of the term profit only includes licit claims. That human authority can declare a legal rate of interest, and that a lender can take this interest without committing usury is because the state has the impartiality and resources to quantify both the real risk of fluctuating currency values and the legitimate operating costs and income needs of a lender . (The United States, having abandoned this responsibility with the current Bankruptcy bill and blatant favoritism towards lenders who corrupt the political process with the profits of their usury, should be considered a place where any loan for profit is morally suspect.) These theoretically legitimate titles to profit on a loan could not previously be allowed by human law as grounds for legitimate interest because extrinsically detecting fraud in those transactions is impossible. Still, current teaching informs lenders that they are committing usury if they know the interest set by the state is excessive. The only test is the conscience of the lender and his internal determination that he is not exploiting an incorrectly determined legal rate of interest.
"Practice has changed with economic change, but the scholastic principles, which are part of Catholic doctrine, remain unchangable and equally good in their new application. " This is how Noonan summarizes the conclusions of Joseph Ernest Van Roey's rigorous reapplication of the scholastic's natural law theory of usury to Church teaching on usury as it stood at the beginning of the Twentieth-Century. These conclusions are quite defensible, especially when compared to natural law explanations of usury based on confusion between Church authorities' use of philosophical arguments about the sterility of money as persuasive authority in justifying decisions on cases and authoritative definition of the wrong in usury. Arthur Vermeersch reaches the conclusion that Church teaching must be explained by the conclusion that the simple possession of money gives the possessor value . This is either absurd or, in light of the fact that it is nothing more than a universalization of the ad pompam exception, a sad comment on the state of mankind- that all men, at all times, utilize their money to awe and impress their friends and neighbors. The more optimistic tenor of the traditional scholastic natural law theories, and the fact that they arguably still succeed in making reason bear witness for the teachings of the Church makes their defense a comfortable argument for an apologist. However, the information about the thinking, sources, intentions and tools of analysis used by the authorities of the Church, who were so influential on the development of modern thought, that can be gained from making that argument make the journey worth the price of the trip.
Any Catholics out there want to seek an advisory opinion from Rome on whether it is continuing, unrenouced sin to own MBNA stock?