There has been no authoritative papal document on usury since 1745. Charles Edward Stuart was raising the Highlands for the King when the last Pope, with the zeal to take on this subject, sat upon the throne of Peter. When making war against the Pelagian fable of Implicitism, the complaint one so often hears is that Implicitism has been floating around for years, and the Popes have done nothing about it so it must be okay. One might think that in the new springtime of Pope Francis people might have given up on the doctrine of the divinely guided digestive grumblings of the Roman Pontiff, but alas no. It occurred to me the other day that the case of usury is very similar. It takes but the merest suggestion that the lending of money at interest might just be usury and a mortal sin to transform an apparently orthodox Catholic into a red faced raging gibbering Neo-con. I watched this metamorphosis take place before my eyes in a seedy European bar circa 2001. It was not a pleasant experience. The Neo-cons are all a bit bewildered at the moment. The Zenit-theology of the Kirchengeist has taken a beating since the last conclave. But the Neo-cons will still cite the absence of any pronouncement on usury in the last two hundred and fifty-six years as evidence that there is no problem anymore. But there it is in black and white in the Acts of the fifteenth ecumenical council:
If indeed someone has fallen into the error of presuming to affirm pertinaciously that the practice of usury is not sinful, we decree that he is to be punished as a heretic; and we strictly enjoin on local ordinaries and inquisitors of heresy to proceed against those they find suspect of such error as they would against those suspected of heresy.
But don’t worry folks, the moderns tells, us the fathers of Vienne don’t really mean it. ‘Usury’ actually means ‘bad usury,’ so long as you don’t practice ‘bad usury’ then don’t worry. Perhaps it is just that usury is such a rare practice nowadays that there has been no need for the Holy See to comment, unlike the dark days of the mid-eighteenth century, when vast international banking corporations bought the loyalties of heads of state and government, and demanded huge subsidies from the ordinary tax payer on the ground that they were too big to fail. Oh… hang on.
I am told by an old friend of her’s (anecdotal evidence alert) that Elizabeth Anscombe in 1967 was pretty convinced that the prohibition on contraception was going to go the way of usury. Terrified of the Catholic bourgeoisie, Paul VI would just let the matter drop, and the succeeding popes would be too terrified to raise the question again until everyone forgot there was ever a problem. Since the Revolution, the hierarchy has been (rightly) terrified of the left. Sheltering under the protective wing of the plutocracy, Popes and bishops have been very unenthusiastic about raising embarrassing questions that might render them unwelcome guests in the house of mammon. Leo XIII did mention the fact that the concentration of the hiring of labour and the conduct of trade in the hands of comparatively few, which he sought to remedy, resulted from a “rapacious usury … more than once condemned by the Church” but that has been just about it. I often think the verbosity of Papal social encyclicals comes from the fact that the Popes are going all round the houses trying to avoid stating straight-out what the real problem is: the lending of money at interest distorts market economies, so that capital automatically gravitates to capital, instead of gravitating to labour “so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the labouring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.”
The rise of Implicitism has many things in common with the magisterial loss of nerve about usury. Usury precisely treats created goods as if they were fertile and life giving of themselves. It treats nature as if it were grace. Usury is not condemned because it would offend comfortable wealthy respectable people. Implicitism seeks to achieve the same goals. It conflates the natural and the supernatural orders, and facilitates a worldview in which nice respectable ‘good people’ go to heaven through their fulfilment of the natural law. A spot of semi-pelagian assistance from on high will of course be most gratefully received.
Although dear Lord I am a sinner,
I have done no major crime;
Now I’ll come to Evening Service
Whensoever I have the time.
So, Lord, reserve for me a crown,
And do not let my shares go down.
‘Blessed are the poor’ says the Gospel, the miserable peasants whom God favours with the preaching of the Gospel and the efficacious grace to receive it. Those who know they are sinners and cannot possibly merit the grace of God are its fit recipients. Those who cannot imagine that ‘good people like us,’ who have had the random misfortune not to receive a preacher might be damned on account of a few trivial sins, will wait in vain for the mercy of God. As Oscar Wilde said, the Catholic Church is strictly for saints and sinners only, for merely respectable people the ‘Church’ of England must suffice. Our Lord says that it will be worse for those places where He preached and was rejected, than for Sodom on the last day. That does not mean that the inhabitants of Sodom are saved (indeed, they are the only specific group expressly designated as damned Jude 1:7), He means their torments are less than those who squandered the grace of God.
Woe to thee, Corozain, woe to thee, Bethsaida: for if in Tyre and Sidon had been wrought the miracles that have been wrought in you, they had long ago done penance in sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment, than for you. And thou Capharnaum, shalt thou be exalted up to heaven? thou shalt go down even unto hell. For if in Sodom had been wrought the miracles that have been wrought in thee, perhaps it had remained unto this day. But I say unto you, that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee. At that time Jesus answered and said: I confess to thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to the little ones. Yea, Father; for so hath it seemed good in thy sight.
It is because we do not want to face this prospect. We do not want to face the pure gratuity of God’s grace, we want salvation to be in our power, that we try to imagine that somewhere noble pagans are redeemed by their own efforts, fulfilling the law with merely moral assistance from on high. And there is another motive, fear of the absolute opposition that faith and grace, establishes between the Church and the world. There was some dreadful debate a few years ago where some foolish Catholics agreed to defend against a baying mob of ‘new atheists’ the proposition “the Catholic Church is a force for good in the world”. Madness! The Catholic Church (depending on which sense of Kosmos one is using) is either the only force for good in the world, or it is the world’s implacable enemy. “I have given them thy word, and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world; as I also am not of the world. I pray not that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from evil. They are not of the world, as I also am not of the world. Sanctify them in truth.”
Now I feel a little better,
What a treat to hear Thy Word,
Where the bones of leading statesmen
Have so often been interr’d.
And now, dear Lord, I cannot wait
Because I have a luncheon date.
Laodicea 
March 11, 2016 at 6:08 pm
It probably would be illuminating to explain *why* lending at interest is wrong.
If you hire a car from me, you get the benefit of using something that’s not yours and you pay me a fee for that service. All good. In the case of money, if I lend you some amount, you also have the benefit of using something that is not yours (which you might put to use to make money for yourself, which you can keep, or to buy stuff) – why is it wrong that you should pay me a fee for that service?
March 11, 2016 at 7:06 pm
Money is used by being alienated. One cannot therefore justly charge for its use distinct from its ownership. One could charge £2 for twenty apples on the basis that this is their value relative to other goods in the market.One cannot, however, charge twenty-two apples for twenty apples on the grounds that the buyer has also had the use of the apples because the apples have no use distinct from their consumption. Likewise the money has no use distinct from its alienation so one cannot charge £200 for £200 plus £20 for the use of the £200. This would be selling something that does not exist and so theft. If one runs a bank one may charge for the expense of administering the loan but not in proportion to the time for which the funds are held because that would clearly be charging for the non existent use. You cannot charge for ‘lost opportunity’ for that is essentially charging for labour that never occurred. You might charge for damage incurred through making the loan (e.g. you were unable to buy your annual seed grain in the usual quantity because you lent out the funds) if this was agreed in advance. However, a sensible legislator would probably ban this as it would almost certainly be employed as a form of concealed usury. Money is instituted to signify the real goods available for a consideration in a given jurisdiction. The value of the money should be the value of those goods divided by the number of units in circulation. Usury encourages fractional reserve banking artificially increasing the nominal money supply effectively stealing from all non-usurers. Allowing the sale of non-existent use by the cash rich causes the cash rich to accumulate money without labour semi-automatically. The consequence is that control over the real goods of value becomes concentrated in the hands of the already-wealthy and those with productive labour, unable to obtain ownership of the means of production for themselves, are forced to labour as the paid servants of the usurers. If social and legal conditions permit the usurers will drive down the wages to the lowest level they can get away with. The non-usurer is reduced to a state ‘little better than slavery itself’ because he is forced to labour in accordance with his ability and is remunerated not in accordance with the value of the goods he produces but in accordance with his need as estimated by the usurers. The tensions this produces (in the absence of proper witness to the Church’s teaching on usury) leads to a popular clamour for the state to intervene in the operation of the market to mitigate these injustices. As there is no suggestion that the state simply solve the problem by recriminalizing usury the state intervenes either as a private actor (nationalization) therefore just becoming another (invariably inefficient) capitalist or through regulation which supposedly remedies the symptoms of usury but always rigs the market in favour of one or more private actors leading to endemic lobbying and corruption. If usury were illegal the only way of making a return on money one could not spend oneself would be either to buy an asset (e.g. house) that one could legitimately sell the use of or to fund the purchase of of capital by a productive labourer in exchange for a stake in the profits of his enterprise. Thus one could still have cooperative banks paying dividends for the deposit of funds in proportion to the profits made by the investments of those banks but you could not charge interest on an unproductive loan or pay automatic interest on deposits. This would stimulate and reward productive labour and restore the primacy of labour over capital.
St Thomas explains the teaching here.
Vix Pervenit, the last authoritative papal teaching on the topic, is here
The 1917 Code dealt with the question at Canon 1543:
“If a fungible thing is given to another so that it becomes his, and later it must be restored in the same sort , no profit can be made by reason of the contract; but in the loan of a fungible thing, it is not by itself illicit to reap a legal profit, unless it can be shown to be immoderate of itself, and even greater profit if there is a just and proportionate title so supporting.”
March 28, 2016 at 12:00 am
£2 now is worth more to me than £2 tomorrow, or next week. The same is true of apples. Lawful interest is a way of accounting for this.
March 28, 2016 at 5:03 am
If it were set to the rate of inflation it would not per se be usury. However, there is no such restriction. Even if there were it would still be imprudent to allow inflation-linked interest because without usury there would be no inflation (so it would be unnecessary) and inflation-linked interest would inevitably become a cover for usury.
March 29, 2016 at 10:56 am
Sorry, I wasn’t referring to price inflation. I was referring to differences in real value.
It is more valuable to me to have £2 now than £2 next week. It’s not simply that inflation will affect the purchasing power of my £2 over time. Absolutely speaking, inflation or no, I would rather have the £2 now than later.
If you want me to part with my £2 for a month, on a commercial basis, and I have alternative uses for my £2, it is just that I be recompensed for the loss I have incurred, even if there is no risk.
March 30, 2016 at 12:01 am
As I said earlier “You cannot charge for ‘lost opportunity’ for that is essentially charging for labour that never occurred. You might charge for damage incurred through making the loan (e.g. you were unable to buy your annual seed grain in the usual quantity because you lent out the funds) if this was agreed in advance. However, a sensible legislator would probably ban this as it would almost certainly be employed as a form of concealed usury.” As a matter of interest do you:
a) think that goods have an objective value?
b) accept the authority of the Church to teach?
I only ask b) so as not to waste time on arguments from authority if you do not accept the authority in question.
March 30, 2016 at 5:36 pm
a) It depends precisely what you mean by that. I would tend to think that the objective value of goods is their market value in a free market. Where the market isn’t free, you’d have to estimate it using some other means; but yes, it should be objectively measurable. It might be hard to measure, but not theoretically impossible.
b) Yes.
Well, the damage sustained here is foregoing my £2 now – if you want to put it that way. I don’t have it to spend, while you are borrowing it.
I agree with you that, if I had nothing else to spend it on (unlikely contingency), there would be no damage incurred, and therefore charging interest would be unreasonable, unless there was some other factor at play.
Where you say “a sensible legislator would probably ban this as it would almost certainly be employed as a form of concealed usury”, I think you have hit on why the Church has fallen more or less silent on the subject. Disentangling the ins and outs of complex financial arrangements in the modern world is beyond the competency of the Church, and typically most of these arrangements could either be usurious or not, or partly usurious, or not, depending on circumstance.
Condemning all interest as sinful usury would be far worse for souls, and far worse for the economy, than simply sticking to the basic principles and leaving people to it. Deal fair, don’t abuse your position, don’t overcharge.
I think this is why people have settled on the view that there is usury, and then bad usury.
After all, God did permit usury to the Jews; if it is always against the natural law, this seems intolerable. As I see it, if I make a commercial arrangement to loan someone money on certain terms (I have never done this, by the way), and the interest I charge is enough to make it worth my while but not more than this, that is likely to be a fair charge to interest, assuming a free market.
March 31, 2016 at 1:05 am
It is not the same to allow extrinsic title for damage sustained as a result of a loan as for opportunity lost. The root title to property is labour. One cannot claim title to hypothetical goods that might have resulted from labour that did not occur. That is not claiming compensation for damage sustained but for goods that do not exist. As Benedict XIV teaches “One cannot condone the sin of usury by arguing that the gain is not great or excessive, but rather moderate or small; neither can it be condoned by arguing that the borrower is rich; nor even by arguing that the money borrowed is not left idle, but is spent usefully, either to increase one’s fortune, to purchase new estates, or to engage in business transactions. The law governing loans consists necessarily in the equality of what is given and returned; once the equality has been established, whoever demands more than that violates the terms of the loan. Therefore if one receives interest, he must make restitution according to the commutative bond of justice; its function in human contracts is to assure equality for each one. This law is to be observed in a holy manner. If not observed exactly, reparation must be made.” It is the clear doctrine of Vix Pervenit that the lending of money at interest simply is usury and the Council of Vienne condemns as heretics those who deny that it is a sin. These teachings are irreformable. The failure to teach of the ecclesiastics of a given era has no doctrinal value.
March 31, 2016 at 10:14 am
I don’t think the de facto acceptance of a practice by the Church is a matter of insignificance. In moral theology, it is a definite green light. Vide NFP, which was allowed in practice before there was anything magisterial on the subject. I would be interested to know what moral theology manuals say about handling usury in the confessional; I think that would enlighten this discussion.
I agree with you there is dogmatic teaching on usury. Interest may not lawfully be charged on the mutuum for the mere fact of its having been loaned. Doing so is a sin. But what you cite here says nothing particularly helpful in identifying modern contracts that fall into the category, unless it goes far too far.
If there are extrinsic titles to interest (% per annum on the principal), you can have interest. Period. It’s not up to me or you, without being in full possession of the facts, to pre-judge a given loan as usurious, without being sure that those titles do not justify the charge to interest in that particular case.
March 31, 2016 at 10:34 am
‘Interest’ is never admitted in Vix Pevenit. What you or I think is ‘far too far’ is not relevant. Benedict XIV teaches that the fact that that money lent might have been productive does not give any title to compensation. As he says later “some will falsely and rashly persuade themselves-and such people can be found anywhere-that together with loan contracts there are other legitimate titles or, excepting loan contracts, they might convince themselves that other just contracts exist, for which it is permissible to receive a moderate amount of interest. Should any one think like this, he will oppose not only the judgment of the Catholic Church on usury, but also common human sense and natural reason.” The ‘Church’ is not any sort of finite consciousness nor is the ‘magisterium’. The infallibility of the magisterium is a guarantee given by Christ (Who Is the only ecclesiastical subject) to Popes and Ecumenical Councils in certain restricted circumstances. What they do outside those circumstances is far less important and what they do not do is of no importance at all (except to their eternal salvation). The idea of the Church as some finite kirchengeist coming to greater and greater self-realisation in history is a dangerous error condemned by Pius X in the Antimodernist Oath “I am completely opposed to the error of the modernists who hold that there is nothing divine in sacred tradition; or what is far worse, say that there is, but in a pantheistic sense … [t]he purpose of this is, then, not that dogma may be tailored according to what seems better and more suited to the culture of each age; rather, that the absolute and immutable truth preached by the apostles from the beginning may never be believed to be different, may never be understood in any other way.”
March 31, 2016 at 11:59 am
Your argument from authority overreaches itself, in my view. Vix pervenit is not infallible (though I don’t think it’s wrong, but that’s neither here nor there; it certainly should be taken seriously). Even if it were, its reasoning would not thereby be infallible; only its definitions in faith and morals. The permission of usury to non-Christians (specifically Jews) undermines the idea that all interest is per se and always intrinsically evil. How can the Church permit what is intrinsically evil, under any circumstance? How can God? There must be something more subtle going on than you allow.
What I was driving at is the way the Church approaches the lending of interest re penitents in the confessional. This cannot be dismissed as a failure to act; it must be a positive election, since the Church regulates this very closely. If the manuals officially approved in the Church teach that lending at moderate interest is generally not a sin, or that people who do this shouldn’t generally be disturbed, you need to adapt your position. The Church’s moral theology IS what She does in the Confessional. If your interpretation of Vix Pervenit is not the one implemented in the confessional, your interpretation must be defective, or the Church has defected.
I am happy to accept the entire account given here:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15235c.htm
We need to break this down.
Inter esse is just “to be between” or to make a difference. You could call markup on any product interest, I suppose. The interest on a loan compensates the lender; it is the bit added to the principal. If he is not compensated, he will not lend. The sin of usury is charging unlawful interest, i.e. a charge to which no extrinsic title exists. In some contexts this may be easy to identify; in the modern world, not so.
March 31, 2016 at 9:31 pm
St Thomas deals with your objection in ST IIaIIae,78,1ad2 “The Jews were forbidden to take usury from their brethren, i.e. from other Jews. By this we are given to understand that to take usury from any man is evil simply, because we ought to treat every man as our neighbour and brother, especially in the state of the Gospel, whereto all are called. Hence it is said without any distinction in Psalm 14:5: “He that hath not put out his money to usury,” and (Ezekiel 18:8): “Who hath not taken usury.” They were permitted, however, to take usury from foreigners, not as though it were lawful, but in order to avoid a greater evil, lest, to wit, through avarice to which they were prone according to Isaiah 56:11, they should take usury from the Jews who were worshippers of God.” As Vix Pervenit clearly contains definitions the Catholic Encyclopedia’s article’s assertion that its extension to the universal church by the Holy Office in 1836 does not render those definitions infallible is without foundation. This was obviously the purpose of making the extension. As it happens I only quoted from the definitive parts of the text. A return on the money lent proportioned to the size of the capital and the time for which it was held by the borrower is quite clearly a charge for the use of the funds and is usury. This is why Benedict XIV never talks of legitimate or extrinsic title to ‘interest’. As I implied earlier your attempt to extend doctrinal authority to act of hierarchs (such as an imprimatur given to a confessor’s manual) in which the whole Church does not act as a subject implies a pantheistic ecclesiology motivated by a desire “that dogma may be tailored according to what seems better and more suited to the culture of each age”. You are making the world not what Benedict XIV himself calls “the judgment of the Catholic Church” your guide in this matter. You consider that adherence to the Church’s teaching as laid out by St Thomas and Benedict XIV would be gravely inconvenient for the world and therefore it must not be demanded. For decades virtually no parish priest has preached on Humanae Vitae. Many openly dissent and are not disciplined by their bishops. Priests who have been disciplined have had their sentences quashed by the Holy See. Paul VI himself did not issue another encyclical after Humane Vitae. Whole bishops conferences denied the force of his teaching or denied it outright. Nothing was done. Pope Francis denies it in conversation with journalists. I suppose that means that on your account Humanae Vitae has been abrogated?
March 31, 2016 at 9:53 pm
The Pontiff’s infallibility cannot be delegated. Therefore the extension by the Holy Office to the entire Church cannot, as the Encyclopedia rightly recognises, afford the doctrine infallibility per se. Though it does, of course, raise its profile. You could defend its infallibility by arguing that the teaching is part of the ordinary and universal magisterium; I’m not averse to this line of reasoning. I have yet to see why what I am arguing contradicts Vix Pervenit. You insist it does, and you may be right. Let’s pursue this for now; please be assured I bear you no ill will, but I would appreciate it if you would try to avoid escalating the emotional stakes needlessly.
You say:
“A return on the money lent proportioned to the size of the capital and the time for which it was held by the borrower is quite clearly a charge for the use of the funds and is usury.”
It’s a charge to compensate me for my loss – damnum emergens. I have no funds for x period of time. The longer the time, and the greater the funds, the greater the loss. Assuming a basic proportionality across the board, a charge of y % will fairly compensate me for this. Obviously, if I have no other use for the money, there’s no title and no basis for a charge. If the author of Vix Pervenit did not grasp the importance of time in affecting the value of things, his conclusions will hold in principle, but the application of his doctrine in practical affairs may be restricted.
Humanae vitae has not been abrogated because the approved manuals teach that contraception is mortally sinful. (I should add a caveat here that the regulation of probati auctores is no longer rigorous enough to carry the weight it did in the past; however, with usury, we are talking about a very long period of “silence”, i.e. longer than the past 60 years). Moreover, the doctrine on contraception cannot be abrogated because it is part of the ordinary and universal magisterium. I didn’t mean to say that a mere failure to apply the law would cause it to be abrogated; I said that the Church positively approving the use of theological manuals that took x line (say, on usury) would mean that the Church AT LEAST TOLERATED people who followed that opinion. This is the case. No a priori argument can contradict this, if that is the reality on the ground.
April 1, 2016 at 12:59 am
Your argument (which is, as I have said, is essentially claiming title to hypothetical goods that might have resulted from labour that did not occur) would render the church’s teaching absurd as the only person who could not claim interest would be someone in coma with no friends or relatives. You are attributing to ‘the church’ acts merely of churchmen. This is a modernist error. You also seem to be denying the irreformability of the supreme magisterium. The pope is not delegating his infallibility to the Holy Office by issuing through that office a statement to the effect that a properly papal document is universal in scope. Being irreformable the failure of the popes to reassert the teaching in detail is irrelevant. It would be absurd to say the teaching on contraception cannot be abrogated because it is part of the ordinary and universal magisterium and then suggest that the teaching on usury (far more fiercely asserted) is not and can be abrogated (or rendered trivially true as you are seeking to do).
April 1, 2016 at 11:39 am
Well, you’re the first person who’s accused me of being a modernist! I may have to take a screenshot.
“The pope is not delegating his infallibility to the Holy Office by issuing through that office a statement to the effect that a properly papal document is universal in scope.”
As I understand it, under that case papal infallibility could not apply. To be infallible under the definition of Vatican I a teaching must be promulgated by the Roman Pontiff personally.
Probati auctores are probati because approved by the relevant congregation of the Roman Curia charged by the Pope. This is an act of the Church (not necessarily infallible, but certainly effectual). In the same way, when a question is posed and the answer formally given “Yes, you can use that NFP” that’s it. You can use it. That’s how moral theology works. Whether it can be overturned or not I’m not sure; but whenever a thing has become tolerated, I can’t think of any historic instance of its later being banned.
Thank you for offering a paraphrase of my argument.
I don’t agree with this convoluted reasoning. I don’t think the reason you give is why I would charge interest; I would charge interest because I am foregoing the enjoyment of my £2 now, in expectation of having my £2 back later.
£2 now is worth more than £2 later. It doesn’t matter whether I in fact spend it or not; what I value is having the property to enjoy, if I wish. I value the opportunity, as does the borrower, otherwise he wouldn’t want to borrow, and he certainly wouldn’t be prepared to pay interest.
If you argue this is excluded, then it would seem to be equally immoral to lease a house I don’t use at a fixed rent.
April 1, 2016 at 2:09 pm
My understanding is that Aelianus is saying that the condemnation of usury of Vix Pervenit is infallible, and that the (later) pope equivalently stated this fact when he told the Holy Office to say that it applied to everyone i.e. it is the earlier papal act to which infallibility is ascribed.
April 1, 2016 at 7:46 pm
Ok, so OUM infallible not EM infallible. Gotcha.
April 1, 2016 at 9:22 pm
The extraordinary/ordinary distinction has been used in many contradictory ways in the twentieth century that do not agree with the manner in which it was explained to the fathers of Vatican I before they voted for Dei Filius. ‘Extraordinary Magisterium’ has only appeared explicitly once in Mortalium animos. The document fulfilled all the criteria for infallibility in the sense defined by Pastor Aeternus when it was first promulgated except that it was not addressed to the universal church. This last requirement was fulfilled later.
April 3, 2016 at 7:24 pm
This is a matter of opinion, not a settled issue.
In any case, I don’t find anything objectionable in Vix Pervenit. I would tend to agree that it is infallible – but not because it came from the Pope.
It is infallible because it is the Traditional teaching of the Church.
Let’s leave it at that. It’s a tangent that’s not worth pursuing for our present purposes.
I agree with you that mere hypothetical opportunity cost is not admissible.
I think that you are wrong to be squeamish about permitting allowance even for lawful damnum emergens, which you say can be a cover for usury. But this is a matter of political and prudential judgement. In my view, the availability of credit has done more to improve the lot of the poor than expelling “usurious” (perhaps truly usurious) financiers has done. In politics some practical toleration of evil is sometimes – regrettably – inevitable for a greater good.
The way I see it, if a business loans money, which would have been spent on stock to be sold at a markup, there is a clear title to damnum emergens there.
If a money lender is in the business of lending money, he has his wages to cover and those of his staff. Also, he has the bad debt expense to cover. The bad debt expense will be calculated prospectively at a certain percentage, and different classes of loan / borrower will attract a different rate of interest on the principal to compensate the lender.
The admin costs can be subsumed into this rate across the board, or charged up front (as in some mortgage arrangements).
I think this is typically what financiers do. I don’t think it is by any means clear that what they do is always or even generally usurious, since competition in the market prevents exorbitant margins from being applied (interest in excess of the legitimate titles).
April 4, 2016 at 1:49 am
See comment 8 below.
April 2, 2016 at 6:10 pm
Tthough it is widely supposed that an encyclical can’t by itself be a way of teaching infallibly, I can see no reason why this is true. Fr Brian Harrison argues convincingly that Humanae Vitae’s central teaching is taught ex cathedra in that document. http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt43.html
April 1, 2016 at 9:53 pm
Your position is modernist because you attribute to the Church (which cannot err) acts which are properly only those of churchmen. In doing so you implicitly adopt the pantheistic concept of tradition condemned by Pius X in the Anti-modernist oath. You also do this for the reason Pius X indicates in order to alter teachings which are inconvenient to this age. The authorisation of some manual by some official or by the Pope himself in a non-irreformable act may shift the responsibility for error from the user to the one who authorised the text (depending on how well formed the conscience of the user is) but it does not remove the error and provides no absolute guarantee of the absence of error. In the same way a British passport official may say my visa has expired when I seek to enter the United Kingdom and he may err in doing so. The United Kingdom has authorised him to discharge the functions he is performing when he makes the error but it would be false to say that the United Kingdom had said my visa had expired. That would only be the case if this statement were made by the Queen in Parliament. When the parish priest baptises my baby it is true he has been baptised by the Catholic Church. When the priest says “what a calm baby” it is not the case that the Catholic Church has said that my baby is clam. When he omits the anointing with the oil of catechumens it is not the case that the Catholic Church omitted the anointing with the oil of catechumens. Confusing these things is clericalist but also modernist for the reasons mentioned (the two often go together). This confusion ignores the fact that the authority of the church is entirely derived from Christ and the Catholic Church per se acts only on those occasions and insofar as Christ authorised her to act on His behalf and because Christ is divine truly in His person. To say the Church is acting in all sorts of other areas is to transfer the divinity of Christ to the Church (see Pascendi §35).
Money is a token for goods of real value. It cannot be used in way that implies it is those goods rather than merely represents them. One of the consequences of this is that it has no use distinct from its ownership. Thus its use cannot be charged for. If your analysis were correct it would indeed have always been legitimate to lend money at at least some rate of interest in all circumstances and therefore the Church’s teaching on this subject would be either trivially true (true only in conditions which cannot obtain) or just false. It may be that some funds might have been invested in goods of real value that might have yielded a return through the sale of their use or in some enterprise but as it happens it was not, it was lent, and the lender can claim no remuneration for this hypothetical investment. I could let my house to a man and charge him for the use of the house over one year. I cannot charge him for the huge profits I imagine a fishmongers that I might have opened in the property over the same year might have made. I did not convert the premises, buy the fish, prepare it for sale and sell it. The imagined goods never existed and to charge for them is theft. Your position is also nominalist because you are attributing value to the present possession of the funds simply because you chose to value this not because they have any objective value other than the simple face value of the coins or notes (prescinding the question of inflation already discussed).
April 4, 2016 at 1:49 am
If you are setting aside the claim about confessors’ manuals then I’m fine with that. The consequentialist claim about furthering the lot of the poor I reject as matter of principle and of fact but there is no need to consider it as, I assume, you are not making a consequentialist argument. You concede “mere hypothetical opportunity cost is not admissible” but then you say “if a business loans money, which would have been spent on stock to be sold at a markup, there is a clear title to damnum emergens there”. Yet, what is this but to imagine how you might have converted money into real goods in which there would be a distinction between dominion and use, and how you might have then made a profit from the use. But you did not and there was not and you have no right to charge for labour that did not occur or for the production or the utility of goods that were never produced or procured. Your point about administrative costs may justify some sort of flat fee it emphatically does not justify a return based on the size of the loan and the time for which the funds are held. Such a return is manifestly a charge for the use of the funds itself and so usury. If the lender is concerned about bad debt let him demand collateral. Again this cannot justify a return based on the size of the loan and the time for which the funds are held. This question is not a matter of opinion. The Church’s condemnation is dogmatic and usury has always meant interest pure and simple. On the pragmatic question, if usury were not available then financial institutions would have to invest funds in stock intelligently and award their investors a proportion of the profits. Such investment and return would stimulate material prosperity far more than usury and without the same reinforcement of existing concentrations of wealth. Hire-purchase agreements could substitute for any other socially necessary functions currently performed by usury.
April 4, 2016 at 10:02 am
There’s no such thing as interest pure and simple; if there were, we wouldn’t be having this argument. All profit is interest. It’s why businessmen are “interested” in doing business! Usury is a percentage interest charged on the principal, which is not – and is never as such – justified by any extrinsic title. In so far as any charge to interest is made without regard to extrinsic titles, having in view only the amount lent, it is usurious. Always.
I was referring only to the precise scope of Papal infallibility as a matter of opinion, not the doctrine of usury under discussion.
It seems to me that you define damnum emergens out of existence, since in your conception all damnum emergens would be hypothetical.
It is one thing to charge interest based on what I might notionally have done with my money (but in fact never did or was ever likely to), and quite another to charge interest based on what I would and have done and am doing otherwise with my money in the actual course of business. In the first case, it would make no difference to whether I lent the money or not. In the second case, I would never in a million years lend money on a commercial basis unless it was at least as much worth my while as using it in my business. I admit the calculation cannot be exact, since no-one has perfect foreknowledge; but a fair and equitable estimate can be made. How can you possibly argue that I have not incurred a cost by foregoing the purchase of x known tons of stock at the known cost of £y, which money I have lent to you? There is certainly a cost, and I have to bear it. At the end of the financial year, it may be possible to ascertain that cost with a high degree of certainty, depending on the trade.
Re the admin fees, I’m not suggesting that they would be calculated in proportion to the size of the loan; I’m only suggesting that for convenience it may sometimes be prudent to collect the fees – calculated at cost independent of the amounts loaned – from all borrowers via an interest adjustment across the board. This would mean that smaller borrowers would in effect be subsidised by larger borrowers in meeting the admin costs of the lender. Otherwise, since the admin costs are constant, it makes it less worthwhile to borrow small amounts than large amounts. You could argue this is not equitable to larger borrowers. In the net, however, it might reduce the overall costs of borrowing.
As to the demanding of collateral, that might make it harder for some borrowers to find credit. I do agree, though, that as far as possible collateral should always be sought. This would minimise the risk of lending, and reduce the cost to borrowers.
April 4, 2016 at 7:07 pm
The OED defines interest as ‘Money paid regularly at a particular rate for the use of money lent, or for delaying the repayment of a debt’. That is usury. If you regularly purchase certain goods with the funds that you have lent and were genuinely unable to purchase it because you lent the funds and you suffered a verifiable harm from not doing so then you may by prior arrangement be compensated for that amount. That is not ‘Money paid regularly at a particular rate for the use of money lent, or for delaying the repayment of a debt’. However, it could easily be used as an excuse for introducing (OED) interest surreptitiously so prudent legislators should ban it. You say ‘I would never in a million years lend money on a commercial basis unless it was at least as much worth my while as using it in my business’ this is precisely the point. Usury is a way for people who are already wealthy to become more wealthy without labour. It thus distorts the market which is supposed to be the best possible mechanism in this order of providence for rewarding productive labour. By permitting usury the state rewards the prior ownership of capital and allows this group to price the productive labourer out of the market for the means of production causing capital to gravitate towards capital instead of towards labour ultimately imposing upon the labourer a yoke little better than slavery itself (house slaves in the west and field slaves elsewhere). Without usury those in possession of significant capital and unable or unwilling to labour themselves would have to invest it in the enterprises of those who could and would. Thus, a return would still be possible but not without rewarding the labourer at a competitive rate. The market would be restored as a mechanism that rewards productive labour and in which capital gravitates towards labour.
April 4, 2016 at 11:23 pm
To him that has, yet more shall be given.
The shrewd investor is rewarded for his shrewdness. So too the shrewd money-lender, who is really just a shrewd investor on different terms.
If you accept the justice of the title to damnum emergens in the circumstance I outline – it looks like we are basically on the same page, though you are more squeamish – then surely how it’s collected is of secondary importance?
In many circumstances the title will be proportionate to the amount lent. A rate of interest charged is an easy way of accounting for this, and it extends additional “time to pay” to the lender, rather than expecting him to pay up front.
It’s not ideal that the economy depends in part on lending, rather than investing. Investing is arguably better.
But then again, it’s not ideal that people are happy being wage-slaves, and don’t want the responsibilities of proprietorship.
What are you going to do about this? Banning all charges to interest will simply mean that many people will have no access to funds that they could otherwise have employed productively. The monied idle are going to be no more proactive about employing their funds.
And in any case, to be a successful money lender you cannot afford to be idle. It requires considerable skill and investment of time and effort.
April 5, 2016 at 1:15 am
Your position is essentially what Benedict XIV condemns when he says “We exhort you not to listen to those who say that today the issue of usury is present in name only, since gain is almost always obtained from money given to another. How false is this opinion and how far removed from the truth!” You are wrong about the effort of usury. The pre-existing rich can simply employ a usurer and need do nothing themselves. As Zippy points out in the link he posted (comment 9) if the right of the lender to repayment in the event of default is limited to the collateral offered for the loan then what has been purchased is a claim over that collateral and it is not usury. Lateran V allows for charitable micro-credit so long as it is not for profit and calibrated to cover expenses only. These two mechanisms more than provide for all the supposedly socially necessary functions of the usurer without creating the mechanism whereby pre-existing concentrations of capital are automatically augmented.
April 5, 2016 at 8:47 pm
I think you are definitely on to something here. I’m not against all reform, by any means; but I think outlawing all interest on loans as a blanket measure would be a step backward. I suppose my attitude is that the necessary change has to come from people’s interior dispositions, rather than from the law.
Consider; all avaricious and otiose accumulation of wealth beyond the amount useful to one’s station is, surely, born of greed. The problem you identify persists because of greed in general, not usury in particular. If they gave that cash away, which they should, there wouldn’t be a problem.
Of course the rich can employ someone else and be idle themselves. That doesn’t detract from the efforts expended by the money-lender.
Any rich person can do this in any profession he chooses.
April 5, 2016 at 11:31 pm
By the selling non-existent use of money what the usurer is actually doing is buying the labour of the borrower rather than the fruits of his labour. That is, the borrower is partially selling himself into slavery (Revelation 18:11-13). Grace is compared to usury in the Gospels because grace is intrinsically and inexhaustibly fruitful. Jesus says to give the image of Caesar (coin) back to Caesar and the image of God (the human person) back to God. By permitting usury Caesar is claiming ownership of the human person and by treating coin as if it were grace he is claiming divine honours. This is why the second beast (the false prophet) in Revelation 13 tries to brand all men with the name of the first beast (the antichrist) and make them worship his image. Usury is the hidden claim of the state to divine honour.
April 6, 2016 at 5:32 pm
The Church does not condemn bond servitude, for instance, as intrinsically evil.
So I don’t see where this argument gets you.
April 4, 2016 at 5:12 pm
FYI:
https://zippycatholic.wordpress.com/2014/11/10/usury-faq-or-money-on-the-pill/
April 4, 2016 at 10:27 pm
That is a tremendously helpful resource, thank you. I suppose I ought to retract what I said above about inflation.
April 5, 2016 at 10:26 am
Aeliane, when you write: “If you regularly purchase certain goods with the funds that you have lent and were genuinely unable to purchase it [them] because you lent the funds and you suffered a verifiable harm from not doing so then you may by prior arrangement be compensated for that amount”, this seems like a large concession. Surely the fact that I normally purchase e.g. crops with my money each month and make 5% is no reason why I should ask 5% if I lend the money instead? Is it not still a claim to be recompensed for labour which I have nor performed?
April 5, 2016 at 6:16 pm
IIaIIae,78,2 ad 1 “A lender may without sin enter an agreement with the borrower for compensation for the loss he incurs of something he ought to have, for this is not to sell the use of money but to avoid a loss. It may also happen that the borrower avoids a greater loss than the lender incurs, wherefore the borrower may repay the lender with what he has gained. But the lender cannot enter an agreement for compensation, through the fact that he makes no profit out of his money: because he must not sell that which he has not yet and may be prevented in many ways from having.” This must be a genuine loss of a morally certain good not a lost opportunity. However, as I said it is so open to abuse it would seem sensible not to allow this in practice. However, if you simply limit the liability of the borrower to the collateral given then the lender may receive a profit from the loan without difficulty. Essentially what the ‘lender’ has done is purchase a lien which can be redeemed at a pre-arranged price.
April 5, 2016 at 12:08 pm
Much of the discussion above has, quite rightly, focused on investments and returns thereon. But what if I lend money to someone because he wants to take a holiday, or to buy a new car? There will never be a return on that “investment”, but why should he not have to pay me to recognise that I have provided him with the means to have something now which he could not otherwise afford? And I have been disadvantaged because I do not have the money which I would otherwise have, which I could have used as I pleased.
I have provided a service to him, for which he ought in justice to pay, surely?
April 5, 2016 at 6:25 pm
Say Bob is the one with the funds and Bill wants to buy the car. Bob could charge for the administrative cost of the loan but not for the use of the funds because the funds have no use distinct from their dispersal. However, Bill does get an advantage from the car so Bob could simply give the Bill the funds necessary to buy the car (£5,000) in exchange for a right to £6,000 by a certain date or the return of the car (+ some other designated asset). Thus there would be no usurious loan only the sale of a right to certain assets with an option for Bill to redeem that right at a cost of £1,000.
April 5, 2016 at 9:24 pm
Even a “loan” charging “interest” for a vacation or to throw a party is not usury if it is not a mutuum: if repayment is secured by (and only by) a stake in some property as opposed to a personal guarantee by the borrower.
It isn’t the “borrower’s” specific use of the “loan” proceeds which makes the difference between usury and not-usury: it is the terms of the contract, the nature of the contact itself.
Personal guarantee to repay principal + interest/profit = usury.
Contract secured by property with no personal guarantee + interest/profit = not usury.
I explain all of this in detail with Magisterial/Scholastic citations in the usury FAQ/ebook I linked upthread.
April 6, 2016 at 1:07 pm
So if I give Bill £500 on condition that if he doesn’t give me £600 next month I can take his piano, which is worth £600, is that usury?
April 6, 2016 at 8:09 pm
If he sold you the piano now with effect from next month and the contract stipulated that you had the right to buy it back for the original price plus £100 for that month how would that be unfair?
April 7, 2016 at 3:38 pm
I see that the two transactions would come to the same thing. I am still puzzled about why you can justly ask for more money back than you gave, provided that you can specify a thing in advance which you can take if you don’t get it.
April 7, 2016 at 6:08 pm
If I sell you my house for £300,000 and then I want to buy it back five years later and you ask £350,000 for it that is not unjust in itself. Its utility relative to other goods or quality in itself may have changed in the intervening period.
April 8, 2016 at 12:14 pm
But could you stipulate that in advance?
April 8, 2016 at 6:12 pm
A right of ‘buy-back’ is a real interest in property which really limits the ownership of the one who presently possesses it and it seems legitimate to charge for it.
April 6, 2016 at 8:15 pm
To quiavideruntoculi: The Church condemns non-penal enslavement. By legalising usury the state creates a situation where it become progressively impossible to function economically without making yourself the victim of usury. This also corresponds to Revelation 13 “And he shall make all, both little and great, rich and poor, freemen and bondmen, to have a character in their right hand, or on their foreheads. And that no man might buy or sell, but he that hath the character, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. “
April 11, 2016 at 11:23 pm
I agree about the corrosive effect of usury.
That document is disciplinary in scope.
April 11, 2016 at 11:28 pm
“We, who, though unworthy, exercise on earth the power of our Lord and seek with all our might to bring those sheep of His flock who are outside into the fold committed to our charge, consider, however, that the Indians are truly men and that they are not only capable of understanding the Catholic Faith but, according to our information, they desire exceedingly to receive it. Desiring to provide ample remedy for these evils, We define and declare by these Our letters, or by any translation thereof signed by any notary public and sealed with the seal of any ecclesiastical dignitary, to which the same credit shall be given as to the originals, that, notwithstanding whatever may have been or may be said to the contrary, the said Indians and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, even though they be outside the faith of Jesus Christ; and that they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect.”
April 11, 2016 at 11:32 pm
Yes – it’s a law.
It’s not a dogmatic decree.
April 11, 2016 at 11:55 pm
Is this on the principle you have been applying above that any definition that is widely ignored afterwards somehow doesn’t count? It is addressed to ‘all faithful Christians’. Paul III goes on to state the doctrinal and philosophical reasons why non-penal enslavement is contrary to natural and divine law. He then invokes his supreme authority ‘We, who, though unworthy, exercise on earth the power of our Lord’ and proceeds to ‘define’ that non-penal enslavement is null and void. This clearly fulfils all the criteria laid out in Pastor Aeternus. It is true that it does in miniature replicate the situation with usury. The wealthy and powerful for whom this teaching was inconvenient managed to intimidate the Holy See into dropping the canonical sanctions attached to non-penal enslavement and to go quiet on the teaching. Yet Christ’s guarantees do not attach to what the Pope omits to do (and the claim that they do is a condemned error DH2047) but to what the Pope does and the teaching stands however inconvenient for the wealthy and the powerful.
April 12, 2016 at 12:19 am
It’s on the basis that it’s clearly a bit of positive legislation, not a doctrinal decree. On the same argument, you’d say Cum Ex Apostolatus is a dogmatic decree; but it isn’t. No approved theologian regards it as such.
You find me one serious theologian who regards that decree as dogmatic.
I would also point out that if it is dogmatic, that sits very ill with the NT injunction “slaves obey your masters”.
April 12, 2016 at 12:41 am
There is no suggestion the text is disciplinary (although other disciplinary texts were issued at the same time by Paul III to buttress its teaching). The Pope would not even have the authority to issue a disciplinary text of that nature. If non-penal enslavement were not contrary to natural and/or divine law the temporal power would have sole competence to decide wether to permit it and the spiritual power could not declare such laws in a per se indifferent matter to be null and void. On your logic Apostolicae Curae declaring Anglican Orders null and void would be purely disciplinary despite being cites by the CDF as a paradigm case of an infallible decree concerning dogmatic fact. Your appeal to the consensus of theologians is, like your reliance on magisterial omissions, just another retreat into the pantheist account of the magisterium. If you want to read a recent study of the text of Sublimis Deus its authority try this. Your reference to 1 Peter 2:18/Colossians 3:22 is beside the point. It is not slavery per se that is contrary to natural and divine law but non-penal enslavement. The legalisation of usury is a form of non-penal enslavement.
April 12, 2016 at 12:49 am
Two points. 1 – it doesn’t define a doctrine. It provides a law. These people are by no means to be enslaved. Particular. Pragmatic. Prudential. It doesn’t come close to a doctrinal definition.
2 – this is not a matter for a priori argument. This is a question of fact. You show me where it is treated as a dogmatic definition. It is not even in Denzinger.
You cannot just go constructing authorities out of thing air, on the basis of some logic-chopping. How was this received in the Church? How has it been viewed by theologians?
The source is not sufficient; you must cite the literature, since I’ve seen nothing which refers to this as de fide.
For all practical purposes, no Greco-Roman slavery was “penal”. It was just owning people, full stop.
April 12, 2016 at 1:04 am
[Reply to the last response to comment 13]. The scope of the magisterium extends to faith and morals. The first definition of Sublimis Deus asserts in morals that non-penal enslavement is wrong and then as matter of fact that it is of no legal effect. There are no canonical penalties mentioned no suggestion made that this is disciplinary text. If you care about the status of the document or the reasons for its subsequent obscurity follow the link in my last comment and read the study. At least you are vindicating the principle that enthusiasts for usury are secretly pro-slavery. If you maintain that Sublimis Deus is disciplinary then you will have to hold either that a) The Pope has the authority to legislate for laypersons subject to temporal polities in merely indifferent matters or b) Paul III acted ultra vires in Sublimis Deus. Which is it?
April 12, 2016 at 1:19 am
I will not continue this discussion if you are going to make personal slurs. I nowhere said anything in favour of slavery. It is a social evil. It should be eradicated. But nowhere has the Church taught that it is always per se intrinsically evil to keep slaves under any and all circumstances, that I have seen cited in the literature. As far as I am aware, no exception is made for “penal” vs “non-penal” servitude.
I am not AGAINST the bull – its just not an infallible bull. It is evidence, solid evidence, of the Church’s constant and praiseworthy effort to act, wherever possible, to limit and, as opportune, ban or urge the banning of slavery. That is how it is employed in the Catholic Encyclopedia article on slavery. But it is not evidence, beyond merely suggestive evidence, that the Church regards all non-penal slavery as always and everywhere intrinsically wrong. Remember that the Church does not regard polygamy is intrinsically wrong; but it is absolutely forbidden to Christians by Christ Himself.
That may be taught somewhere, but I’ve never seen it; surely if such a definitive condemnation existed it would be quoted by apologists for the Church’s record in regard to slavery?
I don’t have a developed understanding of the precise limits of the Pope’s temporal authority. I can’t see why he couldn’t, in theory, provide any lawful rule for lay people, even under another potentate’s jurisdiction, even in “indifferent” matters. Whether he would be wise to do so, is another question. In any event this matter hardly seems indifferent.
April 12, 2016 at 1:33 am
I never said that “it is always per se intrinsically evil to keep slaves under any and all circumstances” nor has the Church. One may sell onself and one’s dependents into servitude and one may be reduced to servitude due to crime or participation in an unjust war. What one may not be is reduced to servitude at the pleasure of the state or a private individual and this is what Sublimis Deus condemns and what the legalisation of usury entails. The Bull manifestly fulfills all the criterea for infallibility laid down by Pastor Aeternus. It is issued by the Pope invoking his supreme authority, in a matter of faith and morals it addresses the universal church and it defines. Various other disciplinary documents were issued by Paul III to add canonical sanctions to Sublimis Deus and Charles V was annoyed by the sweeping character of these provisions. Under pressure from the Emperor, Paul III quietly dropped the sanctions and Sublimis Deus fell into obscurity. All of this is laid out in the text I linked to above.
No one holds that the Pope has the authority to legislate for laypersons subject to temporal polities in merely indifferent matters. As such an enthusiast for going with the theological academic flow that ought to fill you with terror.
April 12, 2016 at 1:48 am
Thank you for the clarification. I was evidently labouring under a misapprehension as to your position.
Ah well – if no-one holds it, it’s probably wrong.
In any event, you are certainly flat-out wrong about the status of this bull. But thank you for the spirited debate.
1) it doesn’t define a doctrine in faith or morals. Where’s the definition?
You have inferred a doctrine from its contents. The fact that you have to use argumentation to arrive at it proves there is no definition (however sound or otherwise your inference may be as to what stance informed His Holiness’s provision).
What it says is, so and so act is forbidden. Such and such persons are by no means to be enslaved. End of.
2) there were canonical sanctions, including ferendae sententiae excommunication, provided in a separate document. No mention of heresy, which incurs latae sententiae excommunication.
April 12, 2016 at 1:57 am
The perfectly obvious definition is: “We define and declare by these Our letters, or by any translation thereof signed by any notary public and sealed with the seal of any ecclesiastical dignitary, to which the same credit shall be given as to the originals, that, notwithstanding whatever may have been or may be said to the contrary, the said Indians and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, even though they be outside the faith of Jesus Christ; and that they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect.” Heresy is only the denial of a revelled truth the nullity of non-penal enslavement is an inference from a revealed truth and so it requires Catholic Faith rather than Divine and Catholic Faith and its denial is an error not a heresy. It still incurs sanctions but not latae sententiae excommunication.
April 12, 2016 at 2:08 am
So what must be believed, if we take it as a definition in faith and morals? That those particular Indians must not be enslaved (until the bull was revoked). And you’re saying that’s an infallible definition of sententia fidei proxima doctrine?
Another massive hole in this line of argument is that the same language is used in Cum Ex Apostolatus Officio, which is clearly not infallible.
I will quote for you from Cardinal Dr J Hergenrother, Cardinal-Prefect of the Vatican archives, a portion of whose 1876 book “Catholic Church and Christian State” is reproduced in Salza and Siscoe’s “True or False Pope?” where the status of CEAO is addressed (footnote taken from original, no. 62, page 399):
“Professor Denzinger has collected all dogmatic decisions in his Enchiridion Definitionum, which since 1853 has gone through four editions, been recommended by many bishops and much praised by the Holy Father. No theological reviewer in all of Christendom has complained of the omission of the Bull in question.”
April 12, 2016 at 2:17 am
I think you should leave off the arguments about Cum Ex Apostolatus Officio which are completely irrelevant (or at least quote the supposedly definitive looking but not passage). The definition teaches that peoples who are discovered by Christians cannot be enslaved simply because they are not Christians. In context it was already understood that enslavement for penal reasons was permitted.
April 12, 2016 at 2:24 am
The argument about CEAO is very relevant; if CEAO is not infallible, what makes you so sure this is? Why should I – or anyone else – believe you, when Denzinger didn’t care to include it or CEAO, and no Pope has ever referred to the “doctrine” of either as infallible?
SD doesn’t teach anything. It says: don’t do x.
That’s not a definition. It’s a command.
April 12, 2016 at 1:11 am
P.S. Do you think a) ‘just owning people, full stop’ is morally legitimate b) the apostles taught error or c) laws contrary to natural and/or divine law are not null and void?
April 12, 2016 at 1:27 am
Abstractions are easy for people who don’t have to live with the consequence.
If, as for instance Thomas Jefferson did, you inherit a slave-holding, and it is illegal to manumit your slaves – as it then was – and by doing so you risk serious reprisals to your person and to that of the slaves, and possibly a bloody uprising, is it immoral to retain legal title of the slave (in your view, assumably an “intrinsically vicious” contract) while 1) providing for testamentary manumission (this was legal) 2) providing in your will for the upkeep of your manumitted slaves (who had no possibility at that time, in that place, of integrating into the local economy) , 3) giving your slaves de facto rights of freedmen?
That is an extreme case, but I hope you begin to see why I reject your extreme stance.
ENSLAVING people is not the same thing as merely owning (or happening to inherit) slaves.
April 12, 2016 at 1:37 am
This is all irrelevant as the Church has never said that it is always per se intrinsically evil to keep slaves under any and all circumstances. However, I don’t suppose such a revolting person as Thomas Jefferson would have worried himself about it. His solution was to deport the entire African American population to Africa and place white women who conceived children by them beyond the protection of the laws.
April 12, 2016 at 1:51 am
In respect of his treatment of slaves, and his humane approach to the question, I have encountered nothing that should attract opprobrium. Maybe you were referring to some other defect in his character that I am unaware of?
The solution you refer to was favoured by many prominent free black thinkers at the time, as being the only option that could avert certain, bloody civil war. If memory serves, Jefferson ultimately reflected that a total deportation was impracticable.
Again – it’s easy to judge people with hindsight, when we do not have to walk in their shoes.
April 12, 2016 at 1:58 am
On the revolting Jefferson and his views on race and slavery read this.
April 12, 2016 at 2:08 am
Read what? (no link)
April 12, 2016 at 2:09 am
Click in the word ‘this‘.
April 12, 2016 at 2:12 am
Ah – it just didn’t work in the reviewing pane. Thank you.
The precis given there seems flawed for a start.
Jefferson pushed for restriction and abolition of slavery on at least two occasions. The subject is addressed by the African American academic Thomas Sowell in his 2015 book “Black Rednecks and White Liberals”.
He cites Jefferson as an example of a good man whose reputation has been severely – and, in his view unjustly – compromised by liberals seeking to instrumentalise history to further their own ideologies.
April 12, 2016 at 2:19 am
On Jefferson: the author of the book I cited is not at all a liberal and the evidence he cites is pretty damning.
April 12, 2016 at 2:31 am
He may have fallen foul of unfavourable second-hand commentaries. He may not have done his job very well.
Sowell cites, for instance, Jefferson’s tentative suggestion that African slaves were genetically inferior in intellect, as something often used to prove his “racism”.
Never mind that he qualifies that by saying he would like to be proven wrong. Never mind that he says it based on his own first-hand personal experience of African slaves, for whom he attempted much more concrete good, at greater personal cost, than those who carp at him with the benefit of hindsight. Never mind he acknowledges that what he has experienced may well be the product of the miserable conditions these unfortunate people had endured.
Never mind that, even now, genetic determinism has its adherents in academia, and even some form of verifiable half-plausible evidence to support it (Sowell addresses and refutes this, however, offering an alternative explanation of the evidence based on cultural factors).
April 12, 2016 at 2:44 am
Well, I am not going to rehearse all the evidence Conor Cruise O’Brien cites in his book but he deals with the points you raise. I do not think the fact that ‘scientific’ racism has its adherents in academia is at all relevant. It is a wicked false doctrine and those who adhere to it are culpable regardless of the century.
April 12, 2016 at 8:59 am
I think that’s a silly, over the top remark.
There are obvious differences in ability between “races” – albeit a woolly term.
As the Olympics prove every four years. Without fail.
April 12, 2016 at 3:32 pm
So you would consider yourself a scientific racist then?
April 12, 2016 at 5:37 pm
I believe that genetic determinism has a role to play as regards certain physical traits. I do not, however, infer from this any conclusions about the respective “merits” of different people, on the basis of their “race” – however, precisely, that term is to be defined.
For instance, Eastern Europeans tend to be vastly better adapted to weight-lifting than Ethiopians. But Ethiopians tend to be vastly better adapted to long-distance running.
There are obvious physiological reasons for this, determined primarily by genetics.
IQ, however, is a much more complex issue; as Tom Sowell points out, by far the most important differences between groups with noticeably different IQs are on the level of “software” (culture), rather than hardware.
April 12, 2016 at 6:30 pm
Matter is the principle of individuation and the highest operations of the intellect do not occur through a material organ. The capacity of the intellect to make use of man’s lower faculties such as the imagination may be impeded by the imperfect subjection of the body to the soul which results from the loss of the preternatural gifts but this privation (a consequence of the fall) afflicts all men. Moral (and therefore political) questions appertain to the will and intellect as such and thus there can be no pretext for the founding of civil rights and their variation upon supposed biological variation between ‘races’. Any attempt to do so is pagan and materialist.
April 12, 2016 at 7:35 pm
Yes, I would agree with that.
April 12, 2016 at 2:55 am
[Reply to last response to comment 14] I have already outlined the reasons for the later obscurity of Sublimis Deus. I recommend you read this on the topic. The document is in many respects an embarrassment to ultramontanists because the Holy See backed off under political pressure and failed to enforce it. Nevertheless, the same could be said of a number of important texts not least Vix Pervenit and Unam Sanctam. You seem to be denying the power of the Pope to define in morals. Are you are claiming “are by no means to be” cannot form a definition? Paul III also explicitly says he is defining. You have still not addressed the point that this would be an unprecedented usurpation of the temporal sword if it were not a definition in faith and morals. According to your argument instead of non-penal enslavement being invalid as Paul III teaches Paul III’s text would be. Your best argument so far is that there is another bull somewhere that some people think is infallible but which you think is not, so there …. a bit weak.
April 12, 2016 at 9:21 am
Unam sanctam contains an explicit doctrinal definition. So does Vix Pervenit.
The language Paul III uses in SD is exactly the same language as that used in other merely disciplinary decrees. The content of the definition is a practical prohibition; don’t do such and such. Paul III’s clear intention is to use positive law to forbid an action. That is what the history of the episode bears out. It is also borne out by the consensus of theologians.
You have not shown me what doctrine is defined. In order for it to be an infallible definition, there must be – without logic chopping and argumentation – a clear doctrine to be believed with the assent of Faith. There is none such in that document. There is your inference (perhaps quite sound) of an implicit doctrinal framework; that is all. Not sufficient.
I have given you a comparable example of a disciplinary bull CEAO. That is certainly non-infallible. It is not a weak argument, because it is a similar bull that is 1) excluded from Denzinger, 2) not regarded by theologians as infallible.
No one can argue – as you argue for SD – that CEAO fell into “obscurity”. It was operative canon law until 1917. Obscurity has nothing to do with it; the bull is not intended to define a doctrine and doesn’t.
Now the burden is on you to show the difference.
I would also remind you that demurring from the unanimous opinion of theologians (viz. that this bull is not infallible), in a matter so grave as Christian dogma, is a dangerous game to play.
April 12, 2016 at 3:36 pm
I assume you are not going to read the text I suggested? The bull was actually obscure (that is unknown) for many centuries. The defintive part of the bull is very clear. It fulfills the requirements of Pastor Aeternus (Pope as supreme pastor, addressed to universal church, definition, morals). Your claim that the Pope is legislating for the King of Spain is absurd. Your deference to academic consensus (which apparently leads you to adopt ‘scientific racism’) is totally disproportionate.
April 12, 2016 at 5:41 pm
Look, if it doesn’t bother you that you can’t find support for your view in any authorised theology manual, there’s no way I’m going to persuade you.
The little logical circle you are involved in cannot be broken on its own terms. Since you won’t accept the rules of the game as it is played outside your head, or any external reference point other than your own private reading of PA, there is no point in continuing this discussion.
You are attempting to settle by a priori argument what is a question of fact. The approach is fundamentally flawed.
April 12, 2016 at 6:21 pm
As I have repeatedly said, because the sanctions associated with Sublimis Deus were withdrawn and the practice of non-penal enslavement continued (de facto in the dominions of Castile and de jure in those of Portugal) and the Holy See did not pursue the matter the document fell into obscurity and was actually unknown to the collectors of papal dogmatic decrees for a long time. It seems Paul III overestimated the support he could expect from Charles V and then retreated when he found he lacked the means to enforce the measures her had adopted. This canonical retreat has no effect on the dogmatic text because “such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are of themselves, and not by the consent of the Church, irreformable”.I have directed you to the literature (further reading can be found in the text I cited) and I exhort you to consult it instead of repeating yourself. It is absolutely uncontroversial that the requirements for an infallible definition laid out in Pastor Aeternus are as I listed them (Pope as supreme pastor, addresses universal church, in a matter of faith or morals and defines). You are giving no arguments for your position other than this passage of CEAO which you refuse to quote.
April 12, 2016 at 5:43 pm
FYI, CEAO legislates for the actions of the civil power as well.
April 12, 2016 at 6:04 pm
How?
April 12, 2016 at 6:58 pm
Quivideruntocculi, according to you, I take it then, if some future Pope issued the following text…
“Paul VII, To all faithful Christians to whom this writing may come, health in Christ our Lord and the apostolic benediction. We, who, though unworthy, exercise on earth the power of our Lord define and declare that women are by no means to be ordained to the priesthood and should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect.”
…you would say that it was purely disciplinary and was neither doctrinal nor infallible?
May 8, 2016 at 3:05 pm
Would be interested in your thoughts on this:
http://wdtprs.com/blog/2016/05/sam-gregg-of-acton-on-medieval-distinctions-about-usury-and-legitimate-forms-of-money-lending/
May 8, 2016 at 8:45 pm
It is impossible to assess the argument of the book from the article as it does not make the distinctions necessary. It is certainly true that as nominalism took hold in the late middle ages much confusion arose concerning the Church’s teaching on usury but the magisterial line was held. Loans for the repayment of which the borrower is personally responsible cannot carry interest. The Acton Institute is an entrist organisation devoted to the dissemination of misinformation concerning any element of Catholic Social Teaching that conflicts with the interests of the USA or the plutocracy.
June 14, 2016 at 11:19 am
No idea whether the contents of this book are any good, but Cardinal Pell has written a foreword.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/God-Profit-Banking-Finance-Common/dp/0824521889
June 14, 2016 at 3:00 pm
The Acton Institute is an entrist organisation devoted to the dissemination of misinformation concerning any element of Catholic Social Teaching that conflicts with the interests of the USA or the plutocracy.