Questions on Usury for Michael Hoffman
From D.L., Omaha, Nebraska:
I have just completed reading your excellent book Usury in Christendom: The Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Not, and am re-reading and researching various sections for further clarity. Here are questions and comments which I hope you can assist me with in whatever spare time may allow.
1. If the popes from 1515 were manifest heretics on the issue of allowing, condoning and promoting the practice of usury in any form whatsoever, from the standpoint of it being mortally sinful, then the Catholic Church was absent of s valid papacy all these centuries. Exceptions most likely, would be popes who served brief reigns e.g.: Adrian VI, Marcellus II, Urban VII, Innocent IX and Leo XI.
2. Pius VIII served only 20 months and near the end of his office was troubled by revolutionary activities in France and Italy. Could these events have led to a hasty and not well thought out decision given to the Bishop of Rheims? Perhaps those advisors in the Curia advised him falsely, and through ignorance and bad trust/judgment he sinned lacking due diligence, but not by way of heresy?
3. Do you see exceptions of heresy with regard to Pius VI and Pius X? The Church cannot err in Canonizations which would violate Her principle of Indefectibility.
4. Trent and Vatican I would have been promulgated by two antipopes, Pius V and Pius IX. Do you see these councils partially or entirely illegitimate?
Dear Mr. L:
I write history. I am not a theologian, nor do I contemplate the theological consequences of my historical research, which is based solely on the pursuit of truth wherever it leads, on the basis that where there is truth there is Jesus Christ. If my book Usury in Christendom is true, then it is of Christ.
Remaining faithful to the True Church of All Time, the ecclesia of SS. Basil, Chrysostom, Aquinas, Anthony of Padua, King Edward the Confessor, Pope Innocent IV, etc., does not make one a traitor. Treason to traitors is no treason. The Catholic Church cannot nullify sacred dogma, or betray Christ, but rather, the post-Renaissance Church of Rome, or "newchurch," as some term it, appears to have done so. The bane of Christian society is their situation ethics, their substitution of human financial standards relative to the circumstances and context of the times, for immutable divine law against interest on loans. No pope after Leo X reversed the tide of usury in the Church. Even the famous Vix Pervenit encyclical of Benedict XIV consisted of toothless semantics. It had no provision for enforcement. It left a loophole for certain types of usury. Usury among “Catholics" flourished in the wake of it.
• Any pope after Leo X had the power to enforce the immemorial Catholic dogma on what usury is and the mortal sinfulness of it.
• Any pope after Leo X could have promulgated the following as law, as it had been law for fifteen hundred years:
"All interest on loans of money is a grave transgression against the law of God. In order to obtain absolution, reception of the Eucharist and a Catholic burial, all usurers must confess their mortal sin, avoid the near occasion of sin by halting their involvement in usurious trade and operations, and make restitution for the interest they took. Impenitent, practicing usurers are not to receive the Eucharist and are to be refused a Catholic burial. In Catholic nations, the civil authorities are urged to seize the assets of usurers after death to repay interest to debtors. Obstinate usurers are excommunicated."No such restorative statement of enforcement of the eternal Law of God (or anything approximating it), has ever been issued in the past 500 years (1515 to 2015) by any pope since usurious operations were incrementally empowered beginning with Medici Pope Leo X's Bull, Inter multiplices of May 4, 1515.
Ergo, despite whatever pious, nostalgic or sentimental feelings one may have for any pope from Leo X onward, it grieves me to say that whatever good those popes may have done cannot override their condonation of the worst of all sins. By their papal permission (by silence, inaction, apathy or active conspiracy) for the love of money that is usury --said love being, according to the Gospel the root of all evil (as it is, by its sterility and the plague of situation ethics that must accompany it in order to justify it) they acted as wolves, not shepherds .
We cannot say "he was a good pope but he permitted adultery. He was a good pope but he permitted idolatry. He was a good pope but he allowed for robbery." Any papal relaxation of the divine law against those grave transgressions renders the pontiff involved a devil in the shape of a pontiff.
This is true as well as for the centuries of gradualism which resulted, in 1830 in the pontificate of Pius VIII, in de facto permission for the root of all evil, the love of money as weaponized by interest on loans of money, which is what very obviously motivated the Renaissance Church of Rome in letting the “Catholic" usurers ply their trade.
Moreover, in the wake of the exposure of the child molestation rings in the Catholic hierarchy, which predate Vatican II, we must wonder about the extent to which even supposed "hero" popes of the past may have shielded malefactors by means of the terrible secrecy in which the Vatican bureaucracy and curia have dwelled these many centuries. Many questions are now being raised of the extent of sodomy in the hierarchy of Rome long before Vatican II. The true history of the papacy from the Renaissance onward, has yet to be written.
As for Pius X, recall that the Code of Canon Law of 1917, which permitted usury, though promulgated by Benedict XV, was largely composed during Pope Pius X's papacy. As for the infallibility of canonizations, I wonder. Alphonsus Liguori argued for the rights of those who charge interest on loans, and advocated a most devious form of lying, and he is esteemed by "traditionalists" as one of the most eminent and holy of all Catholic saints.
The winds of truth are only beginning to blow through the Church of Rome. Let us hope that the sum effect is more than the Cryptocracy's notorious Revelation of the Method.
Michael Hoffman
Copyright © 2013 and 2015. All Rights Reserved
For Further Research:
500 Years Ago the Reign of the Loansharks Began
Independent History and Research
Box 849 • Coeur d’Alene, Idaho 83816 USA
Copyright © 2013 and 2015. All Rights Reserved
For Further Research:
500 Years Ago the Reign of the Loansharks Began
Independent History and Research
Box 849 • Coeur d’Alene, Idaho 83816 USA
___________
Dear Michael
ReplyDeleteI have read your e-mails, etc., on usury, and especially the description of your new book, all with much interest. I haven't really "bought into" the whole important subject yet, but I now find I have a couple questions to ask you.
First of all, in this recent e-mail you say that you are not a theologian ("I write history. I am not a theologian..."). But surely, on this whole subject, you have very much involved yourself with theology, and have very much drawn theological conclusions, to very far-reaching effect in their consequences. Is there not a contradiction here, and a fundamental one? I think it an important question, because theology can sometimes involve very subtle points.
Secondly, have you read the various moral theology books published during the century leading up to Vatican II, on the subject of usury? It may be that you have and that you refer to them and discuss them in your book – I am just asking.
Best wishes,
N.G.
Ireland
Our discussion would be greatly enhanced if you would read my book.
ReplyDeleteYes, I have studied some of the moral theology books and manuals prior to Vatican II. Trent upholds the historic dogma but Trent was not enforced in this regard. The statement at Trent was made, it seems, largely to fend off criticism from anti-usury Protestants.
Jone's manual of theology is downright disgusting both on usury and usury's brother, sodomy (Jone allows for Catholics to sodomize their wives provided the marital act is concluded normally!).
As for my statement that I am not a theologian, as you know, in the Catholic Church the definitions of theologian and canon lawyer, for example, are strict and the qualifications are formal. Therefore, by that yardstick I am not a theologian.
As a historian of usury in Christendom I necessarily encounter theological issues. Any "conclusions" I draw in theological areas are a direct result of the history I present. For example, in the face of the massive practice of a soul-destroying transgression of God's law one would, methinks, necessarily state its corollary: that the popes who permitted this are guilty of condoning the worst of all evils. That statement may be the theologian's bailiwick, but well within the right of a historian to state as an observation.
We have nothing to fear from the truth. Where there is truth there is Christ.
One question about the Code of Canon Law of 1917. Are you sure, Mr Hoffman that paragraphs from CIC 1917, which are permiting usury, have been written under watchful eye of Pius X ?
ReplyDeleteBy the way, you are excellent writer and researcher and I really appreciate your work.
Best regards,
Andrew
The 1917 Code of Canon Law (promulgated in 1918 by Pope Benedict XV) was prepared mainly by prelates chosen by Pope Pius X and was largely complete at the time of his death.
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