Situation Ethics is the Law of the Post-Renaissance Papal Church

Situation Ethics is the Supreme Law of the Post-Renaissance Papal Church

By Michael Hoffman

www.RevisionistHistory.org

This essay has been published in a much enlarged, extended study in the April, 2022 issue of Revisionist History® newsletter no. 119.  

It is available for purchase at this link

_______________

Situation ethics from Leo X to Pope Francis

Situation ethics from Leo X to Pope Francis

With interest rates too low, usury-loving Catholic nuns turn to the market

Like the Vatican Bank and 21st century Catholics generally, these nuns in the news report that follows have no moral qualms about despising low interest rates and seeking an alternative investment—until their prayers that interest rates go up— can be answered. 

  

Contrary to heated denials from “Conservative” and “traditional” Catholics, the Church of Rome did indeed begin, during the Renaissance, to gradually overthrow its immemorial dogmatic law in conformity with situation ethics. Until the pontificate of Pope Leo X (1515), all profits on loans were a mortal sin requiring confession, restitution and absolution before the lender could be readmitted to Communion. Unrepentant usurers were refused Communion and burial in sacred ground. This writer’s study, “Usury in Christendom: The Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Not,” contains documentation demonstrating that situation ethics predates the pontificate of Pope Francis by five centuries.

Usury rates were too low for this usury-dependent order of Catholic nuns. Consequently, according to the Wall Street Journal, they turned to the stock market. — Michael Hoffman

_____________________

Get Thee to a Brokerage! 

Low Rates Turn Nuns Into Traders 

Sister Lioba manages German convent’s $2 million portfolio; a 2.6% return

By Georgi Kantchev 

Wall Street Journal, Front page, Nov. 30, 2016

http://www.wsj.com/

MARIENDONK NUNNERY, Germany—On a recent morning, Sister Lioba Zahn read the Bible, attended prayer, did the laundry and then prayed again. In the afternoon, she called her bank and started trading. Ultralow and negative interest rates have hit savings and investments around the developed world, crushing the income that many mom and pop investors rely on. Mom, pop and Sister Lioba. 

For over a century, Mariendonk financed itself by selling milk and candles, and through income on its bank deposits. After the European Central Bank began cutting rates, eventually going all the way below zero to their current -0.4%, Sister Lioba realized her convent needed extra income to survive.“With rates so low, we must get a better return if we want to sustain the convent,” says Sister Lioba, who holds the position of “cellerarin,” a convent’s version of a chief financial officer. 

Back in 2013, the nunnery’s roof needed repairing and the only car that the 28 sisters owned was nearing the end of its life. Calling her bank, Sister Lioba was offered a seven-year savings bond that carried a 1% annual return. She said she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. 

“You don’t need to have studied mathematics to see that we were going down,” said Sister Lioba, who had studied psychology. 

After morning prayer, she gathered her fellow nuns into a wood-paneled room inside the convent and showed a PowerPoint on low interest rates.

Presiding over the meeting, Sister Christiana Reemts, Mariendonk’s abbess, made an observation. “Twenty years ago we could get enough money from interest to renovate our whole building,” she remembered saying. “Now the interest rate can bring tears to one’s eyes.” 

In Mariendonk, a decision was made and global markets had a new investor. Sister Lioba now runs a portfolio of roughly €2 million, or $2.1 million, from her convent office. 

“I started by googling what a swap is,” Sister Lioba says, referring to a derivative that allows an investor to exchange the income stream of one asset with that of another.

The 54-year-old then began studying the financial pages of German newspapers and her bank’s research notes.  “I now understand every third sentence instead every 10th when I started,” she says.

Carsten Klude, chief economist at Mariendonk’s house bank, M.M. Warburg & Co. KGaA, cautions against underestimating the nuns.  “People often think that the sisters don’t get much from the outside world behind the thick walls of the monastery,” said Mr. Klude, who visits there several times a year. “But they have actually proven themselves to be quite the savvy investors.”

Last year, their portfolio yielded 2.6%. That is above the 0.3% return on German government debt but below the 9.6% the DAX stock market index returned last year. The Church of England has a portfolio valued at around £7 billion, or $8.7 billion, invested in assets including timber and hedge funds, and the Vatican has billions of assets tied up in real estate and private equity.

Mariendonk, an independent convent that receives little financial support from the Catholic Church, is a less likely addition to the fast-paced world of global investing. The red-brick convent is reached by a country road that snakes past farms, mills and sheep in the west German countryside.

Like many investors, Sister Lioba remembers the first stock she bought: Novo-Nordisk AS , a Danish drug company. She bought it in late 2013 and its value increased by around a third before she sold it earlier this year at a profit. “My only regret is why we didn’t buy some more at the time,” she says.

Her best trade so far: selling Deutsche Bank AG just before the financial giant’s stock started tanking. She also sold shares in Volkswagen AG in the fall of 2015, ahead of accusations that the German auto maker had cheated emissions tests. “Once those were stocks that you could take with you to bed,” she said. “Good that we got out in time.”

On the other hand, French bank BNP Paribas SA, Germany’s Daimler AG and telecom provider Telefónica Deutschland Holding AG , have all been losers for Mariendonk. To protect against such losses, Mariendonk says it never invests more than 4% of the overall portfolio in one asset.

Like other investors, Sister Lioba worries she could end up taking on too much risk as she joins the global hunt for yield. Traditional havens such as bonds offer such low returns that Mariendonk now invests around a third of its money in stocks, which are typically more volatile than fixed-income investments. Before rates fell below zero in 2014, the nunnery invested less than a quarter of its portfolio in equity.

Sister Lioba looks at three criteria: yield, low risk and moral acceptability. She has declined offers to invest in some oil companies and says emerging markets don’t match Mariendonk’s risk profile.

Read more at http://www.wsj.com/articles/get-thee-to-a-brokerage-low-rates-turn-nuns-into-traders-1480431892

Michael Hoffman is the author of The Occult Renaissance Church of Rome, forthcoming in 2017 from Independent History and Research

________________

This news service is made possible by donations from truthseekers and the purchase of our publications and recordings.

We like to hear from you, and while we can’t answer every e-mail, we do read them: hoffman(AT)revisionisthistory.org [AT = @]

________________

Usury in the USA: lifetime slavery to debt

Usury in America: 

Lifetime enslavement to debt

This Idaho patient, who is among the working poor and earns too little to make a higher payment or to pay her medical bill in one lump sum, and too much to qualify for Federal or state assistance, is making a $50.00 monthly payment on the $2,500 she owes. The physician's monthly interest charge on the debt is $50.30. At this rate, she will never be free of this debt and will be indebted for life.

Here’s the documentation, from an invoice sent this month of January (2016):

Click on each screenshot to enlarge:

Above: a closeup of the interest charge and payment amount

The invoice itself (with the name of the patient and identification redacted)

_______________

The churches are silent on this crime of theft via interest, and mostly silent concerning the Money Power which rules our nation as a direct result of the enormous profits reaped from this weapon of parasitic usury against the working poor.

FOR FURTHER RESEARCH:

BOOK: Usury in Christendom: The Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Not (scroll to the bottom of the page)

DVD: Catholics, Protestants and Usury in the Renaissance and Early Modern Europe:  A College-level Course in the Christian Theology of Money in Under Two Hours

______________

May 4, 1515: Reign of the Loansharks Begins

504 years ago the Pope of Rome made possible the beginning of the rule of the Money Power over the West

By Michael Hoffman

www.revisionisthistory.org

Medici Pope Leo X

On May 4 1515 Medici Pope Leo X (Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici), issued a papal bull permitting interest on loans of money if the loans were to the poor. This revolutionary permission was granted for so-called charity banks, which were known as Monte di Pieta, which translates as “mountains of compassion,” but quite a bit of the revenue ended up in the hands of the Medici bankers, not the poor, and even if these usury banks had been operated for the alleged benefit of the indigent alone, they were violating God’s law and creating a precedent for more usury.

Pope Leo X initiated a process of gradualism, whereby the Church's immemorial dogmatic law against the charging of interest on loans of money was incrementally relaxed and diluted, leading to a papal revolution —  the complete abolition of all ecclesiastical penalties for usury by Pope Pius VIII in his revolutionary bull of Aug. 18, 1830, Datum in audientia — as well as the absence of all such penalties in the 1917 and 1983 Codes of Canon Law. 

The thesis of this writer’s book, Usury in Christendom: The Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Not, is that the Renaissance Roman Church parted ways with the Church of All Time. It trafficked in fake relics and indulgences as supervised by the Fugger bankers of Augsburg. The Fuggers, with the support of the Hapsburgs, were far wealthier than any single Italian banking dynasty, including the Medici. Did you ever even hear of the Fuggers? Did you know that grievances over their operations were a motive for Martin Luther’s rebellion? The Fuggers controlled the transfer of revenues from the German Church to the papacy. Their loans to the pope brought them a portfolio of revenue-collecting privileges, including from the sale of indulgences. 

In 1519 the Fuggers bought the election of Spain’s Charles V as Holy Roman Emperor. Of the 851,000 Rhenish Florins raised to purchase the office for King Charles, the Fuggers contributed 543,000 florins. They were usury bankers to the popes and to the House of Hapsburg.  In September 1514, eight months before Leo X’s relaxation of the usury ban, papist theologian Johannes Eck of Ingolstadt, Luther’s nemesis, served as the corrupt mascot for the Money Power, as personified by the banker Jakob Fugger. Eck argued in a debate at the Carmelite monastery in Augsburg, that loan contracts at five percent interest were justified.

Is it a coincidence that Medici Pope Leo X issued his papal bull “Inter multiplicis” allowing for the interest-charging Montis Pietatis, the very next year? The pontiff anticipated the unpopularity of his bull and therefore threatened to excommunicate every Catholic who spoke against his gradualist overthrow of the magisterial dogma, by his relaxation, in the name of  charity, of the immemorial proscription against all interest on loans of money. 

Apologists for Leo X put forth a loophole for his exoneration: they quibble that he did not actually change the dogma on usury, just the pastoral application of the dogma. Yes, that’s true, and it was precisely these “pastoral” means which were employed gradually over the centuries from May 4, 1515 onward, to transform usury from a mortal sin to no sin at all.

 This “pastoral” technique for nullification of the Law of God should be familiar to all students of the devious tactics of revolutionary change agents, among whom the most notable contemporary example is the current pontiff, Pope Francis, the spiritual heir of Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici.

Adherents of the Church of Rome often scapegoat Protestant leader John Calvin for being the first to initiate the usury plague. Calvin was not yet six-years-old when Pope Leo X issued Inter multiplicis. 

No pope after Leo X restored the true Catholic Church’s immutable dogma. Every subsequent pope either did nothing or extended the incremental permissions. Toothless anti-usury bombast from Leo XIII and other popes served to camouflage the devious, gradualist process at work. (Benedict XIV’s masterpiece of dissimulation, Vix Pervenit, advertised as a monumental anti-usury jeremiad, contains a sly loophole for the continuation of usurious operations. “Catholic” usury banks continued to flourish in the wake of Vix Pervenit). 

The Cryptocracy uses similar tactics in different situations. If we study the methods and double talk by which Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer began to dissolve Catholicism in England in the 1530s we will observe the methods and double talk by which every pope from Leo X to Pius VIII  and onward, dissolved Almighty God’s bulwark against the Money Power (Luke 6: 34-36).

On May 4, 1515 situation ethics began its reign over Rome. After more than 500 years it is time to face the truth about the Renaissance papacy and its successors. To fail to do so is to ensure that God’s Law and His Church remain occluded and marginalized, while the Money Power’s most devastatingly effective tool continues to destroy the abundant life that is our heritage as heirs of Jesus Christ.  The love of money is the root of all evil. Usury is the weaponization of that love. All subsequent evils which have beset us emanate from this greatest of all iniquities. 

Copyright©2019. All Rights Reserved.

For Further Research:

“The Breeders of Money Gain Dominion Over the Church of Rome,” chapter XVI of The Occult Renaissance Church of Rome (softcover, 723 pages).

 Usury in Christendom (softcover, 416 pages) may be purchased here. An index to the book is available online free of charge at this link. 

Questions for Hoffman concerning his book about usury

Michael is the editor of the journal Revisionist History®, published six times a year. 

______________

Success in Michigan: Hoffman lambasts usury before a crowd of 60

Last Saturday April 11 in the Lansing, Michigan area we addressed what the organizers of our speech said were sixty people, on the subject of our book, Usury in Christendom: The Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Not.

Our speech included new research not in the book on Florentine bankers and their growing control of the Renaissance papacy in 16th century Italy. We spoke for 90 minutes, after which listeners remained in their seats as some ten or twelve people lined up for a lively question-and-answer period.

Christian economist Daniel Krynicki, author of History of Money and Usury in America, was on hand to field questions on usury and inflation, and usury and hard money (gold and silver). He gave learned replies to both queries. We regret having had so little time to converse with him after having corresponded for the past two years. Daniel is the altruist researcher who provided an index to Usury in Christendom, which appears online here.

Our book table did a flourishing business, offering for sale our texts, CDs and DVDs. The entire event ran from roughly 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., after which some fifteen people and this writer repaired to a local diner for lunch and further conversation.

The meeting’s organizer, the courageous Christian activist John Mangopoulos, the father of five, subsequently videotaped two interviews with us for his Michigan “public access” cable television program. Over the years Pat Buchanan, Joseph Sobran, Otto Scott, Sam Francis and other conservative thinkers have appeared on John’s show. We are grateful to him and his family for the smooth operation of the meeting.

The highlight of the day was our conversation with a man from Grand Rapids, who informed us that as a result of hearing our talk, he had contacted a woman to whom he had loaned several thousand dollars in the past, to inform her that he was returning the $400 in interest he had charged her. Hallelujah!

We have been told that a DVD of the speech may become available in the near future. Watch this blog for details.

***

Sedevacantist buncombe

On Jan 30, 2015, at 9:48, “S." recommended this sedevacantist web page:

http://www.fathercekada.com/2015/01/28/dr-de-mattei-prescribes-an-anti-sede-tranquilizer/

_______________________________ 

Dear S.

Yes, I know the sedevacantist line  — no heretic popes other than questionable Honorarius, until John 23rd. 

My book on usury (Usury in Christendom: The Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Not — avoided by every sedevacantist publication) shows that there have been popes who derogated (Leo X) and then later abolished (Pius VIII) the Dogmatic law against usury — by abolishing its as a mortal sin and declaring the mortal sin itself as an act “not to be disturbed”! This was heresy. Pope Pius X signed off on this in the 1917 Code of Canon Law (compiled under him and published after his death).

My forthcoming book on the "Occult Renaissance Church of Rome" will offer evidence of the occult popes of Kabbalism.

The sedevacantist thesis was invented by those who seek to maintain ridiculous and in many cases pernicious myths about the pre-Vatican II Church and its popes. It is worse than nonsensical. 

We can’t understand how the post-Conciliar Church came to be unless we investigate the pre-Vatican II popes of sodomy, usury and occult demonism who predate the Enlightenment and arose beginning in the Renaissance.

Sincerely,

Michael Hoffman

__________

The Church of Rome and the love of money

The Post-Renaissance Church of Rome and the Love of Money

What is the rationale for the position that on the one hand legalization of usury is out of the question, but on the other hand the doctrine against usury is denied in how it is applied in fact? This way of supposedly upholding the dogma on usury reduces it to a utopian principle that exists in a spiritual realm that has no concrete application to daily life. How do we say to young people today —  for whom the “the love of money is the root of evil” is already a very difficult doctrine —  that usury is a terrible wrong and mortal sin, if they know that all the same the Church has created a way of getting around it by permitting Catholics to derive profit from the charging of interest on loans? 

***

Listen now to today's Hoffman call-in radio interview

My interview by journalist Mark Anderson on his call-in radio program has been archived and is available for listening online free of charge, as a public service. The program is approximately two hours in duration. It is centered on a discussion of the book, Usury in Christendom: The Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Not.

Saying the broadcast is "free of charge" is somewhat misleading in that my appearance on the program was made possible by donations from truth-seekers whose gifts fund our research and public activism. Without those donations I could not afford to take two hours to speak on a workday morning analyzing the revolutionary history of how the just relations among human beings that Jesus Christ instituted have been sacrificed on the altar of avarice and situation ethics.

Click on the link to listen:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/americanfreepress/2013/08/26/beyond-exposure

***

Michael Hoffman on the radio Monday Aug. 26 talking about Usury in Christendom

Radio program: Hoffman to discuss Usury 

Your editor will be discussing the thesis of his book Usury in Christendom: The Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Not, on the American Free Press radio network beginning at 10 a.m eastern time, on Monday, August 26.

The program is hosted by  journalist Mark Anderson.

The show will be heard online at this link:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/americanfreepress

_________________

Questions for Hoffman concerning his book about usury

Questions on Usury for Michael Hoffman

From D.L., Omaha, Nebraska:

Michael,

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

___________

Hoffman’s book on usury reviewed in “Culture Wars” magazine

The July-August issue of Culture Wars, a Catholic magazine published by E. Michael Jones, PhD., has an extensive review of Michael Hoffman's book, Usury in Christendom: The Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Not.

The review, titled "Has the Catholic Church Changed Her Teaching on Usury?" is authored by Anthony Santelli, PhD., a fomer professor at George Mason University and the founder and hedgefund manager of AES Capital.

The 19-page review is on pp. 30-49 of the July-August issue. A pdf. of the issue  may be purchased online for $4.00 at this link: http://www.culturewars.com/  (Look for the "Buy Now" button highlighted in yellow).

Michael Hoffman has submitted a 2300-word letter to the editor of Culture Wars in reply to the main points of contention in Dr. Santelli's review.

"I will not release my letter in advance of Dr. Jones publishing it, unless it is heavily redacted or refused publication," Hoffman said.

Hoffman's book may be purchased here:
http://revisionisthistorystore.blogspot.com/2010/03/michael-hoffmans-online-revisionist.html

A YouTube video of Hoffman talking about the Money Power is available here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT0grvk16NI

_____________

More chicanery at the usurious Vatican Bank

We continue to come under attack from Catholics who deny the undeniable: that the post-Renaissance Church of Rome legalized the mortal sin of usury. The latest attack and my response are here.

On the credit side of the ledger, First Amendment Books, a division of the American Free Press newspaper in Washington DC is selling Usury in Christendom: The Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Not. Mark Anderson, the paper's roving reporter, has promised to invite us on his radio program to discuss papal documents such as the encyclical Vix Pervenit, cited by our opponents as an allegedly unambiguous blow to usury and a papal reaffirmation of the ancient dogmas.

In truth, Pope Benedict XIV's encyclical has a loophole permitting usury big enough to drive a Mack truck through. Vix Pervenit is a masterpiece of Vatican doubletalk: 98% eloquent fulminations against usury and then an escape clause permitting it. Those who deny this fact should consult Denzinger 1609 where they will discover a lament from the Bishop of Rheims over the confusion generated among Catholics by the ambiguous Vix Pervenit, some of whom understood it (correctly) as permission for usury.  The bishop asked for a clarification from Pius VIII who, as documented in Denzinger 1610, replies by letting stand the evolving practice of permitting usurers access to the sacraments without repentance for their mortal sin, or the promise to stop their usury operation (much less of making restitution, which is required by the true Catholic Church).

Under papal auspices, since the 1940s the Vatican has operated a usury bank which, in Mafia-plagued Italy, has been a haven for shylocks and financial chicanery of the lowest and most perverse sort, all in the name of the "Vicar of Christ."

The following article discusses attempts by the current pope and the pope emeritus to supposedly "reform" the Vatican Bank. Did Jesus Christ attempt to "reform" the money changers in the Temple, or did He drive them out with a whip?

--Michael Hoffman

Cleric and 2 Others Arrested in Vatican Bank Investigation

By Rachel Donadio

New York Times (online) June 28, 2013

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/29/world/europe/cleric-and-2-others-arrested-in-vatican-bank-investigation.html?hp&_r=0

ROME — The Italian police on Friday arrested a prelate, a financial broker and an agent of the Italian Secret Service on corruption charges as part of a complex plot in which the priest — who is already under investigation on suspicion of money laundering involving the Vatican Bank — is accused of trying to repatriate millions of euros from Switzerland to Italy in a private plane.

Those arrested were charged with fraud, corruption and slander as part of a broad investigation tied to the famously secretive Vatican Bank.

Prosecutors say that the broker and the Secret Service agent had been plotting to help the priest bring 20 million euros, or $26 million, into Italy from Switzerland in a private jet, the ANSA news agency reported. It said that the 20 million euros belonged to “some friends of the monsignor.” The plot never went through.

In a statement, the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said that the priest, Msgr. Nunzio Scarano, had been suspended from his position at one of the Vatican’s main financial departments “more than a month ago, ever since his superiors were informed that he was under investigation.”

The Vatican spokesman said that the Holy See had not received any requests from the Italian authorities, but confirmed its “willingness for full collaboration,” and that the Vatican’s internal financial watchdog was following the matter and would take appropriate measures “if necessary.” Those would include requesting that the Vatican’s internal prosecutor open an internal investigation into the monsignor.

A Vatican official said Monsignor Scarano had been suspended from his position as an accountant at APSA, a department that oversees the Vatican’s real estate holdings, after prosecutors in Salerno opened a separate investigation into money laundering. The official indicated that the suspension was a sign that the Vatican was stepping up its internal vigilance.

Only priests, religious, Catholic institutions, employees of Vatican City State and diplomats accredited to the Holy See are allowed to have accounts at the Vatican Bank, known as the Institute for Works of Religion, but rumors have long swirled about whether accounts were used as fronts for other interests, including organized crime and Italian politicians.

In the past, the Italian prelates who controlled the Vatican Bank tended to see any inquires into possible malfeasance as an attack on its sovereignty. Pope Francis and his predecessor, Benedict XVI, have tried to make the Vatican Bank more transparent.

It was not immediately clear whether the Vatican was cooperating with Italian authorities or whether the arrests stemmed from several suspicious transactions — six in 2012 and seven in the first half of 2013 — that Vatican officials said they had flagged and brought to the attention of the Vatican’s own internal prosecutors.

The arrests Friday were the most dramatic events to emerge from the Rome prosecutors’ investigation into the Vatican Bank since 2010, when prosecutors seized 23 million euros from two external accounts used by the Vatican Bank and placed its then-president and director general under investigation.

It had been acting on a warning from the Bank of Italy urging Italian banks to be more vigilant in their dealings with the Vatican, which has not come into full compliance with European banking norms, making it costly and problematic for other banks to do business with it.

In recent years, the Vatican has been under pressure to meet European norms as a condition for using the euro. In 2010, it created an internal financial watchdog and last year appointed as its director a Swiss lawyer who had helped Liechtenstein clean up its murky banking system.

This month, Pope Francis appointed a trusted prelate to a top post at the bank and on Wednesday, the pope took a further step and created a committee of prelates and a Harvard Law School professor to report directly to him on the bank’s progress.

In an interview last month, the new president of the Vatican Bank, Ernst von Freyberg, who was appointed in February by Benedict in one of his last acts as pope, said that he was committed to making the bank more transparent and compliant.

Last year, a report by Moneyval, a monitoring agency under the Council of Europe, said that the Vatican had made progress but still needed to improve in terms of compliance and customer due diligence. The Vatican must submit a new progress report to Moneyval this fall.

Vatican officials have said that the Vatican needs a bank to help Catholic institutions operate around the world, including in politically sensitive areas. The bank had total assets of 7.1 billion euros under management in 2012, most of it invested in government bonds, and turned a net profit of 86.6 million euros. (End quote from the New York Times).

JOIN MICHAEL HOFFMAN THIS SUMMER IN SANDPOINT, IDAHO

Get an education - read "Dante: Tribune of Western Civilization and Target of Dan Brown's Falsification" in the latest issue of Revisionist History newsletter

____________________________________

E. Michael Jones terms Hoffman's thesis about the Church and usury an "illusion"

LEARN MORE ABOUT USURY IN WESTERN CIVILIZATION

In a 34 minute 50 second radio interview with Catholic author E. Michael Jones conducted by American Free Press editor Mark Anderson, at a point 31 minutes and ten seconds into the broadcast: Mr. Anderson says to Dr. Jones: "As Michael Hoffman has noted too, for so long usury was illegal, a sin, a disgrace —"

(Jones interrupts Anderson): "First of all it has never ceased being a sin. The Catholic Church has never declared that usury is not sinful. It's still a sin. It's a mistake to think that the Church has changed its teaching on usury. That is not the case."

Anderson: "Yeah, maybe they don't emphasize it like they should."

Jones: "Of course they don't emphasize it, but it is still the teaching of the Church. Vix Pervenit is an infallible encyclical of the Catholic Church. That is the Church teaching, so we need to lay this illusion to rest."

Michael Hoffman replies:

I have not been asked to respond to Dr. Jones by Mr. Anderson, but I will do so here, as follows:

If the Catholic Church considers usury still a mortal sin, as E. Michael Jones alleges, why does no usurer have to confess his or her sin and receive absolution before attending Holy Communion?

Since 1830, under the pontificate of Pius VIII (and all subsequent popes), mortally sinful, unrepentant usurers have been admitted to reception of the Holy Eucharist without having confessed or been absolved.

In Vix Pervenit (1745) Benedict XIV expanded Leo X’s "infallible" 1515 Bulla Concilii in decima sessione super materia Montis Pietati, promulgating the lawfulness of charging interest for philanthropic ends, to include the lawfulness of interest on investment credit capital. While Vix Pervenit is often cited, by the semi-literate, as a reaffirmation of the magisterial pre-Renaissance dogma on usury, such claims represent an intellectually lazy failure to note and comprehend Vix Pervenit’s “fine print.” After many anti-usury rhetorical flourishes throughout the document, the technique of the devolutionary degradation of God’s law through gradualism was deployed with the following subtle papal statement:

“We do not deny that at times together with the loan contract certain other titles — which are not intrinsic to the contract — may run parallel with it. From these other titles, entirely just and legitimate reasons arise to demand something over and above the amount due on the contract.”

The papal usurers apply rabbinic-style loopholes to sneak their usury past the eyes of gullible Catholics who have a psychological need to believe that the Renaissance and post-Renaissance Church of Rome did not overthrow the dogma of the True Church. Vix Pervenit consists of 98% anti-usury rhetoric  and 2% loopholes by which usury could continue to operate. Note that in Vix Pervenit Benedict XIV declined to apply the general prohibition to the specific usury contracts which gave rise for the need for his encyclical in the first place.

Jones accepts Vix Pervenit at face value, even though Vix Pervenit is a textbook example of Vatican dissimulation and misdirection, very much in the tenor of the current Pope Francis's undoubtedly eloquent jeremiads against avarice and obsessive pursuit of economic affluence to the detriment of family values. Exceedingly naive people believe that this sort of oratory signifies something. But Jesus Christ said By their fruits ye shall know them, not by their palaver.

Res ipsa loquitor - the facts speak for themselves - usury, both from inside the papacy and among Catholics in general, has grown exponentially, largely unimpeded, from Leo X in 1515, through Benedict XIV in 1745, Pius VIII in 1830, Benedict XV in 1917, John Paul II in 1983, up to the present time of Benedict XVI and now Francis. In the midst of all of these pontificates no other pope restored the mortal sinfulness of usury, or declared that all interest on loans of money must cease immediately, on pain of eternal damantion.  

Vix Pervenit was by no means the last word of the post-Renaissance Church on usury. Dr. Jones should explain to his audience the Catholic Code of Canon Law of 1917, which approved interest on loans. One definition of usury is the charging of a profit on a loan of a consumable fungible good. The 1917 Code of Canon Law declares, “...in the loan of a fungible thing, it is not by itself illicit to reap a legal profit..."

No change, Dr. Jones?

The Catholic Code of Canon Law of 1983 actually requires clerics in charge of church funds to obtain interest on money, and a usury bank, the IOR (Istituto per le Opere di Religione), has operated for decades in Vatican City, under papal auspices.

No change, Dr. Jones?

When the new Pope Francis inveighs against economic predation and injustice while continuing the nearly 500 year revolutionary practice of the Church of Rome to incrementally permit the mortal sin of usury, the pontiff is only ensuring that it will continue. His deceptive rhetoric functions as a disguise, to mask the reality of the overthrow of the dogma of usury's mortal sinfulness by the Church of Rome.

By the 19th and 20th centuries many Catholics had been sufficiently alchemically processed that most failed to protest the fact that usury was by then no longer a mortal sin. The absolute proof for this fact is that the obligation to confess and be absolved of the sin of charging interest on loans was quietly lifted with papal permission, beginning in 1830, after which the "teaching of the Catholic Church," i.e. the Canon Law, declared that interest on a loan is lawful if not "immoderate." Finally, in 1983, the Canon Law mandated that clerics were to be sure to obtain interest on eclesiastical monies.

Denying these facts does nothing to advance the the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the True Church of All Time. The Church of Jesus Christ is based on Truth and formed by believers possessed of the vision and courage to proclaim that Truth, however much it dismays true believers in modernist religious rackets put forth by pious mountebanks.

Many of us learned this harsh truth long ago with regard to the betrayals by popes such as Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. The notion that this subversive papal phenomenon is almost exclusively limited to the era of the 20th and 21st centuries has masterfully succeeded in concealing the root of the situation ethics that produced Vatican Council II's Nostra Aetate, and post-conciliar betrayals and subversion. Situation ethics began to rule the Church of Rome five centuries ago, not 50 years ago. Until Catholics learn this historical fact they will not be able to overcome the enemies of God and will continue to be misdirected into impotent activism based on half truths. My book on usury is intended to spark the beginning of a process of historical investigation of the authentic root of the diabolical financial arcana that gave rise to situation ethics within the papacy. It is tragic that at five minutes to midnight on the clock of destiny,  prominent Catholics continue to seek to interdict an investigation of the trail of the Money Power’s usurpation of the papacy, by expecting us to submit to their childish belief in the credibility of Vatican doubletalk.

The only way my facts can be successfully countered is by the familiar under-handed tactics of silence and suppression. My opponents have no other answer to my research. My thanks to Mr. Anderson of the American Free Press for mentioning my thesis to Dr. Jones on the air, and to First Amendment Books for selling copies of my book to readers of the American Free Press newspaper. These are two tiny candles in a cavern of darkness —  but who knows — perhaps they will yet ignite a flame of inquiry that cannot be extinguished.

Mark L. of North Carolina writes: "The only illusion that Jones is creating here is one of his own making. The evidence you supply in Usury in Christendom is overwhelming and short of discrediting the source material, will stand."

That may be true, but some people’s minds will never be changed. One can give proof and people are not persuaded because their biases are so intense. The more proof Jesus gave to the Jews of who He was, the more intensely they hated him. The human heart by nature is hostile to truth.

For further research:

E. Michael Jones interviewed by Mark Anderson online concerning Michael Hoffman (segment begins at 31 minutes, ten seconds into the approximately 35 minute broadcast): 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmfMb_8YXkA&feature=youtu.be&t=31m10s

Michael Hoffman Talks About Usury (approx. 33 minutes)

This talk was banned by YouTube on Aug. 26, 2019 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT0grvk16NI

Michael Hoffman is the author of Usury in Christendom: The Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Nots), has been endorsed by Rev. Fr. Christopher Hunter, pastor of St. Therese Roman Catholic Chapel in Klamath Falls, Oregon; and by eminent anti-usury campaigners Anthony Migchels and Daniel Krynicki, as well as Amazon reader-reviewers. 

Usury in Christendom is blacklisted and boycotted by the overwhelming majority of Catholic leaders, publications and organizations, whether liberal, conservative or “traditional." "Catholic Social Teaching”  and “distributist” conferences and gatherings have declined to feature Mr. Hoffman as either a speaker, debater or participant. 

***