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. 

______________

"Vicar of Christ on Earth" asks "Who am I to judge a gay priest?"

by Michael Hoffman

www.revisionisthistory.org

The Renaissance Catholic Church's embrace of usury was accomplished under a host of weasel words and euphemisms which have bedazzled and befuddled true believers in the Church of Rome since 1515. The encyclical "Vix Pervenit" of the usury advocate Pope Benedict XIV is a case in point. It was 95% anti-usury and 5% double talk that created an escape clause permitting certain types of usury. It is defended to this day by certain mind-bombed "conservative Catholic scholars" as a bastion against usury.

From instances such as this we should know that it is a major blunder to imagine that the double talk and fork-tongued lucubrations of the current Pope Francis are a product of a "Vatican II mentality of the 1960s." If you believe that, then the Vatican Cryptocracy has you wrapped in its mind control as tightly as a spider ensnares a fly. Let's banish the amnesia: "Vix Pervenit" was issued in 1745, not 1965.

Observe how Pope Francis approaches the sodomite issue. The New York Times reports that he stated to reporters aboard the papal jet, "If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?" (Cf. "Pope Says He Will Not Judge Gay Priests," NY Times (online), July 29, 2013).

Did he actually use the Orwellian Newspeak word for sodomy -- "gay"? If so, that in itself is a grave failure to call a thing that which it is.

Do you spot the hook in the pope's double talk? Do you see the escape clause he has given his right wing? He doesn't say he refuses to judge homosexual acts, only that he refuses to judge if some priest is a homosexual -- this gives his right wing the chance to suppose he is referring to a celibate priest of a "homosexual orientation." That's the escape clause his right wing supporters will use to tamp down the uproar: "The pope is only saying he will not judge priests of good faith who are of a gay orientation. He is not endorsing gay sex." (In the days ahead there will also be subsequent "clarifications" intended to serve as damage control to patch wounded right wing sensibilities).

Even in that case it’s a huge betrayal. Identifying human beings as being stamped indelibly with “gay orientation” reaffirms the popular myth that the majority of homosexuals “were born that way” and “cannot change.” Actually the reverse is true. The Cryptocracy encourages androgyny and homosexuality, for one thing because it helps to reduce the “surplus” population and for another, it leads them into a rootless anarchy that makes them susceptible to further revolutionary, anti-natural change. A normal young person with an attraction for the opposite sex can be seduced by the culture into experimenting with homosexual acts and then, as a result of the experiment, be told they have a permanent “gay orientation.”

Any true Vicar of Christ would have informed the journalists on his plane: “With God all things are possible, and some who believe that in their orientation they are homosexual, can, through prayer and purity of heart and mind, clarify their desires and discover a healthy attraction for the opposite sex, buried under assumptions and delusions imposed on them by a culture that values fashionable trends above Biblical ethics and human ennoblement. The homosexual is a celebrated person in contemporary culture. This leads to people identifying themselves with the homosexual condition even if, in the core of their being, it is not really the case with them. Meanwhile, the bedrock of society, the heroic mothers and fathers of many children who labor daily to provide their families with sustenance and an education, are viewed by the advertising and other media as unattractive drudges, the very last people to be emulated. Do not expect me to endorse these pathologies.”  This is what Francis would have said if he were a pope worthy of the name.

The supporters of "Pope Francis" on the left will seize on the obvious reckless symbolism of his statement and interpret his words broadly and in the manner most people, including youth, will perceive them --it's not morally objectionable to be a sodomite "if you seek the Lord" while doing so. 

If the pope's homosexual priests were of a neo-Nazi instead of a sodomite orientation, I'd bet you dollars to doughnuts that this pontiff would judge them right into the Inferno's eternal barbecue pit. But when it comes to priests who simply yearn for anal sex, it is not something that falls under his judgment as mere Pontifex Maximus.

______________________________

"If the pope's homosexual priests were of a neo-Nazi instead of a sodomite orientation, I'd bet you dollars to doughnuts that this pontiff would judge them right into the Inferno's eternal barbecue pit. But when it comes to priests who simply yearn for anal sex, it is not something that falls under his judgment as mere Pontifex Maximus."

______________________________

Imagine some sexually confused adolescent Catholic boy of 15 or 16 who is drawn to girls mostly, but somewhat tempted by boys, reading today's headlines about the pope. If that Catholic boy chooses a "gay orientation," Francis wants him to know that as pope he does not have the power or authority to "judge" him. If the boy goes out and gets sodomized, the Catholic right wing will reply, "It's not the Holy Father's fault, he didn't approve of sodomy, he only withheld judgement on sodomite orientation."

From our own research it is becoming increasingly clear that as the sterility of money-breeding-money (usury) was incrementally permitted by the Church of Rome beginning in the early 16th century, the practice of sodomy also rose exponentially inside the high ranks of the Roman clergy beginning in the early 16th century, shrouded in a prelatical secrecy which has endured from then until now. We draw your attention to the patent fact that sodomy is also a form of sterility.

Pope Francis is a reflection of this pro-sodomite current, formerly underground and now emerging in the open as Revelation-of-the Method, while the media gives its enthusiastic imprimatur to this latter day Uriah Heep as the pope of "humility." 

It's no wonder that millions of Latin American Christians are fleeing Rome for the chapels of Protestant churches that do not deviate from bedrock Biblical, Apostolic and Patristic Christianity. They don't have an "infallible" pope over them to misdirect them into losing their eternal salvation. They are free to choose to adhere to Biblical Truth and defy the sodomite movement, independent of Rome's latest coffin-riding grave digger, the most recent in a line stretching back through more than forty popes of usury. Catholics who are not brain dead need to begin to dare to think deeply and with the fear of God, about the deception and destruction that has been wrought by popes of Rome since 1515, tracking the trail of both prelatical usury and sodomy inside the Roman institution for the past 498 years. 

This ungoldly rot did not commence with the Enlightenment or the French Revolution or Vatican II. If you believe that hoax, which is a staple fiction among "traditional" Catholics, then you will never have the ability to decode the present manifestation of Mystery Babylon that has the putative "Vicar of Christ on earth" saying he cannot judge sodomite-prone Catholic priests. This type of boldface papal lying is nothing short of a challenge to the hypnotized sheeple to see if we're going to take this satanic spew lying down, or whether we will stand up and witness for the truth of God's Word and that of His apostles, patriarchs and saints.

Pope Francis has no moral compass save for situation ethics. It was situation ethics that determined the legalization of the mortal sin of usury, first in the Church of Rome when John Calvin was but a child, and later by Calvin himself, under the influence of Rome’s lawyer’s equity, or epikeia, which is sometimes just, when used to modify the laws of man, but is always Talmudic and rabbinic when employed to modify or abrogate the laws of God.

The zeitgeist determines the ethics of the Vatican’s rebels against God. Today the spirit of the time is thoroughly homosexual and hence, the papacy accommodates itself to that perverted state of affairs. When the Money Power subsumed the zeitgeist during the Renaissance, an absolutist papacy opened the door to the beginnings of predatory capitalism. No pope has the right to alter God’s law. When he dares to do so, there must be  a mechanism in place to correct or depose him.

For the past 498 years, God’s eternal law has not been the guide or rule for papal situation ethicists. Within the Renaissance papacy, situation ethics trumped God’s law, and popery will see to it that by the time self-described Catholics finally begin to grasp that the absolute authority given to a pope bears within it the seeds of catastrophe, the catastrophe will be upon us. Christ intended for His followers to be overcomers, not slaves of mere men, much less a sinister clown in a white suit who invokes Jesus so as to mock Him and His eternal and unchanging law, whether in matters of loans of money (Luke 6: 32-26), or men who lay with men (Leviticus 18:22; Romans 1: 26-27).

Finally, let's promise ourselves that we will henceforth quit trafficking in Orwellian Newspeak, which imprisons our minds by causing us to think in the occluding manner in which the hidden persuaders frame this controversy. This is about sex in the rectal sewer of the human body. There is absolutely nothing innocent and joyful ("gay") about it, so let us cease our submission to the doublethink agenda imposed on us by our media masters when we are contending for the purity of our children against a ravening wolf in sheep's --or in this case, St Peter's -- clothing.

Hoffman is the author of Usury in Christendom: The Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Not

***

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

____________________________________

Another challenge to Hoffman’s thesis on Usury in Christendom

On June 24, 2013 someone unknown to us, writing under the name “Jonathan Doyle,” submitted a comment on our Dec. 27, 2012 post, “Debate online over ‘Usury in Christendom.”  We published this person’s comment which can be found below the original post, (comment #17) at this link: http://revisionistreview.blogspot.com/2012/12/debate-online-over-usury-in-christendom.html

What follows is our rejoinder.

Hoffman Contra Doyle

JONATHAN DOYLE WRITES:

...my overall impression is that M. Hoffman’s bias against the Catholic church does a great disservice to himself and to his otherwise thought-provoking book.

MICHAEL HOFFMAN REPLIES:

In the penultimate paragraph of your comment you refer to modernists as “an inflitrated enemy in the Church.” How can I be “biased” against the Catholic Church when all I am doing is exposing the actions of “modernizing, infiltrated” enemies? For fifteen hundred years the true Catholic Church taught that all interest on loans of money was forbidden on pain of mortal sin. Supporting the true Catholic Church against the subversive agents of the Money Power who have captured the Church of Rome does not make me an enemy of the authentic ecclesia.

JONATHAN DOYLE WRITES:

It would appear that M. Hoffman’s preconceived idea is that “the Catholic Church falsified the Word of God, especially in relation to usury” (a common claim amongst muslim polemicists today, perhaps M. Hoffman has been influenced in this regard by his muslim teacher) .

MICHAEL HOFFMAN REPLIES:

The true Catholic Church never can falsify the word of God in relation to anything. The post-Renaissance Church of Rome has permitted mortal sins directly contradicting the Word of God. Whether this is a “common claim of the Muslims” it does not nullify the truth. Facts are facts whether Muslims believe them or not. Needless to say, I have not been influenced by Islamic teaching. For my study of the Muslim view of riba, cf. Revisionist History newsletter no. 64, “Modern German and Islamic Resistance to Usury.”

JONATHAN DOYLE WRITES:

On page 383 of the book, it is stated that in items 1609 to 1610 of Denzinger
“The sum effect of this papal directive was that those who take interest on money according to the rate permitted by law must not be disturbed”.

Now those items are online, at http://www.onetruecatholicfaith.com/Roman-Catholic-Dogma.php?id=32&title=Denzinger+1600+-+1699&page=2.

Anyone reading those two short paragraphs will see that
1) Those “not to be disturbed” are not the “usurers” but the confessors
2) Those confessors are not even advocating usury, but are trying to “hold
a middle course”.
3) Nowhere is “rate permitted by law” mentioned in those two paragraphs.

MICHAEL HOFFMAN REPLIES

In Denzinger 1609, a query from the Bishop of Rheims to the pope concerned how Confessors should handle Catholic capitalists who practice usury and have been refused absolution in the past (“denial of the sacraments to many business men engaging in that method of making money”). The bishop notes that the current practice of confessors in many cases is to absolve them. Pope Pius VIII responded in Denzinger 1610: “They are not to be disturbed.”

If Mr. Doyle imagines that declaring that priest-confessors who absolve usurers are not to be disturbed signifies that the usurers themselves are to be disturbed, then I would suggest that Mr. Doyle does not have a firm grasp of the English language. Moreover, there is no evidence that in his statement Pius VIII was referring only to the confessors who absolved the usurers and not the usurers themselves when he declared “They are not to be disturbed.” Pope Pius VIII himself made no qualification. Faced with two categories, confessors who absolved unrepentant usurers, and the usurers themselves, he decreed, they were not to be disturbed. And guess what? By some strange coincidence, from thence onward Catholic usurers were not “distrubed’ by having to confess their mortal sin and receive absolution.

Mr. Doyle is endeavoring to discredit my thesis based not on substance but on raising lawyer’s quibbles. Such petty lawyer’s tactics do not detract, however, from the disgraceful and indeed heretical response of Pius VIII to the revolution that was taking place before his very eyes, in that Catholic agents of the Money Power were being allowed to profit from usury, receive absolution and the sacraments, and remain Catholics in good standing.

As for the “rate permitted by law,” if Mr. Doyle will study the rulings of the Penitentiary in the 19th century he will see that this loophole is often invoked, as it was in the 1917 Code of Canon Law, with regard to permission for usury. As the revolutionaries took over the Church they created a two-tier understanding for usury that had never existed in the past: interest on loans of money based on a “rate permitted by law,” which was deemed permissible, contrasted with extraordinarily high interest rates which were now defined as usury, but for which, once again, no bar to reception of the Holy Eucharist and no refusal of absolution was any longer maintained in the confessional.

Denzinger 1609: "If the penitent perseveres in his plan of giving money as a loan to business men, and objects that an opinion favorable to such a loan has many patrons, and moreover, has not been condemned by the Holy See, although more than once consulted about it, then these confessors demand that the penitent promise to conform in filial obedience to the judgment of the Holy Pontiff whatever it may be, if he should intervene; and having obtained this promise, they do not deny them absolution...If a penitent does not confess the gain from money given as a loan, and appears to be in good faith, these confessors, even if they know from other sources that gain of this sort has been taken by him and is even now being taken they absolve him, making no interrogation about the matter..."

Denzinger 1610:  "Therefore the said Bishop of Rheims inquires: 1. Whether he can approve the method of acting on the part of these latter confessors. 2. Whether he could encourage other more rigid confessors who come to consult him to follow the plan of action of those others until the Holy See brings out an express opinion on this question."

Pius VIII responded:
1: They are not to be disturbed."

(END QUOTE FROM DENZINGER 1609-1610)

Let us examine the declaration of Pope Urban III (1185-1187), from Denzinger 403

From the epistle "Consuluit nos" to a certain priest of Brescia: "Your loyalty asks us whether or not in the judgment of souls he ought to be judged as a usurer who, not otherwise ready to deliver by loan, loans his money on this proposition that without any agreement he nevertheless receive more by lot; and whether he is involved in that same state of guilt who, as it is commonly said, does not otherwise grant a similar oath, until, although without payment, he receives some gain from him; whether or not that negotiator ought to be condemned with a like punishment, who offers his wares at a price far greater, if an extension of the already extended time be asked for making the payment, than if the price should be paid to him at once. But since what one must hold in these cases is clearly learned from the Gospel of Luke in which is said: "Give mutually, hoping nothing thereby" [cf. Luke 6:35], men of this kind must be judged to act wrongly on account of the intention of gain which they have, since every usury and superabundance are prohibited by law, and they must be effectively induced in the judgment of souls to restore those things which have been thus received." (End quote from Denzinger 403; emphasis supplied).

I reject and contest every notion that usury constitutes something other than what Pope Urban III, in confirming what the true Catholic Church always taught, here states. Usury is anything contracted for a loan above the return of the loan itself.

JONATHAN DOYLE WRITES:

On page 390 of Usury in Christendom, it is claimed that Heribert Jones' Moral Theology gives "permission for sodomizing one's Catholic wife", and a paragraph from p. 195 of Moral Theology  is quoted as putative evidence for this. In point of fact, the immediately preceding paragraph condemns sodomy, even "imperfect sodomy" in the strongest terms.

MICHAEL HOFFMAN REPLIES: (Warning to sensitive readers - of necessity some intimate details of a grotesque nature are mentioned here).

Mr. Doyle has his citations wrong. P. 195 of Moral Theology refers to permission for usury, i.e. a “just rate of interest...established...by law." Moral Theology’s permission for sodomizing one’s Catholic wife is on p. 539, not p. 195.

The author is not Heribert “Jones,” it is Heribert Jone.

Mr. Doyle accuses this writer of distorting and misinterpreting quotations. Observe what he does with quotations from the permission for “Catholic” sodomy of one’s wife in the post-Renaissance “Catholic” manual of Moral Theology:

Mr. Doyle indignantly proclaims that this manual, “condemns sodomy, even ‘imperfect sodomy’ in the strongest terms.”

Mr. Doyle should read more attentively. Moral Theology condemns the sodomizing of one’s Catholic wife when the husband ejaculates his semen in her rectum:

“757. I. Imperfect sodomy, i.e. rectal intercourse is a grave sin where the seminal fluid is wasted.”

The Moral Theology manual clearly teaches, for those who can read, that when the husband has anal intercourse with his wife without the intention of ejaculating in her rectum, he is free to do so in that it is not sodomy and it is not a grave sin:

“Excluding the sodomitical intention it is neither sodomy nor a grave sin if intercourse is begun in a rectal manner with the intention of consummating it naturally...”

In other words, if the husband begins his marital act with his wife by having rectal intercourse with her, as long he concludes the act by ejaculating in her vagina, it is not sodomy and it is not a grave sin.

It is also not sodomy or a grave sin, “if some sodomitical action is posited without danger of pollution.”

[All quotations from p. 539 of Moral Theology (Newman Press, 1962) and bearing the Imprimatur and Nihil obstat.

One wonders why Mr. Doyle omitted these quotations in his attempt to impeach my thesis?

He is wasting this writer's time by disputing what are plain facts of the post-Renaissance Moral Theology -- one of the most celebrated “Catholic" statements of dogma in print. The manual gives permission for usury and for sodomy. This is the hallmark of modernity. There is a connection between sodomy and usury. We find it in the medieval, truly Catholic Dante’s equation, wherein he places them together in the seventh circle of Hell in The Inferno.

JONATHAN DOYLE WRITES:

Another very weak point in M. Hoffman’s book is his treatment of St. Thomas Aquinas. M. Hoffman claims that his position is completely in accord with St. Thomas’, but conveniently omits to discuss the parts of the Summa that would be hard to reconcile with this claim, such as solution 1 of Art.2
or Art.4 in IIa-IIae Q.78.

MICHAEL HOFFMAN REPLIES:

Nowhere does St. Thomas Aquinas deviate from this sacred dogma. On a mutuum, the damnum to which Aquinas refers, is strictly limited to cases of compensation for non-payment of the loan; nothing more. The damnum of Aquinas is not an interest payment of any kind (see p. 391 of my book).

Moreover, foenus (or faenus) does not refer to compound interest specifically, but rather, it denotes interest on debt generally. It is always pejorative because of its etymological root as the brood of iniquitous increase. The word is derived from fetus, because it is “quaedam faetura pecunia parturientis” (the brood of increase). The context here is of a mockery of God’s creation by the use of money to create money. The use of foenus/faenus carried with it in antiquity the connotation of man’s monstrous increase, as opposed to God’s natural increase.

“Extrinsic circumstances” relating to fees for a loan arose in the Renaissance with concepts of time value, “administrative fees” and lucrum cessans (see pp. 392-393 of Usury in Christendom). In the majority of cases these are interpretive subtleties created for purposes of circumventing the dogma and sacred law of the True Church against any increase deriving from a loan.

Neither Rerum Novarum nor Quadragesimo anno reinstated the Church’s pre-Renaissance dogma against interest on debt.

Traditionalists often point to the Council of Trent as being a fount of supreme and unassailable Catholic dogmatic Truth. Trent’s definition of what constitutes usury is consonant with all pre-Renaissance Catholic doctrine from the Apostolic and Patristic age, as well as the medieval papacy and councils: “Now, whatever is received above the principal, be it money, or anything else that may be purchased, or estimated by money, is usury.”

What is it about that word “whatever” that sets the human mind working to find an exception or a loophole?

Denzinger after 1515 is no longer a reliable guide to Catholic Truth, since it reflects the statements of the revolutionaries who occupied the Chair of Peter henceforth, all of them being guilty of the formal heresy of tolerating the institution of the mortal sin of usury, or extending this grave and hellish transgression from the initial permission issued by Leo X.

This is a difficult truth to accept, but where there is truth there is Jesus Christ and His Church, as it existed for one thousand five hundred years, until Renaissance modernists subverted and infiltrated, which we have with us still.

JONATHAN DOYLE WRITES

M. Hoffman tries to make a case for a progressive distortion/evolution/falsification of the doctrine on usury by the Church, but the progressive distortion is all of his making : his books starts by giving a fair exposition of the Church’s  teaching on usury, and later on his quotations become increasingly distorted and misinterpreted (on what grounds, for example, does M.Hoffman calls the Catholic interpretation of Vix Pervenit (an interpretation shared by Fr. O'Callaghan) an “intellectually lazy failure”...

MICHAEL HOFFMAN REPLIES

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. The intellectually lazy failure is seen in the 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!

Mr. Doyle 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.

What were the fruits of Vix Pervenit? Because of its rabbinic-style loophole, it opened the door to even more latitude for Catholic usury. Note the testimony of the Bishop Rheims as recorded in Denzinger 1609: "There is bitter dispute over the meaning of the Encyclical Letter, 'Vix pervenit'...On both sides arguments are produced to defend the opinion each one has embraced, either favorable to such (usury) profit or against it.”

________

For further research:

Usury in Christendom: The Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Not 

by Michael Hoffman. Paperback. Illustrated, 416 pages.

________

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. 

***