30 September 2015

H J A SIRE on CAPITALISM and USURY

"While a strait jacket of absolutism was being fastened on the foremost Catholic country in Europe, a more fundamental perversion was taking hold of the Protestant societies. The name of the perversion is capitalism which now began its triumphant career over the economies of the modern world." Mr Sire traces the growth of capitalism through the Dutch alliance with the Barbary corsairs (how many people know that these North African raiders used to fall upon the helpless villages of Cornwall and Devon and carry off their inhabitants into slavery?) and then the take-over of England after the Dutch Invasion in 1688; in lapidary phrases (you get lots of these in Phoenix from the Ashes... see earlier posts) Sire writes of "a [Dutch] programme of the most ruthless capitalist buccaneering in history", and of capitalism as Britain's "baneful gift to the world". 

Sire's prose is often vivid: he writes of "the herding of the poor into grimy cities ... " "country dwellers had to be exiled from their villages; children had to be put to work day and night in relentless mills; Africans had to be packed into lethal holds to meet the demand of the cotton machines: factories and grimy streets engulfed the open fields." " ... In alliance with liberal ideology, capitalism broke down the institutions that had given cohesion to society on the smaller scale. Its end was to leave no social bonds except the legal and the economic, the relation of the citizen to the state and of the wage earner to the employer." The downfall of the Christian Order and the destruction of Catholic Europe; the destruction of legitimist monarchy and of the feudal jurisdictions; such are his themes. He reminds us of the decatholicising of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of North America after purchase or conquest by the United States: in "the Spanish and French colonies that fell to republican expansion, ... their institutions were overruled in favour of the self-evident truths of Thomas Jefferson." America achieved a dominance which was encapsulated in the "rise of the robber barons of large-scale capitalism". 

But at the heart of this survey lies Sire's reminder that the Council of Vienne (1311) authoritatively defined that it is heresy to deny that Usury is a sin. I think you will want to read for yourselves his survey of the teaching of S Thomas Aquinas and of the growth of the systems of Western countries in which "the domination of usury ... was complete by the middle of the nineteenth century, and inflation has been their almost constant feature since." I will leave you with this concluding paragraph of his discussion:
"If we accept that the Church's teaching on usury is sound, there remains the doctrinal question of whether it has been changed. Strictly speaking it has not . There has never been an authoritative revocation of the medieval doctrine, and in practice it continued to be taught in seminaries until scholastic teaching was destroyed by the Second Vatican Council.  ... That does not, however, make the topic of usury a precedent for doctrinal change; rather, it is an object lesson in its misguidedness." (I.e. this historical narrative affords a lesson in the misguidedness of doctrinal change.)

9 comments:

  1. So, umm, what does this mean for you if you have money in the stock market?

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  2. I am very happy that interest rates are negligible on property right now here across the pond. I try to avoid the usury of our world, but my company provides a retirement fund that is invested in the stock market. I know a little about how to take advantage of that, by watching the markets, which has allowed me to purchase said property. So to mimic John H. Graney, what does this mean for me when I have money in the stock market?

    Mary

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  3. It seems to me that in stock market you are an investor, i.e. become a co-owner, and then you can either win or loose money, albeit not through sharing the profit. So this does not fall under the concept of usury. A real problem is that there are millions sinning by keeping their money in a bank account on which the bank pays them an interest, even if it often is lower than the inflation rate. Too bad that since 18th century the Magisterium has been silent on usury. Now with all the new finance products around, inflation, virtual money and other modern phenomena, a new encyclical is grievously overdue.

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  4. Money in the stock market is not lent - it consists of shares of ownership of listed companies.

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  5. I'm no theologian, but to me the stock market doesn't seem very different to gambling on horses, an activity still quite popular with parish priests here in Ireland.

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  6. Yes, I second John. I am perfectly willing to accept that usury in the classical sense is wrong, but now what do we do about it? Must I refuse to use Visa, because in doing so I am supporting a usurer? And I know many dioceses and religious orders manage their retirement funds through the market. Besides creating an alternative economy (a la Alasdair MacIntyre) where does the Church begin?

    If only the press knew of the Church's real opposition to capitalism ...

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  7. (1) Investing in the stock market or in an interest-bearing savings account is not usury. When you're buying stock, you're buying shares in a business and are entitled to profits from the business. Thomas Aquinas:

    He who lends money transfers the ownership of the money to the borrower. Hence the borrower holds the money at his own risk and is bound to pay it all back: wherefore the lender must not exact more. On the other hand he that entrusts his money to a merchant or craftsman so as to form a kind of society, does not transfer the ownership of his money to them, for it remains his, so that at his risk the merchant speculates with it, or the craftsman uses it for his craft, and consequently he may lawfully demand as something belonging to him, part of the profits derived from his money. (II-II, q 78, a 2, ad 5)

    (2) It is not generally unlawful to borrow money at interest from a usurer. Thomas Aquinas:

    it is by no means lawful to induce a man to lend under a condition of usury: yet it is lawful to borrow for usury from a man who is ready to do so and is a usurer by profession; provided the borrower have a good end in view, such as the relief of his own or another's need. (II-II, q 78, a 4)

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  8. I'm no theologian, but to me the stock market doesn't seem very different to gambling on horses, an activity still quite popular with parish priests here in Ireland.

    There's quite a lot of difference. Investing in the market is almost certain to make you a good return in the long-run on average (and it's vert easy to be average through investments index funds). Betting on horses is a good way to lose a lot of money in the long run. The only time investing is like gambling is if you treat it like gambling, in which case you are not investing, you'rs speculating.

    It also might be worth saying that gambling, strictly speaking, has never been a sin.

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  9. It is very much worth noting that the topic of Usury has returned a while ago in the Catholic blogosphere. I invite you to have a look at the treatment of the subject - in particular, how it still applies - on Zippy's blog, and in particular, on his Usury FAQ: https://zippycatholic.wordpress.com/2014/11/10/usury-faq-or-money-on-the-pill/

    All his elucidations on this topic are worth noting, in particular an analogy in strategy when progressives were dealing with usury back then and now are dealing with contraception. https://zippycatholic.wordpress.com/?s=usury

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