The Catholic Church has always tended to see charging interest as being equivalent to committing the sin of usury and throughout history they've tried to ban it

The Catholic Church has always tended to see charging interest as being equivalent to committing the sin of usury and throughout history they've tried to ban it several times. See for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vix_pervenit#Historical_context https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vix_pervenit#Historical_contex... In practice these prohibitions weren't too effective because people always found loopholes and ways of charging interest without calling it interest.