3 ms·
Unfortunate for this article to not actually define or explain anything about Catholic usury theory. Usury in medieval context is profit made on a mutuum loan
by dmenj 4mo ago
Unfortunate for this article to not actually define or explain anything about Catholic usury theory.
Usury in medieval context is profit made on a mutuum loan (a contract for the borrowing a consumable good - as opposed to the commodatum contract, the locatio, etc). It does not apply only to money but all fungible borrowed things. If you borrow a cup of flour from your neighbor, and they ask for 2 cups back, they have (probably) made a usurious contract with you.
The nuance here is the immorality of an "intrinsic title" (as if the loan itself carries a right to earn profit) as opposed to an "extrinsic title" (something external to the loan for which one may validly seek compensation). The two chief extrinsic titles being lucrum cessans (roughly opportunity cost) and damnum emergens (a loss suffered due to the loan).
The case of the Monti from TFA is clearly the right to an extrinsic title of damnum emergens i.e. administrative costs (crucially - not for profit!).
- geye1234 4mo agoYes. A full-recourse loan and a non-recourse loan are different: in the way a cat and a dog are different, not in the way a small dog and a big dog are different. It's most unfortunate (and probably deliberate) that they both go by the word 'loan'. Aquinas explains this very clearly in his discussion of usury in the Summa. Anyone failing to distinguish between the two has no business talking about the ethics of usury, or the history of late-medieval Catholic teaching on the same. Making a profit on a full-recourse loan, regardless of whether the lender or borrower are Christian or not, is a sin, and a pretty serious one at that. Usury is to fraud what robbery is to larceny. Many people try to claim that the Church has 'changed its teaching' on this, but they can never point to a source that shows this.