{"id":229,"date":"2014-10-26T22:33:00","date_gmt":"2014-10-27T04:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/10\/todays-readings-usury.html"},"modified":"2015-02-26T23:12:23","modified_gmt":"2015-02-27T05:12:23","slug":"todays-readings-usury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/10\/todays-readings-usury.html","title":{"rendered":"Today’s readings: usury"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

(I really, really need to get a start on putting labels on my blog posts. \u00a0For a while, it worked reasonably well to just google myself, e.g., \u201cjane the actuary\u201d Social Security, but this doesn\u2019t seem to work as well; I\u2019m pretty sure I\u2019ve written on this general topic before, but I can\u2019t find it.)<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s an except from today\u2019s first reading<\/a> at Catholic churches worldwide, and other denominations that follow the same schedule: <\/p>\n

\n

If you lend money to one of your poor neighbors among my people, you shall not act like an extortioner toward him by demanding interest from him.\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

Now, people generally have an understanding that goes like this: \u00a0the Catholic Church used to oppose money-lending for interest, but then they changed their mind, so that proves that they are able to change doctrines when it becomes convenient to do so, such as putting the stamp of approval on (you choose) contraception, remarriage, non-marital sex, abortion, etc. \n

And what I thought I had previously written is this: \u00a0the reason why, at the end of the Middle Ages, the Church accepted moneylending was that economy itself has changed and \u201cmoneylending\u201d meant something entirely different. \u00a0I\u2019d have to hunt down the particulars in the basement bookshelves as to exactly when this occurred, but the key point is that only during the Middle Ages did moneylending become a part of trade and business (as well as practiced by the nobility to keep up their consumption); in the Ancient World debt amounted to something more like the \u201cdebt slavery\u201d of the Third World today, where, in places like India, you read that poor farmers fall into debt when a harvest fails due to a famine, or to pay a medical bill, or a dowry, and have no hope of paying off their debt. \u00a0If I\u2019m not mistaken, \u201cdebt slavery\u201d refers to places where the debt is passed down to the next generation. \u00a0Of course, in the Roman Empire (again, going from memory), debt slavery was more literally slavery \u2014 in that your debt could cause you to become enslaved. \u00a0In addition, a peasant farmer in these situations was not able to just \u201cwork extra hours\u201d in the future to repay the money \u2014 the plot of land you have to farm isn\u2019t going to increase in size and isn\u2019t going to be more productive, so you have no way to increase your income to pay back the debt. <\/p>\n

So in those circumstances, yes, it is a sin to basically enslave your neighbor.<\/p>\n

What about 2014 America?<\/p>\n

Megan McArdle addresses the subject of seemingly-usurious lenders periodically, most recently with respect to rent-to-own firms<\/a>, before that it was subprime auto lenders<\/a>, who have begun to install ignition kill switches as a means of \u201cvirtual repossession\u201d to ensure they get paid. \u00a0The basic theme is this: \u00a0every time we complain about interest rates charged to the poor, and insist that social justice requires that we restrict those rates, we fail to recognize that, if we did so, the poor wouldn\u2019t be able to get the money loaned to them at all which they clearly must desperately need.<\/p>\n

In a way, this is circular logic: \u00a0we need to permit high interest rates because lenders need to charge those rates because, in the end, the payments will be so high that a considerable number of those debtors are going to be unable to pay back the debt \u2014 though in this case, unlike Ancient Rome or modern-day India, debtors can declare bankruptcy rather than becoming actual or figurative slaves. <\/p>\n

And I\u2019m not saying McArdle is wrong per se<\/i> \u2014 it\u2019s just that there\u2019s got to be a better way. <\/p>\n

UPDATE: \u00a0hmmm. \u00a0It occurs to me that that there\u2019s a part of the parable of the ten talents that makes me curious of the fuller background. \u00a0This is the parable where a man entrusts money to his servants, one 5, one 2, and one 1 talent (that is, a monetary unit, which conveniently translates into English as \u201ctalent\u201d and fittingly reflects the meaning of the parable). \u00a0The 1-talent recipient buries the money in the ground and is later told by the landowner: \u00a0\u201cyou ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest\u201d (Matthew 25:26). \u00a0Bankers, eh?<\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(I really, really need to get a start on putting labels on my blog posts. \u00a0For a while, it worked reasonably well to just google myself, e.g., \u201cjane the actuary\u201d Social Security, but this doesn\u2019t seem to work as well; I\u2019m pretty sure I\u2019ve written on this general topic before, but I can\u2019t find it.) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8,173],"class_list":["post-229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-catholicism","tag-usury"],"yoast_head":"\nToday's readings: usury<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"(I really, really need to get a start on putting labels on my blog posts.  For a while, it worked reasonably well to just google myself, e.g., "jane\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/10\/todays-readings-usury.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Today's 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