Journal of Vincentian Social Action Volume 3 Article 5 Issue 2 Journal of Vincentian Social Action November 2018 Usury and the Common Good Jim Wishloff University of Lethbridge, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.stjohns.edu/jovsa Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons, Business Commons, Curriculum and Instruction Commons, Curriculum and Social Inquiry Commons, Disability and Equity in Education Commons, Educational Methods Commons, Law Commons, Life Sciences Commons, Medicine and Health Sciences Commons, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Commons, and the Urban Studies and Planning Commons Recommended Citation Wishloff, Jim (2018) "Usury and the Common Good," Journal of Vincentian Social Action: Vol. 3 : Iss. 2 , Article 5. Available at: https://scholar.stjohns.edu/jovsa/vol3/iss2/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by St. John's Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Vincentian Social Action by an authorized editor of St. John's Scholar. For more information, please contact [email protected]. USURY AND THE COMMON GOOD Jim Wishloff INTRODUCTION the human person. Once created or willed into he human person’s social nature makes justice being, even on a contractual basis, a community of Tand the common good subjects of immense persons, of which the economic enterprise is one importance. St. Thomas Aquinas defines justice as example, is morally obligated to serve its objective “the habit whereby a man renders to each one his end—the realization of the common good. due by a constant and perpetual will” (Aquinas, In his social teaching, Pope John Paul II points 1948, II-II, q.58, a.1). Looking more closely at out that communities or even entire peoples can the definition, we see that justice resides in and become entangled in “structures of sin” (John perfects the rational will. By willing to be just we Paul II, 1998, #73). Since a stable social order is perfect our moral personhood. The essence of not possible in the absence of justice, these sinful the virtue is to give to others what is their right or unjust structures are a grave matter worthy by virtue of their nature as human beings. Thus, of deep reflection. This study endeavours to get justice inclines us to think of and be attentive to to the heart of the matter by investigating the our obligations to others. Justice is the virtue that inversion of means and ends that has occurred allows us to shoulder the responsibilities of social in our socioeconomic world. A debt economy life. has been constructed where money is created ex Legal or general justice is one of the three forms nihilo by the stroke of a banker’s pen and lent out of justice identified by Aquinas. Individuals ought at interest. Despite the condemnation of lending to obey the just laws of the state and respect the money at interest by the ancient Greeks, the state in its legitimate procurement of the common prophets of the Old Testament, and the Christian good, where the common good is understood to be teachers of the early and medieval Church, usury the social order that empowers or facilitates every is the unquestioned reality at the center of the person in it to attain, as closely as possible, his modern world.¹ The evil of charging a fee for the or her perfection. But such a legal minimum does use of property has been crystallized in unjust not begin to capture what individuals working social structures. An idolatry of money has alone or in concert with others can contribute supplanted the common good as the end being to the social whole so legal justice, in Aquinas’ sought. terminology, is referred to today as social justice. The inquiry begins by defining usury and pointing To possess social justice or civic virtue is to have out the social conditions that are conducive for its an intelligent dutiful concern for the public weal. adoption as a social practice. The condemnation The just citizen constantly wills his or her greatest of usury as it has been presented across a wide contribution to the common good. variety of traditions, worldviews and genres is The perennial virtue of justice applies as surely briefly reviewed before using divine revelation, to social organizations as it does to individuals. patristic teaching, and the relevant magisterial The good company can be considered as the documents to present the basis for the Church’s organization that lives for the common good in all prohibition of usury. According to Mews and that it does. It is an operation that is committed to Abraham (2007), “The time is right to revisit the civic virtue. All social institutions exist to elevate traditional Christian teachings on usury and just compensation” (p. 11). The time is right to look JoVSA • Volume 3, Issue 2 • Fall 2018 Usury and the Common Good 13 at the wisdom of building a social order on a anxiety, sleeplessness, aggression, divorce, practice always considered to be oppressive and and suicide. destructive. The study concludes by tracing out a renewed Having set out the ancient ethical case against Christian economics based on the principles of usury an analysis of how this stance was undercut Catholic social thought. Solidarity sees the human is undertaken. The series of revolutions— race as a single family working together in true commercial, philosophical, financial, industrial— communion under the Creator’s watchful eye. that institutionalized unequal exchange is taken Love is the central ethic informing economic up. The key elements to understand about these activity. The particular effort of Habitat for societal upheavals are noted as the advent of Humanity to build a humane economy in the modern banking and the shift from money as a absence of the necessary structural reform of the commodity to money as debt. With these social financial system is examined. The founders of inventions paper is used not as a medium of Habitat for Humanity, conscious of the injustice exchange but as money itself instead of gold and of usury, deliberately wrote into the charter of the silver coins. This transformation in the essence organization that no interest mortgages would be of money gives rise to our current debt economy. issued. Habitat for Humanity’s moral vision has The result of this triumph of the imagination is proven to be compelling as it builds a hundred an untethering of money from the real economy thousand homes a year, and a house is surely an and from the real physical world upon which all economic good. economic activity depends. The consequences of embedding the evil of usury REVELATION, REASON, AND THE PROSCRIP- in the structures of society are looked at. It is seen TION OF USURY to be impoverishing in three major ways. Usury is at the heart of the regime of capitalism (Heilbroner, 1985), our present ruling order. Usury 1) Social Impoverishment: Both commutative is defined here, as the etymology of the word and distributive justice are violated suggests, as the payment for the use of property. (Niewdana, 2015).² Usury on a loan is Interest is taken to mean exactly the same thing. a gain for the usurer for which he did This is at odds with today’s usage of the words. not labour and for the borrower it is a The relaxation of the strictures on charging charge for which he did labour but did not interest unfolded historically in a two step process. receive the benefit. Usury always involves First, it was argued that not all interest was bad, a wealth transfer from the needy to the only excessive interest. Therefore, one was not wealthy. guilty of usury if one remained within the legal 2) Ecological Impoverishment: Usury limits that had now been set down legislatively. requires and demands economic growth. The problem has always been determining what Such economic expansion in a world the legally permitted interest rate should be, since where environmental carrying capacity is there is no non-arbitrary rate. What we see as already being exceeded can only result in a second historical outworking is a forgetting the destruction of the basic life support of the concept of usury entirely. Today’s credit systems of the planet. card rates of 18 – 30% were once the province 3) Spiritual Impoverishment: Usury subverts of only the most ruthless loan sharks. Charges of the motive of charity in our hearts. The payday lending companies, now entrenched as motive in our relations with others is gain, part of the commercial landscape, can reach the not genuine concern for their wellbeing. unconscionable (Woodyard and Marzen, 2012) The clear signs of the loss of spiritual rate of 1,000% (Martin, 2010). health are evident in the increased risks of Usury is as old as civilization itself. It arises JoVSA • Volume 3, Issue 2 • Fall 2018 Usury and the Common Good 14 whenever there is an unequal distribution of for the summum bonum (Worden, 2009). He is wealth and the concentration of capital in also pointing out the sterility or barrenness of relatively few hands makes gaining access to life money (Langholm, 1984). Money cannot beget giving and life sustaining resources of critical money and to pretend that it can goes against the importance in the lives of the many. The poor natural order. Of course, fruitfulness can result person is in the position of pleading to the person if money is turned into a productive asset. But with superfluous goods for what he needs. The even then, labour is needed to animate this real usurer exploits this vulnerability by asking for capital. Money did not generate money.