Writing for Voice of the Family, Dr. Alan Fimister has reviewed a new book by David Hunt,
Here is an excerpt from Dr. Fimister’s review:
The precise definition of usury and what practices do and do not constitute usury was laid out with great lucidity by the brilliant eighteenth century pontiff Benedict XIV in his 1745 encyclical letter Vix pervenit. And yet many many people, including those charged with the propagation and defence of the Church’s teaching, treat her irreformable teaching concerning usury as if it were a dead letter. Indeed, persons keen to set aside some other aspect of the Church’s teaching — both those seeking to fall away to the left and those seeking to fall away to the right — habitually appeal to the supposedly self-evidently discarded condemnation of usury as a cherished precedent for their own favoured innovation. The complexity, scale and vast distances involved in modern economic life conceal the nature of the problem and distract us from the simplicity of the Church’s teaching. The rage of the oppressed remains nonetheless, as does the misguided yearning for the state to “do something” that does not belong to it and so becomes a tyranny. As Pius XI observed, “Liberalism is the father of this Socialism that is pervading morality and culture and that Bolshevism will be its heir.” (Quadragesima anno, 122)
Into this void has stepped the mathematician and philosopher David Hunt with his brilliant treatise, Something for nothing? — an explanation and defence of the scholastic position on usury.
Usury, Hunt explains, is found in a particular type of loan contract — a mutuum. A mutuum is a loan in which the liability of the borrower is not limited by any collateral he might offer as part of the loan. A mutuum contract could include collateral but it would not by definition be limited by it. In a mutuum, the borrower is personally liable for the full amount borrowed regardless of any collateral. Such loans are morally licit but the lender cannot charge interest on them. Why not? When we own some valuable thing, we may sell it to another entirely or we may sell its use for a certain period. There are, however, some goods which have no use that does not entail complete ownership. Food has no use other than consumption and money is used up by being transferred to another. To charge for its use is to charge for something that does not exist.
Read the rest of Fimister’s piece here…
