Once upon a time the SSPX understood the definition of usury and the Catholic principles that oppose usury.
The February 2001 issue of The Angelus carried a book review of Hilaire Belloc’s Usury, which Angelus Press once offered for sale. Here is an extract from the review:
“The point Belloc makes in his short essay is that usury, contrary to the now common understanding of the term, is not the charging of exorbitant interest on a money loan. Rather, it is the charging of any interest whatsoever [emphasis in original] on a loan which is not ‘productive’ (i.e., on a loan which does not yield financial profits for the borrower). We have become so used to thinking of usury as the charging of high rates of interest, that we have forgotten that usury has nothing to do with the rate of interest charged at all.
“What Belloc points out is that there are two types of loans which could be made. The first is a loan the money from which the borrower invests to make a profit for himself. In this case, whether it was Aristotle or St. Thomas or Roman Law, no one objected to the loaner reaping a certain percentage of the profit which was the direct result of his loan. This type of loan Belloc refers to as a ‘productive loan.’ The ‘unproductive’ loan, however, is one in which no profit is made from the loan (e.g., mortgages). [emphasis added] In this case, the borrower does not take money out of his profit to pay the lender more than he has borrowed, rather he must take money out of his basic livelihood to pay the lender ‘interest’ on the money borrowed.”
The U.S. District of the SSPX is extracting usurious payments from the lay faithful who were too slow to raise enough money to buy the district a new church. Otherwise, all that $1.4 million might have had to be returned to the laity. There are no financial naïfs among the SSPX leadership.
Topic: SSPX charging its own chapels interest on loans (Read 8064 times)