Is usury a sin

Answer 1

A:

St. Ambrose defined usury as "whatever is added to capital." The practice of earning interest from loans and investments was condemned from by various councils, from the Council of Nicaea onwards, and represented one of the most grievous sins of early Christian tradition. Jacques LeGoff (Your Money or Your Life) believes that purgatory was created in the Middle Ages in order to have an afterlife punishment for usury, short of eternal damnation in hell.

Taking their lead from the Catholic Church, the leaders of the Protestant Reformation condemned any increase in the amount to be repaid when no more than a simple loan was at issue, but allowed interest to be charged when repayment was late or when the lender shared in the risk of a venture. Protestant Churches gradually moved away from treating interest and profits as sin, opening the way for modern capitalism, where the profit motive is no longer a sin.

The Catholic Church was more resistant to changing its ancient doctrine on usury. However, when Pope Pius XI signed the Concordat with Mussolini, the Vatican went from near-bankrupcy to being an enormously wealthy organisation. Faced with a need to use the funds now at the disposal of the pope, he employed a gifted financial advisor who soon taught the Vatican how to pursue the highest returns on its funds, through interest and investments, some of which were quite contrary to Catholic teaching. In 1950, Pope Pius XII rhetorically asked, "Does not the social function of the bank consist in making it possible for the individual to render his money fruitful, even if only in a small degree, instead of dissipating it, or leaving it sleep without any profit, either to himself or to others." What had once been regarded as usury and sinful no longer is. The sin of usury still exists where exorbitant interest is charged.