Heresy, which simply defined as the rejection of an aspect of divinely revealed truth about a particular matter, has been a scourge of the Church since its founding. It assumes many different forms, and has new faces to propagate its views and new places where it spreads to. There are potentially as many heresies as there are men because heresy can tailor itself to whatever fancy it desires. However, all heresy share in common the sinful rejection of truth in exchange for a lie, which if taken far enough will lead to other errors and lies that will, in its worst form, culminate in apostasy.
Some heresies are very well known and nefarious. Others are less known, but equally erroneous. Many times, it would seem that the very opponents of the heresy of a certain time would later be condemned for heresy themselves, for out of their zeal to correct one error they unwittingly stepped into another. Arianism was named after the rogue Egyptian priest Arius, who denied Christ’s divinity and taught he was no more than a very good and blessed man. The Patriarch of Constantinople, Nestorius, aggressively opposed Arius’ errors, but erred in responding to Arius by saying that Christ was a man who became God, and so generated the Nestorian heresy. Nestorius was condemned by the monk Eutyches, who responded by saying that Christ’s nature was fully divine and human before the union of his spiritual and earthly bodies, and after there was only one, spiritual nature, which is the basis of the Monophysite heresy. Some years later, a monk named Sergius, while working to bring about better union between the Catholics and Monophysites stated that Christ had a human and a divine nature, but only one will, which is the basis of the Monothelite heresy.
These scandals affected the entire Christian world, but were most pronounced in the Levant and northeastern Africa. It was nearly three hundred years from the open appearance of the Arian heresy to the Monophysite heresy in the early seventh century. None of the followers of these heretical groups eventually survived, because following the death of Muhammad in 632, Islamic armies expanded out rapidly and conquered the entire Silk Road from Spain to Samarkand. With the subjugation of the Catholic Church came the outright oppression of the heretical groups. Over time, only those Christians who persevered in apostolic succession- following the churches established by the apostles and not the later sects- were able to survive under Islam. As for the heretical sects, all of them ultimately died out or their members converted to Islam. This only makes sense, for as St. John of Damascus writes in his book Concerning Heresy, Islam is nothing more than a great heresy, with Muhammad being a forerunner of the antichrist.
Dante and Virgil meet Mohammed in hell
Heresy also has a second effect, and that is it can poison people who are not Christians against the reception of the Faith. A good example of that comes again from the Arian heresy. During the time of Arius, there was a Greek man named Ulfias who adhered to the heresy. Since he was a well-educated man, he decided to work as a missionary among the pagan Gothic tribes which were coming down from what is today southern Sweden. He was very successful, and converted many of the Goths to the Arian heresy. In turn, when the Goths conquered large parts of Europe, they spread the Arian heresy with zeal and violence. Spain was heavily influenced by the Arian heresy due to the large Visigoth settlement in the peninsula. As late as the early 8th century, Catholics and Arians were still fighting with each other, and the fighting only ended with the arrival of Islam in 711, in which many Visigoths supported the Muslims against the Catholics and then complete their heresy through apostatizing to Islam. Indeed, religious heresy will always lead to apostasy, if not in the current generation, than inevitably in a future one unless that person and/or his descendants embrace the true Faith. History shows this clearly.
The condemnation of Arius
There is another form of heresy, however, that is less discussed but is equally pernicious and deadly. This is not a religious heresy that openly denies a core tenet of belief- such as Arianism- but it is a creeping decline caused by either apathy in religious matters or through the intentional ignorance of truth over a long period of time. Essentially, it is committing heresy by denying teachings about faith and morals by inaction or ignorance as opposed to direct action. What happens in a situation like this is a true teaching or teachings are either ignored or simply not taught for a long period of time and other false teachings are allowed to be presented instead. The false teachings are not explicitly said to be morally right or just- they are simply presented as options with nothing else said. This does not give moral license to the false teachings, but it merely gives the appearance that license has been given to it when it in reality has not been.
There have always been people who try to give the appearance that doctrine has changed without actually changing it, such as Cardinal Walter Kasper. Story here, here, and here.
This tendency has always existed in the Church because which the Church is Christ’s, her stewards are men who, though they have been “bought with a price” by Christ’s blood, they still retain their fallen, sin-inclined nature in this life. Men naturally will, unless by conscious choice, seek to favor certain teachings over others because they find some more acceptable and others less desirable. One of the most common teachings that people have issue with and still do is the teachings about divorce and remarriage which Christ Himself gives:
Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and whoever marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery. –Luke 16:18
These are very hard words for people to hear, especially for those in difficult situations. However, truth is always truth, and it is not for men to argue but rather to accept, as Christ says to St. Peter after the multitudes of his followers, upon hearing Christ explain that He is the bread of life and those who wish to follow Him must eat His flesh and drink his blood, many ceased to follow Him:
Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.- John 6:66-68
There are many other teachings which Christ gives that people do not like to hear. Another one, and the subject of my focus here, is the teachings on usury.
Usury is, classically defined, the earning of money from money itself. It has always been considered a mortal sin by the Catholic Church, and is regarded as no different than robbery without a physical weapon:
One should never receive more than the amount loaned- St. Jerome, Commentaria in Ezechielem
Lending at interest can be called another kind of robbery or bloodshed…since there is no difference in getting someone else’s property by seizing it through covert housebreaking and acquiring what is not one’s own by exacting interest.” – St. Gregory of Nyssa, Contra usurarios
“Money is given, it is called a load; it is termed money at interest, it is designated as capital; it is written down as debt; this huge monster of many heads causes frequent exactions; the usurer names the bond, he speaks of the signature, he demands security, he calls for sureties; he claims the legal obligation; he boasts of the interest, he praises the hundredth…The devil is a usurer…The savior owed nothing but He paid for it all…The usurer of money exacts his hundredth…the Redeemer came to save the hundredth sheep, not to destroy it. – St. Ambrose, De Tobia.
Some people put out their money at usury in order to become wealthy. We have to complain of this, not only with regard to those in clerical office, but we likewise grieve to see that it holds true of lay people who wish to be called Christians. We decree that those who are found guilty of receiving this shameful gain are to be severely punished – Pope St. Leo I, Ut Nobis Gratulationem
In addition to the above list, numerous more saints, writers, and popes condemned usury based on the same reasoning. The early church councils, beginning with the Council of Elvira in 304, condemned usury and continued to condemn it up through the Council of Trent in 1645. Many successive popes have condemned usury in more recent times including Gregory XVI (Vix Pervenit) Pius XI (Quadragesimo Anno), John Paul II Even most Protestants for the first two centuries after the Reformation condemned the practice.
St. Ambrose (De Tobia) and St. Basil (Homily on Luke) both articulated well that usury is a sin equal in its nature and gravity to sodomy. This is because as sodomy seeks to take the natural means of reproduction and perverts it into a sterile act, usury takes a sterile substance (money) and tries to make it into something genitive. The great Italian writer Dante likewise in Divine Comedy noted that in the seventh circle of hell (cantos 12-17) usurers are in there together with sodomites, murderers, and blasphemers because they are all united by the sin of violence, since all of these acts are forms of rebellion against the divinely created order in the same way that King Saul rebelled repeatedly, culminating in his final rebellious act of consulting a spirit medium against the wishes of the Lord and after which he met his untimely demise in battle.
The seventh circle of hell from Dante’s Divine Comedy, the place of sodomites and usurers
Author Michael Coffman in his book Usury In Christendom: The Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Not comments on the constant condemnations of usury by the Church by noting that if money- the sterile means through which human exchange takes place- can be perverted to make it produce gain, then any human or divine law can be philosophically and eventually, materially eroded and replaced with perversions unto perversions that would lead to complete apostasy and enslavement by the demon:
(Renaissance England) understood that money is a sign, and they objected on ethical grounds to the idea that signs could ‘breed’…Financial value was recognized as the alienated form of human life as a whole, and this was the second sources of the virtually universal opinion that usury was evil. It was evil in a metaphysical sense; it was the logical, practical, and manifest antithesis of human life itself. It is hard to overstate the importance that attached to this issue as a result. The people of Renaissance England believed that if it was allowed to do so, usury would bring about the triumph of atheism, the reign of satan, and the death of the human soul. (Page 343)
Now here is my question: When was the last time you heard the Church in modern times publicly and aggressively condemn usury?
To be absolutely clear, usury is not, nor has it ever been legitimized according to the Church and Her teachings. It is just as deadly a sin as it was thousands of years ago because the nature of sin does not change- sin remains sin. What has happened is that the term “usury” has been indirectly mollified in writings by renegade Catholic thinkers and popes, beginning in the Renaissance period, to make excuses and justifications for it while only indirectly, if at all, addressing Catholic dogma on usury. This gives and gave the appearance of usury as merely one among many options for how money can be applied in a society, but without discussing it’s wicked nature and consequences that come from it.
Pope Benedict XIV, author of Vix Pervenit against usury
As the Catholic Faith has come under increasing attack in recent years, especially in the very nations which were the ancient lands of the Faith in Europe, many have asked “how did we get to where we are?” Some point to the revolution of the 1960s. Others to the Freemasons. Some will identify the Protestant Reformation. All of these answers are good and accurate, with each one going further back in history to an earlier root cause. However, none of these are complete answers.
There has always been pressure against the Faith no matter where it goes. However, the real rebellion began in the Renaissance with the de-emphasis on usury as a sin and in some cases, its explicit permission. According to Hoffman, this began in the northern Italian city of Florence and eventually spread throughout the rest of northern Italy and to other parts of Europe, in particular the Germanic countries. He also notes, with great interest, that with the rise of usury also came a rise in many other sins in Florence, namely that of sodomy.
The permission of usury against Church teachings by rogue bishops and disobedient priests and laity created a weakness in European society into which a multitude of many evils could grow within, including religious heresy. It is no surprise that the heretic John Calvin did not oppose usury, just “unjust” usury, which an oxymoron because all usury is unjust and sinful. There is no such thing as a “just” sin because all sin is an affront to God’s justice.
If sin is the mother of error and heresy, then usury is one of the chief roots of that tree, as it bears more heresy and when fully ripened, apostasy. It also has been used to entice many people who are not Christians into rebellion against the Faith and ultimately, God Himself. This sad story is seen very prominently beginning in the Renaissance not only with the Florentines, but with Jewish money changers who, by various errors and lies in their Talmud and in combination with their social position in European society, grew into positions of unnatural wealth, power, and influence.
Next Week: A Medieval Jew’s Dilemma
-- Delivered by Feed43 service
Post a Comment