Usury

[MelanieM]

a) What is its history in the Catholic Church?

b) What is the Catholic Church's current position on it?

[DavidObeid]

Usury is the charging of an unjust amount of interest on money lent.

The Church has always condemned usury as sinful, but since the nature of economies have changed over time the definition of what is and what is not usurious is not always clear cut. It is hard to give a blanket definition of what type of financial charges are usurious nowadays.

Dr. Garrick Small (former professor of land economics at the University of Technology, Sydney) gives a great lecture on this topic. It might be an idea to have him give a talk and upload an mp3 of it to TCF at some stage to address this issue in more detail.

[MelanieM]

Labban, take notes

Thanks David

God Bless

[Maiden Dame]

Hello,
I know this is an old question but i like to go over them to re-interate the knowledge. However this question has sparked a light bulb for me and it has always been a curious one for me. Does usury also include interest on a bank account? If i have my money with a LEGAL instituition and it is collecting interest, is this wrong? What about having an arrangement with a family member to reduce the amount of interest he pays on his home loan, i give him an amount that will thereby reduce the payments he pays weekly. With the money he saves being quite a large amount, he gives me the interest rate i would have gained with a bank. Is this wrong?