Divine Consumption (and Conception)
Who doesn’t need the new Catholic credit card, where 1% of each and every purchase goes to support an authoritarian religious regime? If I recall the story correctly didn’t Jesus throw the money lenders out of the church at least once?
– and could this be a sign?
A shark at Henry Doorly Zoo in Nebraska gave birth to a pup despite having had no contact with a male.
Genetic tests by a team from Belfast, Nebraska and Florida prove conclusively the young animal possessed no paternal DNA, Biology Letters journal reports.
Well, he did say that none would know the time, nor the place, nor the manner, of His return – didn’t he?
Jesus didn’t throw credit cards out of shopping malls. It’s perfectly okay to raise money this way.
That’s right, Stageleft. They didn’t even HAVE credit cards then, so how could Jesus have disapproved?
I’m sure his next benediction on the Mount would have been “Blessed are the usurers who lend money at interest”, but he was getting a wrap up cue from Radio Judea.
And God knows, the Vatican needs the money.
Credit card companies are money lenders, pure and simple SUZANNE… there is also a prohibition on usury (interest) – see Exodus 22:25.
Since I’m not a christian the biblical aspect of this is really no more than a “geeze, what will they think of next”, as far as I’m concerned – credit cards, on the other hand, are, IMO, simply wrong.
Interest was wrong given the nature of money in biblical times. Before the Medieval period, the value of money was the actual value of the item that served for money– so you were lending gold as gold, not gold as a symbolic value.
With the development of economics, and the evolution of currency, it is acceptable to charge a reasonable amount of interest on a loan, for the depeciation of money, and as a service charge, and as compensation for the risk.
You can make the case that credit card interest is usuriously high, and I would be very sympathetic to that argument. However, not everyone who uses a credit card pays interest. I’ve never paid a dime of interest. I’ve paid a service fee– which is perfectly understandable since the company makes zero dollars off of me. The credit card companies may behave in immoral ways by charging too high an interest and playing off the financial stupidity of some people, but the concept of the credit card itself is not immoral.
When one starts with an ideological position – which is to say, a position that MUST be correct and that cannot, under any circumstance, be wrong – one really does end up creating the most fascinating moral universes, doesn’t one? If the Vatican endorses Vatican Credit Cards, then that MUST be right.
This is why theology manages to be simultaneously a stunning intellectual edifice – like mathematics or classical music, it’s an amazing human achievement – and a mind boggling absurdity.
One can, in fact, create a model universe in which the earth is at the centre of the sun and stars. Their behaviour makes no sense, of course…stars reverse their courses and follow strange zigzagging courses through the heavens. But if your ideological position is firmly geocentric, such a universe can be conceived.
Once again, SUZANNE, you’ve treated us to another stunning example of how to shore up an ideological position with bad history (commodity money systems have been in existence since the days of Babylon) and unsupported chunks of personal dogma.
“With the development of economics, and the evolution of currency, it is acceptable to charge a reasonable amount of interest on a loan, for the depeciation of money, and as a service charge, and as compensation for the risk.”
So the Bible is wrong then? Or at least, the edicts in the bible can become irrelevant and unneeded in the face of changing technology and society.
Good to know. Thanks.
Are you totally deranged?
Gold was a symbolic value little different than the Dollar, the Euro, the Pound and the Yen. You purchased a modius of grain, or a good horse, or an amphora of oil for n coins, and the price fluctuated according to the perceived (symbolic value) of the product. Gold did not have an intrinsic, set value. Recession, inflation and economics, devaluing currency etc. were well understood concepts as far back as the Republic.
For crying out loud – Republican Romans had bank drafts – for those times when carrying a hundred tonnes of gold was impractical. Speculation over the price of next season’s grain was practically a sport.
If the Church at some point in the Middle Ages (though, being a graft on Roman society, I’m sure it happened much earlier) decided to go against the clear Biblical injunction against usury, good on them. I’m sure they have an exquisitely wordy and moldy document somewhere that explains their about face.
Teh ghey, though – that’s still right out.
“Recession, inflation and economics, devaluing currency etc. were well understood concepts as far back as the Republic.”
Long before the Republic, Valiantmauz. The shekel, frequently mentioned in the Bible, was created around 3000 BC, and represented a particular measure of barley.
SUZANNE? Care to explain your highly personal personal theory of economic history and explain where we’re going off track here?
I did not know that, balbulican
Perhaps I should have worded it as “at least as far back as the Republic”. That’s about where my admittedly sketchy understanding of history peters out.
“In the Old Testament the injunctions against interest-taking fall generally into three classes.
First, passages such as Exodus 22:25 and Leviticus 25:35–38 command that the poor among the Israelites are to receive interest-free loans, out of compassion and mercy.
The second group of texts is illustrated by Deuteronomy 23:19–21: “You shall not charge interest to your countrymen: interest on money, food, or anything that may be loaned at interest. You may charge interest to a foreigner, but to your countryman you shall not charge interest, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all that you undertake in the land which you are about to enter to possess.” Here the principle of interest-free loans is extended to embrace all of Israel (and would include those non-Jews who are living under Israel’s protection). But notice that the Scripture also says, “You may charge interest to a foreigner,” indicating that interest-taking is not presented as inherently evil or sinful.
Finally, the third group of texts (Ezek. 18:13, 17, Jer. 15:10, Prov. 28:8) condemn the greed of the rich, who oppress the poor by, among other things, exacting interest which the unfortunate are unable to pay.
So in the Old Testament we have specific prohibitions against Israelites taking interest on loans to other, poor Israelites, or more generally to any Israelites, but this prohibition does not constitute an absolute prohibition against all interest-taking; in fact, we have explicit testimony that interest is not completely forbidden. The larger ethical issue of the morality of interest-taking is not addressed in the Old Testament. Rather, “interest was viewed only as a problem of social justice. The problem of commutative justice, i.e., of equivalence of value in an exchange of present for future goods, remained quite untouched” (Thomas F. Divine, S.J., Interest, 10).”
http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1997/9709fea3.asp
As I commented above, any ideologically rigid body of belief generates its own rationalizations. I strongly urge anyone who has ever wondered what people mean when use the term “Jesuitical” in the pejorative sense to follow the link provided by SUZANNE. It’s marvellous.
However, your quote doesn’t shed any light on your astonishing assertions about “the nature of money in medieval times.” Did you just make that up off the top of your head?
Wait now, I think I may actually like where this is going. If this prohibition is Israelite specific I’m wondering just how much more of the Old Testament is not applicable to the rest of the world?
So, it’s only usury if the Catholic Church gives credit cards to *poor* Catholics or Catholics who live in Isreal?
Or are Catholics unprotected, since really it’s the Jewish people this is for?
Or is it that Jewish people shouldn’t charge interest to other Jewish people, but Catholics can screw each other over without worry?
Huh. Interesting. God as a nit-picking, lawyerly rules-whore invested in xenophobic, tribal morality.
If that were God, I’d be an atheist. Because God would be the drunk creep at the party shooting off at the mouth about “those people”, whomever those people are, which pretty much immediately crushes the idea of omniscience, doesn’t it?
You know, I thought the church was growing beyond that. So sad. No wonder my mom lapsed.
This helps explain why I am, have always been, will always be, a heathen in the eyes of the one true Church.