T. Decrees Concerning Profit Received from Money Given as a Loan

The Bishop of Rennes in France sets forth to the Sacred Congregation of the Inquisition that there is not the same opinion among the confessors of his diocese concerning profit received from money given as a loan to merchants, that by it they may grow rich.

There is keen dispute concerning the sense of the encyclical letter Vix pervenit. From both sides arguments are brought forward for maintaining that opinion which each one has embraced, either favoring or contrary to such profit. Hence complaints, dissensions, denial of the Sacraments to many merchants adhering to that mode of becoming rich, and innumerable harms of souls.

That they may meet the harms of souls, some confessors think that they can hold a middle way between each opinion. If someone consults them concerning profit of this kind, they try to deter him from it. If the penitent perseveres in the plan of giving money as a loan to merchants, and objects that the opinion favoring such a loan has many patrons, and besides has not been condemned by the Holy See, which has been consulted not once concerning this matter; then these confessors exact that the penitent promise that he will obey with filial obedience the judgment of the Supreme Pontiff, if it intervene, whatever it may be; nor, this promise having been obtained, do they deny absolution, although they believe the contrary opinion to such a loan to be more probable. If the penitent does not confess concerning profit from money thus given as a loan, and seems in good faith, these confessors, even if otherwise they know that this kind of profit has been received by him or is even now being received, absolve him, no interrogation having been made concerning this matter, when they fear that the penitent, admonished, would refuse to restore or to abstain from such profit.

Therefore the said Bishop of Rennes asks:

I. Whether he can approve the manner of acting of these latter confessors.

II. Whether he can exhort other more rigid confessors, approaching him for the sake of counsel, to follow the manner of acting of these, until the Holy See gives an express judgment concerning that question.

Wednesday, August 18, 1830.

Our Most Holy Lord Pius VIII, Pope by divine providence, in the usual audience granted to the Reverend Father Lord Assessor of the Holy Office, having heard the relation of the above doubts together with the vote of the Most Eminent Lord Cardinals General Inquisitors, answered:

To I. - They are not to be disturbed.

To II. - Provided for in the first.

1° Whether a confessor can, in conscience, deny absolution to priests who contend that the law of the Prince is a sufficient title for receiving something beyond the principal, without the title either of cessant gain or of emergent loss?

2° Whether he ought to?

Resp. to both: They are not to be disturbed until the Holy See issues a definitive decision, to which they are prepared to submit themselves; and therefore nothing obstructs their absolution in the Sacrament of Penance.

I. Whether the manner of acting of those confessors can be approved who, while they hold as more probable the opinion contrary to profit from money given as a loan to merchants, absolve penitents receiving profit in that way, that they may grow rich, when, namely, those penitents, objecting that the opinion favoring profit has not been condemned by the Holy See, nevertheless promise to obey the judgment of the Supreme Pontiff, if it intervene; and who act similarly when penitents, receiving profit in good faith, do not confess concerning it, although otherwise they know that they are receiving profit, as above, no interrogation having been made concerning that matter, when they fear that the penitents, admonished, would refuse to restore or to abstain from such profit.

II. Whether the Bishop can exhort more rigid confessors, approaching him for the sake of counsel, to follow the manner of acting of the former confessors, until the Holy See gives an express judgment concerning that question.

It is answered:

To I. - They are not to be disturbed.

To II. - Provided for in the first.

Given at Rome in the Sacred Penitentiary, August 14, 1831.

In the Exposition of the Bishop of Rennes no mention is made of the said title which certain Theologians wish to be found in the law of the prince; but only of a loan given to merchants, and of the sense of the Encyclical Vix pervenit concerning such a loan made to merchants.

Whence some say that the judgment of the Most Holy Pontiff Pius VIII is to be attended to in itself alone and separately from the responses given by the Most Eminent Cardinals, so that the sense of that judgment would be that the opinion favoring a loan made to merchants has not been condemned by the Holy See, which has been consulted not once concerning that matter; and therefore if penitents promise that they will obey with filial obedience the judgment of the Supreme Pontiff if it intervene, confessors who do not deny them absolution are not to be disturbed. Those who thus interpret the judgment of the Most Holy Pontiff turn their ears away from the Encyclical Letters of Benedict XIV, Vix pervenit, and from I and II of De Synodo Dioecesana of the same Pontiff, to which several responses of the Holy See refer, from the Instruction given to Father Charles Felix on April 17, 1749, and from diverse responses given by the Holy Apostolic See.

Others, not conceiving by what way the aforesaid judgment (of Pius VIII) can be reconciled with the said decisions of Benedict XIV and of other Supreme Pontiffs concerning a loan made to merchants, if it be so attended to separately, think that the said judgment is not to be understood thus, but jointly with the Responses given by the Most Eminent Cardinals, to which the Supreme Pontiff seems to refer ..., and that the Judgment is to be referred to doubts concerning the title of the law of the prince, which title was not condemned by the Holy See....

Therefore it is asked:

I. Whether the aforesaid judgment of the Most Holy Pontiff (Pius VIII) is to be understood, as his own words sound, separately from the title of the law of the prince, concerning which the Most Eminent Cardinals speak in these Responses, so that it concerns only the loan made to merchants.

II. Whether the title from the law of the prince, concerning which the Most Eminent Cardinals speak, is to be understood thus, that it suffices for the law of the prince to declare that it is lawful for each person to agree concerning profit from a loan made by itself alone, as is done in the Civil Code of the French, without saying that it concedes the right of receiving such profit.

Wednesday, August 31, 1831.

In the General Congregation of the Holy Office ..., the above prayers of the Reverend Father Lord Bishop of Viviers having been proposed, the same Most Eminent and Reverend Lords (Cardinals), the votes of the Lords Consultors having first been had, said:

Provided for in the decrees of Wednesday, August 18, 1830, and let the decrees be given.

On the same day and weekday, Our Most Holy Lord Gregory XVI, Pope by divine providence, in the audience granted to the Reverend Father Lord Assessor of the Holy Office, approved the resolution taken by the Most Eminent.

The Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, under date March 26, 1840, the doubt having been proposed whether N. N. is bound to restore anything, whose father had given a great sum of money as a loan with profit of ten per cent, corresponding to the legal rate of that time; and insofar as he would be liable to restitution, whether at least he may licitly retain five per cent, it was rescripted: "As regards usuries in general, let him consult the decrees already issued. As regards the excessiveness of the fruits, let him consult the Reverend Father Lord Bishop, who should weigh the circumstances of the fact and the practice of that time which was in force among men of timorous conscience, and provide."