Testimonials for Hoffman’s book on Usury

Encomiums for Michael Hoffman’s new book:
Usury in Christendom: The Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Not

(New review added on March 30, 2013)
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Endorsement by Rev. Fr. Christopher Hunter, SSPX:
“For 1500 years the Church of Rome unequivocally condemned usury as one of the worst of evils; then it suddenly starting teaching that ‘moderate’ usury was permissible. Hoffman’s book challenges Rome to explain the contradiction.

“Rome needs to explain why, after 1500 years of solemnly teaching that usury is one of the worst of evils, it suddenly said it was permissible as long as it was not ‘excessive.’

“Usury in Christendom challenges the Catholic hierarchy to explain how it changed its traditional opposition to usury into permission to practice it. This book needs to be read in Rome.

“Usury in Christendom will remain the definitive textbook on the topic of the Church and usury until such time as Rome discloses why it reversed its 1500-year-old teaching.

“Little wonder the Church of Rome overturned the traditional Latin Rite of Mass if it would overturn its age-old teaching on usury.”

Fr. Hunter is a noted historian of the American Republic. He is the pastor of St. Therese Chapel in Klamath Falls, Oregon and a teacher at the schools of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX).

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"I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for writing the book, Usury in Christendom. I have written in the Bible in the front cover the places that deal with interest or usury. I did that 30 years ago. You’re right on every issue that I can see. Creating money out of thin air and charging interest is the greatest evil that the world has ever seen.”

May God bless you, 

—Linus E.

North Dakota 

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Book Review by Pat Flanagan, M.D. (Wisconsin):

This book takes a while to read, because it is packed with useful  information which the interested reader is advised to read slowly and deeply.  It will be especially important for those Catholics who tend to refer to themselves as Traditional in terms of attending the Latin Mass for their ordinary custom of worship.  I say this in order to prepare this type of reader for some rather startling news that usury is not from the Jews or the Protestants but rather comes from the wealthy Catholic families in Italy and Germany.  And, brace yourselves, the popes since 1515 have said it is OK as long as the interest rate is not excessive!  So forewarned is forearmed.

Simply put, (and not trying to be funny), this book by the author Michael Hoffman promises to do for usury what Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky did to adultery—it will give it a bad name.

I took great enjoyment in reading this book for two reasons: (1) it is myth exploding actually exculpating the Protestants and Judaics from the blame they falsely took for so many centuries for their part in the interest-bearing debt racket and laying the blame squarely on the Catholics who started it and the Roman Catholic Church who authoritatively condoned since the 1500’s; and, (2) it is going to be a sort of cutting board separating Catholics who lust after the Truth no matter how harsh it may sound and those lickspittle Trads whose religion is based on who and not what informs them of their doctrinal teachings.  It is a given that those who still accept the official and approved version of 9-11 and the Holohoax as irreformable historiography are not going to make it past the first few pages.

Hoffman is a true scholar who has been studying this issue of Church approved usury since around 2000 publishing his findings serially in his newsletters right up to the present, so that much of what I have already learned in those publications has been included in the book.   This prompted me to dig them out of my files because he was not able to include all this information in the book due to cost concerns.  But just reviewing this old material helped to further reinforce its importance in my learning experience.

We can never be too casual with avoiding the First Principles of any topic.  As one traditional Catholic who was wont to mechanically associate  the usury industry with the Money Power of the Protestants, specifically the pilgrim Puritans who landed at Plymouth rock in 1620, and the Khazar Talmudists whose experience in this despicable business is legion, it was a real epiphany to me to read that the thesis of Max Weber, the German Catholic of the early 20th century, had falsely ascribed the onus of money profit-making on the Protestant mentality of worldly success being used as a sign of predestination.  If Weber had actually gone back in his research another 200 years he would have discovered that the original Puritan divines of 16th century England based their teachings on the utter immoral nature of usury on earlier Catholic patristic writings and the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas and not on Calvin who actually had made peace with the financial elitists of his day in approving loans at “modest” rates to those who could afford to pay the extra interest on the principal.  And this was certainly news to me where the name Max Weber had become synonymous with sound Catholic scholarship.  Hoffman went back further dredging up First Principles amongst the Catholic families in Florence—the Medicis—and the Fuggers in Germany.

All of this would have meant absolutely nothing had not a pope given it his blessing, and that happened with Pope Leo X at the Fifth Lateran Council in 1515.  From that point on every pope and theologian has given the practice of loaning not above the going legal rate a pass in the Catholic world. Actually now, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) “The Holy See puts its funds out at interest, and requires ecclesiastical administrators to do the same.”

Mike Jones of Culture Wars and his contributors never tire of bringing up Vix Pervenit, the encyclical of Pope Benedict XIV (1745).  A closer reading of this Hegelian-like document does anything but condemn the practice of usury as a huge loophole inserted into its midst undoes the initial proscription of this fiendish practice and instead goes on to describe approvingly of “…just and legitimate reasons…to demand something over and above the amount due on the contract….”  Check it out for yourself as it is the 30th edition of the Enchiridion Symbolorum by Denzinger, edited by none other than Karl Rahner, S.J.

Followers of the Austrian School of Economics in Auburn, Alabama, capitalists down to their boots, would say this of Hoffman and his book, “Flee for your life from the man who tells you money is the root of all evil.  That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.”  Well, here is news for you guys who preach Free Enterprise and making lots of money is what America is all about—Our Lord never tired of preaching to “Lend expecting nothing in return” (Lk 6:35).  Did He not put his money where his mouth was when he ran the money changers out of the temple, not once but twice, by furiously lashing them with a whip of knotted cords that he especially made for the occasion?  And, yes, He really did foresee the evils of unbacked paper money and unchecked interest on loans in the modern world.  So He meant it back then to continue up to the present.

This book is easily readable and bound neatly in soft cover.  It lacks an index which would be extremely helpful for study, but if you really apply yourself diligently as a good student reading a textbook, which it is, then the index is dispensable.  The bibliography is very impressive showing the effort made in getting down to the origins of this massive criminal syndicate that has been devouring the lifeblood of the remnants of Christendom for these last 500 years.

This is a book that should be read by all people, especially Protestants and Judaics, who might feel a little bit after doing so to chortle, “There, we’ve been trying to tell you that for years!”

—Pat Flanagan

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 I finally finished your superbly written book in the predawn hours this morning.  What comments I am going to share with you now couldn't have been made by me three days ago with only about two-thirds of the book read.   The book is manifestly a scholarly work on the subject of usury.  I say this because the information in the book "squares" with what I have studied and learned from others and examined on my own.  But for me, the undercurrent theme of self-examination of the one's conscience in all things, is the most important.  I'm thinking this was powered by the "mini biographies" and "sermonettes" that are found in just the right places throughout the pages of this book. Your book is a call to repentance of not just the sin of usury but all things that would remove us from His Kingdom here on earth.  May we all be blessed by what you have written!

Gratefully yours,

—Mark Layne

I finished reading Usury in Christendom...I have been saying for several years that from a Christian standpoint we must back out of the banking, debt-based currency, fraudulent monetary/usury system. It is the basis of the preponderance of evils we face today. I had never put two and two together to realize that usury as Divine Law and cannot be revised by the Church. You have laid bare the dreadful fact that all popes since 1515 have promoted this abominable heresy. No wonder the Catholic Church and Faith is nearly destroyed and the world is filled with war, tyranny, and poverty!  Your research can only be described as incredible and bares the signs of Divine assistance. My favorite part is John Jewel's sermon castigating usury and usurers. What a treasure!  I have begun to select about a dozen individuals who I deem to be appropriate to be the recipients of the flier you provided and a recommendation for purchase. ...Those Catholics who cannot tolerate the truth about the Church can only stand in the way of Her restoration. One cannot walk the line. We must either be with Christ or we will be against Him and His Church.   May God bless you in your courageous efforts to overcome the Money Power and just do the right thing despite the consequences, which were, no doubt, foreseen.                                                                         

Respectfully yours, 

--Susan Trelease Nasoni 
DuBois, Pennsylvania 

                                                               

Thank you for your tireless efforts to defend the simple teaching of Scripture regarding counterfeit and godless increase.  Thus you are an alien and stranger in this present evil age, and your enemies are members of your own household.  Take heart by another passage of holy Scripture: "And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart."  Ironically, in battling against counterfeit increase that comes from the hand of Mammon, you are promised in this Scripture and elsewhere true increase that comes from the hand of God, an increase that makes the most usurious schemes pale in comparison, being even 100 fold from the Author of Life, if you do not lose heart.  In this, Satan himself knows he has been defeated. He will pay particular attention to those whose aim is to publish the facts of this defeat.  But the one in you is greater than this one in the world.  Do not lose heart.  

Sincerely,
— R. G. 
Louisville, Kentucky

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