poor credit loans
First, it isn’t clear that these loans to the poor were in fact mutuum loans at all (see Question 47)
Some medievals argued (with the wide ranging of opinion typical of the human experience) that certain actual costs incurred by lending (called “extrinsic titles”) could be recovered from borrowers who could afford to pay those costs, in addition to the principal amount of the loan, under certain circumstances
This is similar to the situation with contraception and natural family planning. Just as it is possible to engage in otherwise-licit kinds of sex with a “contraceptive mentality”, it is also possible to enter into otherwise-licit kinds of contracts with a “usurious mentality”. The kind (species) of contract or sexual act under consideration may not be intrinsically immoral; but the fact that it is not intrinsically immoral does not make it impossible to do moral wrong in the particulars: in intentions or circumstances. The nature of a particular kind of contract may not be usurious; but it does not follow that the choice to agree to a particular contract of that kind therefore cannot be unjust.
This is exactly as we should expect it to be with a moral doctrine covering a particular loan companies in Connecticut for bad credit species of sin. The moral prohibition of contraception, for example, is not in itself an all-encompassing theory of sexual immorality. Adultery and fornication are sexual sins distinct from contraception, and what is true in the sexual domain is also true in the domain of property: that theft and usury are distinct kinds of sins doesn’t make either particularly ambiguous. Neither the prohibition of theft nor the prohibition of usury constitute Theories of Everything about the moral use of property.
Mutuum contracts are only morally licit as charity. Lending money to someone in need is a good deed. (más…)