Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by geye1234 33 days ago
Yes. A full-recourse loan and a non-recourse loan are different: in the way a cat and a dog are different, not in the way a small dog and a big dog are different. It's most unfortunate (and probably deliberate) that they both go by the word 'loan'. Aquinas explains this very clearly in his discussion of usury in the Summa.

Anyone failing to distinguish between the two has no business talking about the ethics of usury, or the history of late-medieval Catholic teaching on the same.

Making a profit on a full-recourse loan, regardless of whether the lender or borrower are Christian or not, is a sin, and a pretty serious one at that. Usury is to fraud what robbery is to larceny. Many people try to claim that the Church has 'changed its teaching' on this, but they can never point to a source that shows this.