Again the Roman
court intervened. In 1830 the Inquisition at Rome, with the
approval of Pius VIII, though still declining to commit itself on
the _doctrine_ involved, decreed that, as to _practice_, confessors
should no longer disturb lenders of money at legal interest.
But even this did not quiet the more conscientious theologians. The
old weapons were again furbished and hurled by the Abbe Laborde,
Vicar of the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Auch, and by the Abbe
Dennavit, Professor of Theology at Lyons. Good Abbe Dennavit declared
that he refused absolution to those who took interest and to
priests who pretend that the sanction of the civil law is sufficient.
But the "wisdom of the serpent" was again brought into requisition,
and early in the decade between 1830 and 1840 the Abbate Mastrofini
issued a work on usury, which, he declared on its title-page,
demonstrated that "moderate usury is not contrary to Holy
Scripture, or natural law, or the decisions of the Church." Nothing
can be more comical than the suppressions of truth, evasions of
facts, jugglery with phrases, and perversions of history, to which
the abbate is forced to resort throughout his book in order to
prove that the Church has made no mistake.
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