In Defense of the Indefensible: The Excruciating Convolutions of E. Michael Jones
Solemnity for Sodomy and the Utilization of Usury in the Situation Ethics of Rome’s Apologist
www.RevisionistHistory.org
E. Michael Jones (EMJ) in his January 9 column at Unz.com (“Wicked Imposters Scratching Itching Ears”), makes various claims about this writer’s December 19 essay, “Memo to Pope Francis: “God cannot and does not bless sin,” indicative of either gross inattention to what I wrote, or brazen misrepresentation.
I begin with his final paragraph:
“By now it should be obvious that the one thing Michael Hoffman, the Life Site News crowd and James Martin have in common is the claim that Fiducia Supplicans endorsed gay marriage in spite of the fact that FS said the exact opposite. People like this have no respect for the truth. They are, in the words of St. Paul (2 Timothy 3:1-12) ‘wicked imposters…”
One would think that to reduce a person to the degraded level of having “no respect for the truth” and a “wicked impostor” there would have to be a surfeit of evidence in support of so grave and reputation-destroying charges, otherwise they would constitute reckless calumny. Dr. Jones has furnished no such evidence.
I have not in any manner stated or implied that Fiducia Supplicans “endorsed gay marriage.” In fact, in “Memo to Pope Francis,” having discerned the papal misdirection at the heart of Fiducia Supplicans, I argued the very opposite concerning the document’s “unspoken subtext”:
“Pope Francis attempts to cover himself by saying that these ‘blessings’ are ‘not to be confused with the Sacrament of marriage.’ Yet the pope’s directive is almost universally understood as the validation of sex acts between two men, when those men are intimate only with each other; that’s the unspoken subtext. ‘Loving commitment’ is defined sub-rosa as their non-promiscuous, ‘self-sacrificing” monogamous sodomy.”
It was obvious to me that the storm of controversy over Fiducia Supplicans —the contention that it supposedly leads to a church-sponsored marriage of homosexuals —was an intentional act of distraction.
Being no stranger to the history of Renaissance papal dissimulation with regard to the incremental process of granting permission for the renting of money under a variety of pretexts, I was not beguiled by the semantic misdirection in Fiducia Supplicans. I did not succumb, as E. Michael Jones falsely alleges, to the straw man set up by papal apologists who have made the controversy a question of whether the document is a stepping stone toward the endorsement of gay marriage.
Thomas Pynchon once observed, “If they get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.”
The question is not whether the promulgation of Fiducia Supplicans changes the Church’s teaching on marriage. That’s the wrong question. The controversy that follows from it is a rabbit hole. We know indubitably that Fiducia Supplicans does not alter the teaching.
Here’s the right question: Does Fiducia Supplicans tend to overthrow Biblical law and immemorial patristic dogma on sodomy? Given that those engaged in that mortal sin are to be blessed by Catholic priests, without first having confessed their transgression, repented, and resolved to desist henceforth, the answer is — yes, it most certainly does.
Jones replies: “Well, because they are in an irregular situation. Conferring a blessing on those who are in irregular situations does preclude admonitions to repent. In fact the admonition is part of the blessing.”
(EMJ conflates same-sex couples with the category of “irregular situations.” The two are distinct, as the author of the papally-authorized text, Cardinal Victor Fernandez states: “It is precisely in this context that one can understand the possibility of blessing couples in irregular situations and same-sex couples without officially validating their status or changing in any way the Church’s perennial teaching on marriage” (italics added). The title of Section III of the document reinforces the distinction which Jones blurs: “Blessings of Couples in Irregular Situations and of Couples of the Same Sex”).
Couples in “irregular situations” include divorced heterosexuals who have not had their Catholic marriage annulled and who have remarried nonetheless. The issue at hand is the blessing of homosexual couples.
In many if not most cases, homosexuals are coming to the Church for a blessing of a union that is sexual in nature. The key aspect obscured thus far is that these blessings solemnize sodomy.
The amnesia at work is remarkable. A mere two years ago the Vatican’s responsum correctly declared that priests and deacons could under no circumstances bless same-sex couples because “God cannot and does not bless sin.”
This has since been derogated in favor of the new line, “…a blessing may be imparted that not only has an ascending value but also involves the invocation of a blessing that descends from God upon those who—recognizing themselves to be destitute and in need of his help—do not claim a legitimation of their own status, but who beg that all that is true, good, and humanly valid in their lives and their relationships be enriched, healed, and elevated by the presence of the Holy Spirit…there is no intention to legitimize anything, but rather to open one’s life to God, to ask for his help to live better, and also to invoke the Holy Spirit so that the values of the Gospel may be lived with greater faithfulness.”
With devious rhetoric similar to that which accompanied the papacy’s gradual lifting of the sacred dogma prohibiting the renting of money, we read the preceding spin-doctoring with dismay.
Nothing in Fiducia Supplicans denotes any pre-requisite that before receiving a blessing the couples being blessed are required to state their sincere intention, without mental reservation, to give up their sinful activity and live chaste lives according to the requirements of the Holy Scriptures and the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Is anyone so gullible as to imagine that proud sodomites are approaching these blessings “recognizing themselves to be destitute” and “begging” for healing?
As I noted in the “Memo,” in the case of the situation ethics revolution of Pope Francis, blessings have typically been requested not by penitent persons but rather by those who defiantly refuse to distance themselves from the proximate occasion of grave sin, and who view the blessing of their sexual relationship as a bold and triumphant victory over the teaching of the Bible and the true Church, notwithstanding the Vatican’s sonorous disavowals of the obvious symbolism.
Jones writes, “Hoffmann…attempts to rescue his case by saying that ‘the pope’s directive is almost universally understood as the validation of sex acts between two men….’ without telling us who is responsible for this universal understanding. Even if everyone in the world said what Hoffmann is saying it would have to be termed a universal misunderstanding of what is actually in the text.”
What is in the text, Dr. Jones, is a minefield of deliberately sown ambiguity and a startling cynicism which sets forth ideal conditions: the blessing of sorrowful homosexuals — while omitting any mechanism for ensuring that they are indeed 1. honestly sorry; and 2. determined to avoid the near occasion of sin which, if that were the case, would often result in their parting ways as cohabitating couples. Hence, the misunderstanding is intrinsic to the document.
Blessing sexually active male couples without requiring them as a condition of receiving the blessing to abstain from a sin that condemns them to eternal perdition, subverts the Vatican masquerade that the blessing “does not claim a legitimation of their own status.”
The document generated sufficient confusion that Cardinal Fernandez was compelled to issue a clarification on January 4 in which we read, “…the Church does not have the power to confer its liturgical blessing when that would somehow offer a form of moral legitimacy to a union that presumes to be a marriage or to an extra-marital sexual practice.”
Rome’s lawyerly escape clause centers on distinguishing between the category of “liturgical blessing” and an innovative Pope Francis-concocted category termed “spontaneous.” In his January 4 statement, Fernandez admits that this entails a new teaching (“real novelty”): “It is the invitation to distinguish between two different forms of blessings: ‘liturgical or ritualized’ and ‘spontaneous or pastoral.’ The presentation clearly explains that ‘the value of this document… is that it offers a specific and innovative contribution to the pastoral meaning of blessings, permitting a broadening and enrichment of the classical understanding of blessings…This ‘theological reflection, based on the pastoral vision of Pope Francis, implies a real development from what has been said about blessings in the Magisterium and the official texts of the Church.”
If you’re conversant with the Talmud of Mystery Babylon then you’ll be acquainted with the preceding pilpul. By calling some men who cohabitate and engage in posterior coition to a priestly blessing, Rome wants us to believe it is not offering moral legitimacy to anal sex between males. The pontiff and his chief theologian assure us that “these are blessings without a liturgical format which neither approve nor justify the situation in which these people find themselves.” If you believe that then you’ll believe that my grandmother is a defensive tackle for the Buffalo Bills.
Consider the optics: sexually active gay men are being blessed by the Church. Let us imagine that Francis, with “pastoral solicitude” were to authorize the non-liturgical blessing of Catholics who are white supremacists and neo-Nazis—accompanied by the requisite linguistic somersaults explaining that the blessings in no way amount to an endorsement of racism or Nazism. Would anyone in their right mind believe it?
But who is in their right mind these days? Many of the points I’ve raised would have been patent five years ago, without need of elaboration. The conditioning process of the post-modern occult imperium continues its solve et coagula operation of alchemical transformation to such an extent that we find ourselves obliged to undertake the correction of errors that would have, until recently, been easily recognizable.
In “Memo to Pope Francis” I endeavored to provide that rarest of birds in this polemical realm: historical memory and context, so as to equip Catholics and all interested Christians with the discernment of a pattern of revolutionary situation ethics imposed by means of guile and doubletalk, beginning in the Renaissance-era pontificates.
Dr. Jones attempts to counter my thesis with a string of demonstrable falsehoods. He writes:
“Having failed to make his case against FS (Fiducia Supplicans), Hoffmann tries to bolster his argument by claiming that the Church changed its teaching on usury. Once again, Hoffmann can only make his claim by ignoring what the Church actually said. Hoffmann is forced to admit that Pope Benedict reaffirmed Church teaching on usury when he issued his encyclical Vix pervenit…”
In addition to repeatedly misspelling my name as “Hoffmann,” EMJ fantasizes that I have been “forced to admit” that Pope Benedict XVI “reaffirmed Church teaching on usury.” This is news to me.
I have never made any such affirmation. I have always said that Vix Pervenit is a dishonest document that contains “many rhetorical, anti-usury flourishes” intended to distract from its affirmation of the renting of money under certain situations. (Jones even quotes that sentence).
Here’s the crux of what I wrote about the “Vix” encyclical in my “Memo” (similar statements are in my book Usury in Christendom: The Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Not):
“Dr. Jones promotes Vix Pervenit as the: ‘infallible encyclical of the Catholic Church’ upholding the sinfulness of usury. ‘That is the Church teaching.’
Let’s see if he knows what he’s talking about.
“In Vix Pervenit, issued November 1, 1745, Benedict XIV expanded Leo X’s ‘infallible’ 1515 Inter multiplices to include the lawfulness of interest on investment credit capital. While Vix Pervenit is often cited as a reaffirmation of the magisterial pre-Renaissance dogma on usury, such claims represent a failure to note and comprehend Vix Pervenit’s ‘fine print.’ Jones seems to be awed by the many rhetorical, anti-usury flourishes throughout Vix Pervenit of 1745. One observes the same tactic by Pope Francis in Fiducia Supplicans in 2023.”
In the face of the preceding, Dr. Jones asserts “Hoffmann is forced to admit that Pope Benedict reaffirmed Church teaching on usury when he issued his encyclical Vix pervenit…” Dr. Jones concocts any mendacity of his choosing when it suits his purpose.
He states further: “Hoffmann’s treatment of the Church’s teaching on usury is every bit as tendentious and wrong headed as his treatment of the Church’s teaching on sodomy. He brings up the case of the monte di pieta, which was a pawn shop for the poor created by the Franciscans and Dominicans in Renaissance Italy, which attempted to keep the poor from falling into the hands of the Jewish usurers. Unlike the Jews, who charged on the average 44 1/3 percent per annum compound interest, the monte di pieta charged five percent simple interest, which was the same as a fee, which meant that it was not usurious.”
The monte di pieta (“mountain of compassion”) operations began as well-intentioned, usury-free lending administered by monastics. These were not established solely to “keep the poor from falling into the hands of the Jewish usurers,” however. There were numerous predatory non-Judaic usurers plying their trade as well.
Over the years, the original intent of the montes was increasingly compromised by pressure from Catholic usurers who had been relentlessly pursuing a loophole whereby their money-renting would no longer be forbidden by the Church. Judaic usury in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries was dwarfed by Catholic usury banking on the part of the Fuggers in Germany and the Medici in Florence, among other large gentile usury operations.
Notice the situation ethics at the heart of EMJ’s support for the overthrow of the absolute prohibition on the renting of money: “Unlike the Jews, who charged on the average 44 1/3 percent per annum compound interest, the monte di pieta charged five percent simple interest…”
Is this supposed to evoke cheers? Apply this logic to prostitution: unlike Judaic harlots who charge $44 for a sex act, Catholic prostitutes are morally superior because they charge $5. Does it actually need to be stated that the law of God is violated either way, at any rate? The renting of money is malum in se (evil in itself).
Jones’ affinity for nullifying the law of God as the situation requires is also on display when he attempts to counter this writer’s point that, “The 2% of the (Vix Pervenit) encyclical which consists of escape clauses by which usury could continue to operate…” To which he replies, “Recognizing the complexity of the 18th Century European economic system is not an escape clause; it is an attempt to deal with the complexity of economic life.”
In the preceding sentence lies modernism’s heart of darkness. It is the alibi for nearly every transgression of the modern world against the commandments of God. The young people who share a bed outside of marriage do so in “recognition of the complexity” of the 21st Century American cultural system. They are “attempting to deal with the complexity” of modern life.
In addition to his situation ethics, EMJ’s delusions invoke pity. He writes, “In order to accept Hoffmann’s thesis we have to ignore what the Church actually said in ‘Inter multiplices in 1515 and Vix Pervenit in 1745, and the 1917 and 1983 Codes of Canon Law,” which Hoffmann derides as ‘enchanted history’ in favor of Hoffmann’s claim that for over 500 years now ‘popes and prelates have been initiated as part of the Neoplatonic-Hermetic gnosis.”
All of the papal documents which Jones cites above as antidotes to the renting of money, actually expanded the permission for it. Under Inter multiplices the first Medici pope, Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici (“Leo X”), allowed for charging rent on a loan for the sake of the poor. It wasn’t long however, before his relatives had gained control of the monte, and were making lucrative loans to their not-so-poor co-conspirators.
The Code of Canon Law of 1917 compiled on the watch of Pope Pius X (though published after his death), decreed, “…it is not in itself illicit to contract for legal interest, unless this be manifestly excessive…”
The 1983 Code of Canon Law promulgated by John Paul II, which is still in force, commands the commission of mortal sin. Canon 1297: “Stocks, bonds, certificates of deposit or money involved in prudent loans may belong to a juridic person as part of it stable patrimony, if they belong to special funds or endowments.” Canon 1305: ‘… goods are to be invested cautiously and profitably…’ (James A. Cordiden, The Code of Canon Law [1985], p. 883) According to the 1983 Code of Canon Law, it is even required of church administrators that they “invest for profit funds not needed to pay expenses” (Modern Catholic Encyclopedia [Liturgical Press, 1994]).
The Holy See has been putting its funds at interest for quite some time, and requires ecclesiastical administrators to do likewise. Does EWJ imagine this practice emerged out of thin air?
If one needs further evidence that E. Michael Jones is in over his head, there is this:
“At one point Hoffman claimed that priests stopped withholding absolution from penitents who continued to traffic in usury. How he knows this is anyone’s guess.”
Anyone’s guess? Dr. Jones presumes to lecture on the ecclesicastical history and theology of usury while revealing the depth of his ignorance of that history. Priests did indeed stop refusing absolution to usurers. Here’s “how I know” this:
In 1822, Mademoiselle de Saint-Marcel, a well-connected Catholic residing in Lyons, France was receiving interest income. In the course of her confession to a priest, she was refused absolution after she admitted that she intended to continue to receive the income. She boldly appealed her confessor’s refusal to the Holy Office in Rome, which subsequently ruled against the priest and in favor of the impenitent woman.
This led to further appeals by others like her, followed by more than a dozen decisions by the Congregations of the Holy Office, Propaganda Fidei and the Penitentiary (the office charged with the oversight of confessors), which declared, without allusions to extrinsic titles, that the faithful, even though they are clerics and religious, who lend money at a “moderate rate of interest,” are “not to be disturbed” (non esse inquietandos). This revolutionary corruption was formally confirmed by Pope Pius VIII on August 18, 1830, in his Rhedonensem datum in audentia.
I could say more, but I will spare the reader further excursion into the excruciating convolutions of E. Michael Jones.
For those who wish to research further, there is Usury in Christendom; as well as “The Breeders of Money Gain Dominion” (chapter 16 of The Occult Renaissance Church of Rome) and online televised lectures. There is also an exchange of letters in Dr. Jones’ own Culture Wars magazine (October, 2013, pp. 4-12), between this writer and Dr. Anthony Santelli.
Furthermore, for those who may be interested in the connection which Dante Alighieri articulated between sodomy and usury, I refer you to the essay which led EWJ to allude to this writer as a “wicked imposter” who has “no respect for the truth” —“Memo to Pope Francis.”
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Michael Hoffman is the author of Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare, and its sequel, Twilight Language, and eight other volumes of history and literature, as well as 122 issues of the periodical, Revisionist History®. He is a former reporter for the New York bureau of the Associated Press and a former paid consultant to the news department of the New York Times. His books have been published in translation in Japan and France. Listen to his broadcasts on the podcast, Revisionist History® and find him on X (Twitter). Michael resides with his family in Idaho.
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Thank you for a well reasoned and evidenced clarification. I wonder if EMJ has a to do list of tasks legitimising genocide (war, ethnic cleansing AND the Convid Bioweapons) and non-binary gender nonsense. Usury and sodomy ticked off already.
FS clearly approves blessing SS couples. This will be used to legitimate these unions. The media will push this interpretation. Unless there’s a revolt against this, the result will be tantamount to SS marriage in the Catholic Church.