The Christian Church's position on usury began with the First Council of Nicaea in the year 325, which prohibited the clergy from engaging in usury. Subsequent ecumenical councils applied this rule to any member of any religious faith. Lateran III decreed that people who accepted interest on loans could receive neither the sacraments nor Christian burial. Pope Clement V condemned the practice of charging interest as "hateful to God and man, damned by the holy canons, and contrary to Christian charity. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Should Not be prohibited" '? Get an original essay The historical performance of usury as an evil enterprise stems not only from a spiritual view but also from the social implications of practices perceived as "unjust" or "discriminatory." Christians, based on biblical rulings , they condemned interest-taking absolutely, and by 1179 those who practiced it were excommunicated. Despite its Jewish roots, criticism of usury was warmly welcomed as a cause by the institutions of the Christian Church where the debate prevailed with great intensity. for well over a thousand years the Old Testament decrees were resurrected and a reference to usury in the New Testament was added to fuel the case. Relying on the authority of these texts, the Roman Catholic Church had prohibited the taking of interest by the clergy in the 4th century AD. rule which they extended to lay people in the fifth century. In the 8th century, under Charlemagne, they went further and declared usury to be a general criminal offence. This anti-usury movement continued to gain momentum during the early Middle Ages and perhaps reached its peak in 1311, when Pope Clement V made the prohibition of usury absolute and declared all secular legislation in its favor null and void. Also associated with this change is the rise of Protestantism and its pro-capitalist influence. As a result of all these influences, around 1620, according to the theologian Ruston, “usury went from being a crime against public morality, which a Christian government should repress, to being a matter of private conscience and a new generation of Christian moralists redefined usury as excessive interest.”Remember: This is just one example.Request a custom paper from our expert writers now.Request a custom essay This position has remained pervasive to today's thinking in the Church, as opinions indicative of suggests the Church of Scotland when it states in its study report on the ethics of investment and banking: “We accept that the practice of charging interest for commercial and personal loans is not, in itself, incompatible with Christian ethics. What is more difficult to determine is whether the interest rate charged is fair or excessive." Likewise, it is illustrative that, in contrast to the clear moral injunction against usury still expressed by the Church in Pope Leo XIII as “voracious usury… an evil frequently condemned by the Church but yet still practiced deceptively by materialistic men ” Pope John Paul II's 1989 Sollicitude Rei Socialis contains no explicit mention of usury, except the vaguest implication of recognition of the Third World debt crisis.