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Remember usury?

The collapse of Christian society follows from the church’s embrace of the world. “the secularisation of Christian values, at the very heart of the Church, has been relentless.”
People who make this point usually focus on the sexual revolution. Here, A. N. Wilson refreshingly looks at usury, the enabler of every modern economic system and something that the historic church always opposed. Some strong words on getting back to a church that truly shows another way:

It was good to be reminded in Olivier Roy’s book that the encyclical Non expedit (1868) forbade Catholics to vote in Italian elections, a ban only lifted in 1919. A similar ban from Pope Francis, forbidding all European Catholics, on pain of excommunication, to take part in all the spurious electoral processes and referendums on offer today, would be a useful backward step towards what Eliot would have called a Christian Society. If no Christians voted, we should at least be clear that none of the political options on offer are even faintly compatible with Christianity

As an aside, the phrase “Gadarene rush” here is delightful:

Roy also rightly sees that for many Catholics, following the Second Vatican Council, there has been a Gadarene rush to espouse what are essentially secular values