enters the what's interesting is first
of all he sees this incredible array of
humanity and he's like I can't believe
hell is undone so many and the first
group that are actually in a vestibule
out outside of Hell proper they're in
hell but it's it's outside of Hell
proper and these are the tremors these
are the people that were neither for
good nor evil they were only for
themselves and and they they have a
banner that has nothing on it
representing the meaninglessness of
their lives and they're running about to
and fro with these insects biting them
and stinging them on their heads as
reminders of what they should have done
so but then he moves into the sins of
the leopard which are the sins of youth
and he has in their luxurious
Ola aviary Shion IRA luxurious lust it's
the Latin word for lust which is an
interesting word that is is related to a
kind of spreading out like sorry as a
looseness we talk about loose morals the
idea of not being able to contain
oneself and then you have gula which is
where we get gluttony from and and it's
a wonderful almost an amount of pattaya
type word because it just sounds so much
like the actual act and then aviary
Hsieh which is a beautiful word which we
get avid reader is a greedy reader it's
from the same root from a Sanskrit word
avati which means to crave or to desire
and so
greed is a craving which is also hungry
is is related to greed it's the same as
you go back to the ancient cognates
you'll find that greed and hunger are
the same so the idea of greed is a
craving and we know the second noble
truth of the Buddha is craving is at the
root of our problems
so the sin of luxurious is an
interesting one I want to talk and this
is always religious people always going
on about lust and pornography and and
this is the obsession of Christianity
for for too long
right I mean Christians and it's kind of
driven everybody mad I think they've
kind of gone to that extreme because
they just couldn't take the sermons
anymore but you know I I want to say
that I don't think people are really
aware of this problem I think a lot of
good people that that and not to say
other people are bad people but people
that you know that people that aren't
engaged in these type of things don't
really understand the extent of this
problem and and when when a when a
society we're producing almost 90
percent of all the pornographic material
in the world and this is becoming it is
by far the predominant downloading now
going on on the internet there's a
wonderful you can google this if you'd
like there's a wonderful image on on on
youtube of a investment banker who's
live from australia and he's talking
about interest rates and behind him is
one of the investment bankers they're
downloading pornography this showed up
on live TV so he kind of gets caught
he's at work supposed to be crunching
numbers right and and he's downloading
pornography and somebody comes and
points it out to him that they're on
live TV back there and he's kind of in a
state of shock but this is a major
problem in terms of loss of time and
these things so what's interesting about
lust Dorothy Sayers who people know her
as a mystery writer
was also I think a first-rate theologian
Dorothy Sayers argues that there are two
reasons for lust becoming predominant in
a culture or in a person in a person it
can be sometimes from what she calls an
abundance of animal spirits in other
words there a lusty person there there's
somebody that has a lot of vital energy
and this vital energy can be dissipated
in sexual pursues but the other one is
that she said that in a society that has
lost meaning she said that this pursuit
can become a type of in essence it's
it's a distraction from the troubling
emptiness that is there and this is
something that Kierkegaard recognizes
because Kierkegaard talks about the
estate the the aesthetic man he said at
the high level and the estate this is
what so answered about Kierkegaard is
that Kierkegaard recognizes that the guy
at the Opera do you know the guy at the
opera titillating his senses and
experiencing these things and is
obsessed with the aesthetic life is no
different from this guy down on the
pornographic downloading that it's the
same type of impulse that is causing us
to pursue these things that's my little
graphic there now in the United States
now it's estimated that only 3% of boys
and 17% of girls have never seen
internet pornography and I know just
from my own experience on the internet
you can find images like when I was
trying to get some of these images
pornographic images popped up on the
image thing in Google and you're
supposed to report them so people upload
these images this is a real problem in
our country and then if you look at the
statistics that are going on beyond
really beyond belief it's quite tragic
so I will just as a side note I
participated and wrote a paper BAE
Dante's Inferno with the Witherspoon
Institute this is called the social
costs of pornography and my papers in
here my paper was originally titled
climbing Mount purgatorio reflections
from the seventh cornice which is the
cornice of lust and they changed it I
guess the Catholics kind of wanted the
Muslim to have a non Catholic title
maybe I don't know the but gula which is
gluttony I don't I didn't that image the
person that put that up put that up I
really wouldn't want to do that to
somebody the prevalence of obesity in
the United States is really quite
stunning what's happening in our country
obviously some of it you know one at one
of our scientists at the National
Institute of Health said that we're
making food now like crack cocaine
because they found that high fat and
high sugar rats cannot stop eating it
and so the people that the hand for C
corporations know these things and this
is the ruthlessness and the impersonal
nature and the really a moral nature and
immoral nature but this is what's
happening so you can see since 1974 to
2004 just look at that and if you look
these are doubling and one of the things
about exponential growth if you
understand the doubling factor and I'll
get into that when we talk about usury
but it's very dangerous to see doubling
happening now every Hsieh which is greed
this this American thing I'm not calling
them a greedy family this is more just a
normal family in America it's obviously
for they were from I think Texas very
Christian she's got the Bible as the
centerpiece of their possessions which i
think is quite lovely but if you look at
the amount of goods they have and this
comes from a wonderful book of people
that went around the world taking
pictures of the average person in that
country and they would have the family
come out and have all their possessions
and and you you see places like Bhutan
where they've got like a few blankets
and some pots to cook with and
and they they're beaming with radians
they look so happy and I can attest this
because I actually lived with Bedouins
in West Africa and the Bedouin that I
live with the tribe that I lived with
which moved three times in the year
lived in tents the the the possession
was always contained in a chest all
their worldly possessions in a chest and
it was a great gift to live with them
because one of the things I learned from
them is you do not need very much our
needs are very very few and and one of
the things about those people is I never
really saw any depression or people that
were troubled they were really happy
people prozac hasn't had a market there
yet it's a this is from st. Thomas it is
a sin directly against one's neighbor
greed since one man cannot over abound
in external riches without another man
lacking them it is a sin against God
just as all mortal sins in as much as
man contemned things eternal for the
sake of temporal things that's at the
essence of this and then IRA I'm gonna
get back to grieve because it doesn't go
away when we get to violence IRA is is
wrath and an anger now here we are in
Dante's extraordinary vision of Hell
which actually comes from the Islamic
tradition which has circles going down
and some of the prophets Elias nm did
not write this but some of the Muslim
writers had it burrowing in to the earth
and they also unlike the Christian
tradition there is a tradition in Islam
that ice is the deepest punishment in
hell which is where Dante gets this
frozen lake where the demon is now as
dante enters into limbo these are for
the righteous pagans what's interesting
is he puts a very wheeze even the
Russian and even Xena there and
Salahuddin AUV so this is because limbo
is not that bad
it's probably like motel 6 as opposed to
the Fairmont it's really not that bad
it's green it's got the seven mountains
that represent the seven virtues and
you're not really suffering there but
you're distant from God so that's that's
the punishment and and then Dante is
informed also that when Christ died he
came and took all the Old Testament
prophets out of there and brought them
into heaven so obviously it can't be
that bad if those great men were put
there and then he the next circle is the
lustful the gluttonous the avaricious
the prodigal the wrathful and the sullen
he's got two groups of the wrathful and
the they're the ones that express their
wrath and they're there they're in the
lake and they're they're all fighting
each other and then the sullen ones that
interiorize their anger and become
depressed resentful and angry at the
world
but they're not expressing it outwardly
and then we moved to sticks which is the
hateful river and he borrows from
greco-roman tradition and then he has
the heretics and heretics eros eya and
Greek comes from a word which means to
choose for yourself
so the heretics are those who choose for
themselves no out outward authority in
in many ways we are the heretical
generation the modern world is a world
of heretics I'm you know I did it my way
Frank Sinatra the great singer so the
and then he moves into the seventh
circle and this is where the sins of
violence are and they're the the violent
that are against their neighbor and
these are the tyrants the war mongers
the murderers these are the people that
are the purveyors of war so violence are
the sins of the lion these are the sins
of manhood in the way that the leopard
which are the sins of incontinence the
inability incontinence which now just
means incontinence to stool and urine in
medical terminology means you can't hold
your urine or your feces it used to mean
you just couldn't control yourself a
crazy ax it was the idea of just
somebody that did not have the moral
fiber to hold themselves within the
boundaries of morality
so the sins of the lion are the violent
ones now if you look at the you know the
world that we were living in right now
again the exponential factor here is is
quite frightening but these are the
types of money that we're putting in to
military and this is a much more
accurate you know one of the things that
the official records want to say is that
our military budgets about 20% and
that's the the the government's official
one but if you actually look at all
their finagling and see how it's quite
clever how they do it I mean it's
wonderful if you if you look at at New
York New York is the only state in our
Union that has a budget they have to
actually have a fiscal budget that stays
within the boundaries that's a clause in
their state constitution that they
actually cannot do deficit financing
well how do they get around that they
were 200 million short not that long ago
so they sold Attica prison to themselves
for 200 million dollars I'm not making
this up does this this literally happens
this is the type of stuff that goes on
Clinton they always talk about how
during the Clinton period it was Oh last
time we had we didn't have a deficit
that was a surplus right look at the
really what happened and you'll see that
they they were digging into the social
security funds so they didn't have to
borrow the money they just took from
future people seriously I mean this this
is this is what's happening so if you
look at at the warmongering that goes on
and we have to deal with this this is
our country here's our budget in
relation to the rest of the world we are
15 times we're 15 times greater than all
of the the next group combined and 12 of
these are strong allies I mean you look
at Canada Canada it's it's it's number
14 there and they're a strong ally of
the United States and if you look Saudi
Arabia that's just corporate welfare by
the way cuz Saudis never use their
hardware they never fight wars I mean
when they got into trouble they called
on America so all the weapons are just
there waiting for the Americans to use
right but they're number eight all that
those Petro dollars this the
military-industrial complex is at the
root of these sins of violence and this
is something that unfortunately because
we as Americans we view ourselves as
always wearing the white hat you we
don't you know collateral damage isn't
that's not terrorism because hey we
didn't mean to kill them even though
they have statisticians in the Pentagon
that tell them how many civilians are
going to die probabilistically they know
that but we didn't intend to do it it's
just an important fortunate byproduct of
war so this is the type of environment
now this was an act of violence against
this country but Iraq wasn't our act of
violence against a country that had
nothing to do with this act of violence
and so this is these are the cycles of
violence that are perpetrated constantly
and we can never get out of them and and
and so these these violent sins and then
violence against themselves because it's
interesting how they're they're the same
sides of one coin right two sides to the
same coin now
and then he's got blasphemers against he
has the blasphemers and and then the
sodomites now what's interesting about
the sodomites in Dantes I don't want
that's not fair a friend of my did that
what what's interesting about the the
sodomites is if you look at Ezekiel now
this was the sin of your sister Sodom
she and her daughters were arrogant
overfed and unconcerned they did not
help the poor and the needy they were
haughty and did detestable things before
me therefore I did away with them this
is also consistent with the Platonic
narrative one of the sins of the
sodomites was they raped guests and and
in the Platonic narrative they come to
the house of lot and they demand that he
surrender their guests so that they can
rape their guests and so the this is a
violent society they had they express it
through sexual violence but it is a
violent Society and I think that's
important to remember and he actually
has a kind word to one of them who was
his teacher
Dante now now we get to the users and
these are the this is the crime against
art that's that's how it's produced now
art in the medieval world view was
production it was the idea of production
that you produce things Christ and his
three-year mission the only time he gets
violent is with the users chasing them
out of the temple now if you look at the
abrahamic you can look at these these
are all in exodus leviticus take no
usery or interest from him but fear your
God that your brother may live with you
you shall not lend him your money for
usury nor lend him your food at a profit
if one of your brethren becomes poor and
falls into poverty among you then you
shall help him like a stranger or a
soldier that he may live with you and
then to a foreigner you may charge
interest it's interesting st. jerome and
if you look at the early church father
st. jerome has a very famous statement
about ubi
just bel i boobie ATM juice user i if
it's just to wage war on them it's just
to charge users
that's how he understood that that the
that the stranger was actually somebody
who was an enemy and then this was the
Jubilee right you know what they would
say today our economist oh that creates
moral hazard right seriously that's
exactly how that how they would look at
that and then this is Ezekiel also right
so and and this is a just man who does
what's lawful and right he doesn't eat
on the mountains where the idolaters
used to eat and or lifted his eyes to
idols nor defiled his neighbor's wife
nor approached a woman in her impurity
if he has not oppressed anyone but he
has restored the debtor to his pledge
he's robbed no one by violence taken no
Ussery if he had not extracted using nor
taken any increase but has withdrawn his
hand from iniquity and executed true
justice between a man and a man if he
has walked in my statutes and kept my
justice judgments faithfully he is just
now in the Jewish tradition and the Jews
in European tradition were forced into
usury it's very interesting if you
studied they used that a lot of the
European sovereigns would have the Jews
as tax collectors and this is like
having african-american police in inner
cities do you know it's it's it's it's
kind of it I mean that's an opposite
example of that it's trying to deflect
but it's what the tax collector when he
was Jewish if he would come they would
see the Jew and not the sovereign so
they would see the Jew as an oppressor
and that was literally designed I mean
these people were were Machiavellian in
their in their in their outlook so but
this is from the Talmud every man's
Talmud by dr. Cohen one method of
earning a living which was condemned in
scathing terms by the rabbi's was usury
a man who practice it was precluded from
giving evidence in a court of law come
and see the blindness of the user errs
if a man call his fellow a villain the
latter proceeds against him even to the
extent of depriving of his live with it
but user errs take witnesses scribe pen
and ink and write and seal the document
to the
I mean woody guthrie put that in a more
popular phrase when he said some men
will rob you with a six-gun and some
with a fountain pen and so that's what
he's alluding to but he said no matter
how far you roam you'll never see an
outlaw take a family from its home not
like the bankers whoever has money and
lends it without interest of him as
written he that putteth not out his
money to user he shall never be moved
hence you can learn that if a man lends
on interest his possessions will be
moved users are comparable to shedders
of blood Cato the Elder was asked about
user he he said user II asked me about
murder he equated it with murder and
there's reasons for that would that the
monitor people don't understand
unfortunately because we don't fully
grasp it one of the most important
things and this is why it's so good to
see this issue being addressed justo
Gonzales and I would recommend reading
this book faith and wealth a history of
early Christian ideas on the origin
significance and use of money in
Gonzales his book what he shows very
clearly is one of the most central and
important issues that Christians were
grappling with was the ethical use of
wealth they were obsessed with it in
their writings but what he says on the
outlines of the actual relationship
between faith and wealth there's and
there is also remarkable unanimity it's
one of the few things they really agreed
on to the point that certain themes
appear again and again usery by witches
usually meant any loan on interest is
universally condemned in the early
church the one possible exception is
clement of alexandria who may have held
that the prescription of loans on
interest applies only to loans to other
believers but even this possibility is
based only on a debatable interpretation
of a single text so user ii was seen as
condemned and and this is obviously the
chasing them out love your enemies do
good to them and lend to them without
expecting to get anything right even
your enemies so this is really
abrogating that idea of lending to the
the enemy which is why he put it in
there and it's interesting that modern
Christians have justified usury with the
Luke story about the man who comes with
the the talons and he gives his each one
he gives him ten and five and one and
then two of them work it in the third
one he just hides it and he says oh I
knew you're an austere and cruel man and
you take what's not yours and you reap
what you don't sell so I just hit it and
here it is here and he said you you're
your condemnation of me is my judgment
against you you should have known that I
would have wanted more and you should
have put it in a bank and gotten
interest so he used the example of a
wicked tyrant that everybody hates and
says well there's Jesus he's saying user
he's okay
they have very weird interpretation but
hey that's Scripture yeah the nature of
the sin called user has his proper place
in origin in a loan contract this
financial contract between consenting
parties demands by its very nature that
one returned to another only as much as
he has received the sin rests on the
fact that something the creditor desires
more than he's given therefore he
contends some gain is allowed to him
beyond that which he loaned but any gain
which exceeds the amount he gave his
illicit and user EAA's this is an
encyclical a papal encyclical which is
basically Church doctrine the Pope
writes it and then sends it out to all
the churches this is not ex cathedra in
other words it's not considered
infallible because the Pope's rarely use
ex cathedra as a doctrine and but this
was sent in 1745 it was all over by Pope
Benedict the 14th and then it was again
applied to the in cyclical to the whole
the Roman Catholic Church in 1836 during
the reign of Pope Gregory and dr. Noonan
one of the great Catholic scholars says
that it's impossible say that there was
not universal agreement on the
prohibition of usury charging for the
loan of money is unjust as such for you
are selling something that doesn't exist
this is the important distinction that
the the medieval 's understood that
money is a means of exchange
it is not meant in and of itself to be a
source of income you can invest money by
buying goods and products and selling
them as a businessman but when you loan
money and make money off the money you
have perverted the purpose of money
which is a means of exchange and you
have made it an end as a good is an end
this is how they understood it the word
in Greek for usury was tacos which means
to give birth and this is why he has
them on a barren sandy completely on
fertile because what they've done is
they've made something that should be
unfertile in its essence but it causes
things to grow if it's used properly and
so this is this is a Thomas saying some
things like food are concerned by use so
that the use can't be separated from the
thing when we let someone use such
things and we transfer the ownership of
the thing itself so if you sell a
sandwich you've transferred the
ownership of sandwich and so the use of
the sandwich was which its consumption
is you can't charge them for that and
that's why bankers literally get their
cake and eat it too literally
it's amazing so so now when we let
somebody use such things than we
transfer knowledge if we tried to sell
wine and it's used separately we would
be selling the same thing twice over or
selling something non-existent that
would clearly be unjust by the same
token then it is unjust to lend wine and
then as for the twofold recompense the
restoration of some equivalent and
charge for its use this is what user he
is a use charge in such cases there are
however things which are not in this
abuse
st. Thomas always preempts what you're
gonna object to right he even really
he's quite stunning in that he
constantly does that he just he thinks
okay what are they gonna say to this one
and then boom he answers you so he said
there are however things which are not
consumed by you a house is used by
living in it not by pulling it down so
here we can separate the thing from its
use transferring the ownership for
example while reserving the use for
or vice-versa allowing someone the use
and retaining its ownership this is why
one can listen for a houses use and
later ask for its return as happens in
letting and renting so now Aristotle
tells us money was invented for the
purpose of exchange and that its prime
and proper use is in its consumption and
disbursement by being spent in
transactions it follows that it is in
principle wrong to charge for the loan
of money as is done in usury now in the
Islamic view allodynia Karuna rely upon
Allah , a poem on Lydia Taha Babu who
ship an omen and mess those who devour
usery
will rise only like the one who rises to
be knocked down by a demon as if
possessed by madness my teacher said
Abdullah remember who's one of the
foremost authorities on Islamic finance
said that this is the boom-bust cycle of
a new serious society they rise only to
be knocked down and this will happen
again and again throughout history the
Quran says those who consume interest
cannot stand except this one stands who
is being beaten by Satan as a demon oh
you have believed do not consume user he
doubled and multiplied but fear that you
may be in order to be successful now in
traditional views of all forms of wealth
acquisition the most unnatural and
odious is that by means of usury
Aristotle in the politics John Addison I
love this one a moneylender he serves
you in the present tense he lends you in
the conditional mood keeps you in the
subjunctive and ruins you in the future
I mean really great stuff nothing like
the English for stringing words together
usery dolls and damps all industries
improvements and new inventions where
and money would be stirring if it were
not for this slug provision and that's
why why how are they trying to stimulate
the economy now they just keep lowering
the interest rate right just keep
lowering it down but there's deeper
problems and this is I'm gonna get to
this anyway john maynard keynes says
this very interesting that he used he
was brought up to believe that the
attitude of the church was to the rate
of interest was inherently absurd and
that the subtle discussions aimed at
distinguishing between the return of
money loans from the return of active
investments were merely Jesuitical
attempts to find a practical escape from
a foolish theory but I now read these
discussions as an honest intellectual
effort to keep separate what classical
Theory has inextricably confused
together the rate of interest and the
marginal efficiency of capital and he
distinguished he invented the marginal
efficiency of capital so that's the nice
thing about inventing your own terms is
that you define them as well
so but he basically the marginal
efficiency of counts of capital is what
it's worth which is not necessary the
interest rate so most economists would
see the same thing he saw it as
different but his point was is that they
recognize there is a difference between
the capital itself and and and the
interest itself and they distinguish
between those two and and but it's
prohibition is is for a very different
reason
I already mentioned that from now back
to to Dante now we're in the fraud now
why why is greed violent fraud is not
one of the seven deadly sins and the
seven deadly sins Aquinas says deadly
sins are capital sins which means they
breed other sins in the same way that
you have moral virtues are virtues that
are the source or the matrix of other
virtues so courage when you think of
generosity generosity is a virtue but
generosity is subsumed under the virtue
of courage because you can't be generous
without courage your your your your your
literally going against the fear
of losing your wealth by giving it to
somebody else and so it's a very
sophisticated system but fraud st.
Thomas identifies these are called the
daughters of the seven deadly sins and
he has each of the sins have daughters
like one of the sins the daughters of
lust is that you begin to hate God you
begin to lose any sense of spirituality
because you're so subsumed by the
sensual but in the daughters of greed he
has treachery he has fraud
so fraud is a daughter of greed it's a
daughter of avarice yeah and it's
important to note also that the deadly
sins are not acts they are states of
being so greed is not an act it's a
symptom when you see somebody acting
greedily that what he's doing is a
symptom but the actual disease is a
state of being and so he's got the first
ones are the the panders and the
seducers the fraudulent men there's
there's a book now that was on the front
table of borders and Barnes & Noble
called the players Bible and it was a
book on how to seduce women like it
teaches you how to seduce women and and
what's interesting about this is that
apparently there's a whole underground
group of these guys that communicate on
internet and exchange how they do these
things I read an article about this and
it was quite shocking to see this but
this is this is a type of fraud like to
know the right things to say to a woman
in order to seduce her right and that's
what they do so they're fraudulent and
he he has this horrible geureon which is
a from from Greek mythology which is a
monster with a beautiful face and it's
got a poisonous tail and that's how he
personifies fraud and so and and and
this is also he's got the flatterers who
are literally up to it in cracked like
they're full of it literally I mean in
in Hell so there he's got the the
glutton the
witness our being rained down by feces
rain it's like so the flatterers are
those those people and this also is you
he would probably today put the ad
executives down here if he was a lot the
scientists are those who sell from Simon
Magus and in the New Testament who tries
to buy the gifts of the Holy Spirit and
puts obviously the church was having a
difficult time with that and then divin
errs astrologers and magicians he would
probably put people like and he put the
people of his time like the people that
read Dante knew all the names because
they were familiar with all the people
they were like celebrities of the time
so he would put probably like these
people dive in or dinners he would put
these guys on CNN who do the the
prognostication for where the stock
market's going you know telling you what
to buy and things like that and then
he's got the the Bears who are what the
Simon is are to the church the barriers
are to government they're the people
that accept bribes and then he's got the
hypocrites the thieves
fraudulent counselors and it's
interesting the man that advised Caesar
to cross the Rubicon is here so it's the
people that give fraudulent advice like
the people that told the to go into Iraq
for instance under false pretenses
because many of them knew and this is
all come out so we know that this is the
the the type of and then solar's of
scandal and schism this is where
unfortunately for Muslims he has the
Prophet Mohammed with Adi now I want to
and I you know this is difficult for me
but I would like to defend a little bit
Dante Dante Dante put him it in among
the schismatic s-- there is another
group in