This was a Catholic philosophy about as wrong-headed as its pathological and ultimately suicidal installation of celibacy as a priestly ideal. Look at what the Irish Catholics did to themselves: they would take the best brain among the kids and turn into a priest who does not pass on his good DNA. Not only is celibacy perverse, it’s stupid.

And it was the same wrong-headed thinking that had the Church of Rome condemning money-lending as an evil.

When it is not. What a money system does is transform immovable wealth, such as land (real estate) into a liquid commodity that gets passed around. Capitalism, not socialism, creates the greatest material good for the greatest number because it virtually alchemically transforms natural resources/immovable wealth (after gold and silver) into a symbolic piece of paper, which requires literacy to be read. And that’s the way to spread the wealth around. There is a connection between capitalism and democracy for the common man.

And when the English broke from Rome and began their slow rise to world dominance, they had to deal with such as the international Jewish merchants in Venice who, thanks to their multi-lingual abilities and business sense, were the major importers and exporters of the day. And that comedy by Mr. Shakespeare which is now playing in New York by a disappointing Al Pacino was written in that time period when the Jew was still a money-grubbing, blood-thirsty, all-around disgusting person, a figure of ridicule. When Shakespeare first mounted this production, there was, in modern terms, zero political correctness about laughing at and making fun of Jews. Nothing to be ashamed of. This was pre-Holocaust.

On the contrary, in England’s mostly Roman Catholic phase, Christians every Good Friday heard a sermon in the parish church confirming them in the belief that Jews are perfidious. That’s how bad the Jews are. They are perfidious…