Vocations, Catechesis & Discipleship

Father V. directs us to this article on “Why Vocations Programs Don’t Work”.  Naturally I think the article is pure genius, since it says thing such as:

If youth ministers and, more specifically, priests take the time to teach their young people how to pray alone, in community, liturgically, before the Blessed Sacrament, with an icon or crucifix, in nature, with Scripture, or with a journal, disciples will emerge. Don’t be fooled; young people desire to learn to pray and to pray well, and they want their leaders to teach them.

Yes.  My kids beg to pray.  Even in my very rough start as a first-year teacher with no training, the day we set a dozen fifth graders loose in the church with brochures on How to Pray The Stations of the Cross, they were all over it. No groovy music, no splash, no drama.  Just a quiet empty church and a prayer card, and the chance to move from station to station and pray.  It was good.  Stunningly good.

Moreover, it’s all too common that those working with youth soft-step around difficult or controversial Church teachings in an attempt not to drive young people away. Gone are the days of young people defining themselves as liberal or conservative Catholics. The stakes are much higher today: either you believe in God or you don’t. As the Southern novelist Walker Percy said upon his Catholic conversion, these days it is either “Rome or Hollywood,” there is no more middle ground. As such, young people want to be challenged. They want to think and understand and wrestle with big ideas. So why not spend time teaching them about the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Paschal Mystery, the Liturgy, and the Last Things? It is no secret that the Church’s teachings on sexuality are counter-cultural, but this is precisely the draw for so many young people—that the human person is more than simply an object of pleasure, and that there is something beautiful about God’s creating us male and female, in his image and likeness, and that there is a divine plan for the way we express ourselves.

To which I say: Preach it, Father.

And yes, all these things need not wait until the kids are 17 and “mature”.  I teach a 100% G-rated class.  Boys and girls know they are boys and girls.  They know that babies come from mothers and fathers.  They know that families are good, and they desperately want to grow up to be like their parents, to live in a home where they are loved by both parents . . . they understand good whether they themselves get to experience it or not.  We who are afraid of controversy, are just afraid of telling the kids what they already know deep down.

And in any case, how exactly does free pizza and a trip to the amusement park prepare a young man for seminary?

–> Would you really promote, say, engineering majors, by hosting a high school engineering club that shied away from any of that frightful math and science  stuff?  Don’t teach the kids to solve equations!  If they truly feel called, they’ll embark on their own quest to discover the value of the unknown!  We don’t want anyone intimated by rigid adherence to the number line!

I’ll stop there.  I have this vocation I need to tend to.  But one of the combox requests at Fr. Ference’s article asks for more detailed “how-to’s”.   At the risk of over-promoting a mighty good blog, I send you to this enjoyable and insightful article on teaching about the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes.  Which includes a lovely vocations twist I for one had never noticed.

Meditation & Imagination Update

Update Round-up:

Christian sends in this link from his blog, on the topic of imagination, art, and catechesis.  Smart people would read his blog regularly. He has a really fun post up right now about language and the Egyptian revolution, for fellow word geeks.

(Am I the only one who wishes the wordpress spellcheck function would learn the word “catechesis”?  Every time I see that red squiggly underline, I get nervous, and have to go check my dictionary to make sure it is a real word. It is.)

Jeffery Miller (the Curt Jester) posts about pantheism and “centering prayer”.  Including this handy link to a This Rock article on the topic.  So let’s make sure we are super clear: “meditative prayer” as described on this blog and used by reputable catechists, is not “centering prayer”.  Not.  NOT.

Here’s what the Catechism has to say about meditation:

II. MEDITATION

2705 Meditation is above all a quest. The mind seeks to understand the why and how of the Christian life, in order to adhere and respond to what the Lord is asking. The required attentiveness is difficult to sustain. We are usually helped by books, and Christians do not want for them: the Sacred Scriptures, particularly the Gospels, holy icons, liturgical texts of the day or season, writings of the spiritual fathers, works of spirituality, the great book of creation, and that of history the page on which the “today” of God is written.

2706 To meditate on what we read helps us to make it our own by confronting it with ourselves. Here, another book is opened: the book of life. We pass from thoughts to reality. To the extent that we are humble and faithful, we discover in meditation the movements that stir the heart and we are able to discern them. It is a question of acting truthfully in order to come into the light: “Lord, what do you want me to do?”

2707 There are as many and varied methods of meditation as there are spiritual masters. Christians owe it to themselves to develop the desire to meditate regularly, lest they come to resemble the three first kinds of soil in the parable of the sower.⁵ But a method is only a guide; the important thing is to advance, with the Holy Spirit, along the one way of prayer: Christ Jesus.

2708 Meditation engages thought, imagination, emotion, and desire. This mobilization of faculties is necessary in order to deepen our convictions of faith, prompt the conversion of our heart, and strengthen our will to follow Christ. Christian prayer tries above all to meditate on the mysteries of Christ, as in lectio divina or the rosary. This form of prayerful reflection is of great value, but Christian prayer should go further: to the knowledge of the love of the Lord Jesus, to union with him.

THAT is what we’re teachin’ the kids.  Just so ya know.  And they like it.

And speaking of teaching the kids:  Dorian’s got week up one of Ask A Catechist, and I am an utter slacker in getting my own my comments posted.  But that’s okay, because hooooweeee that was a hairy question, and did I really want to answer it?  But don’t worry, my shutting up powers aren’t that strong.  I’ll be there soon.  Meanwhile I’ll just put this stylish graphic in my post, so that you’ll know that yes, I really am participating.

See.  A box.  With answers inside.  Click and find out more.

Dear Lent-a-Claus,

UPDATE: Christian LeBlanc adds his list in the combox – classic catholic novels version.  More additions welcome.

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Actually I’m not planning to ask Lent-a-Claus for any books this year.  I already own copies of the two I should be reading, and I’ve got a backlog of other good stuff sitting around.  But if you need ideas, here are my three top picks from what I’ve read in the Good Catholic Books department lately.

All three are good enough I personally may do a re-read for lent.  Not many books qualify for that.  And all three are entirely suitable for normal people. How often does that happen?  So sit up and take notice:

The Gargoyle Code by Fr. Dwight Longenecker.  See the shiny ad in the sidebar?  You can get one, too.  I already own a copy, so unlike my usual will-work-for-books ethic around here, I actually volunteered to post the ad purely because it is a good book. (And no, I don’t belong to Fr. L’s parish either, so I’m not sucking up.  It’s just a good book. Did I mention it’s a good book?)  If you liked the Screwtape Letters, this is a very enjoyable catholic counterpart.  Highly readable and edifying.  It will be serious Lenten mortification to make yourself read just one entry a day, rather than staying up to finish the book in a single sitting.

Who is Jesus Christ? by Eric Sammons.  Here is the link to my review, in case you missed the part about how You Should Definitely Buy This Book.  Impeccably written, meaty, and it will push you in your faith.  After reading my copy (courtesy of the Catholic Company), I visited my local Catholic Bookstore to purchase a second copy to use as a loaner.  The owner told me, “No, we don’t have it in stock.  Should we?”  Yes, I told her.  I lent her my copy.  She read it, and that is how it became the store’s next Book Club book.    So yes, it’s that good.

Why Enough is Never Enough by Gregory S. Jeffrey.   It’s the book I keep reviewing without ever reviewing.   The topic is money, and if you struggle with trusting God about how to manage your money, this is your answer.  There are other (worthwhile) books on the topic of getting out of debt and keeping a budget.  This is not that book.  This is about the deeper picture — developing a proper relationship with money, and learning to use the amount you have in a way that helps you grow in happiness and holiness.   Unqualified buy recommend.

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I’ll post more recommendations if any particularly suitable additions come to my attention.  Meanwhile, if your book made the top three and you didn’t already send me a sidebar linky-picture-widget, feel free to do so.  It doesn’t seem fair that my readers should only be made to read book reviews.  They should also have to look at pictures.

Prayer, meditation, and imagination

Meditative prayer, which my 5th graders love so much, asks you to use your imagination.  When we pray the rosary, we do this.  We think about the mystery, we imagine the mystery, we let our mind’s exploration of the mystery show us things we hadn’t seen before.

But if you have fallen into the hands of weirdness before, you can become scared of imagination.  When someone says “It is okay to use your imagination to help you pray”, we fear what they mean is “it’s okay to make up pretend stuff about God, or whatever it is you choose to believe that suits your fancies”.

No.  Not that.

But abuse does not disprove right use.

Father L. makes the case for right use of imagination. Go read.  It’s not just me and my woozy liberal friends* making this stuff up.  But for goodness sakes if it makes you nervous, just stick to the rosary for a start.   About as good a ground for rehabilitating your imagination as you could hope.

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*Ahem.  I’m not claiming me or my meditative-prayer liking mentors in the catechetical hierarchy are in fact woozy liberals.  Which would be laughable.  I’m saying, maybe when you see me post about these things, you fear that is what we are.  Nope.  Not.  But yeah, I will totally, yes TOTALLY lead a room full of ten-year-olds through a meditation on the gifts of the Trinity as explained in the Apostle’s Creed.  Salvation, all that.  With candles. And reflective music.

It’s almost as if kids want to spend time with Jesus.  Cultivate a prayer life.  Go figure.

More on the Economics of Ordination

Last night SuperHusband observed that one reason protestant ministers struggle so much with employment, is that there is a glut of bible-college and seminary graduates.   You want your child to attend a Christian college.  Christian colleges specialize in preparing students for church work.  Christian students are eager to do church work. Ten years ago in a boom economy, the roofing companies knew it and circled like vultures*.

Celibacy is a definite barrier to entry.  You may have had an inkling.

So we asked ourselves last night, what would happen if you did open the gates to ordaining married men?  Would the catholic church face a vocations-glut the way protestants do?

We suspect what we would see is a significant jump in late vocations.  The inability of a priest to re-marry is a strong discouragement for younger men with families, for good reason.  Men rightly don’t want to find themselves with a brand new baby and no mother to care for it.  If your wife dies, you need to have a plan B for who is going to help you rear your children, and remarriage is a pretty good plan B under ordinary circumstances.

These exact reasons are why young, pious catholic married men aren’t rushing off to become deacons.  Who are the deacons?  Older men whose children are grown.  Or at least grown enough, and the wife past the age of childbearing.

So that’s what we guess.  Open the gates of priestly ordination to married men, and we’d expect to see a vast conversion of deacons-into-priests.  Not 100%, necessarily.  But that is where the married priests would mostly come from — or reasonably should come from.

Economically there all sorts of interesting implications, but I’ll refrain from more crass calculating.   Suffice to say that celibate young men are still your best value per sacramental-salary-dollar.

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FYI Even though I can see the practical benefit to ordaining a significant percentage of our permanent deacons to the priesthood, I’m not convinced it is “the solution”.

Two reasons:  One is concern that the former-deacons will end up in an employment vortex of a similar nature to what our protestant kin suffer.  And that reason alone is enough to proceed very cautiously.    The other, more pressing, is concern that ordaining the permanent deacons is a band-aid of a solution.  Maybe even a bad band-aid.

My sense is that our shortage of vocations is caused by a deeply spiritual wound in the church.  One that can only be healed by precisely the kind of self-abandonment  and commitment to the gospel that lifelong celibacy entails.  We as a church suffer from a case of “Do you really mean what you say?”

A young man willing to pass over all the joys of marriage in order to serve Christ?  That’s a guy who means what he says.

 

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*In our area, since that time we’ve had a surge in immigration.  The would-be youth pastors have been supplanted by workers even more cash-hungry.  The best of whom are strong, competent, hard-working, loyal, and unlikely to be called off to the mission field without notice.  And legal, too.  Good for the roofing companies, not so great for the bible students.

 

 

 

Marriage, Stability, and Ordination

Dear Catholic Friends,

We need to talk about this whole married priests things.  Because no doubt some of you read Simcha’s post, and you thought, “Well, sure, those are difficulties.  But protestant pastors and their wives deal with these little parish politics all the time.  Surely we can do it, too.”  And the answer is of course we can.   We could even have sermons about tithing.

But here’s what you need to know: Protestant ministry does not have the job stability of the catholic priesthood.

See most of us only know about protestant ministers from the front facade.  Church, steeple, open the doors and there’s the minister, his wife, and their denominationally-appropriate number of little people.  We think, ha!  This works just like the catholic church, only with wedding rings!  He goes to seminary, he gets assigned a church, his family helps out with vacuuming the pews and folding bulletins, what a life!

And we assume all this works just like the catholic church in another respect: Once a priest, always a priest.  Just do a half-decent job, and the diocese will find a little spot for you somewhere.

No.  It is not like this, anymore than getting  PhD means you’ll soon be a tenured professor.  If we could magically put clerical collars on every former pastor in America, you would drop your coffee.  Yes, your coffee, because that really friendly older guy working the morning shift at Starbucks?  The one that doesn’t say “ya know?” every other word?  He’s probably a former pastor.  (Or a PhD.)

One neat thing about being a a bachelor is that you don’t have a family to support. Men really understand this, which is why historically being a bachelor has had such appeal.  If there isn’t much work in your chosen profession, it isn’t the end of the world.  A friend with an empty couch, a few bucks for groceries . . . you can live on very little if you must.  It works out well for the catholic clergy:  In the unlikely event that there is a sudden glut of catholic (celibate) priests, well, it’s not exactly an employment crisis.  Always room in the rectory for one more bunk.

But if you’re a married minister, it’s another story.  Your church can only afford so much in the way of salaries, and there might not be a congregation hiring full-time, professional-wage staff just now.  But your kids still need to eat.  You can’t just take that assisant-vicar’s co-helper rotation with the minuscule stipend, and philosophically chalk it up to a time for extra prayer and fasting.   You’ve got to make a living.  A real living.  So you go back to doing whatever it was you did before you were ordained — construction, retail, maybe a professional position if you’re lucky and you have the skills.

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Now friends perhaps you think I exaggerate.  Perhaps you think I am using my broad powers of imagination to promote an arch-conservative agenda.  So allow me to give you a list of the “where are they now” of my personal, real-life friends who are former or current married protestant ministers.  All of these men have been through seminary.  They are intelligent, capable, competent, and could hold their own in the ranks of the catholic clergy.  (Which is saying something — I am surrounded by good priests.)  These are not internet friends, these are real guys I speak to in person on a regular basis.  So I’m leaving them as anonymous as I can:

Exhibit A: Was a senior pastor with significant experience, then his church let him go.  Returned to graduate school, earned a PhD, worked in a church position while in school. Couldn’t get a full-time job after.  His wife works full-time now, he homeschools the kids and cobbles together a combination of a freelance preaching gigs, ministry events, and other odd jobs.  (Need a tree cut down?)  Just picked up an adjunct teaching job he hopes will go full time.

Exhibit B: Pastor in a major denomination, congregation laid him off after decades in the ministry.  Applied for positions at other congregations within the denomination, no job offers.  He and his wife both found part-time work that gradually led to full-time work. She works in a nursing home, he works at a grocery store.

Exhibit C: Currently employed, full-time pastor with a major denomination.  And his wife works full time anyway, because there is no way . . . . Repeat: No Way they could pay their bills otherwise.  I know this because these people live in my neighborhood.  And you don’t live in my neighborhood because you are trying to impress anybody. Children attend public schools (no private school tuition), wear hand-me-downs, they drive old cars.  Normal modest middle class life, if you don’t count the part about every spare moment being utterly devoted to the needs of the church.

There are more, but I’ll stop there since you are begging for mercy.  But any more of this starry-eyed dreaming, and you’ll be sent to do rounds with the minister’s wife for penance.

Sincerely,

Jennifer.

 

 

 

Marriage & the vocation crises

Simcha explains why married priests are a bad idea.  H/T to Mrs. Darwin, since “D” comes before “I”, so I saw it there first.

Funny thought from the other week.  So I was sitting standing at mass and two of my students (from separate class-years) were serving that day.  And my very-attentive-to-the-Gospel self thinks:

1.) “Oh yeah, they’d make a great couple”.  Which leads to . . .

2.)  “Well, yes, allowing girls to serve at the altar does foster vocations.  Just maybe not the vocations we had intended.”  Which causes me to conclude . . .

3.) “Then again, where do priests come from?  You need the one vocation if you mean to have the other.”

So that’s what I think about while I am doing my best to look like I’m paying attention, but slip on my effort to actually be paying attention.  Yep, that’ll come up in confession. Again.

–> For the record, I have no particular opinion on whether girls should be altar servers*.   Either my pope, bishop, and pastor know what they are doing, or else if they are failing spectacularly then thank goodness that one it isn’t on my head.  I figure my layperson watchdog powers are better served if I just stick to worrying about the ten commandments.

But I thought, hmmn.  Maybe someone in the hierarchy has actually thought about this?  And having a little catholic match-making service in the sacristy is all part of the program?  Sort of long-range strategic plan.  How else do you expect the thirty practicing catholic kids in the city to actually get to know each other?

Or not.  But my goodness I’m definitely with Simcha on encouraging our youth to pick just one vocation at a time.   I have yet to meet a priest or a married man who isn’t sufficiently poured out with just the lot God gives him.

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*I do think that in parishes where only boys serve on the altar, it is important to have some counterpart role for the girls.  Could be something completely different.  But a specific place where they can serve in the church from an early age.  Ideally something that fosters uniquely feminine vocations.  There is a longer missive associated with this, but I save it for another day.

Sunday Thoughts

Three of them:

1)   Months on end spent vomiting really is excellent preparation for parenthood.   Allows you to stand calmly in the bathroom door at midnight and give your child practical tips for dealing with her stomach virus.  And you are thinking, “Ha.  Wish I couldda kept my popsicles down when I was pregnant with you.”  But you don’t say that.  You are tender and encouraging, and very pleased with the thought that the likely break is coming not at 14 weeks, or 24 weeks, or heaven forbid 40 weeks, but probably in just a few hours.  Still, you will be quite happy when it is all over.

2)  P.G. Wodehouse.  Our friend.  Just the companion for the restless mother, relaxing in the wee hours between pep-rallies in the bathroom.  Better on the second reading, I’ll add.

3) H/T to The Pulp.It for this article on why you should not shop on Sundays.  And since I am not afraid to be insufferable, let me just totally ruin your plans . . . Going out to brunch does more of the same.  Just say no.

Sunday:  Get up.  Get a shower.  Go to Mass.  Come home.  Rest.

Works great every time*.  Try it.

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*Actual mileage may very, subject to some limitations due to VOMITING CHILDREN.  DID I MENTION VOMITING CHILDREN?!  Actually just one of them.  SuperHusband took the healthy people to the usual mass then penitentially kept them out on the playground awaaaay from the ill sibling.   I went to the Spanish mass after lunch.  Lovely Mass, need to go to it more often.  Note to self: Learn Spanish.  Worth the risk.

Hoodlum-Loving Pro-Life Ninjas

The reference to ninjas is tucked inside Simcha Fischer’s otherwise apolitical posting of a Loretta Lynn housewife song:

It seems like a pretty good follow-up to the March for Life, doesn’t it?  You know, that day when hundreds of thousands of ninjas march to show their support of women and babies.  I say “ninjas” because they somehow slip by the attention of the media — amazing!  It’s like they were never there.  And yet they get the job done.

Our local March for Life, however, was not entirely ignored by the media.  Our free entertainment weekly, which doubles as our incisive political reporting weekly*, made mention of the event:  Our intrepid reporter tells us that the March happened, and then utterly topples the foundations of the Pro-Life movement, by pointing out that all those aborted babies would have grown up to be criminals anyway.

Not his idea, he was citing Levitt & Dubner in the very famous Freakonomics.  (The hardcover was published William Morrow, 2005.  You can buy other versions now, of course.)  The book doesn’t make any moral prescriptions, by the way — economists general don’t.  But it really does set forth the theory that the drop in the crime rate that occurred in the 1990’s was the direct result of Roe v. Wade.  The idea being that the really bad mothers know they are really bad mothers, so they abort their children rather than raising them up to a life of crime.  And 18 years later, you and I reap the benefits of that instinctive act of preemptive genocide.

If only all those marching ninjas had known!

But all mockery aside, our reporter got to the bizarre heart of the Pro-Life movement: We actually believe that even the children of ne’er-do-wells should not be summarily executed.  We are willing to take the risk that you, child of poverty, decadence, and a very broken home, may or may not live out the hope embodied in your cute little baby smile.

Radical freedom.  The idea that the right to life belongs even the children of those other kinds of people.   The idea that having lousy parents is not, in itself, a capital crime.

And so I’m thankful to our reporter for giving us such a clear vision of the divide.  We see how those who want to apply the abortion chapter of Freakonomics to public policy feel about the human race:  What’s a few million dead bodies, if it lowers the crime rate?

Which explains why you would need thousands upon thousands of ninjas, if you wanted to go head-to-head with a regime like that.

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*I am not kidding about the politics — in addition to vast coverage of bars, restaurants, and services with 1-900 phone numbers, it really is the only local paper that does investigative reporting.  And we wonder why the mainstream newspapers are failing.

Usury Part 3: Lending Gone Right

This is the post where I propose that there is an acceptable kind of lending at interest.  Which we can then use to evaluate other situations and see how they stack up.  Here goes:

Imagine for a moment that I give up my life of prayer, goofing off, and educating children (let us not contemplate which one I put most effort into — hint, the prayer part could use a lot of work), and decide to start a business.  Any kind of business, but one that produces a tangible product.  Knitting socks, growing tomatoes, something like that.

[If either of those sound immoral to you, just imagine me producing something that you think really truly ought to be produced.  We’re going for an unimpeachably worthwhile productive activity here, for the purposes of our study.  And we are going to refrain from comments about how my knitting and gardening skills are only slightly better than the prayer life.]

Now imagine that I have the talent for this business, all the necessary organizational skills, even the ability to file my taxes properly. (Which I actually can do!)  But that YOU are the one who has the cash I need to buy supplies.  And you’re perfectly willing to invest in my business.

So what do we do?  Surely the Church does not require you and I to abandon all prospects of a business venture, on account of the peanut butter and chocolate never being permitted to touch.  You have the cash, I have the rest, we can change the world one sock at a time, if only we can join forces.  Our current options are this:

Become full partners in a business. It’s like getting married, only harder to put asunder if things go awry.  You love me, but not that much.  Really all you want is to fund some yarn purchases in exchange for a cut of those huge margins I’m gonna make on my extraordinarily unique sock creations.

I sell you stock in my company. If it’s a publicly-traded company, it will be relatively easy for you to sell off your portion of the business if you so desire, but you may or may not get your desired share of the profit if you do that.  If it’s a privately held company, it’s eerily like that partnership option.  And from my perspective — do I really want you having a voice in how I run my sockworks?

–> Really what you and I both want is for you to contribute some cash to this year’s sock run, and at the end of the season you take your cut of the profits and move on.  Maybe we’ll join up again later, maybe we won’t.  But we want a nice, clean, short term arrangement.

Now in certain staunchly Muslim countries I am told that to get around the usury problem, a profit-sharing type of financial instrument is available.  But here in the U.S., we either have ownership equities (those stock or partnership options rejected above), or . . . DEBT.

Yes, debt.

Our friend, debt.

Bet you never thought I would type that ever.

But here’s what:  Debt is simple.

You want to contribute some cash to my sock works in exchange for a share of the profits.  Now we could, in theory, set up something to do exactly that.  I say you’ll get, say, 10% of the profits off of this year’s sock production in exchange for buying a year’s supply of yarn.  But where does that leave us?

–What if we disagree about how to calculate the profits? I feel sure sure sure my knitting needles will depreciate fully this year, and you think I can get a good twenty years out such sturdy bamboo.  (Which means lower costs, more profits, a bigger piece of pie for us to split.)

–What if I have more than one product line, and you only funded one of them? Now the accounting gets really rough.  How do I allocate my call center costs between the project you funded (all that beautiful chartreuse wool — thank you!)  and the project my other faithful reader funded? 

-And that’s not even taking into account horrible management decisions, strange market conditions, and everything else. Surely I would have made much more money, you argue, if I’d gone with the other shade of chartreuse.  And if only we had waited 14 months before settling up instead of 12, you would have gotten 10% of a much bigger pie, what with the sudden epidemic of Sheep Flu that hit right after I paid you off.

Summary: Profit sharing is complicated.

So we simplify our agreement.  I expect that if I use your $100 to buy wool, I can turn around and sell the socks for $150.  Dividing the proceeds fairly, after taking into account my other expenses, we agree that if I pay you back the $100 plus an additional $5 as your share of the expected profits, that will be a win-win.  And we agree that I’ll pay you back exactly one year from now, rather than having to worry about exactly when the project is over.

Will one of us end up the loser?  Maybe.  I might not sell as many socks as planned, and I still have to pay you the $5 interest.  I might make more profit than planned, and you still get only a measly $5.  But it is a clean arrangement, built around the real expected values of what wealth the sock project is going to generate.  If it is part of an overall habit of making prudent business decisions  over the long run, it should balance out.  Maybe this project you get the better end of the deal, next time chance favors me, but in the long run, when we aggregate all these little arrangements we work out within the business community, we both get our fair share.

And that, I think, is the basic model of why and how debt can be good.

Usury, I argue, is something else.  A situation where we pretend to have good wholesome debt, but in fact one of us is abusing the financial instrument to exploit the weaker party. We’ll look at that in Part IV.