The NCR portal publishes an article by Alyssa Rusonik, a PhD candidate in finance at HEC Paris, which reduces the glorious restoration of Rome under the Vicars of Christ to a mere exercise in game theory and real estate economics. Drawing on a quantitative dataset of palace construction, the author argues that the Renaissance urban revival depended not on the supernatural mission of the Papacy but on a “credible commitment mechanism” inaugurated by Sixtus IV’s bull *Etsi Universis* (1475), which aligned cardinals’ financial self-interest with the Pope’s permanent residence. The piece culminates in a paean to modern institutional economics, citing Nobel laureate Daron Acemoglu, to explain the “irreversibility of institutional change.” This secularist reductionism, masquerading as historical scholarship, exposes the naturalistic bankruptcy of the conciliar sect’s intellectual class, which views the Bride of Christ through the lens of a hedge fund manager.
The Papacy as a “Company Town”: Blasphemy of Economic Reductionism
The article’s central metaphor—that Rome was a “company town” whose economy was “very much dependent on the papacy”—is a categorical denial of the Church’s divine constitution. The author writes: “Rome was, in many ways, a company town. Its economy was very much dependent on the papacy.” This language strips the Holy See of its potestas spiritualis and potestas jurisdictionis, reducing the Supreme Pontiff to a CEO managing a local labor market. The Quas Primas of Pius XI thundered against this very error: “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed” (Pius XI, *Quas Primas*). To analyze the return from Avignon solely through the prism of palace construction and inheritance tax rates is to commit the naturalismus condemned by the Syllabus of Pius IX: “The civil government… has a right to an indirect negative power over religious affairs” (Error 41), here inverted so that religious affairs are judged by the standards of civil economy.
The Bull Etsi Universis as a Tax Loophole: Desecrating Ecclesiastical Law
Rusonik hails the 1475 bull *Etsi Universis* as a stroke of genius because it “dropped [cardinals’] inheritance tax from 100% to 0%,” triggering a “300% increase” in palace building. She frames the canonical prohibition on prelates bequeathing ecclesiastical goods—a discipline rooted in Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code and the ancient jus commune preventing the alienation of Church patrimony—as a mere “tax” obstacle to investment. The article states: “Before this reform, high-ranking ecclesiastical officials — cardinals — could not bequeath their property to heirs. When they died, their real estate reverted back to the church.” This is presented as a bug, not a feature. The Corpus Juris Canonici and the Council of Trent (Sess. XXV, c. 21 *de Regularibus*) strictly forbade the conversion of ecclesiastical benefices into private family inheritances precisely to prevent the saecularizatio of the clergy. By celebrating the removal of this safeguard as an economic “reform,” the author applauds the very mechanism that fueled Renaissance nepotism and the secularization of the cardinalate—a cancer that the Council of Trent sought to excise.
Cardinals as Rational Actors: The Death of the Sensus Fidei
The article’s theoretical framework treats cardinals as homo economicus: “Once cardinals began investing heavily in Roman real estate, they developed a personal financial stake in the papacy remaining in Rome. A cardinal with substantial property holdings in the city would not vote for a candidate who might leave.” This is the hermeneutic of suspicion applied to the Conclave. It denies the action of the Holy Ghost in the election of the Roman Pontiff, replacing afflatus Spiritus Sancti with portfolio optimization. The Syllabus condemns the proposition that “Roman pontiffs and ecumenical councils have wandered outside the limits of their powers, have usurped the rights of princes, and have even erred in defining matters of faith and morals” (Error 23); here, the error is deeper: the Pontiff is reduced to a functionary elected by property speculators. The “self-perpetuating commitment mechanism” is a Masonic parody of the Petrine Promise—Portae inferi non praevalebunt (Mt 16:18)—guaranteed not by Christ but by the cardinals’ mortgage payments.
Lay “Learning Effects” and the Silence of the Supernatural
The author describes a “learning effect” where lay patrons “gradually updated their beliefs about the papacy’s long-term commitment” by observing clerical investment. “My analysis shows that in the crucial first 50 years after the reform, every 10 additional prelate projects in one decade led to roughly six additional lay projects citywide in the next decade.” Nowhere in this econometric fantasy appears the Cross, the Mass, the salvation of souls, or the Social Reign of Christ the King. Pius XI taught that “Christ reigns in the minds of men… because He Himself is Truth… He is said to reign also in the wills of men… because He inclines our free will and conquers it with His inspiration” (*Quas Primas*). The article’s silence on the supernatural end of the Church—salus animarum suprema lex—is not an omission; it is the formal signature of Modernism, condemned by St. Pius X in *Lamentabili Sane Exitu*: “The dogmas of faith should be understood according to their practical function, i.e., as binding in action, rather than as principles of belief” (Prop. 26). Here, the “practical function” is real estate development.
Modernist “Credibility” vs. Divine Indefectibility
The article concludes by extracting a lesson for “modern economies”: “What Rome teaches us is that truly transformative reforms are those that create self-perpetuating mechanisms, where the interests of key decision-makers become aligned with maintaining the new arrangement.” This is the gospel of the Civitas Diaboli: stability through aligned self-interest, not through obedience to God. The author cites Daron Acemoglu, a secular economist, as the authority on “institutions,” displacing the Magisterium. The Syllabus condemns: “Human reason, without any reference whatsoever to God, is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood, and of good and evil” (Error 3). Rusonik’s article is a textbook illustration. She notes that after the reform, “papal absences decreased by 81.5%, and discretionary absences disappeared entirely,” attributing this to the “commitment mechanism” rather than the grace of state or the reforming zeal of saints like St. Charles Borromeo or St. Philip Neri who actually rebuilt Rome’s soul.
The Conciliar Sect’s Intellectual Prostitution
That this reductionist drivel appears in the National Catholic Reporter—the house organ of the conciliar sect’s modernist wing—is perfectly fitting. The portal, which champions women’s “ordination,” sodomy, and religious liberty, now serves up a history of the Papacy stripped of the Holy Ghost, authored by a financier. It is the final fruit of the nouvelle theologie and Vatican II’s *Gaudium et Spes*: the Church is no longer the Mystical Body of Christ but an “institution” to be studied by the tools of the World Bank. The 84% of palaces still standing are not monuments to “credible institutional commitment”; they are stones crying out against the silence of the modernist intellect. “The state is happy not by one means, and man by another; for the state is nothing else than a harmonious association of men” (Pius XI, *Quas Primas*, citing St. Augustine)—but that happiness is found only in the Kingdom of Christ, not in the regression coefficients of a PhD thesis.
Source:
Palaces and the pope: The fascinating story of how Renaissance Rome was rebuilt (ncronline.org)
Date: 06.09.2026