Here's an example:
Beinedict XIV. saw that the best thing for lihu-iiaty, the only thing-was a surrender unlder forini of a compromise. In a brief hle decdared( s)stanti,ally that the law of the Church ISce rItationI f'roi Coocina in Lecky; also, acquiescence in this intc,l)rctati-'l,y Jfr. Dickinson, in Speech in Senate of Nw YIrk, al)ov-e quotel. 131
It's practically unintelligible.
But let's look at it, anyway.
What it appears to say is that Pope Benedict XIV somehow repealed the moral law of the Church concerning usury.
In order to substantiate his claim, White references not the Pope himself - whose writings on these matters are quite public - but two other sources. The first is Lecky, a Protestant historian who was a polemical opponent of the Church and not a dispassionate source. The second is apparently a speech given by a Dickinson in the New York State Senate - no date or even year given, as far as we can tell.
The obvious reference would be to Vix Pervenit - the letter to the Italian bishops which outlined Benedict XIV's policy on usury.
It's telling that White does not reference the primary source, because the primary source does not bear out his assertions.
The fact that the letter was addressed to the Italian bishops and not to the Church as a whole means that the letter is not a statement of Church law, but a statement of the recommended policy to be followed in Italy. So this is an outright fabrication on White's part.
The letter itself reiterates the Church's opposition to usury in forceful terms and does not contain a "compromise" or a "surrender." It reiterates that repayment of a loan is to be made in exchange for the value provided and also reiterates that Church law recognizes and has always recognized that legal contracts can be more complex than simple loan contracts. This was acknowledged by the Church for centuries.
If White had done his research he would have been aware of the existence of the mons pietatis of the XIIth century. He would also have been aware of the Salamanca School of economists of the XVth and XVIth century and the great advances they made in economics and finance.
So essentially, in the space of one paragraph White is dishonest in three ways:
(1) He makes a claim about Benedict XIV's teaching but fails to substantiate it from primary sources. Instead he cites one polemical secondary source and another secondary source almost impossible to substantiate.
(2) He mischaracterizes a letter as a statement of Church law. It is nothing of the kind. No consultative letter sent to a small number of local bishops can be considered legislative. In fact, as to the matter of the loan contracts under discussion, the Pope specifically states in paragraph 7: "We decide nothing for the present; We also shall not decide now about the other contracts in which the theologians and canonists lack agreement."
(3) He makes a misleading statement about the historical significance of the letter: it is in perfect harmony with the statements of his predecessors. There is no "surrender" or "compromise" - it states absolutely nothing new.
All this deliberate misleading is meant to buttress his larger argument which is also deceptive - that the Church was unalterably opposed to all forms of interest until matters came to a head in the late XVIIIth century and Benedict finally caved in and allowed Catholics to take and pay interest. This would come as a great surprise to all the bankers who operated with the Church's blessing throughout the Middle Ages.
This complete fabrication - that the Church opposed all forms of credit financing - ties in to the gneral pattern of deception in his book. He maintains that the Church acted to suppress developments in economic and financial theory. In point of fact the Church encouraged it, many Dominican philosophers made it their life's work, the school of Salamanca in Spain was the first group of free trade theorists in history, and the first great modern economist was the Irish Catholic, Jesuit-educated Richard Cantillon who was a student of the Salamanca school and was a financier in France.
White wants to pretend that the Church was at war with economic scholarship when it actually fostered it. To keep up the pretense he misrepresents, misquotes and misleads.
That's just one sentence in this execrable book.