I also have a lot of trouble with this one. Saying anything that reveals a person’s fault does seem broad. Any fault? Does it have to be objectively known (public knowledge) or subjectively known (to the person you’re talking about it to)?
Does it mean I can never say anything negative about another person? Like, for example, suppose I want to complain to a friend about how someone treated me badly and has left me frustrated. Can I not do that, since it puts that person in a negative light? Is it okay as long as I never identify the person I’m complaining about? How are you supposed to get something off your chest when it relates to someone else?
What if someone asks me why I don’t want to hang out with a particular person? Am I allowed to say if it reveals that person’s faults?
What about saying that someone is a hypocrite? Reading gossip magazines? Listening to someone else say bad things about someone?
Also, can someone please give me some sort of way to judge the seriousness of the detraction?
This is such an important discussion! Thanks, OP, for posting.
I’d like to offer what little I know on the subject, as it has been one of those faults or sins that I’ve worked to try to root out of my life.
I first became aware of just how serious an offense detraction is when I was flicking through the channels a few years ago and I heard Fr. Benedict Groeschel stating, in no uncertain terms, that detraction is a
mortal sin.
My priest also recently preached from the pulpit on the subject of mortal sin and included detraction in the list of such grievous offenses.
I can relate to the question above, re: how we can “vent” or “get something off our chest” and still not commit the sin of detraction. I really struggled with this myself, and sometimes still do.
I can only offer what I’ve learned through my personal experience; I believe I often overestimated the value or necessity of “venting,” as I believed “getting it off my chest” to be necessary for my emotional well-being.
Many evenings, my husband and I would “vent” to each other after a long day, believing this to be a healthy way to work through our feelings about the hurtful, aggravating or unfair things that happened to us that day. Very often, the identity of the “offender” was revealed through the course of the conversation, and we would end up feeling worse than we did before the conversation, because now we had spoken ill of someone.
*We finally accepted that we could no longer rationalize the need to relieve our stress through such discussions. It didn’t matter that we only said these things to each other, in the privacy of our home.This realization was such a grace!! As it turned out, the venting was so often just adding fuel to the fire–not getting it off our chest at all, just stoking he flames of anger, resentment, hurt pride, etc. *
I spent a long time I trying to figure out where the line was drawn…how much could I “get away” with saying before the talk became sinful or gravely sinful, how anonymous could I keep the person about whom I was complaining, could I justify the conversation. I finally realized that it is better to just keep silent, rather than always pushing the envelope.
I still struggle with this sin–less than I used to, but still…it is a great temptation. I have found, though, that in so many instances, the complaints or gossip felt “good” at the time, but were so unnecessary, and only mattered in the long run as far as the damage they did to my spiritual well-being and the reputation of another person…in other words, it feels good to vent or to gossip,
but if you can resist the temptation in the moment, the need to blurt out the gossip or complaint ebbs away–and after much practice, and by the grace of God, the habit will be broken.
I hope this post was helpful to someone. The bottom line is that I believe it’s safer, better, more pleasing to God to simply never speak ill of another (child-molester-moving-in-next-door and other such scenarios excluded, I’m not commenting on those instances where detraction may truly be justified.)
St. Francis De Sales addresses the issue in his great wrok,
Philothea:
“He who unjustly takes away his neighbour’s good name is guilty of sin, and is bound to make reparation, according to the nature of his evil speaking; since no man can enter into Heaven cumbered with stolen goods, and of all worldly possessions the most precious is a good name. Slander is a kind of murder; for we all have three lives–a spiritual life, which depends upon the Grace of God; a bodily life, depending on the soul; and a civil life, consisting in a good reputation. Sin deprives us of the first, death of the second, and slander of the third. But the slanderer commits three several murders with his idle tongue: he destroys his own soul and that of him who hearkens, as well as causing civil death to the object of his slander; for, as S. Bernard says, the Devil has possession both of the slanderer and of those who listen to him, of the tongue of the one, the ear of the other…My daughter, I entreat you never speak evil of any, either directly or indirectly; beware of ever unjustly imputing sins or faults to your neighbour, of needlessly disclosing his real faults, of exaggerating such as are overt, of attributing wrong motives to good actions, of denying the good that you know to exist in another, of maliciously concealing it, or depreciating it in conversation. In all and each of these ways you grievously offend God”
“Whenever anything disagreeable or displeasing happens to you remember Christ crucified and be silent.”
