I’m glad you brought this up, as it sheds some light (though it does not have to do only with gossip) on how we may (or, indeed, should) use communication in cases where grave harm to oneself or another is involved. Here’s a good article from CA:
When I became acquainted with Catholicism, and studied it both before and after being received into the Church, I was intrigued to see that Catholicism places an emphasis on always telling the truth that is lost on people outside the Church. In the Protestant environment in which I was raised (we were not church-goers and did not formally affiliate with any denomination), it’s very simple — you tell a “white lie” to keep yourself or someone else out of trouble, or even to achieve a desirable goal, as the situation arises.
Catholicism doesn’t admit of this. However, we do have an “escape hatch” in the concept of the mental reservation, and in the concept of “does this person have the right to know the truth or not?”. Over the years, I have trained myself in the skill of how to craft a mental reservation, saying nothing that is false, but speaking in such a way as not to reveal harmful or disadvantageous facts. A case in point is my father’s illness that eventually resulted in his death. He did not wish people outside the home to know the extent of his illness, so when people would ask about him, I’d say “he takes it pretty easy these days”, “he doesn’t get out much”, “he’s had to quit driving”, and so on. He didn’t want people coming in, seeing him in his extreme state, and spreading the word all over town. I said nothing whatsoever that was untrue, I just concealed the extent of his illness. Sadly, for somewhat the same reasons, I am now having to do the same for my mother, whose condition is very precarious right now, and probably terminal just as my father’s was.
People in the culture in which I was raised (not Catholics) would say “oh, you lied all that time”. No, I didn’t. I was just selective in the truth that I told. In their culture, deceiving equals lying, not telling the whole story about something equals lying, and so on. Yet we as Catholics know better. And that is one more thing that makes our faith so comforting to have and to live by.
