Lying (Hypothetical Holocaust Situation)

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Let me set up the following well-known hypothetical scenario: I am a German hiding Jews in his basement during the Holocaust. The Nazis knock on my door and ask me if I am hiding any Jews. Personally I would lie and say “No,” knowing full well that it is a venial sin. Then I would confess the venial sin later (or have it forgiven at Communion). Otherwise if I try to do what the Church says to do and tell the truth in a roundabout way so as to deflect the Nazis from their goal, they may interrogate me further and get the real truth out of me.

Does this make me a cafeteria Catholic?

…Also I don’t understand the difference between a “white lie” and telling the truth in what seems to me to be such a deceptive way. It seems to be the same thing to me. Can somebody help me understand the difference?
 
Job42 said:
Let me set up the following well-known hypothetical scenario: I am a German hiding Jews in his basement during the Holocaust. The Nazis knock on my door and ask me if I am hiding any Jews. Personally I would lie and say “No,” knowing full well that it is a venial sin. Then I would confess the venial sin later (or have it forgiven at Communion). Otherwise if I try to do what the Church says to do and tell the truth in a roundabout way so as to deflect the Nazis from their goal, they may interrogate me further and get the real truth out of me.

Does this make me a cafeteria Catholic?

…Also I don’t understand the difference between a “white lie” and telling the truth in what seems to me to be such a deceptive way. It seems to be the same thing to me. Can somebody help me understand the difference?
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The choice is not between lying and telling the truth (even in a roundabout way). You have many other options at your disposal.

You can, for instance, refuse to speak.

You can attack and kill the Nazis, who would, after all, unjustly attack and kill the Jew you’re hiding if they had their way.

You can, when they ask you “Is Herr Schwartzmann here?”, respond, “Yes. Wait right here.” Then close the door, grab Herr Schwartzmann, and run out the back. You didn’t lie after all, though you did deceive.

You may say that none of these things are feasible, that they would carry the risk of ruining your own life. But then you did the Jew an injustice by agreeing to shelter him only to hand him over the moment it becomes an inconvenience to you. If you are not prepared to protect him, you should never have agreed to shelter him in the first place.

As for the difference between lying and deception, it all goes back to the reason why lying is morally prohibited: it subverts the natural end of our communicative faculty, which is to relay truths. Deception is moral where lying isn’t because deception offers the opportunity for the truth to be discerned (e.g., when you close the door in the Nazis’ faces, they may discern that you might be trying to escape) where as lying doesn’t.

All that said, lying in a situation like that is, as you said, I think a venial sin. And while venial sins nevertheless ought to be avoided, I really doubt you’d find your soul imperilled by telling a lie under those circumstances.
 
Fr Pro changed his clothes while being pursued by the revolutionaries …so he would appear as someone else…this is lying incarnate…in dress?

If he can do it, then why can’t a child tell a potential murderer --the child’s mother out of the house at the moment—that his mother is here, but can’t come to the door…and be a liar…or tell the truth and be murdered?..

I myself wait to hear…
 
I don’t know that failing to divulge information to a person who has no right to know it constitutes “lying”.

I won’t pretend to have the fully articulated, definitive last word on this issue (and it is an issue which I find interesting to think about). Here are some Catholic articles I’ve accumulated bookmarks to that give a variety of perspectives on the issue:
That might help give you a clearer picture of the issues involved, even if it doesn’t settle things definitively for you.
 
Joe_5859 said:
I don’t know that failing to divulge information to a person who has no right to know it constitutes “lying”.
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Words are a method of communication–they are used to send messages from one brain to another. A lie is used to obfuscate the truth. I think intentionally communicating the wrong idea is lying. What else is it? It certainly isn’t in the spirit of truth.

So if you withhold information, you may only do so without communicating a lie.
 
A priest told me these kinds of situations are the same kind as priests debate at the dinner table.

I know of a 5th grade girl who was posed a hypothetical question: What would you do if your mother was out of the house, a bad man came up and wanted to get in to kill you.

She said she would make up something so he would go away. The teacher called the mother to say her daughter was standing up for a lie…and this scenario was being used as a litmus test on the parents to see where they were in handling truthfulness.

Really happened. So the response I gave here…this is something priests disagree with…is hard to answer.

I will look at the links on St. Thomas Aquinas.
 
Sanctity of life (Pikuach Nefesh) is such an overriding principle in Judaism that not only is one permitted to lie in this scenario but the sin would be in revealing the hiding place and therefore leading to the murder of the people in hiding.

(there are however 3 cases which can never be overridden for any purpose- these are idolatry,incest,murder)

There is an underlying mutual responsibility in Judaism for your fellow man and his/her welfare- which also comes into play here (see Vayikra/Leviticus 19:16 “you shall not stand aside while your fellow’s blood is shed”)
 
This issue came up in a thread I started a week or so ago. The answer I discovered is that it is not any kind of sin at all, not even venial (according to CCC). The Nazi’s had no right to that information. You would have been justified. My understanding is that they were ruthless inquisitors so you would have likely been caught unless your faith in this doctrine of justification was rock solid (hence opaque to their interrogations).
 
Michael19682 said:
This issue came up in a thread I started a week or so ago. The answer I discovered is that it is not any kind of sin at all, not even venial (according to CCC). The Nazi’s had no right to that information. You would have been justified. My understanding is that they were ruthless inquisitors so you would have likely been caught unless your faith in this doctrine of justification was rock solid (hence opaque to their interrogations).
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Can you cite the relevant passage? I can’t see how any “right” to the information or absence thereof would support the morality of lying. Our communicative faculty exists for the purpose of relaying information, and a lie would be to subvert that purpose and thus to act contrary to natural law.
 
sw85 said:
Can you cite the relevant passage? I can’t see how any “right” to the information or absence thereof would support the morality of lying. Our communicative faculty exists for the purpose of relaying information, and a lie would be to subvert that purpose and thus to act contrary to natural law.
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There was a lot of discussion on this on Catholic websites during the summer over Live Action’s sending undercover operators into Planned Parenthood centers to pretend to be women who needed abortions, so they could tape the PP’s responses. This was done to help preserve life. Was it a sin to lie in this case?

Christian children are able to sleep safely in their beds at night unmolested because a lot of good people around the world are lying on their behalf on a daily basis. CIA operatives are working undercover against the terrorists who want to kill the children in their beds. FBI agents are on-line, ferreting out pedophiles who want to commit unspeakable acts against children by pretending to be children or other pedophiles themselves. Police officers are pretending to be drug dealers to prevent meth and heroin deliveries from being delivered and making addicts more willing to commit crimes. Are these acts sins?

Should Pope Pius XXII be condemned for saving Jewish lives by falsifying baptismal records?

I don’t believe so, in any of these cases.

I think the referenced passage was from the post-WWII passages in a previous edition of the Baltimore Catechism, which specifically stated that (presumably based on the Church’s experiences in just such situations as described in the first post), that one is not required to tell the truth to someone who is not entitled to the truth, and who will use the truth to commit a grave evil, such as a Gestapo officer who wants to murder a Jewish child.

St. Thomas Aquinas made the distinction that lies told to save the innocent from harm are “officious lies” and only venial sins. I would be willing to shoulder those to save a human life.

Here is an exegesis from John Henry Cardinal Newman, who I think knew (and knows) a bit more about moral theology than I do, on the issue:

the-american-catholic.com/2011/02/27/cardinal-newman-on-lying-and-equivation/

And some interesting articles on the subject from the always interesting John Zmirak:

crisismagazine.com/2011/arrest-that-protestant-banker

crisismagazine.com/2011/up-from-literalism
 
Arizona_Mike said:
Should Pope Pius XXII be condemned for saving Jewish lives by falsifying baptismal records?

I don’t believe so, in any of these cases.
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Exactly. If you have to lie to prevent a murder or prevent another heinous crime, you lie, and you don’t risk someone’s life trying to get clever with how you tell the truth. There is no sin in that.

Having said that, people in law enforcement can tell you that it is extraordinarily difficult to tell a lie to a suspicious person without being found out eventually. For practical reasons as well as moral, it is far better to stay well off the radar of evil people than to hazard getting yourself into a position where deceiving them is morally permissible. You’d only take that chance if you had no other choice…again, for reasons both moral and practical. It must truly be necessary.
 
Thanks, Copperblade for the link…I think that scenario was used in a CCD class…and if the child made up a story…then the child most likely came from a home with compromised personal sense of honesty.

No mother would ever tell her child to go answer the door when a stranger comes killing.
 
sw85 said:
Can you cite the relevant passage? I can’t see how any “right” to the information or absence thereof would support the morality of lying. Our communicative faculty exists for the purpose of relaying information, and a lie would be to subvert that purpose and thus to act contrary to natural law.
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In addition to what’s already been posted in response as reference to the modern Cathecism, I thought of Jesus, who obviously never lied in any way, shape or form: but who refused direct answers on a few of occasions. When the Pharisees said they didn’t know by what power they drove out demons, I think Jesus said then that neither would he tell them by what Authority he drove them out; also, when a man asked Jesus to tell his brother to give him his inheritance, Jesus said something like ‘who made me your judge’–that is kind of a refusal to get involved in something. Also, the parables, not direct answers but coded responses that only his disciples would understand–they seemed like outrageous lies to the Pharisees.

Best I can do with citations to actual scripture.
 
Arizona_Mike said:
There was a lot of discussion on this on Catholic websites during the summer over Live Action’s sending undercover operators into Planned Parenthood centers to pretend to be women who needed abortions, so they could tape the PP’s responses. This was done to help preserve life. Was it a sin to lie in this case?

Christian children are able to sleep safely in their beds at night unmolested because a lot of good people around the world are lying on their behalf on a daily basis. CIA operatives are working undercover against the terrorists who want to kill the children in their beds. FBI agents are on-line, ferreting out pedophiles who want to commit unspeakable acts against children by pretending to be children or other pedophiles themselves. Police officers are pretending to be drug dealers to prevent meth and heroin deliveries from being delivered and making addicts more willing to commit crimes. Are these acts sins?

Should Pope Pius XXII be condemned for saving Jewish lives by falsifying baptismal records?

I don’t believe so, in any of these cases.

I think the referenced passage was from the post-WWII passages in a previous edition of the Baltimore Catechism, which specifically stated that (presumably based on the Church’s experiences in just such situations as described in the first post), that one is not required to tell the truth to someone who is not entitled to the truth, and who will use the truth to commit a grave evil, such as a Gestapo officer who wants to murder a Jewish child.

St. Thomas Aquinas made the distinction that lies told to save the innocent from harm are “officious lies” and only venial sins. I would be willing to shoulder those to save a human life.

Here is an exegesis from John Henry Cardinal Newman, who I think knew (and knows) a bit more about moral theology than I do, on the issue:

the-american-catholic.com/2011/02/27/cardinal-newman-on-lying-and-equivation/

And some interesting articles on the subject from the always interesting John Zmirak:

crisismagazine.com/2011/arrest-that-protestant-banker

crisismagazine.com/2011/up-from-literalism
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To answer your various questions, no, I don’t believe the ends justify the means. I would probably act the same way under similar circumstances – but I would’ve committed a venial sin by doing so, even if it produced a much better world.

I’ve said before I don’t think it’s much more than a venial sin to lie under certain circumstances. But that’s a much different thing than saying that it’s morally permissible to lie. We ought to the greatest extent possible avoid even venial sins, especially ones we don’t think we need to repent for because it was in service to a good cause.
 
A few quick things:
  1. The situation is kind of absurd. If a Nazi captain suspects you are hiding Jews, they are probably not going to ask politely, and certainly they wouldn’t forgo searching your place simply because you said “nope, no jews here”. So it really doesn’t matter what you say, your house is getting searched.
  2. You cannot lie. Lying is an intrinsic evil.
  3. There are many other things you can do besides telling the whole truth. The CCC clearly says it is fine to simply hide the truth. You could use mental reservation: “There are no Jews here” (where “here” refers to where you are standing and no the entire house). You could say nothing, or deflect. I’m sure there are many other hypothetical responses one could come up with that would not be lying.
  4. For those who state that it’s not lying if they don’t have a right to know: That rule was removed from the latest version of the CCC. See this thread for more details.
Hope that helps!
 
sw85 said:
To answer your various questions, no, I don’t believe the ends justify the means. I would probably act the same way under similar circumstances – but I would’ve committed a venial sin by doing so, even if it produced a much better world.

I’ve said before I don’t think it’s much more than a venial sin to lie under certain circumstances. But that’s a much different thing than saying that it’s morally permissible to lie. We ought to the greatest extent possible avoid even venial sins, especially ones we don’t think we need to repent for because it was in service to a good cause.
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It isn’t morally permissible to lie unless failure to lie amounts to a grave sin of omission. If there is any other realistic course of action, you do that instead. If there isn’t, however, then it is not only morally permissible to deceive, but practically a moral necessity.

Everyone who thinks that the Popes involved in producing fake baptismal certificates in order to decieve the British and American governments and save Jews from the Nazis were sinning (if memory serves, both Pope Pius XII and the future Pope John XXIII were personally involved), please outline the morally-correct course of action they should have taken, instead. I would submit that if the innocent persons involved could have been saved from arrest and probably murder in a different way, that way ought to have been pursued. I just don’t have any idea what that other avenue would have been.
 
smichhertz said:
A few quick things:
  1. The situation is kind of absurd. If a Nazi captain suspects you are hiding Jews, they are probably not going to ask politely, and certainly they wouldn’t forgo searching your place simply because you said “nope, no jews here”. So it really doesn’t matter what you say, your house is getting searched.
  2. You cannot lie. Lying is an intrinsic evil.
  3. There are many other things you can do besides telling the whole truth. The CCC clearly says it is fine to simply hide the truth. You could use mental reservation: “There are no Jews here” (where “here” refers to where you are standing and no the entire house). You could say nothing, or deflect. I’m sure there are many other hypothetical responses one could come up with that would not be lying.
  4. For those who state that it’s not lying if they don’t have a right to know: That rule was removed from the latest version of the CCC. See this thread for more details.
Hope that helps!
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My only argument here to the scenario you paint is to make the scenario far more personal placing you or I under extreme duress.

And I speaking about beloved family members under the extreme plausible threat of being killed, tortured, or both and your hiding them to protect them.

I wouldn’t think twice about fabricating the most cunning articulate lie I could if it meant saving their life under any of these circumstances. Nor would I even entertain one iota of guilt before God for bending the truth at the very extreme before any possible conspirator or assailant to protect anyone innocent.

This includes hiding any Jew becoming a prisoner in the (Hypothetical Holocaust Situation).

No Greater Love than To Offer Thyself Up For Death or a Prisoner For Someone Else.
That Of Course Takes A Lot Of Guts
 
centurionguard said:
My only argument here to the scenario you paint is to make the scenario far more personal placing you or I under extreme duress.

And I speaking about beloved family members under the extreme plausible threat of being killed, tortured, or both and your hiding them to protect them.

I wouldn’t think twice about fabricating the most cunning articulate lie I could if it meant saving their life under any of these circumstances. Nor would I even entertain one iota of guilt before God for bending the truth at the very extreme before any possible conspirator or assailant to protect anyone innocent.

This includes hiding any Jew becoming a prisoner in the (Hypothetical Holocaust Situation).

No Greater Love than To Offer Thyself Up For Death or a Prisoner For Someone Else.
That Of Course Takes A Lot Of Guts
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Lying is an implicit denial of the goodness of God’s Providence. It shows a lack of belief (and assent to that belief) that God has everything ordered with the most infinite love and care, ever to say that an individual must do evil in the hopes that good will come from it. God is not the cause of evil/lacking, his order is not lacking, nor does he set us up in some vague way to commit evil. Lying is evil, because it is a deliberate formation in language of an intellect upon error (that which does not exist and is not true). Lying is styled a “violation” in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and it is that. It is a violation of the primary and ultimate purposes of communication in language (i.e., conveyance of the truth with certitude, and communion, respectively). It is also a violation or violence upon the intellect being formed erroneously. Lying is also styled an “intrisic evil” in the CCC. This means that in and of itself, the act is evil, and can never be called good/meritorious or neutral. Neither intent nor circumstance mitigate the evil of lying.

There are still many who stand by their lies, because they love their lies. Well, that should be quite scary to people who call themselves “Catholic”, since Our Lord Himself took the time to say (in John ch. 8 vs. 44):
You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and he stood not in the truth; because truth is not in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father thereof.
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– Nicole
 
CCC 1997: 2484 The gravity of a lie is measured against the nature of the truth it deforms, the circumstances, the intentions of the one who lies, and the harm suffered by its victims. If a lie in itself only constitutes a venial sin, it becomes mortal when it does grave injury to the virtues of justice and charity.

If it was venial, say, the Jewish person, you are, hiding were himself a killer–then what would remain left to mitigate? The truth is that you wouldn’t be hiding anyone, and that the affect of a Nazi in so asking would/should make you hear “are you concealing evil from us”; in that case I think you are deforming not a truth, but a lie if you do say/admit you are hiding your friend or whomever. The victim of that lie would be the Jewish person you are concealing from them. That case would make you a killer.

The best you could do is die with him, which, I suspect, is the intended urging of this thread.

The choice is yours.
 
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