Lying - Is it Ever Acceptable?

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Pitcharan said:
Neither lying nor any other action can become right or wrong as such. Only, the intended purpose of the doer will come under judgment.
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I am not certain of your position. Are you in agreement then that lying to Nazis to protect Jews is not sinful since their intention is an act of love and not a desire for evil?
 
fndrb58 said:
i am not certain of your position. Are you in agreement then that lying to nazis to protect jews is not sinful since their intention is an act of love and not a desire for evil?
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I am in complete agreement. In fact it is good deed that will be rewarded by God
 
The only possible rebuttal to this argument is the one MOSHER has proposed and that is the standard Natural Law argument which I still don’t think applies since its purpose is to serve the moral good and justice to which the saving of lives by lying in the Nazi example does not violate.
 
mosher said:
Another confusion is with the interpretation of the statement, **“the ends don’t justify the means.” **We forget that there are two ends that are occurring in any human act, the end of the agent and the end of the act/means. The statement is specifically concerned with the notion that a good end of an agent does not make the means chosen to achieve that end good. This is because each item, the end of the agent, and the means chosen are only parts of the whole human act. For a human act to be good/virtuous then each of the 8 parts of the human act must also be good, but if one of the 8 parts is bad then the whole human act is bad/vicious. This seems to be where the problem usually rests in moral discussions.
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Okay, now we must question what “means” means. You are presuming in this quote that the means is evil. If it meets the requirements then it is indeed evil and the phrase holds. If the means is not evil then it does not hold. I question your argumentation by the use of this phrase because of your presumptive definition of the word.
 
I think that we are asking for trouble when we insist that we all agree upon an absolute meaning, in the literal sense.

That’s because God’s Word has senses deeper than the literal, so the reason we can’t come to peace with letting others believe what they will, is that we are lacking in those deeper senses. So IMO, arguing about literal absolutism is simply a distraction technique to keep us from focusing on matters that really matter to God, matters of the heart.

I surrender my need to be right on this issue, and leave it in the capable hands of the Holy Spirit. I will continue to ask questions and explain my thoughts as long as others want to exchange them with me. 🙂

I think we should all be true to our consciences, to the extent we know how. :twocents:

Alan
 
I think I am close to being done with this debate. It has been very thought provoking yet I have seen nothing to sway me from my position as I still believe an act of love to protect our brothers mitigates any sin that might ordinarily come from lying to others. And I believe that lying to murderers does not offend justice, love, or the moral good. In fact, I believe it combats it. “Fight evil with good”, I think applies here.

I have come to the conclusion that the absolutists are only so in an objective sense. When speaking of the Nazi example, one could not say with any confidence that a person who is hiding Jews and lies to inquisitive murderers commits even a venial sin. The stress of the situation and the fact that their conscience is telling them to protect the innocent would I am sure relieve them of ALL cupability even if objectively speaking to ever lie in any circumstance is sinful.

I don’t believe even the absolutists here can be confident that in this case a venial sin rests upon these otherwise heroic individuals. So at least in that context they indeed are sinless.
 
fndrb58 said:
i think i am close to being done with this debate. It has been very thought provoking yet i have seen nothing to sway me from my position as i still believe an act of love to protect our brothers mitigates any sin that might ordinarily come from lying to others. And i believe that lying to murderers does not offend justice, love, or the moral good. In fact, i believe it combats it. “fight evil with good”, i think applies here.

I have come to the conclusion that the absolutists are only so in an objective sense. When speaking of the nazi example, one could not say with any confidence that a person who is hiding jews and lies to inquisitive murderers commits even a venial sin. The stress of the situation and the fact that their conscience is telling them to protect the innocent would i am sure relieve them of all cupability even if objectively speaking to ever lie in any circumstance is sinful.

I don’t believe even the absolutists here can be confident that in this case a venial sin rests upon these otherwise heroic individuals. So at least in that context they indeed are sinless.
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There is **absolutely no sin **when there is no sinful urge or desire behind an action. The converse is also true and I leave it to readers to define it for themselves
 
Our Lord’s advice in Matt 10:16, sums up all: "See, I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. So be as cunning as serpents and as innocent as doves. (Matt10:16)
 
Sorry I’ve been away. I have a lot of school work to attend to so I won’t be able to contribute much more in the short term to this conversation. I’ll do want I can with the following:
dskysmine said:
That would result in any human act being evil…
… nice… :x
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On the contrary it provides for evil acts, good acts, and acts that are something in the middle.
AlanFromWichita said:
So something that is evil does not necessarily do anything harmful?

Is that like a victim-less crime?

If it’s true that just because it’s evil doesn’t mean it hurts anybody, then what’s the point in calling it evil? :confused:

Alan
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Harm is not always something done to a person. Sometimes what is harmed is the natural order. In proper moral considerations we must consider these two different “objects of harm”, viz., the natural order, the person(s) involved.

Evil is not a thing in itself. Evil is a privation of good. In the case of the lie, it is a privation of truth and by definition an evil.
 
AlanFromWichita said:
OK, the lie was not “meritorious” due to the circumstances, but they had goodwill, so they did “what they had to” because of a greater good.

But, does “not meritorious” mean it is a lie and therefore is sinful – therefore the midwives had sinned against God and/or the Truth – if God and Truth aren’t the same thing, that is.

Or does “not meritorious” imply that the lie is itself not the virtue, but it is the tool that good people use to do good for the Lord? If it is, why do we call it sinful?

Some people use the Internet as a tool for doing satan’s work, or otherwise selfish work. Does that mean the Internet is evil? Others use Internet to do God’s work. So the Internet is a communications medium, that can be used to do good or bad work; it isn’t intrinsically good or evil in itself.

Similarly, a lie is one method of communication that can result in good or harm, depending on the circumstance, and the disposition of those telling the lie.

Alan
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What is meritorious is the good intention, the actual saving of life. But, among all these meritorious things that can be identified we can also identify the sin of the lie.

Artifacts like the internet are morally neutral. A lie is not an artifact, it is an act and as a result has a moral character.
 
Robertanthony said:
What if what looks good on paper doesn’t reflect God’s Heart, what if we arrive at a conclusion that follows perfectly from logic, but God might very well not be bound by human logic. What if qualifying lying as intrinsically evil (ergo not “redeemable” by the spirit of charity and selflessness in which a lie is told) is flawed from the start. Or could extreme situations (ex. Nazi at the door, or killer at the door looking for your kid) exempt someone from being bound by that moral law? Charity is the golden rule, we’re not talking murder here or denying Jesus, we’re talking potentially saving lives by misleading people who were equivalents of incarnate demons?
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I agree, and if it were the only acceptable option I would probably lie in the circumstances but my bone of contention here is not what we would be willing to do. My concern is that people are trying to call something good that is evil. It is better to own up to the evil chosen than to try to explain it away. We should allow for God’s mercy in such a circumstance instead of circumventing His mercy through justification of actions.
 
FNDRB58 said:
St. Raymond and other prominent Catholics also hold an opposing view and I am certain they fully understand the basic priciples of reason, virtue, and vice. Perhaps, their educational system failed them? You are presuming that what you have been taught is infallible teaching. To say that your school taught you this philisophical stance and therefore it is fact is not correct. Philosophy is not mathematics. It is like theory is it not? It is open for more than one interpretation which is why there have been philisophical debates over the centuries.
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My presumption is that we should not be looking for an infallible teaching. That is not what the charism of infallibility is used for. It is not the moral and theological “answers in the back of the book.” My other presumption is that Aquinas is the "go to’ theologian for ethical debate. In the Church we usually begin with Aquinas and then work our way from there. Why? Simply because the Church consistently confirms his teachings in Magisterial form and also he is the foundation for all theological and philosophical education in the Church. Thus, to simply disagree with Aquinas is not sufficient of an argument because he doesn’t have an equal weight to other thinkers.

I would have to carefully look at the various authors you mention to comment. I can say that both Peter Kreeft’s and Janet Smith’s recent articles on the subject are quite poor examples of their own work. Janet Smith misapplies Thomistic and Aristotelian principles and Peter Kreeft makes an emotivist argument contrary to his own methodology. I haven’t seem any other significant contemporary Catholic theologians other than these two argue in favor of lying as a good.
FNDRB58 said:
Well, that is certainly your opinion. I don’t believe it is evil to tell an untruth if it is done as a true act of love. One should be absolutist only in the context that one’s “lie” indeed has evil intent, that is, there is selfish gain, or it hurts your brethren, or is contrary to truth to someone who has the right to know, or destroys the moral order or justice. The Nazi example does not offend any of these.
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Not simply an opinion. It is an informed and certain opinion that can be substantially justified. When it comes to helping people determine what is a right or wrong action opinion is not sufficient.
 
in my own point of view lying is not acceptable and would never be acceptable… why?
all lies came from Satan the father of all lies… lying is a sin even if you say that you may save a life… AMEN…AMEN…AMEN…

“GOD WILLS IT”
- ST. CANDIDA MA. DE JESUS
 
FNDRB58 said:
Ok. So just to confirm. You agree that to us there are no obvious ill effects of lying to Nazis who want to kill Jews, correct?
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Incorrect.

Like the ill effects of, say, not attending Mass on Sundays, the ill effects of a lie in those circumstances have to do with damaging our relationship to God, to whom we owe the obligations of being honest in our speech (since speech is His gift to be used for His glory and He is truth itself, and so wants us to likewise be truthful) and rendering Him the proper worship due Him on the day He appointed.

They are very obvious indeed, but they don’t necessarily impact strongly on those around us, only on ourselves and God. For some reason this seems to make them either invisible or less important to you, but they are in fact equally important.
My point being that we have to know what is acceptable and what is not. God does not leave us guessing what is good and what is evil. To tell an untruth in the Nazi example must be deemed either sinful or nonsinful. And I maintain that if we base its status on the Catechism, it is not explicitly stated either way but seems to speak to those who have a right to know and it speaks to the natural law where lying in this context destroys the moral order and justice to which the Nazi example does not qualify.
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And I maintain that the Catechism is more than clear enough. “By its very nature lying is to be condemned.” In those passages of the CCC that discuss Sunday worship, killing etc etc the exceptions are spelled out plainly alongside the rules themselves.

In those passages of the CCC that discuss absolute evils on the other hand, such as contraception or homosexuality, their intrinsically disordered nature of those particular sins, which admits of no exceptions to the rule against them, is similarly made absolutely clear.

gThe language of the passage about lying is much more akin to that of the passage about contraception than those about killing or Sunday worship. Thus it can readily and, IMHO correctly, be inferred that lying is also an absolute evil. Meaning, as with all intrinsic evils, that though the circumstances may lessen culpability, it cannot necessarily completely eradicate it.
 
I hope you don’t mind my giving an example. Would bikinis on women be better than conservative clothing because they are “more truthful” about the true nature of the lady wearing it? This is again what happens when absolutism and literalism get into the picture simultaneously. If truth is good and lack of truth is bad, then wouldn’t something that’s “more” true be better that smoething that isn’t? Never mind the woman is exposed; it’s all true so it must be better. 🤷
 
LilyM said:
I maintain that the Catechism is more than clear enough. “By its very nature lying is to be condemned.” In those passages of the CCC that discuss Sunday worship, killing etc etc the exceptions are spelled out plainly alongside the rules themselves…
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I think you are reading too much into the proximity of exceptions and rules in the Catechism. Apparently you don’t want to see CCC 2488 and 2489 as exceptions to CCC
2483 just because it is not immediately adjacent. If the truth is absolutely sacred, then 2488 and 2489 would be hard to reconcile. So tell me, what is the proper interpretation of 2488 and 2489 that would not apply to the extreme cases mentioned earlier?
 
It is usually possible to take the Kantian approach, and always tell the truth while at the same time deceiving the other party when necessary to serve a morally desirable purpose.
 
LeafByNiggle said:
I think you are reading too much into the proximity of exceptions and rules in the Catechism. Apparently you don’t want to see CCC 2488 and 2489 as exceptions to CCC
2483 just because it is not immediately adjacent. If the truth is absolutely sacred, then 2488 and 2489 would be hard to reconcile. So tell me, what is the proper interpretation of 2488 and 2489 that would not apply to the extreme cases mentioned earlier?
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2488 and 2489 are not exceptions to the rule, and if you think they are then you’re misunderstanding what the rule is.

The rule is simply that everything we DO choose to communicate should be true as opposed to deceptive untruth.

The rule is not,as you seem to think, that we MUST comunicate absolutely everything we know to be true to anyone and everyone who asks us for information regardless of circumstance.

There’s a crucial and I hope obvious distinction between not telling the whole truth to someone (which is the sort of ‘discreet language’ that the Catechism permits) and telling a deceptive untruth (lying) to them, which IMHO it doesn’t. Lying isn’t discreet language, it’s deceptive language. Discretion is not the same thing as deliberate deception by way of total untruth.

2488 and 2489 are making the distinction clear, they are not making exceptions to anything.

If I can make an analogy - no-one would deny that the Eucharist is an absolute good, and that anyone who disrespects it commits sacrilege and serious sin.

However, not everyone has a RIGHT to the absolute good that is the Eucharist - those who are in mortal sin, for example, or non-Catholics.

So yes, the Eucharist can and indeed should be denied to some who would partake. But you can’t be disrespectful about the sacrament while exercising this prerogative. A priest can’t, for example, say to the person he’s denying ‘oh, you don’t want that, it’s just a cracker after all’.

This in effect is what you’re doing when, in the course of exercising your right to withhold the full truth from someone, you turn around and go further, and demean that truth by lying to them.
 
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