Case VII: Is It Ever Permitted to Tell a Lie?

A young unmarried girl is criminally with child. Her mother sends her to a lying-in hospital in a distant city before anything is known by the neighbors of her condition. The mother pretends to her other children and to the neighbors that her daughter is employed in a store in New York. She tells them frankly that she is. After the birth of the daughter’s baby and before her return home, the mother tells the neighbors that her daughter does not like New York and is coming home. Finally the daughter arrives home and continues the deception, giving many details of her “store experience” in New York and what she thought of the city. Of course she had not been in New York at all. Is it lawful for the mother and daughter to say these things which they know are untrue, and to deceive others, even though their object in practising this deception is quite good and praiseworthy? Is it not making the end justify the means and doing evil that good ‘may come from it?

Answer.—A writer in the review Ami du Clergé some years ago said well: There is no matter in moral theology so involved and so headsplitting as the theory of lying. “Il nest pas des matieres en morale aussi embrouillées, aussi casse-téte que la théorte du mensonge.” The source of all the difficulty seems to be the definition of a lie, as generally accepted by the theologians. That definition was first given by St. Augustine and from him has been adopted by practically all Catholic theologians. St. Augustine defines a lie as locutio contra mentem. This definition, I say, has been adopted by the Latin fathers and by Catholic theologians generally. Cardinal Newman says: “The Greek fathers thought that, when there was a justa causa an untruth need not be a lie. St. Augustine took another view, though with great misgiving; and whether he is rightly interpreted or not, is the doctor of the great and common view that all untruths are lies, and that there can be no just cause of untruth.” (Apologia, Note G.) The principle that it is never allowed to tell a lie, seems to be deep seated in the human conscience and to be admitted by all, just as it is universally admitted that it is not allowed to steal, or to murder. There can be no quarrel about the principle. It is only when we come to define a lie that the trouble begins. If it be admitted that all lying is sinful, and if we accept St. Augustine’s definition of a lie, as Catholic moralists generally do, locutio contra mentem ad decipiendum prolata, then it follows that every time we speak contrary to what is in our mind for the purpose of deceiving others, we lie and, therefore, we commit sin. But it is admitted, on the other hand, by all moralists that there are cases when it is permitted to say the thing that is not in our mind, even with the intention of deceiving others, and according to the definition just given, that would be a lie. For instance, there are times when it is impossible to keep a secret that must be kept at all hazards, except by saying the thing that is not in our mind. Of course the theologians were perfectly cognizant of this all the while, but still the definition of a lie, borrowed from St. Augustine, had taken such deep root in Catholic theology that it could not easily be retouched or revised. On the one hand they admitted that the definition made all speaking contrary to what was in the speaker’s mind, a lie; but on the other hand they could not deny that there were cases when it was lawful to say the thing that was not in one’s mind. To save the definition, and at the same time to save the truth, the theologians were compelled to invent the artificial theory of mental reservations. Though elaborated with great skill and ingenuity, the theory is quite artificial and invented solely for the purpose of permitting one to do that which one was Clearly bound to do, but which the doctrine of lying, as generally expounded, seemed to condemn. “Jn these later times,’ says Card. Newman, “this doctrine (of St. Augustine) has been found difficult to work, and it has been largely taught that though all untruths are lies, yet that certain equivocations, when there is a just cause, are not untruths.”

Archbishop Kenrick says: “It is confessed by all Catholics that in the common intercourse of life all ambiguity of language is to be avoided; but it is debated whether such ambiguity is ever lawful. Most theologians answer in the affirmative, supposing a grave cause urges, and the true mind of the speaker can be collected from the adjuncts, though in fact it be not collected.”

To use mental reservations or equivocations without a just and sufficient cause is sinful. But when it becomes necessary to dissemble or to mislead in order to keep a secret or to repel an impertinent inquirer, or when dealing with children, it is lawful to equivocate, or rather to play upon words or to use evasions. This is the ordinary doctrine given in the text-books of moral theology. Objection has been made to the whole theory of mental reservation on the ground that it is an artificial system, suited only to the learned and the cultivated, but of no avail for the simple minded and the ignorant. Thus, while the learned and the ignorant speak the same thing, the learned and quick-witted save themselves from the sin of lying by using a mental reservation, while the simple and ignorant, not versed in the theory of mental reservation, find themselves in the necessity of telling a lie.

Fr. Genicot says that we need not find fault if the simple minded and uneducated call a lawful lie what the theologians call abroad mental reservation (Moral I, p. 378). Of course the difficulty remains that these same simple minded and uneducated people don’t know that there are lawful lies. They think every lie is a sin, and still they feel compelled sometimes to tell lies or untruths as the only means left them for concealing the truth or for keeping a secret.

Fr. Berardi has this to say on the subject: “The theologians seem to have experienced an excessive fear of these condemnations (three propositions regarding lying condemned by Pope Innocent XI, 1679), and introduced into this matter incredible confusion. They first of all taught that a strict mental reservation could never, for no object whatever, become lawful, because it is always a lie and intrinsically evil. They say that a mental reservation in a strict or narrow sense is one whose meaning can not, morally speaking, be detected, as for example, if one, when asked if Peter is alive, should answer: “No, he is dead,” meaning civilly dead, either by reason of some crime or because he has entered a religious order. But then they admit that it would not be making use of a strict mental reservation if an adulteress should maintain that she was innocent of adultery when questioned about it (meaning that she had been made innocent by sacramental confession!), or that she had never committed adultery (meaning by adultery, idolatry!) (S. Alf. Ill, 162). How does this square with the definition of a pure mental reservation, just given, which the theologians say is never allowed? If they had said that the woman could deny her sin, at the same time using the reservation “that I should tell you,’ I would not find fault. But that they should deny that a pure mental reservation, or one whose sense can not be divined, is sufficient to excuse a lie and a sin, and nevertheless concede that these same reservations are no longer purely or strictly mental, but intelligible, that is something that I can not understand” (Praxis Conf. I, 1092).

If a theologian as competent as Berardi finds difficulty in applying practically the theory of mental reservation, it will be readily understood how the simple and ignorant are quite unable to use it as a means of concealing a truth or keeping a secret from those who have no right to know it. In the face of this insurmountable difficulty many moralists think that the definition of a lie, as commonly given in the text-book ought to be revised; that is to say, it ought to be made to read something like this: A lie consists in speaking contrary to one’s mind, with the intention of deceiving one who has a right to the truth. If the person has no right to the truth it ought not to be called a lie if the truth is concealed from him by saying the thing that is not in one’s mind.

Such speaking against one’s mind might be called an untruth, but not a lie. Not every taking of human life is murder, and not every taking of another’s goods is stealing, and, therefore, not every speaking contrary to one’s mind ought to be called lying. As there is taking of human life that is justifiable, and, therefore, not sinful, and as there is taking of another’s property that is not stealing, and, therefore, not a sin, so there must be untruths that are not lies and, therefore, not sinful. There are many occasions when a person has no right to know the truth and to deny the truth to such a person is justifiable and, therefore, not sinful.

Of course there is a difficulty here in the case of exceptions to the rule of veracity, and it is “that very little external help is given us in drawing the line as to when untruths are allowable and when not; whereas that sort of killing which is not murder is most definitely marked off by legal enactments, so that it can not possibly be mistaken for such killing as is murder. On the other hand the cases of exemption from the rule of veracity are left to the private judgment of the individual, and he may easily be led on from acts which are allowable to acts which are not.... If I had my own way I would oblige society, that is, its great men, its lawyers, its divines, its literature, publicly to acknowledge as such, those instances of untruth which are not lies, as for instance, untruths in war; and then there could be no perplexity to the individual Catholic, for he would not be taking the law into his own hands” (Card. Newman).

If this woman and her daughter thought that it was lawful for them, under the circumstances, to say something that was not true, in order to hide the truth from those who had no right to know it, then we would say that they told an untruth, but not a lie, or if a lie, then only a material lie. Murder is the formal transgression of the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” but accidental homicide is the material transgression. The matter of the act is the same in both cases; but in the homicide there is nothing more than the act; whereas in murder there must be the intention, which constitutes the formal sin. So a man who simply to keep himself from starving takes a loaf that is not his own commits only the material, and not the formal, act of stealing, that is, he does not commit a sin.

So we say, that if a person says something that is not true in order to keep a secret that must be kept, then such a person commits the material, but not the formal, act of lying. “If I allow of silence, why not of the method of material lying, since half of a truth is often a lie? And, again, if all killing be not murder, nor all taking from another stealing, why must all untruths be lies? Now I will say freely that I think it difficult to answer this question, whether it be urged by St. Clement or by Milton” (Card. Newman, Apol., Note G).