Morals of the Church
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Article — Wouters, Manual of Moral Theology

Article II. On Causes Excusing Detraction

1070.

I. Calumny is never licit, as is clear both from what has been said about lying and from proposition 44 condemned by Innocent XI: "It is probable that he does not sin mortally who imputes a false crime to someone in order to defend his own justice and honor."1

II. The following can render simple detraction licit:

  1. The consent of the delinquent, since he is master of his own reputation, and therefore per se can abdicate himself from that good.

  2. The public good to be protected. Hence, if you know that a man given over to lust wishes to receive Sacred Orders, you are held to denounce him to the Superior (St. Alphonsus, III, 968); likewise, per se, you ought to manifest a dishonest physician who is to others an occasion of sinning.

  3. The spiritual good of the delinquent himself; hence they rightly excuse "those who indicate to parents the hidden crime of children, or to masters that of servants, or to the prelate of religious as to a father, in order to correction; as also a wife speaking with her husband about the hidden crimes of children or servants" (St. Alphonsus, loc. cit.).

  4. A temporal or spiritual good, grave with respect to defamation, whether of the revealer himself or of a third party. Hence it is lawful to manifest the guilty person if an innocent person is accused; likewise to inform a mistress about the bad morals of a maidservant whom she intends to hire; likewise, sometimes, to indicate a hidden crime to someone for the sake of taking counsel or help, etc. (St. Alphonsus, loc. cit. and n. 969).

  5. With respect to historians, I note:

a) It is lawful for them to write down the public things of their own time, even if these, consigned to letters, are transmitted to the knowledge of posterity, and thus injure in perpetuity the reputation of the authors of those deeds.2

b) With respect to those things which were public but have been completely obliterated, authors commonly concede more to historians on account of the integrity of history and for the instruction and terror of others. Besides, since archives, even more secret ones, in our age are easily accessible to all students of history, it can be doubted whether hidden crimes which are contained in old documents ought to be called hidden.3 And this can be urged all the more because it is better that many things, which of themselves would better remain buried in eternal oblivion, be narrated according to truth by an upright historiographer, than that they be mixed with falsehoods by the impious and propagated for wicked ends.3

Yet note that, in a historical book which is intended for the common people, many things can be passed over in silence which cannot be passed over in others.

1 Denzinger-Bannwart, n. 1194.

2 Sweens, De virtute iustitiae, n. 473.

3 Lehmkuhl, Theologia Moralis, I, 1426.

Detraction and CalumnyWhen another's faults may be made known