Secrets

A SECRET is some hidden matter concerning another which cannot be made known without causing him injury or displeasure. Besides the secret of the seal of confession, which is treated of elsewhere, divines distinguish three kinds of secret: the natural secret, the promised secret, and the secret which is communicated under an express or implied contract of secrecy.

When we come to the knowledge of something concerning another which cannot be made known without causing him injury or displeasure we are under the obligation of a natural secret not to make it known. This obligation arises from charity and justice, inasmuch as these virtues forbid us to do anything to the hurt or annoyance of our neighbour.

If we come to know something concerning our neighbour and then give a promise not to reveal it to others, we are bound by a promised secret. If the matter was of its nature secret, there would be the obligation of a natural secret independently of the promise. When the promise is given, a special obligation arising therefrom binds the party to secrecy. In case the matter was not of itself secret, the only obligation would be that arising from the promise. It depends to some extent on the intention of the promisor as to.what obligation he takes upon himself by his promise. He may intend to bind himself to keep his word by the virtue of fidelity, because it is the duty of an honest man to keep his promise. In this case, as fidelity only binds under pain of venial sin, there will only be this obligation to observe the promised secret. However, if the other party to whom secrecy was promised would suffer serious loss from the violation of the secret, or if the parties were bound by mutual promises, then justice would require the secret to be kept, and the violation of the obligation would of itself be gravely sinful. Apart even from these circumstances, the promisor may intend to give the other a right to secrecy in justice, and then he will be bound to observe it under pain of mortal sin, A secret which is confided to another under the condition that secrecy is to be observed constitutes the matter of an onerous contract and binds more strictly than either a natural or a promised secret. Such are secrets of office which officials of all sorts become aware of in the execution of the duties entrusted to them; professional secrets of doctors, lawyers, priests, and others, who are consulted as experts by people in doubt or difficulty; as well as all others which are entrusted to any person under the express or implied condition of secrecy.

The obligation to observe a natural secret will cease after the secret has become public property. The party whose secret it is may sometimes be reasonably presumed not to be unwilling that the matter should be communicated to another, as, for example, to somebody who can and who will be of assistance to him. If the public good requires that the secret should be made known in order to prevent public wrong, the obligation of secrecy will cease, for the public welfare is of greater importance than that of an individual. If serious harm threatens one’s self or some other innocent person, or the party whose secret is in question, and the harm can only be averted by making known the secret, this will be allowed in the case of natural or promised secrets. The right of defence from impending evil prevails over that of natural and promised secrets.

Even the obligation of the third class of secrets will cease when they cannot be observed without serious harm to the public weal. The natural law, however, which requires that people should be able to consult others in their difficulties in all security, demands that this class of secret should be observed in the case when even serious harm threatens some innocent person, unless he whose secret is in question is the cause of the impending evil. Thus, if I know as a professional secret who is the real culprit in the case of a crime wrongly imputed to an innocent person, I may disclose the real culprit if by some special means he caused the false accusation of the innocent person, otherwise I must keep the secret. ‘It is a disputed point among theologians whether I am bound to observe a secret at the peril of my life when it was entrusted to me under that express condition, some maintaining that no one can pledge his life in that way, others more probably holding the contrary. ’Whether or not I am bound at my own serious loss to keep a secret entrusted to me under the condition of secrecy depends to some extent on circumstances, Sometimes I cannot be supposed under the circumstances to have bound myself by so strict an obligation; but as a rule professional secrets will continue to be binding even when the observance of them entails serious loss.

We are bound to make known natural and promised secrets at the command of lawful superiors. The obligation of obedience to lawful authority prevails over that of secrecy due to individuals in those cases. And so a witness in a court of justice when lawfully questioned about what he knows under the obligation of natural or promised secrecy must give the evidence required. Similarly, secret impediments to marriage must be declared according to the precept contained in the proclamation of banns. Professional secrets, however, and, in general, secrets which belong to the third class, are privileged, and must not be declared, unless they have ceased to be binding for some such reason as those mentioned above. Secrecy in this case is demanded by the natural law, which gives the fullest possible security to those who consult others in their difficulties, and even the precept of one’s superior cannot avail against the natural law, as St Thomas teaches.¹

English law acknowledges the privilege of state secrets and of the professional secrets of lawyers, but in the case of doctors and clergymen it does not as yet go the full length of the doctrine laid down above.

¹ Summa, 2-2, q. 70, a. I, ad 2.

Vol. II, Pt. II, Q. II, Art. 6. The Remaining Pote…, Breach of Promise · Vol. II, Pt. II, Q. II, Art. 6. The Remaining Pote…, Violation of Secret

The doctrine with regard to secrets is applicable to the opening and reading of letters, unless it is known that they contain no secrets and the writer is not aggrieved. It is, however, a general rule of Religious Orders that letters written by and to religious may be opened by the superior, except such as contain matters of conscience, and communications between higher superiors and their subjects.

Wouters, Manual of Moral Theology

Ludovicus Wouters, C.SS.R. — 5 passages

Vol. I, Bk. II, Tr. II, Diss. I, Pt. VIII, Section IV. On Injury of a Secret

n. 1087.

I. Notion. A secret is a hidden matter which cannot be manifested.

n. 1088.

II. Division. A secret is distinguished into natural, promised, and entrusted. A natural secret is one which, from the nature of the matter, must be kept, namely because it cannot be revealed without damage or grief to one's neighbor; as if you know where someone has hidden his money, and you reveal this to a thief. A promised secret is one which someone, after receiving knowledge of it, has freely promised to keep; it can at the same time be natural. An entrusted secret is one which has been communicated to someone who did not know it, and who expressly or tacitly promised that he would keep it. By force of a tacit pact, for example, physicians, advocates, theologians, religious superiors, and others to whom recourse is had because of the office which they discharge, for the sake of seeking counsel, are bound to an entrusted secret (St. Alphonsus, III, 970). I said by force of a tacit pact; for by undertaking the office they undertake an obligation without which, if it had not been undertaken, subjects and clients would not approach them with sufficient security for the sake of seeking counsel or imploring help.

n. 1089.

III. Obligation of keeping a secret. 1. A natural secret obliges from charity if the revelation merely creates sorrow; from justice if it creates damage for one's neighbor. Hence the said obligation is grave from its kind.

A proportionate cause excuses from the obligation, as was said concerning manifestation of a hidden crime or defect (n. 1070). Yet it is clear that a secret cannot be revealed if common damage would be imminent from the revelation (St. Alphonsus, III, 970).

A promised secret obliges from fidelity or from justice, according as was said concerning a promise in general (n. 864).

The obligation of a promised secret ceases or does not subsist: 1° by the consent, even presumed, of the promisee; 2° if from another source there was, or there arises, an obligation of revealing the secret, as if you are legitimately questioned by a judge or by a superior (St. Alphonsus, III, 970; IV, 268); 3° if it cannot be kept without such inconvenience that the one promising cannot be judged to have wished to bind himself with so great a burden. Moreover, these statements hold even if the promise was confirmed by oath.

Sometimes a promise is added to a natural secret; in that case the added promise is judged to be merely confirmatory of the obligation already existing, so that it stands or falls with the latter. Yet it is not repugnant that an obligation independent of the existing obligation be intended and assumed. Apply the same to an oath, if perhaps it is added to a natural secret.

Question. To what extent is he obliged who expressly promised that he would keep a secret of very great importance even with the loss of life? I said of very great importance, because otherwise the promise would certainly be prodigal and therefore invalid.

Response. Some say that he is not obliged, because from the precept of charity each person is bound to prefer his own life to another's good, however very grave. Others maintain the obligation, because every promise of an honorable object obliges. But the promise about which we are speaking regards an honorable object; since it is permitted "for an honorable end to omit the preservation of one's own life in order to save another's life... because this is not directly to bring death upon oneself, but not to protect life, which is permitted for a just cause: therefore very probably the doctors... say that in the proposed case you are sufficiently obliged to keep the secret even with danger of life, if you promised it" (St. Alphonsus, III, 971). Yet note that the words even with danger of life must more often be taken less strictly according to the mind of the one promising.

An entrusted secret obliges from justice, and therefore by an obligation grave from its kind (n. 978). Moreover, the said obligation is stricter by reason of the onerous contract intervening. With respect to the promise at least tacitly made by the adviser, there is added the fact that it is of the greatest interest to the common good that the secret entrusted to him bind most strictly, namely so that men may be able to seek counsel without fear of revelation. Yet it is sufficiently probable that it is not a grave sin to reveal an entrusted secret to one or another person who will certainly keep it and will not even reveal it to one or another person. Moreover, this is sufficiently probable because in that case the secret remains safe as to its substance. Except, however, if the secret is revealed to him from whom the one entrusting it wishes it to be hidden before all others; in that case it would be a grave sin (St. Alphonsus, III, 971). I said sufficiently probably, because a contract is involved, and it is doubtful whether that more benign interpretation is valid; with respect to a natural secret, the matter is certain.

The obligation of an entrusted secret ceases: 1° by the consent, even reasonably presumed, of the one entrusting the secret; 2° if, from the secret being kept, grave damage is imminent either to the common good, or to the one entrusting the secret himself, or - provided he accepted the secret without force or fraud - to the one accepting the secret. The first two are sufficiently clear; the latter is drawn from this, that "no one is presumed to have obliged himself to such a burden, unless this certainly appears from the circumstances" (St. Alphonsus, III, 971). The obligation of an entrusted secret does not cease from the questioning of a judge or superior; and "you can respond that you know nothing, namely nothing to be revealed" (St. Alphonsus, III, 970). Except if the obligation of the secret has already ceased from another heading (St. Thomas, II-II, q. 70, a. 1, ad 2; St. Alphonsus, III, 970, 971; IV, 49, 248, 268).

What if grave damage is imminent to a third party from an entrusted secret being kept?

Response 1. If the damage is neither created nor culpably permitted by the one entrusting the secret, it is not lawful to reveal the secret; suppose that an advocate knows that an innocent man will be condemned, but the guilty man will be freed. If, because of special circumstances, the guilty man can permit the damage of the innocent man, the advocate also is bound to keep the secret entrusted to him.

Response 2. Outside the aforesaid case, I distinguish between those who are not bound by force of office and those who are bound by force of office to keep the secret. Now:

One who is not bound by force of office to keep the secret can certainly reveal it: 1° if the damage to the third party is created by the one entrusting the secret himself; as if a syphilitic, who pretends that he is healthy, intends to marry a bride ignorant of the bridegroom's disease; 2° if the damage to the third party is not indeed created by the one entrusting the secret, but nevertheless is culpably permitted by him; as if the guilty man mentioned above would culpably permit the damage of the innocent man. The reason for both is that charity demands that the secret be disclosed in order to avert damage to one's neighbor, unless the common good stands in the way. But the common good does not require that one who is not bound by force of office to be silent should be obliged to be silent, if a grave cause for speaking, i.e. for revealing the secret, exists (St. Alphonsus, III, 971).
The same, with St. Alphonsus and others against many, seems to be admitted if there is question of those who are bound by force of office to keep a secret; as if a physician knows that the bridegroom is afflicted with a contagious disease, and nevertheless does not wish to abstain from marriage. For on the one hand the reason just given is valid; on the other hand, the common good in this case does not demand that secrets of this sort be kept even with grave damage to a third party. For it is more in the interest of the common good that provision be made for the innocent person than for the harmful one, i.e. for him who wishes to inflict unjust damage on an innocent person, or who does not wish himself, by manifestation of the secret, to avert the damage to be inflicted on the innocent person (St. Alphonsus, III, 971). Yet the physician, etc., would be excused if grave damage to himself, for example hatred of citizens, a penalty to be imposed, etc., would be imminent from the revelation.

Objection 1. The common good demands that each person be able, without fear of revelation, to entrust a secret to those who furnish counsel by reason of office.

Response. On account of the reason just given, I deny the assertion with respect to those about whom the discussion is here. Nor, for that reason, will others to whom these things cannot be applied reasonably seek counsel with fear.

Objection 2. One who knows an impediment of marriage under an entrusted secret is not bound to reveal it, although there is question of averting damage.

Response. I deny the assertion taken generally; namely, one is bound to reveal an impediment, however known under an entrusted secret, if it is supposed and known that the impediment is known to one of the persons about to marry and unknown to the other, and therefore that formal injustice will be committed by one of the persons about to marry. And a case of this kind is especially intended by us.

Note 1. To an entrusted secret also belongs what is called a quasi-sacramental secret, namely one which arises from the manifestation of conscience to a superior or spiritual director, for the sake of seeking counsel or obtaining spiritual direction. Before this secret can be revealed, or even merely used, to avert some damage, even common damage, generally the one seeking counsel should first be warned concerning his obligation of preventing that damage by spontaneous manifestation or use of the secret; if he refuses, it should be well weighed whether in the case the gravity of the damage in question is not to be postponed to the gravity of that common damage which arises from the fact that, at least apparently, faith is broken in this matter.¹

Note 2. In some kingdoms a promissory oath concerning keeping a secret must be made by physicians; this oath, as is clear, is not valid insofar as you suppose that in some respect it is opposed to the law of nature.

¹ Aertnys-Damen, Theologia Moralis, I, n. 1004.

n. 1090.

IV. Investigation of a secret. 1. Per se it is illicit and unjust to seek out another's secret against his will, for example by questioning deceitfully, reading letters, spying on the things which someone purposely does secretly, or by extorting a secret by a certain force. The reason is that one acting thus deprives another of his own thing; since a secret or hidden matter is most proper to a man. Moreover, it is a grave or light sin according as there is question of a grave or light matter. Except, with respect to a grave matter, if someone fishes out another's secret with the intention of keeping it to himself; this is sufficiently probably only light (n. 1069).

It is lawful to seek out a secret if there is at least presumed permission of the owner, or a proportionate cause, of which sort is damage to be averted, whether common damage, or grave damage to oneself or one's own. The reason is that there is no injury if the other consents or is bound to consent to the investigation itself of the secret.

Corollary I. It is lawful to read another's letters (i.e. whether written by subjects or sent to subjects): 1° as was said, from consent, even presumed, either of the writer or of the recipient; 2° if from the secret of the letters common damage, or damage to oneself or a third party, is feared; 3° if the rule of a religious institute prescribes or permits this, namely for the common good. Besides, parents, guardians, and superiors of institutes generally can read the letters of subjects, namely lest some evil befall them. A husband, however, per se cannot inspect letters given to his wife, since she is not plainly a subject but a companion. Often there will be consent at least presumed. For the rest, what a religious superior can do should be drawn from the rule and from custom (St. Alphonsus, III, 969; V, 70).

Corollary II. It seems illicit to join and read fragments of letters that have been torn very small and thrown away, because the owner, by tearing the letters, sufficiently signifies that he does not wish them to be read. The contrary must be said if the owner tore them into larger parts and voluntarily threw them into a place accessible to all (St. Alphonsus, loc. cit.).

n. 1091.

V. Use of a secret. 1. Use of a secret communicated as such, which takes place without revelation of the secret - suppose if someone uses knowledge of a secret to direct others in the way of perfection - is lawful if it is done without damage to him whose secret it was; for what does not harm you is, with the required suppositions in place, lawful for me. If it is done with damage, it is illicit, unless there is added the consent, at least presumed, of the one communicating the secret, or a proportionate cause for allowing the damage; for a secret is judged to have been communicated with the burden of not harming the one communicating the secret.

Use of a secret not communicated, but investigated by just industry - suppose an invention publicly displayed and attentively inspected by an expert - is lawful; since the one investigating by his own industry made the secret his own, and therefore he can use it; except if a monopoly of using it had already been granted to another by the State.
Use (whether revelation, or use without revelation) of a secret unjustly extorted, with damage to him whose secret it was, is lawful for averting damage to oneself or to others only when the matter has been brought to that state in which it would be lawful to seek out the secret; otherwise it is illicit, because it would be a continuation of the injustice (St. Alphonsus, III, 969).

McHugh–Callan, Moral Theology

John A. McHugh, O.P., and Charles J. Callan, O.P. — 12 passages

Vol. II, Pt. II, Q. II, Art. 6. The Remaining Pote…, Breach of Promise

n. 2407.

Infidelity and Violation of a Secret

Infidelity and Violation of a Secret.—It remains to speak of the vices of infidelity and violation of secret (see 2388 a). As to the former, since it has been discussed elsewhere (1877 sqq., 1888, 1889; see also the matter on Promissory Oaths), it will suffice here to ask the question: Is the breach of a promise freely given a sin?

(a) If observance of the promise is due from fidelity only, there is no legal fault, but there is moral fault, and hence the breach of the promise is a sin. The malice is essentially the same as that of untruthfulness (see 2395), for both the liar and the promise-breaker show themselves unreliable, the former because his words do not square with his mind and the latter because his deeds do not live up to his plighted word. Breach of promise, then, seems per se to be a venial sin, though there are often circumstances (such as damage done) that make it mortal.

(b) If observance of the promise is not due even from fidelity, on account of the presence of some defect, there is no moral obligation to keep the promise and no sin is committed by not keeping it. The defects referred to are such as make the promise lack force from the beginning (e.g., if it was immoral or extorted by force), or deprive it of the force it had (i.e., inability on the part of the promisor or loss of right on the part of the promisee). The promisor is unable to keep the promise, if the thing promised has become physically impossible (e.g., he no longer has the strength or the means to perform what he promised), or morally impossible (e.g., the thing promised has become unlawful, or a notable change has taken place which, could it have been foreseen, would have prevented the promise). The promisee loses his right if the sole or principal reason that dictated the promise has ceased, or if the promise has become useless to the promisee, or if the promisor has been released, or if the promisee forfeits his claim by his own perfidy towards the promisor (see 2256 sqq., 1889).

Vol. II, Pt. II, Q. II, Art. 6. The Remaining Pote…, Violation of Secret

n. 2408.

Definition of a Secret

Definition of a Secret.—A secret is a matter (e.g., an invention, valuable information, concealed virtues, the fact that a crime has been committed) known privately by only one person or by so few that it is neither public property nor notorious. Moralists distinguish the following kinds of secrets:

(a) a natural secret, which is one that cannot be revealed without causing injury or annoyance to another, as when the revelation will harm a person in his reputation, honor, influence property. It is called natural for it arises from the very nature of the matter of the secret and not from any promise or contract.

(b) a promised secret, which is one that a person has promised, but only after he had already learned it, to guard inviolate. It makes no difference whether the promisor learned the secret from the promisee or from some other source;

(c) an entrusted or committed secret, which is one that a person promised (and before he learned it) to keep from others. The promise here is either implicit or explicit. An implicit promise of secrecy is one that is demanded by the confidential nature of communications between two parties (professional secret), as when physicians, lawyers, priests, parents, or friends are told of private matters on account of their position or relationship. An explicit promise is one that is given in express terms, as when A says to B: “I have a matter of great importance to tell you, but you must first promise that you will keep it secret”; and on B promising, A confides to him the secret.

n. 2409.

Sinfulness of Violating a. Secret

Sinfulness of Violating a. Secret.—A secret is the property of its owner, and to it he has a strict right; for if it is a good secret (such as an original idea or discovery), it is the product of his labor or at least a possession which he has lawfully come by; if it is an evil secret (such as a crime of which he has been guilty), it may not be made known without infringing on his right of reputation. It is no more lawful to violate the right to a secret than to violate the right to property, and, as there are three kinds of injuries to property, so there are three kinds of injuries to a secret.

(a) Thus, the right of possession is injured by those who by fraud or force or other illegal means deprive another of his secret (e.g., by secretly intercepting private letters, by making a person drunk in order to learn a secret).

(b) The right of use is injured by those who on acquiring knowledge of a secret guide themselves or others by it to the detriment of the owner’s rights.

n. 2410.

Prying Into Others’ Secrets

Prying Into Others’ Secrets.—To seek to discover the secrets of others is not lawful unless the following conditions are present:

(a) one must have a right to the knowledge. Hence, if there is question about a crime that has been committed or that is about to be committed, one has a right to investigate in order to prevent harm to public or private good; in war one may try to discover the plans of the enemy. But it is not lawful to pry into purely personal matters, to fish from others natural or confidential secrets which they are bound to keep, to steal from another the thoughts, plans, inventions, etc, which are his own;

(b) one must use only honest means to discover secrets to which one has a right (1504). Thus, it does not seem lawful generally to inebriate another in order to learn his secret, and it is certainly sinful to resort to lies or simulation or immorality.

n. 2411.

Reading Another’s Letters or Papers

Reading Another’s Letters or Papers.—When is it lawful to read the letters or other papers of another person?

(a) This is lawful when the writings are not intended to be secret to anyone, as when a circular is meant for public use, when greetings are written on a postcard which all may read, and when a letter is left open and thrown away or otherwise abandoned. But a sealed letter, or one left open in a private room, or one lost in a public place, is secret. If a letter or manuscript has been torn up by its owner and thrown away on the street or other public place, it does not seem lawful to piece the fragments together and read the writing, for, though the paper has been abandoned, the owner by destroying it has indicated his will to keep the contents secret.

(b) It is also lawful to read the writing of others that are not secret as regards oneself, as when one has received a just permission from the writer to peruse a letter written by him, or when one may presume such permission on account of friendship with the writer, or when rule or lawful custom gives the superior of an institution the right to inspect the correspondence of his subjects. Exception must be made for exempted matter for which there is no permission, such as letters containing conscience matters and letters directed to higher religious superiors (see Canon 611).

(c) It is also lawful to read the writings of others that are meant to be secret, if one has a right to know what is in them: for in such a case the owner would be unreasonable if he wished to exclude one from the knowledge. Thus, the public authority (e.g., in time of war) has the right to open and read letters and private papers, when this is necessary for the common good; parents and heads of boarding schools may examine the correspondence of their subjects, though parents should respect conscience matter and others should not read family secrets; private individuals have the natural right, as a measure of self-defense, to read another’s letter, when there is a prudent reason for thinking that it contains something gravely and unjustly harmful to themselves (such as conspiracy, a trap, calumny).

n. 2412.

Lawfulness of Utilizing Knowledge of Secret

Lawfulness of Utilizing Knowledge of Secret.—One is said to use the knowledge obtained from a secret when one guides one’s conduct by the knowledge, doing or omitting what one would not otherwise do or omit. Is this use of a secret lawful?

(a) If there was a promise not to use the secret, such use is unlawful (see 2414). Breach of promise is then, in case of a merely promised secret, an act of infidelity at least, and in case of an entrusted secret an act of injustice. Thus, when one consults a professional person, there is a tacit understanding that the knowledge communicated will not be used against one’s interests or without one’s consent, and hence a lawyer would be unjust if, on learning in the course of work for a client that the latter’s business was not prosperous, he gave word of this to one of the client’s creditors.

(b) If there was no promise not to use the secret, the use of it is nevertheless unjust, if it infringes a strict right (e.g., to make money from a secret process on which another has a patent, to get knowledge of another’s information and plans through reading his letters and thereby to prevent him from securing a vacant position), or if it is equivalent to unjust revelation of a secret. The use is uneharitable if it harms another person without necessity (e.g., to take away one’s trade from a deserving merchant solely because one has learned that on one occasion he was accidentally intoxicated).

(c) If there was no promise to avoid use and no harm will be done by use, it is lawful to use a secret for a non-necessary good (e.g., to raise the price on one’s property when one accidentally learns through overhearing a secret conversation that the property is worth the higher price), and it is obligatory to use it for a necessary good (e.g., to assist a neighbor when one is told under secret that he is in dire need of one’s charitable help). Even though harm will result to another by use of the secret, use is not sinful if it infringes no right and could be sacrificed only at great inconvenience to oneself, as when one has discovered by one’s own industry some important truth in an art or science which another had previously discovered but had neglected to make his own by exclusive right, or when one learns under secret that another person is one’s enemy and has to be watched and avoided.

n. 2413.

The Sin Committed by Stealing or Unduly Using the Secret of Another

The Sin Committed by Stealing or Unduly Using the Secret of Another.—(a) From its nature (cases of mere fidelity excepted) the sin is mortal, as being a violation of commutative justice or of charity. Injury to property rights, whether in goods or in knowledge, is violation of a strict right (see 1890, 1894). The sin is aggravated by the greater import of the secret or by the greater damages or displeasure caused.

(b) From the imperfection of the act or the lightness of the matter the sin may become venial, as when one thoughtlessly reads another person’s letters, or opens correspondence without authority, feeling morally sure that there is nothing confidential in it, or makes use of an unimportant secret without permission.

n. 2414.

The Obligation of Keeping a Secret

The Obligation of Keeping a Secret.—(a) The natural secret obliges per se under grave sin; for violation of it offends charity and justice by saddening and harming a neighbor. The sin may become venial on account of lightness of matter, as when little sadness or harm is caused.

(b) The promised secret obliges ordinarily under light sin only; for as a rule the promisor intends to obligate himself in virtue of fidelity alone (1888), and the obligation of fidelity, as said above (see 2407), is not grave. But exceptionally the obligation may be grave, as when the promisor intended to bind himself in virtue of justice and under grave sin, or when the secret is natural as well as promised.

(c) The entrusted secret obliges per se under grave sin; for there is a duty of commutative and of legal justice to keep it, on account of the rights of contract and of the common good that are involved. The violator of an entrusted secret injures private good by disregard for contract, and he injures public good by weakening confidence in officials or professional persons to whom others must go for advice or assistance. Violation of a committed secret may be only a venial sin on account of the lightness of the matter. Thus, some think it is not a serious injustice to reveal a secret to one very discreet person, if the person whose secret is made known is not very much opposed to this and no other damage will result (see 2065).

n. 2415.

Comparison of Secrets as Regards Binding Force

Comparison of Secrets as Regards Binding Force.—(a) The promised secret obliges less than the natural or the entrusted, as was said in the previous paragraph. (b) The natural secret obliges less per se than the entrusted secret, for the safeguarding of the latter is agreed to in an onerous contract, while no engagement is made to keep the former. (c) Some entrusted secrets are more sacred than others. Thus, a secret confided from necessity is more binding than one confided without necessity; a secret one has sworn to keep is more obligatory than a secret one has given one’s word of honor to keep; a professional secret is more imperious than a private secret; a state secret is far more important than any secret of private individuals. The most inviolable of all secrets is that of the confessional, because its violation is always a sacrilege.

n. 2416.

Cases Wherein It Is Not Necessary to Keep a Secret

Cases Wherein It Is Not Necessary to Keep a Secret.—(a) If there has been no obligation from the time the secret was learned, it is not necessary to keep it. Thus, if a merely promised secret was accepted under compulsion and revelation will be advantageous and not harmful, it does not seem necessary to keep the secret.

(b) If the obligation of the secret has ceased, it is not necessary to be silent. Examples are cases in which secrecy was promised only for a certain space of time, or in which a matter formerly secret has become public, or in which the owner of the secret wishes it to be divulged, or in which he has not kept faith with the possessor of the secret, provided of course that in these cases no injury or unnecessary harm is done by making known the secret. Similarly, if the recipient of the secret cannot keep it without grave harm (e.g., death) to himself, he is not bound by it, unless charity (see 1165, 1236) or justice calls for the contrary. Commutative justice would demand silence (though many make exception for a most grave reason, regarding a promise to the contrary as prodigal) if there had been an express contract to guard the secret at all risks; legal justice would demand it, if the safety of the republic were involved.

n. 2417.

Cases Wherein It Is Not Lawful to Keep a Secret

Cases Wherein It Is Not Lawful to Keep a Secret.—(a) If a secret cannot be kept without greater harm to the common good, it may not be kept, for legal justice requires that private good be subordinated to public safety. The violation of secrets is a harm to the public good and a greater harm than ordinary evils against the community (such as the escape of a guilty person); but it is a less harm than serious evils against the people (such as menace to public health, sedition, or treason). The possessor of a natural or promised secret must make it known at the command of lawful authority, as in court; but the superior has no right to question about entrusted secrets of a necessary kind, and this is usually recognized by positive law in the protection extended to professional communications.

(b) If a secret cannot be kept without greater harm to the private good of the owner of the secret, distinction is made between a non-entrusted and an entrusted secret. In the former case the secret may not be kept, for charity bids one to help a neighbor escape a greater evil, and the owner of the secret would be unreasonable if he were opposed to its revelation (see 501 sqq.). In the latter case, some are of the opinion that the secret should be kept, if it is professional (since the public good then takes precedence over the private good of the owner of the secret), but this is denied by others. Example: Titus knows that Balbus is about to marry with a secret impediment that will nullify the marriage, but he cannot persuade Balbus to disclose this impediment to the pastor.

(c) If a secret cannot be kept without greater harm to the private good of a third party (i.e., one other than the owner of the secret), distinction is made between cases, according as injury is or is not done by the owner of the secret to the third party. If no injury is done the third party, the secret should be kept (e.g., if one knows in confidence that Sempronius has made an invention which will supersede an invention made by Claudius, one is not at liberty to make this known to the latter, for Sempronius has done no injury to Claudius). If, however, injury is done the third party by the owner of the secret when the secret is kept, one should not keep the secret; for charity requires that one help an innocent person to escape from harm, even if this has to be done at the expense of harm to the guilty cause of the harm. Examples: If one knows as a secret that A, B and C have conspired to murder D tomorrow night, and one cannot otherwise prevent the murder, one should if possible break the secret, at least by sending warning to D that his life is in danger tomorrow night. If a doctor knows that a man who is about to contract marriage is syphilitic and pretends that he is sound, and if the doctor cannot persuade this man to make the facts known to the intended wife, the doctor himself should give notice to the woman, according to some authorities, unless the laws of the country forbid such use of professional knowledge.

n. 2420.

Lawfulness of Revealing a Secret Learned by Stealth or Force

Lawfulness of Revealing a Secret Learned by Stealth or Force.—Is it lawful, in order to avert some great evil, to use or reveal against the interests or wishes of its owner a secret which one has learned by stealth (e.g., by spying, eavesdropping, wiretapping, unauthorized inspection of papers) or by force? Various answers are given to this question, but to us the following seems the best:

(a) if the stealth or force would not be unjust here and now, because the owner of the secret has a duty to disclose it (e.g., on account of the public good, on account of the extreme need of a private person), or the other party has a right to seek after it (e.g., because he cannot otherwise defend himself against the unjust vexation of the owner of the secret), the answer is in the affirmative; for in such a case there is only applied the principle of lawful occupation or of lawful self-defense (see 1920 sqq., 1819). But if the stealth or force is excessive in its manner or productive of unnecessary harm, it is sinful and induces the duty of restitution, nor is there any right to make such use or such revelation of a secret as is sinful in itself (e.g., on account of calumnies, scandals, disorders);

(b) if the stealth or force would be unjust here and now, the answer is in the negative; for in such a case there is real theft of a secret, a person’s most intimate possession, and a continuation of the original injury by the use of the stolen property against its owner, or at least an unlawful conversion of property. Hence, if there is no grave or proportionate reason for the use of the secret, or if other and simpler methods can be employed, the secret may not be used. Those who play the detective ostensibly for other reasons but really for purposes of blackmail or other personal advantage, are therefore in the same class as thieves and are bound to restitution; their sin is per se mortal, for secrets are usually esteemed more highly than money, and it would be seriously detrimental to the public weal if the practice of using secrets unlawfully obtained (e.g., by secretly taking down privileged communications or state secrets) were permissible.

Bucceroni, Institutions of Moral Theology

Gennaro Bucceroni, S.J. — 13 passages

Vol. II, On the Eighth Precept of t…, V. On Violation of Secret · Vol. III, On Penance, XII. On the Various Duties of the Minister

Vol. II, On the Eighth Precept of t…, V. On Violation of Secret

n. 1536.

What is a secret, and how manyfold is it? A secret in general is called whatever is hidden. As pertains to the present question, a secret is: some hidden thing revealed to someone, or known in any way, with the burden of silence. - A threefold secret is distinguished: natural, promised, committed. A natural secret exists if by chance you know something which you cannot reveal without the just sorrow or damage of another. It is promised if by a gratuitous promise you promise another that you will reveal to no one a thing which you already knew or of which you receive knowledge; or by an onerous promise of revealing the thing to no one, another manifests it to you under this condition. Finally it is committed when you reveal a matter to another for the sake of counsel or help, with this express or tacit condition, of revealing it to no one. L. 970.; St. Thomas, Quodl. 12, a. 21.

n. 1537.

How does a natural secret oblige? - In a grave matter it obliges of itself under grave sin, and indeed for the most part from justice, sometimes from charity alone, unless a just cause excuses. The reason is that from the revelation of the secret damage to neighbor follows for the most part, and he has the right not to be injured without just cause. Moreover, he is affected with just sorrow who, as if deprived of his own thing, is deprived of a secret without just cause. Without just cause; for a natural secret obliges insofar as in that case justice or charity obliges; when this obligation ceases from a just cause, the obligation of the secret will cease. L. 970.

n. 1538.

How does a promised secret oblige? - It obliges of itself gravely or lightly, according as someone by promise willed to oblige himself --- gravely and from justice in grave matter; or lightly and from mere fidelity, which from its genus is light. The reason is that the aforesaid obligation arises spontaneously from the promise made. Wherefore a gratuitously promised secret regularly does not oblige with grave inconvenience; whether an onerous one obliges even with grave inconvenience depends on the intention of the one exacting it and of the one promising it, and on the damage of each. With very grave damage it regularly does not oblige, unless someone expressly promised it in such a way; and it is licit that he extorted it by injury, if nevertheless from the revelation the other would not undergo the same damage. Cf. 987.; Ithur. Cas. 37, n. 2, 5, 6.; L. 970.

n. 1539.

How does a committed secret oblige? It obliges of itself under grave sin from justice, and indeed more strictly than a merely natural secret, and also than a promised one. The reason is that besides the natural obligation, there urges also an obligation from onerous contract; for another would not commit knowledge of the matter to you unless he received from you a promise of secrecy. Moreover, in miserable affairs also to snatch away counsel and help is dreadful and publicly ruinous. Hence by civil law also it is prohibited to reveal a committed secret, and magistrates are forbidden to question about those things which by reason of the office one exercises, e.g., of pastor, advocate, etc., have been entrusted to someone. C. I. Proc. poen. 288.; C. G. poen. 378.

n. 1540.

Note: There are several and grave theologians who probably defend that it is not mortal to reveal a grave matter committed under secret to one or another upright person under the same secret, provided it is not disclosed to whom especially he who committed the secret wished it concealed; since the matter can still be called secret in those circumstances. Yet this is not so easily to be permitted in practice. For so great is the talkativeness of men that a secret can scarcely stop with one. By an oath furnished, officials of the Roman curia are held to keeping secret; administrators, consultors, cardinals of the Sacred Congregations of the Holy Office, of the Index, of the Consistory; synodal examiners and pastor-consultors; examiners of books and writings of the Servants of God; and administrators of any order in the Roman curia. Ord. serv. in R. C. after Const. Sapienti Consilio. Secret is to be kept in designating those who are proposed for Episcopal Sees in the United States of North America. S. C. Consistor. 2 July 1910. The secret to be kept in designating persons for episcopal sees is extended to all dioceses and provinces in which the same or a similar form of designation obtains as in the United States of North America. S. C. Cons. 28 Apr. 1911.

Deputies for discipline and deputies for economy of the new major Roman Seminary at the Lateran, and of the minor Seminary at the Vatican, according to C. In praecipuis of Pius X, 28 June 1913, are obliged under grave sin to keep secret from office concerning business discussed and concluded in the deputation. S. C. Cons. 30 Oct. 1913. Public agents before the Sacred Congregations are held to keeping secret from office. C. Sapienti consilio, Reg. Gener. after C. cap. 9. Those who violate the secret which is called of the Holy Office cannot be absolved except by the Supreme Pontiff, the Cardinal Penitentiary himself excluded, from the reserved excommunication to the same Supreme Pontiff which they incur. Ord. serv. in R. C. Norm. pecul. c. 7, a. 2, n. 4.

n. 1541.

Whether from violation of a secret an obligation of restitution arises? He who by revealing another's secret sinned mortally is held from justice and under grave obligation to repair the grave damage of another. The reason is that it is unjust damaging. Cf. 1358.

n. 1542.

Whether it is ever licit to explore and reveal a secret? - It is licit to explore and reveal a natural, promised, and committed secret: 1. From the rightly presumed consent of him whose interest it is that the secret be concealed; for then there is no injury of anyone's right. 2. If the matter has already been spread abroad from another source; for then it ceases to be secret. 3. If damage to the republic is going to follow from the secret. The reason is that private good ought to yield to the common good, and therefore there can be no obligation of procuring a private good against common damage. And for the same reason, if common damage would follow from revelation of a secret, one is held rather to undergo death and any torments whatever than to reveal the secret. 4. Regularly, if from the observation of the secret grave damage would come to you or to him to whom the secret pertains, or to another innocent person. The reason is that naturally no obligation can be given against the order of charity; nor is anyone by his promise and contract presumed to have obliged himself to such a burden, that he keep a secret even with his own grave damage, unless from the circumstances this certainly appears and the thing itself requires it. 5. If there is question especially of a committed secret concerning a truly grave matter, a committed secret does not cease in the private damage of someone, even if very grave; but it does cease in the grave damage of him to whom the secret has been committed; in grave spiritual damage of the very one committing it, e.g., if he wishes to marry his spurious daughter; in damage of another which threatens him from the very one committing the secret, as if a girl attempts to procure abortion and kill the fetus. The reason of the first assertion is that it still more concerns the public good that this secret be kept than that the private damage of another, even very grave, be impeded.

The reason of the second assertion is that otherwise, in the 1st case, you will scarcely find anyone who would wish to give counsel or help in straits of this kind, which likewise would be pernicious to the public good; in the 2nd and 3rd, the promise of secrecy would be illicit. 6. Finally, someone can use knowledge of a secret for his own advantage as if his own thing, although he extorted the secret not without injury to another, if nevertheless this is done without another's unjust damage, and he does that which otherwise by his own right he could have done. L. 570, 971.; l. 4, n. 49.; l. 6, n. 698.; St. Thomas, 2. 2, q. 70, a. 1 ad 1, 2.; Laym. l. 3, tr. 3, p. 2, c. 5, n. 2.; Lugo de Iust. et Iur. d. 14, n. 142.; d. 38, n. 37 seqq.; Ithur. l. c. n. 8-10, 11, 28, 29, 30-34, 37, 38.; Appendix n. 4, 19, 22, 23.; La Croix l. 2, p. 2, n. 1231.

n. 1543.

Whether someone is held to manifest a secret to a judge legitimately questioning? - Resp. Affirmatively, if there is question of a merely natural secret; because the obligation of obedience to be furnished to a judge legitimately questioning on account of the common good is stronger than that of impeding damage to a private person by observation of a secret; and in any case, since it is legitimately inflicted by a judge, there will be no injury of another's right. - Resp. Affirmatively also if there is question of a secret simply promised; because by the promise you obliged yourself only to that which you could licitly furnish.

But you could not promise against obedience owed to a judge or superior; because, when you knew the crime, you had already contracted a natural obligation of manifesting it, if the judge or superior required this. Therefore the subsequent promise of secrecy could not destroy the prior obligation. Resp. Negatively of itself, if there is question of a secret promised by pact and onerous promise.

The reason is that, as St. Thomas says, 2. 2, q. 70, a. 1 ad 2, "to keep faith is of natural right: but nothing can be commanded to a man against that which is of natural right." - Indeed, when an onerous contract intervenes, it is altogether of natural right to keep the faith given. - Resp. Likewise negatively, of itself, if there is question of a committed secret. The reason is that the common good itself demands that, from fear of such revelation, men not be deprived of the advantage of seeking necessary counsel or help, which certainly they would never require unless they were certain of the secret to be kept. Therefore the common good itself demands that, as long as the one committing the secret can licitly keep his secret, he retains the right that the other not betray it. Hence one can answer a judge questioning: I do not know, understanding internally, in such a way that I ought to manifest it; although, with an oath interposed, he is compelled to give testimony. S. Poenit. 21 Aug. 1830. Of itself; for otherwise it is if the case is one in which someone can and is held to reveal the secret, as for instance if heresies, conspiracies, robberies are to be restrained. - L. 970.; Ithur. l. c. n. 13, 25.; Append. n. 10, 11, 12.; St. Thomas, Quodl. 1, a. 15, 16.; Lugo d. 14, n. 135, 141.; Gur. 437.

n. 1544.

Whether you can reveal a secret if you promised to keep it even with loss of life? Resp. Affirmatively, if the common good requires it, because a promise made against the common good is null. Resp. Negatively, if there is question of your own damage simply grave, and the other is placed in the same peril; because it is better to keep this secret promised by a special contract. - Resp. Likewise negatively, more probably, if there is question of your extreme damage, and the other would be cast into the same danger, or at least a very grave one, because you have expressly renounced your right, nor is it illicit in the case to omit the preservation of life in order to keep a promise. But it is altogether necessary that the business to be kept secret be of very grave moment. Otherwise the promise would be prodigal, which we are not held to keep. Yet St. Liguori 971 says the opposite is sufficiently probable, because it is licit for no one to squander his own life and postpone it to another's.

Ithur. l. c. n. 30.

n. 1545.

Whether he sins gravely who opens or reads another's letters? Resp. Affirmatively, of itself, or from its genus. The reason is that by natural right and the right of nations there is an obligation of leaving the secrets of letters uninjured; otherwise human commerce would be ruined. - Except the following cases: 1. If there is tacit or presumed consent of him who writes, or of him to whom the letters are sent. 2. If it is known or presumed that the letters contain matters of light moment. 3. If it is done from a just cause, e.g., for averting public or private damage, provided one has the right of opening the letters for warding off that evil, and does not read more than is necessary for this end. 4. If the letters are opened from levity or from some inadvertence. L. 1. 5, n. 70.; H. A. 5.; Lugo Resp. Mor. l. 5, d. 10.

n. 1546.

Note: Until the letter is delivered to him to whom it has been sent, it still pertains to the sender, who will be able to recall it to himself. That the secret be preserved, writings to be transmitted to the Holy See which contain secrets ought to be closed. S. C. Consist. 25 Nov. 1908. From C. L. 575, letters sent cannot be published without the permission of the author or of him who represents him, except in the case that they are to be added to some process. Violation of the secret of letters is prohibited by grave penalties in Civil Law. C. I. Poen. 159-164.

n. 1547.

Resolutions: To gather letters torn into small pieces, to join the various parts together, and to read them, is not licit with justice saved. For someone tore the letter apart in this way so that it could not be read. L. 1. 5, n. 70. "Thus a Prince can open letters not only of enemies, but also of others, which in time of war come from places bordering enemies. Likewise public ministers, as often as they judge it necessary for the public good.... And this proceeds not only for a Prince and ministers, but also for private persons....

A religious Superior licitly opens and reads the letters of his subjects, provided they are not sent to a higher superior, or to one whom the statutes exempt, nor come from him, either from the statute or custom of the religion, or from probable suspicion that they contain something evil." L. 1. 5, n. 70. Thus also in colleges and seminaries the superior, by reason of a more special vigilance to be observed, can open the letters of students, unless they are sent to other higher superiors or received from them, or unless there is question of a secret of conscience or of a family secret; for then it suffices that the superior know that the letters are truly directed to the higher superior, to the spiritual director, or to the parents, or received from them.

Gousset 1090. - Struggl 56. III.; Ithur. l. c. n. 26 seqq.; Ferraris v. Litterae n. 9, 10. In the Norms of the S. C. EE. and RR. for Religious Institutes, art. 179, 180, it is said: Letters to be sent by Sisters, and those sent to them, are to be handed to the local superioresses, who will be able to read them at their discretion. Let them use this faculty with the moderation of prudence and charity, the secret being kept. From any inspection of superioresses are excepted letters to be sent to the moderator general, or provincial, and their councilors or assistants, to the Bishop and to the S. C. EE. and RR., or those given by these to the Sisters.

Vol. III, On Penance, XII. On the Various Duties of the Minister

n. 831.

What of the obligation of the seal of Confession? - The seal of Confession is the religious obligation of preserving secrecy concerning those things which are known from sacramental Confession, namely of manifesting them to others neither directly nor indirectly, nor, outside confession, to the penitent himself. - There is a most strict obligation of preserving the seal of Confession inviolably.

This is clear 1. From natural law, and indeed under a threefold title, namely from charity, from justice, and from religion. 2. From positive divine law, at least implicit; for from the institution of Christ, Confession, imposed on all from necessity of precept and from necessity of means, must be secret: therefore by that very fact there has been imposed by Christ on confessors the obligation of preserving the seal. 3.

From ecclesiastical law, the Fourth Lateran Council, C. 21, Omnis utriusque sexus, etc. - The obligation of the seal of Confession always presses in every case, so that in no possible case is it lawful to reveal anything heard and received in Confession. The reason is manifestly clear; because if some exception could be given, men would always fear lest such a sin be that cause for licitly breaking the seal, and consequently the sacrament of penance would become odious. Moreover no cause of obtaining good or avoiding evil can compensate for that evil of hatred of the sacrament. - The obligation of the seal arises from every and only sacramental Confession, namely one made with the intention of accusing oneself and obtaining absolution. From every, because then the whole reason for the precept is present; and this holds even if absolution has not been conferred for whatever reason, since Confession is made in order to receive absolution at some time. From only, because only sacramental Confession induces the obligation of the seal, since any other manifestation has no relation with the sacrament of penance. - L. 634, 636; E. M.

Bucceroni, Cases of Conscience

Gennaro Bucceroni, S.J. — 16 passages

88. Mental Restriction, Secret

Magdalena, a wife, is accused by her own husband concerning adultery altogether hidden, so that he can institute divorce before a judge and enter another marriage. Hence Magdalena asks her confessor whether she is held to confess her sin in court. The confessor responds that she can deny that she committed adultery.

Q. What as to the Case?

R. “It must be said that concerning this a distinction must be made. For if the adultery is altogether hidden, she ought not to confess her sin in court, nor ought an oath concerning speaking the truth to be demanded from her, because hidden things are reserved to the divine judgment alone; according to that saying, 1 Cor. 4:5: Do not judge before the time, until the Lord comes, who will illuminate the hidden things of darkness. But when infamy proceeds from adultery, or some evident signs appear which can cause vehement suspicion, or when it has been half-proved, then an oath concerning speaking the truth ought to be demanded from her, and she herself is held to confess the truth.” S. Th. Quodl. 5. a. 16. Therefore, since in the Case there is question of adultery altogether hidden, Magdalena can, by mental restriction, deny it, saying, I did not commit adultery, and understanding, which I am held to confess in court. For the response is of itself to be understood according to the question made. But a question made by a judge concerning adultery is evidently a question concerning adultery about which he himself can ask and render sentence, and which consequently the guilty woman is held to confess in court. I. M. 1530, 1535; G. 418, 419.

Galenus, a most skilled physician, knew a most powerful herb for checking the flow of blood. He communicated the secret only to Laelius, his dearest friend, under the latter’s promise of keeping the same secret. Galenus having died, Laelius, who alone knows the secret, would like to manifest the secret for public utility; and he proposes the doubt to his confessor.

Q. Can Laelius, in the Case, manifest the secret?

R. It seems that Laelius can manifest the aforesaid secret. The reason is that from that manifestation no damage at all can come to Galenus, indeed good can come, namely praise and honor for him. Nor truly can damage of this sort come to any other, since Laelius alone knows the secret. Whence, communication of that secret having been made to him by Galenus, he himself is now the absolute owner of this secret. Besides, the secret is altogether useful to the common good of others. Wherefore it would rather seem to be against charity not to communicate a salutary remedy to all. This is confirmed by the authority of St. Thomas. For the Angelic Doctor, Quodl. 12. a. 21, raises the question: “Whether one receiving the teaching of some experiment under an oath not to communicate it is held to observe the oath”; and he responds: “One thing must be said here simply, and another in the Case. Speaking simply, he is not held, but he acted badly by swearing. An oath loses force not only when the oath is illicit, but also when he swears to worse things; because an obligating oath ought to have judgment, justice, and truth. But even if I sometimes swear something which it is lawful for me not to do, say, not to go to church, nevertheless it is not lawful to swear (forever), because although it is lawful for me for some time to do or omit this good, which is to go to church, nevertheless it is not lawful for me to interpose an oath and to harden my soul toward not doing some good, because this is to act against the Holy Spirit. And therefore an oath against everything which is of the genus of good things is illicit and not to be observed. Nevertheless, in the Case, he is held to observe it, say if that man or another sufficient physician were present and were prepared to cure and to use that experiment for the bodily health of others.” Scavini, ed. 12, Milan 1874, l. 2. n. 229, speaking of an oath of keeping a secret concerning the art of making some medicine, of healing some infirmities, says: “Notwithstanding the oath, you are held from charity to reveal it, if otherwise someone would undergo grave danger of death, or if the art would therefore die with him, with harm to the commonwealth, and the sick cannot otherwise be healed, since an oath is not for damage.”

Eustachius, under the strictest promise of secrecy, manifested to Hilarius that Amalia, his daughter, was spurious. Moreover Hilarius in his own mind had proposed to marry Amalia; but, her condition having been learned, he altogether changed his mind and married another.

Q. What as to the Case?

R. Hilarius used his own right, nor did he act illicitly in any way. A secret is, as it were, another’s thing, and consequently of itself it is not lawful to explore or extort it. For that would be, as it were, to snatch his own thing from the owner, although someone proposes to himself not to reveal the secret to others. But after someone has in whatever way naturally learned a secret, that knowledge has now been made his own, and he is not prohibited from using it without any unjust damage to another. Hence, if the secret is some invention of art or science, I can use it, if utility follows for me and no damage follows for another; indeed also, according to Lessius, if some damage to another follows, because that knowledge is mine. If the secret regards some fact, someone can then use it, namely by doing those things to which he already had a right before the knowledge was accepted; for after the knowledge has been accepted, he does not lose the right, as, e.g., if someone seeks a benefice or office which he has learned to be vacant, or buys a field in which he has learned that a treasure lies hidden. Less. l. 2. c. 12. n. 131.

Sempronius had written his wife as heir in usufruct, with the burden added that she furnish support to Caius and to Titia, his mother; but in ownership he had named Caius himself as heir, and if he should die without offspring, he had substituted the sons of his niece Bertha, from his sister, who, the testament excluded, by law would have succeeded to the inheritance of her maternal uncle. After the death of the testator, Bertha pressed in civil judgment for the nullity of the testament, since he had called an adulterine son to the inheritance, namely Caius himself, as she said, born from Titia at a time when marriage with his wife was standing. But truly, since the arguments deduced for proving this did not exceed the limit of mere conjecture, and Bertha had declared that in the episcopal Chancery and in the baptismal parish archive documents existed by which the true status of Caius, as she contended, would be placed in clear light, the presiding judge asked the bishop that he exhibit the mentioned documents.

Q. Could the bishop manifest and hand over the commemorated documents?

R. Negatively, as is evident from the Response of the S. C. EE. et RR. 25 Feb. 1842, Bizzarri Collectan. ed. 1855, p. 101. But the reason is that it is especially of the public good that the things which are committed to some person established in some ministry by reason of office, it be unlawful to publish and manifest; for otherwise it would be done with the faith owed to public authority, especially of the Church; for no one would any longer be found who would entrust himself to the same. And thus the Civil Laws themselves exempt Advocates, Physicians, Surgeons, and other professionals from giving testimony concerning those things which become known to them by reason of profession. Nor truly could the bishop or pastor have exhibited the aforesaid documents, entrusted to his faith, from the fact that Bertha already knew the tenor of the documents from the rumor of the crowd. For if truth is obligated to guarding a secret, it cannot confirm public report and rumor, often doubtful and uncertain, by its assent and its affirmation, and render it undoubted and certain. For then it would already be done against the law of secrecy. And although perhaps Bertha knew the matter certainly from the corrupted faith of officials, and so from a shameful and unjust fact, nevertheless to continue and confirm baseness and injustice is altogether illicit. Nor truly is he to be heard in court who alleges his own baseness. Whence Bertha could acquire no right from this to the exhibition of the aforesaid documents.

Lucianus, by a fortuitous event, received letters directed to Lucius. Recognizing the handwriting of Rufinus, by whom many damages had already been inflicted on him, and fearing lest those letters contain something against him, whence Lucius, his friend and a powerful man, could be turned away from his friendship, he at once opens and reads the letters, and in them he in fact finds several calumnies asserted against him. Hence, saying nothing about the letters received, by opportune means he forestalls the mind of Lucius, and easily frees himself from every evil machination of Rufinus.

Q. What as to the Case?

R. Lucianus licitly read the letters in the Case. For he did this not with the intention of prejudicing the right of another, but with the intention of averting from himself an unjust burden threatening him, judging probably, indeed morally certainly, that the aforesaid letters had been written to his prejudice. But it is lawful to read another’s letters, just as it is lawful to manifest a natural secret, for forestalling unjust damage to be inflicted on oneself or on another. Elbel 616; I. M. 1545.

But what if Lucianus had deceitfully stolen the letters beforehand: could he still use them for removing from himself the grave danger of damage which he first learned from the letters themselves was threatening him, or which he otherwise knows to threaten him? Generally it is not lawful to use another’s letters deceitfully stolen, especially if damage to that other follows from it. The reason is that no one can continue in sin and in injustice. But if someone uses that knowledge, unjustly acquired, for driving away from himself grave and unjust damage, that is not illicit. It is lawful in those very circumstances in which someone licitly reveals another’s sin and reads another’s letters. For just as someone would now licitly acquire that knowledge and licitly use it, so now he can licitly use knowledge already acquired, although its acquisition was unjust in the beginning. I. M. 1494, 1495, 1545; G. 429, 430, 440-442.

Gury-Ballerini, Compendium of Moral Theology (8th ed., 1884)

Jean-Pierre Gury, S.J.; notes by Antonio Ballerini, S.J. — 25 passages

Vol. I, Treatise On the Precepts o…, On the Eighth Precept of t…, Ch. IV, Suspicion, and Rash Doubt, Appendix. On the Violation of a Secret

- A secret in general is called whatever is hidden: as concerns our matter, we call a secret whatever either from its own nature, or from a special contract, ought to be kept hidden.

A threefold secret is distinguished:

Natural, if it is imposed by nature itself, for example, if you know something which you cannot manifest without grave injury to another, whether in estimation, or in goods, etc.

Promised, if someone hearing a private matter from another or learning it by chance promises that he will not reveal it.

Committed, if someone manifests something to another, and at the same time tacitly or expressly requires silence from him concerning it.

n. 469.

Principles. - I. A natural secret in a grave matter obliges per se under grave sin, and indeed from justice, unless a just cause excuses. The reason is that from the revelation of a secret there follows per se damage to the neighbor, who has a right not to be injured without a reasonable cause. - St. Lig., n. 970. - Salm., etc.

n. 469.

II. A promised secret obliges per se gravely or lightly according to the quality of the matter and the nature of the obligation undertaken, which for the most part is from fidelity alone. The reason is that a contract is contained in a simple promise, which per se obliges only from fidelity and according to the intention of the one promising, as was said concerning a vow ¹. - St. Lig., ibid., and others commonly.

¹ When the matter of a promised secret, even apart from any promise, by its own nature requires that it be kept hidden, because evidently it is also the matter of a natural secret, it is easily understood that the law of a promised secret can also oblige gravely. It is not so if you derive the whole obligation of the secret from the promise, and then in general establish that a promise obliges from mere fidelity; since the obligation of fidelity according to common doctrine is light from its genus. Therefore you will settle the matter more clearly when you notice with Card. De Lugo (De Iust., disp. 23, n. 14 and 90-91), that by force of a promise someone can oblige himself either from mere fidelity or from justice, and that it depends on the intention and free will of the promiser in what way he obliges himself; to this can also be recalled the words of the Author saying: and according to the intention of the one promising. Therefore a promise will oblige under light sin if one promises from mere fidelity; but if from justice, according to the measure of the matter it will also be able to oblige under grave sin.

n. 469.

III. A committed or communicated secret, which is also called rigorous, obliges per se under grave sin from justice, and indeed more strictly than a merely natural and also than a promised secret; because besides the natural obligation there also presses an obligation from a contract undertaken expressly or tacitly ². - St. Lig., n. 970.

² A contract intervenes also in a promised secret; but it differs from the contract of a committed secret, because the former is a gratuitous contract, but the latter is onerous; for another would not commit to you knowledge of the matter unless he received from you the promise of secrecy.

Questions. - Q. 1. What are the just causes of manifesting a secret?

Resp. 1. The rightly presumed consent of him whose interest it is that the secret be hidden. - 2. The divulgation of the matter proceeding from elsewhere. - 3. Damage to the Republic or to private persons going to follow from the secret. Nevertheless if there is question of damage already inflicted, you cannot lawfully reveal a committed secret, so long as the one causing the damage is not himself bound to betray himself ³. - St. Lig., n. 971, Lugo, Sanchez, etc.

³ And in this a committed secret differs from a merely promised one: in this latter the one promising has not received knowledge of the matter by force of his promise, but gratuitously promises secrecy concerning knowledge received in whatever way. Further, when he thereafter promises this, even with an oath added, he cannot by his promise exempt himself from an obligation by which he is already held. Therefore, since each one is bound to open the truth to a judge legitimately interrogating, a promise of secrecy cannot extend to the case of a judge legitimately interrogating. But the contrary happens in a committed secret. For the common good demands that, through fear of revelation, men not be deprived of the advantage of seeking necessary counsel or help, which nevertheless they would never seek unless they were certain that the secret would be kept. Therefore the common good demands that, as long as the one committing the secret can lawfully keep his secret, he retain the right that the other not betray it. Hence the reason why physicians, advocates, midwives, theologians consulted, etc., are not bound, even to a judge interrogating, to open a matter known under a committed secret; indeed why they are bound not to open it.

Q. 2. Whether you can reveal a secret if you have promised to keep it even with loss of life?

Resp. 1. It is affirmed, if the common good requires it, because a promise made against the common good is null.

Resp. 2. It is denied, if there is question of your own damage simply grave, because it is better to keep the secret promised by this special contract. It is also denied more probably, if there is question of your extreme damage, because you have expressly renounced your right, nor is it illicit to omit the preservation of life in order that you may keep a promise ⁴. - Thus Lugo, Lacroix, and St. Lig., n. 971. - Nevertheless the Holy Author deservedly says that the opposite is sufficiently probable.

⁴ In order that this opinion can be held probable, it would further be necessary that the business to be kept secret be of the gravest moment. For otherwise the promise would be prodigal, which we are not bound to keep.

- Q. 3. Whether he sins gravely who reveals a secret to one or another upright man under the same secret?

Resp. It is denied probably per se; because in this case grave injury toward another does not seem to be committed. Except provided that it is not revealed to a person to whom the one committing the secret to you is deservedly presumed to have especially wished it to be concealed. - St. Lig., n. 971, and others.

I said per se; because in practice, on account of circumstances, the revelation of a secret will easily become grave, namely when you suppose too lightly that the persons to whom you commit a secret received by you are so discreet that they will certainly keep it, especially if there is dealing with women. For the secret was committed to you because you were thought discreet; but if you violate it, do you think that another, to whom you entrust it, will be more discreet than you yourself?

Q. 4. Whether one opening or reading another's letters sins gravely?

Resp. It is affirmed per se, or from its genus. The reason is that by natural right and the law of nations there is present an obligation of leaving the secrets of letters uninjured; otherwise human intercourse would be ruined. - St. Lig., Hom. apost., tr. 11, on the 8th Precept, n. 5; and others commonly.

Except the following cases: 1. if there is present the tacit or presumed consent of the one who writes, or of the one to whom the letters are sent; 2. if it is known or presumed that the letters contain matters of light moment; 3. if it is done for a just cause, for example, to avert public or private damage, provided that in order to ward off that evil one has the right of opening the letters, and reads no more than is necessary for this end ⁵; - Scav. - 4. if the letters are opened from levity or from some inadvertence. - St. Lig., l. 5, n. 70.

⁵ ** To this can be recalled the question which St. Alphonsus (Lib. 3, n. 969) calls great: Whether, in order to avoid your own grave damage, you can reveal the hidden crime of another, if you have received knowledge of it unjustly by force or fraud, suppose by opening letters, etc. But after relating the opinions of others he adds: Among these so various opinions, the opinion of Lugo (de Iust., disp. 14, n. 101) pleases me more. This great theologian teaches that, generally speaking, you cannot use that knowledge unjustly received with the damage of another, for escaping any damage whatever of your own... Lugo rightly admits only then that you can manifest the crime, when it would have been permitted to you even by force and fraud to seek it out and to open the letters. Thus St. Alphonsus.

But Lugo explains this doctrine of his thus by an example (l. c.): In order that this distinction may be explained and proved, we can use that example from goods of fortune, which anyone, as I suppose, can usurp even by deceit and force in order to free himself from extreme danger: wherefore, although you had previously usurped goods of this sort by injury and theft, yet if afterward you are in extreme need of them, you will now be able lawfully to retain and consume them, because you have been reduced to the state in which you could again take and consume them in whatever way. Thus, therefore, although you had unjustly received knowledge of another's crime, yet if you have been reduced to the state in which, on account of necessity, you could procure that knowledge in whatever way, you will be able lawfully to use that knowledge, just as if you had lawfully had it from the beginning.

Resolves. - 1. A promised secret in no way obliges whenever otherwise you were bound to manifest the matter, for example, if you are interrogated by a Superior or by a judge. - St. Lig., n. 970.

A committed secret must be kept by you generally, even if you are interrogated by a Superior or judge, etc.; but you must answer that you know nothing about this, since indeed you have knowledge of this sort in the same way as if you did not have it. - St. Lig., n. 970.

A secret only implicitly or tacitly committed must be kept in the same way as if it had been expressly committed. Thus counselors of Princes, generals of war, advocates, physicians, theologians consulted about some question, and absolutely all to whom a secret is committed for the sake of counsel or consolation or help, are strictly bound to secrecy.

A religious Superior lawfully opens the letters of his subjects, or of others sent to them, whether from the statute of the Religion, or from custom, or from prudent suspicion that they contain something less right. - St. Lig., l. 5, n. 70.

Yet a Superior cannot open and read the letters which subjects send to mediate Superiors and, in turn, those Superiors send to subjects; for right reason of governing demands that supreme Moderators be able to communicate freely with all subjects. - St. Lig., ibid. - See Cases, n. 436 and following.

END OF THE TREATISE ON THE PRECEPTS OF THE DECALOGUE

Tanquerey

Adolphe Tanquerey, S.S. — 13 passages (filed under the subtopics)

Vol. III, Contracts, and the Obligat…, On the Virtue of Justice (…, Part I — Chapter II: On Injury, or the Violation of Right

n. 418.

I. Notion of a secret. A secret is a matter, not yet made public knowledge, which ought to be preserved hidden. - It can be threefold: (a) natural, which from the very nature of the matter ought to be guarded, because the matter cannot be manifested without damage to the neighbor; e.g., if you know where another's money is hidden which robbers intend to steal, by the natural law, without any promise, you are prohibited from manifesting this; (b) promised, when someone explicitly promises to keep silence concerning a hidden matter which he already knew beforehand; e.g., if someone, after hearing a secret, spontaneously or at the petition of a friend, says: I promise you to press the matter with deep silence; (c) committed, when the matter is not revealed to someone except under an express or tacit promise of preserving secrecy; express, if it is said: I shall not manifest this matter to you except under the condition that you be silent concerning it; tacit, when a hidden matter is committed to someone who from office, by force of the duty which he bears, or by special title of kinship or friendship, is bound to preserve the secret matter; thus physicians, advocates, priests, parents and friends and others, to whom a hidden matter is not manifested except because it is supposed that it is to be guarded faithfully. - When a sin is declared under the seal of confession, it is called sacramental.

n. 419.

II. On the obligation of a secret. First principle: Those who violate a natural or committed secret without cause commit a sin against justice, and indeed grave from its kind.

(A) As regards a natural secret, this is clear; for, from the definition given above, it cannot be violated without damage being inflicted upon the neighbor in the goods of body, soul, or fortune; and therefore to manifest such a secret without cause is the same as cooperating unjustly with the damage of the neighbor. - But the gravity of the sin depends on the gravity of the damage which is foreseen or can be foreseen.

(B) A committed secret obliges even more strictly from justice; for in this case there is a true contract, explicit or implicit, by force of which the one hearing the secret obliges himself to preserve it inviolably; if therefore he manifests it without reason, he harms the neighbor and society: (a) the neighbor, because he violates the strict right which the latter has that the secret be preserved, which was not revealed except under the condition of guarding it faithfully;¹ (b) society; for the common good demands that all may safely seek counsel or aid from those who, from office or by title of special friendship, are able to offer it; but men would be deprived of this utility if a committed secret could be manifested without grave cause; for who would confidently approach a physician, advocate, priest, and disclose to him secrets whose manifestation can harm him, unless he were certain that the same would be guarded inviolably?

¹ Hence civil laws affect violators of professional secrecy with severe penalties; cf. Cod. pen. gal., art. 378; Supplement, p. 72*.

n. 420.

Second principle: Those who violate a merely promised secret without cause sin against justice or fidelity, according to the intention of the one promising.

For he who promises something can bind himself in two ways: from justice indeed, if by explicit declaration, or implicitly from various circumstances, he manifests his intention of obliging himself thus; from fidelity, if he does not wish to undertake such an obligation, but only intends to confirm words by deeds. In the former case, the promise of itself obliges under grave sin, provided the matter is grave; in the latter, it binds only under light sin. Yet it must be noted that it is unworthy of an honorable man to violate these promises without reason.²

² "There could not exist a society, in fact, which does not rest on this firmly established principle: that every word given is sacred... What should one think of a man who has several words, or who has no word, for it is all one? In vain he lavishes his word of honor; it has no value in the eyes of anyone. Can one imagine a more certain sign of moral decline?" (Marion, Lecons de Morale, 11th ed., Paris, 1901, p. 269-270.)

I said merely promised, because it happens not rarely that a promised secret is at the same time natural, because it cannot be revealed without damage; then it obliges from justice, according to what was said above.

n. 421.

III. On the causes excusing from revelation of a secret. These ought to be greater the stricter the obligation is of preserving it; but this obligation depends on two things: (a) on the nature of the secret; for from what has been said, a committed secret obliges more strictly than a merely promised secret; and that which is at the same time natural and committed binds more strictly than a merely natural one; (b) on the damage inflicted: the graver and more irreparable the damage inflicted by the manifestation of the secret is, the greater cause is required for revealing it. - With these things posited, there are four causes from which a secret can legitimately be manifested:¹

¹ Some thought that a secret can never be revealed, even for saving the life of a friend; Fenelon excellently refutes these, in a letter, hitherto unknown, to L. de Sacy, which E. Levesque, S.S., made public in the periodical Revue des Facultes Cathol. de l'Ouest, April 1902, p. 511-526; from which we excerpt these things: "The silence which you would keep and which would cause your innocent friend to perish is contrary to humanity, to Christian charity, to good faith, and to the security of men in society... It is true that the secret which was told to you is a kind of deposit... It is not at all a deposit of sincere confidence, but a trap which is laid for you to force you to be an accomplice in a crime. Now society, which has so much interest in the preservation of other deposits, and in inviolable fidelity concerning other secrets, has a capital interest that the fraudulent deposit of so criminal a secret not be guarded, and that this deceiving depositor be confounded in his own deception... It is true that fidelity concerning a secret is a virtue, but this virtue is inferior to humanity, to charity, to the general order of human society... I would not wish, however, that you turn the secret against that unjust man from whom you hold it. To avoid this inconvenience, say to your friend only what is absolutely necessary for saving his life. Say it only to him alone. Say it to him only by using all the power which friendship gives you and all that which is acquired for you by the singular service which you actually render him, in order to prevent him from avenging himself."

n. 422.

1. The public good of civil or ecclesiastical society; for since the obligation of a secret was chiefly introduced on account of the public good, its obligation ceases when the public good demands the revelation of the secret, according to this: the safety of the commonwealth is the supreme law. But here there is question of a proportionately grave public good: therefore the damage threatening the commonwealth must be compared with the damage going to follow from the violation itself of the secret, and the lesser evil, with all things carefully weighed, must be chosen. Thus if someone under secrecy, even committed secrecy, knows another's plan of betraying a city, and cannot otherwise impede its execution, he can and ought to manifest it to authority; but light damage does not suffice, arising namely from the fact that some guilty person will remain unpunished.

n. 423.

1. The good of him who handed down the secret; for he is not judged unwilling, since there is question of promoting his own good; thus if someone knows that another wishes to marry, although bound by a diriment impediment, and that this evil cannot otherwise be averted than by manifesting the impediment to his own priest. Yet the case of a secret which was committed by reason of public office is excepted (De Matrim., n. 200): for then the public good demands that such a secret be guarded.

n. 424.

1. The good of an innocent third party, namely when grave damage to him cannot be averted in another way; e.g., if you know, even under secrecy, that snares are being unjustly prepared for Titius, and that his death cannot otherwise be impeded than by revealing the secret, it is licit to do this; for charity demands that we impede grave damage to an innocent person even with damage to the guilty. - But if there is question of a committed secret, it is not licit to manifest it, unless the damage to be inflicted is from him who committed the secret; for, if it were revealed in other circumstances, the public good could be injured, as was explained above; but on the supposition that the one committing the secret himself wishes to kill or wound an innocent person, he now becomes an unjust aggressor, and the innocent person can be warned to beware for himself.¹

¹ Yet in many regions this is prohibited to those who have received the secret from office; thus physicians are forbidden to reveal a hidden contagious disease even to relatives.

n. 425.

1. One's own good, namely when he who heard the secret cannot flee grave damage except by manifesting the secret; for he is not judged to have obliged himself with so great an inconvenience.

Yet the matter becomes more difficult if there is question of a committed secret; e.g., Caius is falsely accused of homicide, whose author he knows from a committed secret: can he manifest him, in order to spare his own life? - It is answered affirmatively if the author of the crime falsely accused him to whom he committed the secret: for then he is an unjust aggressor. But if the calumny proceeds from another source, it is controverted; each opinion seems probable; in practice the name of the guilty man can be manifested, if he is first warned that he should provide for himself by flight: for then he cannot complain.

But when the common good demands that a hidden matter be altogether preserved, even with the greatest private damage, - e.g., if the guarding of the secret is necessary for the security of the State or army, - it is necessary to die for the fatherland rather than betray the secret.

n. 426.

IV. Corollaries. 1. He who without legitimate authority and just cause maliciously investigates or extorts the secrets of another, of itself sins gravely against justice.

For each one has a right to his own secret: for nothing is more proper to man than the hidden things of the heart; now that right is injured as often as another maliciously, that is, through force, deceit, or fraud, tries to fish out these secrets. - But the gravity of the sin depends on the very gravity of the hidden matter which is thus extorted.

It was said (a) without legitimate authority; for superiors, whether ecclesiastical or civil, can and ought sometimes to investigate secrets on account of the common good; thus Bishops inquire concerning those to be ordained whether something is known against them; likewise magistrates from office can and ought to uncover crimes even hidden ones.

(b) Without just cause: for if it is licit to manifest a secret for averting grave damage, from what has been said above, by that very fact it is licit to investigate it; e.g., if someone were very probably to suspect that snares were being unjustly prepared for him, he would have the right of investigating the matter, and of exploring the secret counsels of adversaries: for this is the case of legitimate defense.

n. 427.

1. He who justly or unjustly uncovers the secrets of another cannot use them to the damage of the neighbor; e.g., if someone by chance hears others conversing about a new invention, still hidden, he cannot use this knowledge for his own advantage; for otherwise he inflicts injury upon them, because they will no longer be able to obtain the exclusive privilege to which they had a right. A fortiori if, by unjustly opening another's letters, you know that some office is vacant, you cannot seek it with the damage of another: for thus you would deprive another of the legitimate hope of obtaining the same.

n. 428.

1. From this it can be understood what must be said concerning the violation of a secret contained in letters.

(A) Of itself it is a grave sin to open and read another's letters, without the consent of him to whom they were written. For often secrets, some of which can be of great moment, are contained in these letters, e.g., matters pertaining to family, to business, or to conscience; and therefore by reading these letters without license, one exposes himself to the danger of unjustly knowing a secret of great moment.

n. 429.

(B) Yet the sin will be light: (a) if it is reasonably presumed that in these letters nothing is to be found except what is of lesser moment, e.g., if someone already knows the nature of the matters which are usually treated between two friends; (b) if the letters are opened or read from levity of mind, or without full advertence, and the reading is interrupted as soon as it is noticed that the matter is grave.

(C) But there will be no sin: (a) if express or tacit consent is present, - which nevertheless ought not easily to be presumed, - e.g., if spouses or friends are accustomed to hand over to one another to be read the letters which they receive from a common friend; (b) if in certain communities or colleges it is licit for the superior, from received custom or rule, to read the letters of subjects; for then the inferiors, by accepting the custom or rule, give tacit consent; yet letters sent to major superiors or received from them are excepted, and also those in which secrets of conscience are opened, from the reading of which the superior ought to abstain; (c) if the reading of some letter is necessary for averting damage threatening the commonwealth or private persons, according to what was said above.

n. 430.

(D) If letters have been thrown away by the owner, or knowingly left in a public place, they can be read without injustice, because he is deservedly judged to have renounced his right; but otherwise, if this happened against his intention.

But what if the owner tore up the letter and threw away its fragments? Not a few theologians hold that it can be read without injustice, because by so acting the owner renounced his right.¹ But much more probably others teach that this is not licit; for by tearing up the letters, he sufficiently signified that he did not wish them to be read by others, and therefore did not renounce his right.²

¹ Layman, lib. III, tr. III, p. 1, c. 4, n. 4; Lugo, d. XIV, n. 150; Vogler, n. 388.

² St. Alphonsus, lib. II, De peccatis, n. 70, with the authors alleged there.

Koch–Preuss

Antony Koch; adapted and edited by Arthur Preuss — 26 passages

Vol. V, Pt. I, Ch. II, Section 6: The Duty of Keeping Secrets

Neither the duty of telling the truth nor the virtue of veracity, demand that we disclose everything that we know always or to all men. On the contrary, we are sometimes bound to withhold knowledge or information from others.¹ This brings us to the consideration of secrets.

¹ St. Thomas, Summa Theol., 2a 2ae, qu. 40, art. 3: “A will would be disordered if someone wished nothing to be concealed from him by others.”—Gury, Comp. Theol. Mor., Vol. I, n. 484: “A secret is knowledge of some matter which by its own nature or by a special contract must be kept hidden.”

A secret (secretum) is something hidden or concealed, or, more properly, knowledge or information which we are in duty bound to keep from others.

There are various kinds of secrets. a) A secret is called natural (secretum naturale) if a man has accidentally or inadvertently or purposely through his own efforts (secretum extortum) obtained a knowledge of something which he may not reveal to others without violating justice or charity, or which the one concerned has a right to hide. The latter category includes everything that cannot be revealed without injury to the honor, reputation, or property of others. If a crime can be prevented, or an injustice righted by the revelation of a secret, it may be revealed, but only to those who are in a position to act effectively, for instance, parents and superiors. b) The duty of keeping a secret sometimes rests upon positive grounds, as when a secret has been communicated or entrusted to one in an official capacity, or for safe-keeping under promise of silence. To the former class (secreta commissa) belong the so-called official or professional secrets, i. e., communications made to a man solely because of his official station or office, or communications made because of knowledge he has obtained by means of official functions or by participation in debates or trials. c) The promised secret (secretum promissum) arises from the fact that one has, through one’s own efforts, obtained a knowledge of a secret and then bound himself by a promise to keep it from others.

If a man comes for professional advice to another, as to a lawyer or a doctor, or simply to a friend for moral counsel, and in order thereto imparts to him natural secrets, those secrets, as they are received and held by the person consulted, are called secrets of trust or privileged secrets, be- cause, in contradistinction to natural secrets and secrets of promise, they need not be delivered up at the demand of an authority empowered to inquire in the department in which the secret lies.

The highest kind of privileged secret is that called sacramental. It is protected by the seal of confession (secretum sacramentale, sigillum confessionis) and arises from the Sacrament of Penance.²

² Cfr. this Handbook, Vol. II, pp. 167 sqq.—J. P. Gury, Comp. Theol. Mor., Vol. I, n. 485, 488; Irish Theol. Quarterly, Vol. V (1910), No. 17; Vol. VIII (1913), No. 29, No. 31.

The duty of keeping secrets needs to be more accurately circumscribed. a) Broadly speaking, a man is bound to keep every secret of which he has knowledge. To divulge a secret of any kind without urgent reason is a sin against both charity and justice, the guilt of which is measured, first, by the malice involved in the act, and, secondly, by the importance of the secret divulged and the injury inflicted by its revelation.

Vol. I, Pt. II, Sect. II, Tractate VIII: On the Eigh…, Ch. I, Article III: On Violation of Secrecy · Vol. I, Pt. II, Sect. II, Tractate VIII: On the Eigh…, Ch. I, Art. III, § 1. On Revelation of a Secret · Vol. I, Pt. II, Sect. II, Tractate VIII: On the Eigh…, Ch. I, Art. III, § 2. On Inquiry into and Use of Another's Secret

It is sinful to induce others to violate the duty of secrecy, especially if it is done maliciously or by force.

n. ¶8.

More particularly, the obligation of secrecy is gauged by the nature of the secret. The seal of confession by its very nature binds absolutely and always. So-called natural secrets are based upon the obligation of justice, which man owes his fellowmen, and which admits of exceptions for just reasons, and does not exclude silent reservation.

n. ¶9.

Silent reservation is admissible also in regard to committed or entrusted secrets, nay, even in regard to secrets promised under oath.³

³ J. P. Gury, op. cit., I, n. 486: “Question I: What are the just causes for disclosing a secret? Answer: (1) The rightly presumed consent of the person whose interest it is to conceal the secret; (2) disclosure of the matter made from another source; (3) harm that would follow from the secret to the commonwealth or to private persons; indeed, a grave obligation to reveal the secret sometimes presses, especially by reason of the public good. Question II: Can you reveal a secret if you have promised to keep it even at the cost of your life? Answer: (1) Affirmatively, if the common good demands it, because a promise made against the common good is null; (2) negatively, if it concerns your own merely grave harm, because it is better to keep the secret promised by this special contract. More probably negatively even if it concerns your own extreme harm, because you expressly renounced your right, and it is not unlawful to omit the preservation of life in order to keep your promise. Nevertheless St. Alphonsus [l. III, n. 971, ed. Gaudé, II, 361] rightly says that the contrary is sufficiently probable.”—Reg. Iuris in VI° Decr. Bonifacii VIII, n. 69: “In evil promises it is not expedient to keep faith.”—Cfr. this Handbook, Vol. IV, p. 260, n. 16.

n. ¶10.

The obligation of keeping professional or official secrets rests upon fidelity, without which the social order could not exist, and can therefore be modified only by the exigencies of public welfare. b) Apart from the seal of confession, which, as we have said, binds absolutely and at all times, the obligation of keeping a secret ceases whenever there is a just cause or excuse for disclosing the same, that is to say, when the secret has become publicly known without the co-operation of him who knows of it, and the welfare of any of the parties concerned in it or the public interest require that it be revealed. This would be the case, for instance, if an innocent man were to suffer serious injury unless a secret were disclosed or if a criminal could be reformed by divulging it.

n. ¶11.

Generally speaking, the obligation of keeping a secret does not hold before the law if the secret involves matters which may not be legitimately concealed, e. g., unjust plots against others or against the commonwealth, abuses and faults which cannot be corrected without publicity, etc.

n. ¶12.

In such cases it makes no difference whether an oath is involved or not.

n. ¶13.

Parents, guardians, teachers, and other legitimate superiors are allowed, by opening letters or by other means, to procure a knowledge of things which their children or subjects illegitimately wish to conceal from them.⁴ The public authorities may, for reasons strong enough to justify the use of force, examine the correspondence of suspected persons.

⁴ Gury, Comp. Theol. Mor., I, n. 487: “The question is whether one sins gravely by opening or reading another’s letters. Answer: Affirmatively in itself. The reason is that by natural law and the law of nations there is an obligation to leave the secrets of letters inviolate; otherwise human intercourse would be ruined. Except the following cases: 1. If there is the tacit or presumed consent of the one who writes or of the one to whom the letters are sent; 2. if it is known or presumed that the letters contain matters of lesser importance; 3. if it is done for a just cause, e. g., to avert public or private harm; 4. if the letters are opened from levity or mere curiosity.”—Cfr. St. Alphonsus, Theol. Mor., l. V, n. 70 (ed. Gaudé, II, 755).

n. ¶14.

Much has been said of late against "secret diplomacy," and justly so: but the fact remains that every government is allowed, nay obliged, to keep secret certain things which cannot be divulged without danger to the common weal. But those in authority may not employ such secrets to cover dishonest transactions, or to create false opin- ions, or to spread lying reports, or to engage in mendacious propaganda either at home or abroad, nor, in general, use any means apt to injure or undermine the public confidence.

n. ¶15.

For the individual it is not only a command of natural, and especially of Christian, prudence, but it may even be a grave duty to refuse to be made the repository of secrets which do not concern him, or to pry into the secrets of others.

n. ¶16.

“The main art of keeping a secret is not to talk about it. If a man is asked an awkward question, and sees no alternative but to let out or lie, it is usually his own fault for having encouraged the questioner up to that point. A wise man lets drop in time topics of conversation which he is unwilling to have pressed. He is never the first to introduce such topics. It is said of the ploughman in Ecclesiasticus, that his story is of the sons of bulls—enarratio eius in filiis taurorum. After all, cattle have no secrets, but men and women have.”⁵

⁵ Joseph Rickaby, S. J., Political and Moral Essays, p. 221.

n. ¶17.

Without strict necessity, letters should not be opened, nor should family secrets be exposed, or if necessity demands that it be done, the duties enjoined by truth and fidelity should be strictly adhered to.

n. ¶18.

Parents, guardians, and superiors should be cautious in making use of their right to pry into the secrets of their subjects, for if this is done without a just cause, it will encourage rather than stop underhand dealing.⁶

⁶ Linsenmann, Moraltheologie, p. 440.

n. ¶19.

For the rest it is well to remember that, in the words of a famous German poet, “two things are a detriment to him who wishes to ascend the ladder of happiness: namely, keeping silence when it is time to speak, and speaking when it is time to be silent.”⁷

⁷ Fr. Bodenstedt.

n. ¶20.

3. the Means of Keeping a Secret.—

A positively untrue statement or denial is illicit, and mere silence often creates unjustifiable suspicion. Consequently, as it is often necessary to keep a secret, both for the sake of individuals and of society at large, moralists have devised ways and means by which illegitimate or curious questions can be evaded without lying or dissimulation. Of these ways and means the principal ones are: a) Amphiboly (ἀμφιβολία, doubt) or equivocation (aequivocatio), i. e., the use of equivocal or ambiguous expressions with the intention of being misunderstood by others. Usually in an expression of this kind the words reflect the thoughts of the speaker in such a way as to admit of a meaning different from the one that lies on the surface. Hence the speaker is not really the author of the ensuing deception, but the deception is the fault of the hearer, who could have perceived the true meaning had he paid closer attention to the words employed. b) Mental reservation or interior restriction (reservatio sive restrictio mentalis) may be subdivided into two species, namely: α) Pure mental reservation (restrictio sive reservatio pure seu stricte sive proprie mentalis) is the restriction of one’s meaning to the proposition as modified by some addition made to it within the mind of the speaker, the literal sense of which, therefore (verbum oris), is true only under the conditions retained in the mind (verbum mentis),—as if one, on being asked whether he did a certain thing, were to answer “No,” meaning, “Not in the way in which the questioner thinks, or at the time he means, or under the conditions he imagines, etc.,”—modifications which cannot be gathered either from the tenor of his words or the circumstances of the case.

n. ¶21.

Such pure or strict mental reservations are downright lies, because they aim at deception and effectively undermine the mutual confidence without which society can not exist.⁸

⁸ Gury, Comp. Theol. Mor., I, n. 457: “It is never lawful to use a purely or properly mental restriction, nor an amphibology not perceptible in a human manner; much less is it lawful to swear with them, because it is simply a lie.”—Cfr. the propositions condemned by Innocent XI, supra. Joseph Mausbach, Catholic Moral Teaching, pp. 79 sqq.; New York 1914; A. Meyenberg, Die katholische Moral, 2nd ed., pp. 180 sqq.; A. Adloff, Katholische Moral und Sittlichkeit, Strasbourg 1901, pp. 22 sqq.

n. ¶22.

β) Mental reservation in a broader sense (reservatio non pure sive late seu improprie mentalis aut sensibilis) is practiced if words are employed which are capable of being understood in different senses, either because they are in themselves ambiguous, or because they derive a special meaning from the circumstances of time, place, or person in which they are spoken, or, to put it somewhat differently, if the speaker really means what he says, but expresses himself so guardedly that the person addressed can gather his true intention only by taking his words in connection with the circumstances of the case. Thus when a servant says that his master is “not at home,” the words may mean either that he is absent or that he does not wish to receive visitors.⁹ With this kind of reservation, therefore, the true meaning of the speaker is not contained in the bare words, but may and must be gathered from the meaning which the words acquire from the circumstances in which they are spoken. Consequently, broad mental reservation is merely a species of equivocation, which, though by some authors called internal reservation, is in reality not such, because nothing is concealed.¹⁰

⁹ Slater, Moral Theology, I, 468.

¹⁰ Gury, Comp. Theol. Mor., I, n. 456: “Equivocations or amphibologies are also referred to restriction; these are expressions having a twofold principal sense, but one more obvious and the other less so, or even one spiritual and the other literal.”

n. ¶23.

In English, which is not the language of a Catholic people, and in which words mean, not what we would have them mean, but what they commonly mean in educated non-Catholic society, equivocation denotes a practice which is certainly wrong, and carries all the guilt of lying. “What ordinary Englishmen call equivocation,” says Fr. Rickaby, “corresponds to that which Catholic divines know as pure mental reservation, and that is a cowardly fashion of lying. Where aequivocatio is mentioned with approval in a page of Latin casuistry, the word ought to be translated, broad mental reservation. To render it equivocation is to create confusion, just as much as if one should render the canonical appeal, peto apostolos, “I ask for the Apostles,” or the old French, entre chien et loup, “between a dog and a wolf.”¹¹

¹¹ Political and Moral Essays, pp. 217 sq.

n. ¶24.

Examples of aequivocatio are pointed out in Holy Scripture. Thus Abraham and Isaac represented their wives as their sisters,¹² Jacob deceived his father to obtain the paternal blessing, and Judith gained admittance to Holofernes’ tent by means of a ruse.¹³ But the statements concerned, with the exception perhaps of those attributed to Abraham and Isaac, though literally mendacia, are to be regarded rather as mysteria,¹⁴ and therefore prove nothing either pro or con with regard to the question under discussion.

¹² Gen. XII, 11–19; XX, 2, 11 sqq.; XXVI, 7; XXVII, 1–35.

¹³ Judith X, 12 sqq.

¹⁴ St. Augustine, Contra Mendac., c. XI, n. 24: “What Jacob did with his mother as instigator, so that he seemed to deceive his father, if it is considered diligently and faithfully, is not a lie but a mystery. If we call these things lies, all parables and figures signifying any things whatsoever, which are not to be taken literally but in which one thing is to be understood from another, will also be called lies—which be altogether far from us.” (Migne, P. L., XL, 533).—St. Thomas, Summa Theol., 2a 2ae, qu. 110, art. 3, ad 3.

n. ¶25.

In the New Testament, Christ Himself repeatedly employed broad mental reservation, as when He called John the Baptist “Elias,”¹⁵ when He said that the daughter of Jairus was “not dead but sleeping,”¹⁶ and when He declared that if the Jews would destroy “this temple” (meaning His body), He would raise it up again in three days.¹⁷ It sounded like a mental reservation when He said that “the Father is greater than I”;¹⁸ that neither the angels nor the Son know the day or the hour of the Last Judgment;¹⁹ or when He declared that He would not go up to Jerusalem, and then went up anyhow.²⁰ It is obvious, however, that by employing such ambiguous language, our Lord did not wish to conceal the truth, or to mask His real intentions, but merely to indicate that His words bore a deeper meaning than that which lay on the surface. All that can be concluded from the passages in question is that ambiguous language is not per se forbidden. Broad mental reservation, therefore, must not be unreservedly condemned as illicit.²¹ However, it is not allowable under all circumstances, but only when (a) it does not embody a positive untruth, as is supposed; (b) when the true nature of the statement is recognizable, and (c) when there is a morally justifiable reason for keeping a secret.²² Whenever, on the other hand, there is a positive duty to tell the truth, e. g., in taking an oath, testifying in court, making a contract, or instruct- ing others, and when there is no obligation of keeping a secret, equivocation or mental reservation may not be employed.²³

¹⁵ Matth. XI, 14.

¹⁶ Matth. IX, 24.

¹⁷ John II, 19.

¹⁸ John XIV, 28.

¹⁹ Mark XIII, 32.

²⁰ John VII, 8–10.

²¹ St. Augustine, Enarr. in Ps., V, n. 7: “Since it is one thing to lie and another to conceal the truth—indeed, one thing to speak falsehood and another to keep truth silent—if someone perhaps does not wish to betray a man even to this visible death, he ought to be prepared to conceal the truth, not to speak falsehood, so that he may neither betray nor lie, lest he kill his own soul for the body of another.” (Migne, P. L., XXXVI, 85).—St. Jerome, In Ezech., l. IV, c. 14: “He who questions fraudulently does not deserve to hear the truth, but is to be caught by his own heart.” (P. L., XXV, 118).—St. Bernard, Serm. in Ct., XLII, n. 6: “For the most part it is not expedient that everything we know about ourselves become known to everyone, and by the very charity of truth and truth of charity we are forbidden to wish that what would harm the one who learns it be made public.” (Migne, P. L., CLXXXIII, 900).

²² “‘What news, my Lord, from France?’ some one asked of a cabinet minister. ‘I don’t know,’ was the reply, ‘I have not read the papers.’ The story is Cardinal Newman’s. Here the sense of the I don’t know is restricted and reserved, internally in the mind of the speaker, and externally by the words added about the newspapers. It is a mental reservation of the broadest, such as no Pharisee could call a lie. Now suppose the reference to the papers omitted. It would still be very hard to call the I don’t know a lie. The reservation of official knowledge is still sufficiently apparent: no sensible man would expect that to be communicated by way of ordinary chitchat. Above all, when a topic has been forced upon one, and questions put that admit of no evasion, by an enquirer who has no right to ask, then surely any denial or disclaimer, however direct the form of words, must be qualified by the outward circumstances in which it is spoken. This qualification, unspoken, but not unsignified, will be, ‘secrets apart.’” (Jos. Rickaby, S.J., Political and Moral Essays, pp. 222 sq.)

²³ Gury, Comp. Theol. Mor., I, n. 457: “It is sometimes lawful for a grave cause to use restriction in a broad sense, that is, improperly mental restriction, and equivocal words from which the sense intended by the speaker can easily be understood. The reason is that this is not evil in itself, since one’s neighbor is not properly deceived, but his deception is permitted for a just cause; moreover, the good of society requires that there be a means of lawfully concealing a secret of great importance; sometimes no other means is available except equivocation or restriction in the broad or improperly mental sense. I said, for a grave cause, because if such restrictions were used without a grave and proportionate cause, no one could or would be willing to believe another; and this would result in the greatest harm to human society.”—Cfr. Kössing, Ueber die Wahrheitsliebe, pp. 112 sqq.

n. ¶26.

READINGS.—St. Alphonsus, Theol. Mor., l. III, n. 970–971 (ed. Gaudé, II, 360); l. III, n. 151–171 (ed. Gaudé I, 467 sqq.).—F. X. Linsenmann, Lehrbuch der Moraltheologie, pp. 438 sqq.—Aug. Lehmkuhl, S. J., Casus Conscientiae, Vol. I, 3rd ed., n. 972 sqq.—F. A. Göpfert, Moraltheologie, Vol. II, 7th ed., pp. 334 sqq.—Kössing, Ueber die Wahrheitsliebe, pp. 106 sqq.—V. Cathrein, S. J., Moralphilosophie, Vol. II, 5th ed., pp. 96 sqq.—P. Hötzel, Jakob und Esau, Munich 1881.—E. Recejac, De Mendacio quid senserit Augustinus, Paris 1897.—W. Protopopoff, Biblische alttestamentliche Fakta nach Beleuchtungen der hl. Väter und Kirchenlehrer, Kasan 1897.—J. Mausbach, Catholic Moral Teaching and its Antagonists, pp. 113 sqq.—M. Cronin, The Science of Ethics, Vol. II, pp. 77 sqq.—Jos. Rickaby, S. J., “The Catholic Doctrine of Lying and Equivocation,” in Political and Moral Essays, N. Y. 1902, pp. 215 sqq.—IDEM, Moral Philosophy, pp. 232–237.—J. E. Ross, C.S.P., Christian Ethics, pp. 264 sq., 140 sqq., N. Y. 1919.—J. H. Newman, Apologia, pp. 274 sqq., 349 sqq., 359 sqq.—J. Brodie-Brosnan, “Mental Restriction and Equivocation,” in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record, Dec., 1920, No. 636, pp. 461–469.

Vermeersch, Theologia Moralis

Arthur Vermeersch, S.J. — 6 passages

Vol. II, Bk. II, Tract VI: On the Virtue of…, Chapter II: On Secrecy

n. 697.

I. The notion of secrecy and its varied character. A secret is a hidden thing, not to be divulged. Secrecy is distinguished:

a) Natural, which, if it remains alone, is also called merely natural, whose revelation is prohibited by the very law of nature concerning preserving either charity or justice, according as the other would conceive just sorrow from the revelation or receive injury. A secret of this kind already arises from those things which are communicated in conversations with a certain mutual trust. There things are said without sin which without sin would not be reported to him about whom they were said.

b) Promised, when an obligation either only of fidelity or also of justice arises from a promise following upon knowledge of the matter, whether this became known by chance or through another's communication.

c) Committed, when an agreement concerning preserving secrecy has been placed before the communication itself. The agreement can be explicit or tacit: as when someone approaches a confessor, advocate, or physician for the sake of seeking counsel. Secrecy from office obliges more strictly, so that it is called rigorous. It supposes a profession which induces secret communications. Therefore there is not true "professional" secrecy for drivers, although such is sometimes recognized even in the civil forum.

d) Sacramental, which flows from every sacramental confession and from sacramental confession alone, and alone admits neither exception nor light matter in direct revelation.

When parties agree concerning secrecy quasi of confession, they would attempt in vain to attribute the force of sacramental communication to their confidences. But by the greatest force by which they can, they intensify the obligation.

n. 698.

Revelation obtained by an unjust way induces a graver secret. The use of such knowledge is prohibited, unless another's injustice or public safety should permit you to extort the secret by force and fraud.

n. 699.

II. Obligation. 1. From merely natural secrecy, one must be silent as long as there is a cause of charity or justice; from a promise, one must be silent as long as, the promise set aside, it would be lawful to keep silent; from a committed secret, one must be silent as long as the other has a right of willing that the thing be concealed. But the one committing the secret justly exacts silence as long as he himself justly conceals the matter, unless the reason of the common good narrows or extends the obligation of keeping silence. Wherefore, not even in judgment is it lawful to reveal the hidden crime of the one committing the secret; but for preserving a rigorous secret, even the damage of an innocent person must be put after it, unless it threatens from the very deed of the one committing the secret: as if a pregnant girl wishes to procure abortion.

Nevertheless, with grave proportionate damage the obligation of the agreement ceases, and therefore also of the committed secret, even one rigorous per se: lest there be lacking those who are willing to give counsels. Yet the cause of the public good can sometimes require that you prefer death to revelation. On the contrary, if it is gravely important to religion or fatherland that it be revealed, even a rigorous secret can be disclosed.

Today they are accustomed to enlarge the force of rigorous secrecy beyond just limits. Then a new reason of the common good can intervene so that, for example, Catholic physicians could observe these norms, lest recourse be had to upright physicians with less confidence.

From all or grave guilt, consent prudently presumed of the one himself committing the secret will excuse a revealed committed secret, as if the revelation turns to his good, or if it is of little interest to him and the revelation has great utility. Nor is revelation made to one or another prudent man judged grave per se.

n. 700.

On Letters. 1. Secret matters which are communicated through letters, according to the nature of the matter and the mode of the writer, are protected by natural or committed secrecy and remain per se in the dominion of the writer.

To read letters destined for another, when they are closed or kept in a secret place, is per se grave, unless the danger is absent of finding grave matter there. There will be no sin if it is done on account of a just cause, or with the consent either of the owner of the secret, i. e. the writer, or of him who can prudently judge concerning the force of the secret, i. e. him who received the letters. It is lawful for him to open and read letters who probably thinks that they are injurious to himself, or that they contain such things from which he can avert grave and unjust damage from himself or from another or from the commonwealth.
Parents are permitted to read letters written and received by children. The same is permitted to religious Superiors according to the constitutions. Yet those letters which contain matters of conscience can be torn up by them, but cannot be read when the person writing is unwilling. But they can examine the letters sufficiently so that they know that matters of conscience are being treated seriously. What is lawful for a husband must be gathered from received customs, unless a founded suspicion gives a greater right. From letters read, the aforesaid Superiors are held by natural secrecy, by which, the consent given or reasonably presumed of him whose secret it is being set aside, no other use of the knowledge is permitted to them except that which is referred to the end on account of which the faculty was given.
He who casts letters into an open place, even when torn, admits the voluntary danger that the fragments be gathered by another. Therefore the collector can suppose that no matters are contained in them which the possessor of the letters could not expose to this danger. Wherefore the reader yields only to venial curiosity; indeed he does not sin if he has reasonably hoped for some utility for himself from it. More concerning these things, cf. Lugo, Iust. d. 14, nn. 145-151.

n. 701.

He who, against the other's will, furtively reads another's secret writings sins not only by curiosity, but also by a sin of injustice, since each one preserves dominion over his own writings. The sin can be grave if it is done with notable damage of the other, or if the owner is very unwilling. Except the rights of parents and Superiors and of those who have to protect themselves from injury, in the manner which was said concerning letters.

n. 702.

Summary

I. Secrecy is distinguished as natural, which is imposed by the very natural law concerning preserving charity or justice; promised, which arises from a promise that follows knowledge had from wherever, whether the promise was one of fidelity or also of justice; committed, which is owed from an agreement placed before the communication itself. A tacit agreement of this kind is had when someone, for the sake of seeking counsel, approaches a confessor, advocate, or physician; and there arises the secret which is called rigorous. Finally there is sacramental secrecy, flowing from every secret sacramental confession and from sacramental confession alone.

The parties intensify by the greatest force by which they can the obligation, though not sacramental, of preserving secrecy, when they agree concerning a secret quasi of confession.

II. Natural secrecy must be preserved as long as it is urged by the law of charity or justice; and that especially when the knowledge has been obtained by an unjust way: then only another's injustice or public safety, which would permit invasion of the secret, make its revelation honorable; promised secrecy holds as long as it would be lawful to be silent; committed secrecy, as long as the other preserves the right, i. e. as long as he himself justly conceals the matter. Rigorous secrecy must be preserved even with damage of an innocent person, unless the secret threatens from the deed of the one committing it. - Yet per se no secret, unless it is sacramental, must be preserved with one's own damage which would excuse from preserving an agreement. But the consent of the one committing the secret can prudently be presumed.

III. On letters. Matters communicated by letters preserve their nature of secrecy; and they remain per se in the dominion of the writer, so that it is per se grave to read the letters of others which are closed or kept in a secret place: for those which are found thrown away in an open place are judged to have been permitted for every use. Parents and religious Superiors, according to the Constitutions, are permitted to read letters sent and received by children or subjects. The right of a husband is to be estimated from received customs. Yet letters cannot be known by Superiors when it is sufficiently established to them that they treat of matters of conscience; whether there is question of another's conscience, or of the conscience of a subject who is not obligated to render an account of conscience; but those letters must either be handed over or torn up.

Coppens, Medical Practice

Charles Coppens, S.J. — 6 passages

Coppens, Medical Practice, Lecture VI. The Physician’s Professional Rights and Duties

n. ¶21.

The sixth duty of a Doctor is of a different kind. There exists a tacit or implicit contract between him and his patients that he shall keep their secrets of which he becomes possessed in his professional capacity. It is always wrong wantonly to betray the secrets of others; but the Doctor is bound by a special duty to keep his professional secrets; and it is doubly wrong and disgraceful in him to make them known. For instance, if he has treated a case of sickness brought on by sinful excesses of any kind, he is forbidden by the natural law to talk about it to such as have no special right to know the facts. Parents and guardians are usually entitled to be informed of their children’s and their wards’ wrong-doings, that they may take proper measures to prevent further evil. Besides, the Doctor is properly in their service; he is paid by them, and, therefore, his contract is with them rather than with the children. He can, therefore, prudently inform them of what is wrong, but he cannot inform others.

n. ¶22.

It is a debated question in Medical Jurisprudence whether the Doctor’s professional knowledge of criminal acts should be privileged before the courts, so that he should not be forced to testify to a crime that he has learned from his patients while acting as their medical adviser. Dr. Ewell speaks thus on the subject (p. 2): “The medical witness should remember that, by the common law, a medical man has no privilege to avoid giving in evidence any statement made to him by a patient; but when called upon to do so in a court of justice, he is bound to disclose every communication, however private and confidential, which has been made to him by a patient while attending him in a professional capacity. By statute, however, in some of the United States, communications made by a patient to a physician when necessary to the treatment of a case are privileged; and the physician is either expressly forbidden or not obliged to reveal them. Such statutes exist in Arkansas, California, Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New York, and Wisconsin. The seal upon the physician’s lips is not even taken away by the patient’s death. Such communications, however, must be of a lawful character and not against morality or public policy; hence, a consultation as to the means of procuring an abortion on another is not privileged, nor would be any similar conference held for the purpose of devising a crime or evading its consequences.

n. ¶23.

“A report of a medical official of an insurance company on the health of a party proposing to insure his life is not privileged from production; nor is the report of a surgeon of a railroad company as to the injuries sustained by a passenger in an accident, unless such report has been obtained with a view to impending litigation.”

n. ¶24.

The practical rule for a Doctor’s conscience on the subject of secrecy is, that he must keep his professional secrets with great fidelity, and not reveal them except in as far as he is compelled to do so by a court of justice acting within its legal power or competency. If so compelled, he can safely speak out; for his duty to his patient is understood to be dependent on his obedience to lawful authority.

n. ¶25.

As to the question of Jurisprudence whether the courts ought to treat the physician’s official secrets as privileged, in the same way as they do a lawyer’s secrets, this will depend on the further question whether the same reasons militate for the one as for the other. The lawyer’s privilege is due to the anxiety of the state not to condemn an innocent man nor a guilty man beyond his deserts. To avert such evil, the accused party needs the assistance of a legal adviser who can guide him safely through the mazes and technicalities of the law, and, even should he be guilty, who can protect him against exaggerated charges and ward off unmerited degrees of punishment. Now, this can scarcely be accomplished unless the attorney for the defence learn from his client the entire truth of the facts. But the client could not safely give such information to his lawyer if the latter’s professional secrets were not held sacred by the court of justice.

n. ¶26.

Can the same reasons or equivalent ones be urged in behalf of the physician? I do not see that they can. And I notice besides that, if he be excused from testifying against his patients, all their servants and attendants would seem to be entitled to the same privilege. Many persons, I think, labor here under a confusion of ideas; a Doctor is as sacredly bound to keep his patients’ secrets as a lawyer is in regard to his clients, but it does not follow that the law cannot grant a privilege to the one and refuse the same to the other, for reasons which require it in the case of the lawyer and not in that of the Doctor.

Prümmer, Manuale Theologiae Moralis

Dominic M. Prümmer, O.P. — 8 passages

Vol. II, Tr. XI, Sect. I, Q. III, Ch. III, Art. IV, II. On Injuries By Words O…, § 4. On Violation Of Secret

n. ¶36.

Just as lying violates the virtue of truthfulness by defect, so violation of a secret violates it by excess, as was already said above. Hence, conveniently, after lying and mental restrictions there is discussion of violation of secret.

n. 175.

175. Notion. Secret taken objectively is the hidden thing itself; but accepted subjectively it is knowledge of that hidden thing and the obligation of not betraying the knowledge received. Concerning this secret accepted subjectively there is treatment here.

Division. A threefold secret is usually distinguished:

A natural secret, which is an obligation of concealing something arisen not from contract, but from the very nature of the thing, because, namely, such a secret cannot be manifested without another being reasonably unwilling, even if no entrusting or promise has intervened. This natural secret indeed is again distinguished as either simple or extorted. A simple natural secret is that which someone knows either by chance or because of the levity or lack of consideration of another, e.g., someone by chance sees another's hidden disgraceful vice. - An extorted natural secret is that which someone has known after a crafty investigation has been made; e.g., someone by design investigates concerning the private life of another.
A promised secret is that which someone promised to another after knowledge of the matter had been received. This promise indeed can be given in a twofold way. a) Someone has already known another's secret matter from another source, and now promises him that the secret is to be kept. b) Someone has heard a matter from another without secrecy and afterward promises him secrecy. Therefore in a promised secret, knowledge of the secret precedes the promise, and that promise is (ordinarily) gratuitous.³⁴⁸
An entrusted or strict secret (anvertrautes Geheimnis) is that which was not communicated except after there had first been an implicit or explicit pact of keeping secrecy. If this pact was implicit or tacit, the secret is called official (Amtsgeheimnis), because it arises from an office undertaken. By such an official secret, e.g., physicians, midwives, counselors, etc., are bound. But if the pact was explicit, this secret is called a privately entrusted secret; e.g., Peter says to Paul: I wish to narrate to you a matter of great moment, provided you promise me strict silence. Paul, having promised silence, hears the matter. This secret is entrusted to him in a private way. - Stricter is the secret which obliges from an oath taken, such as, e.g., officials of the Roman Curia emit. But the highest degree of entrusted secret is obtained by the sacramental secret, or the confessional seal, concerning which there will be discussion in the treatise on penance. In an entrusted secret, knowledge of the secret follows the promise, and that promise is onerous.

³⁴⁸ Under promised secret, privately entrusted secret also is included by some authors, e.g., by D'Annibale, Haine.

n. 176.

176. Principle 1. It is not lawful by unjust means to explore another's secret; but when sufficient cause accedes, it is lawful to use just means for knowing another's secret.

The first part of this principle is plain of itself, since it is never lawful to use unjust means for obtaining some end. There is added that a secret truly is another's thing. Now, just as it is not lawful to usurp another's thing, so neither is it permitted to explore another's secret. Hence it is not lawful to listen at a wall or door, to open another's letters, to discover an invention of art by unjust means; much more strongly, it is not lawful to use knowledge of a secret unjustly received, for this would be to renew or continue the injustice already committed.³⁴⁹ But he who uses knowledge of a secret unjustly received with grave damage to another is held to restitution; e.g., he who unjustly opens another's letters and from this causes grave material damage to another must repair this damage. When it is lawful to manifest a secret will be said below, n. 180 and 192.

The second part of the principle likewise is easily proved. For just as it is not a sin to take away another's material thing when a legitimate cause accedes, namely, if the owner is now not reasonably unwilling, so also from a sufficient cause it is lawful to use just means for exploring another's secret. Thus, e.g., it is lawful by just means to explore in war the forces and positions of the enemy; a father may inquire concerning the hidden crimes of a son for correcting him.

³⁴⁹ Cf. St. Alphonsus, Theol. mor. l. 3, n. 969.

n. 177.

177. Principle 2. A natural secret obliges of itself under grave matter.

The reason is that the neighbor has a strict right to a natural secret from the very nature of the thing. But from the revelation of such a secret the neighbor is saddened, and quite often damages arise for him in the goods of fortune or of reputation. Hence it is plain that he who without just cause wounds a natural secret sins, and indeed from its genus mortally, in almost the same way as a thief who takes away another's thing. From lightness of matter or of the damage caused this sin becomes venial. Therefore he sins who without sufficient cause reveals the hidden sins or hidden defects of another. - What are just causes of revealing a natural secret will be said below.

n. 178.

178. Principle 3. A merely promised secret of itself ordinarily does not oblige except under light matter.

I say 1: a secret merely promised. For often a secret of this kind is also natural, and then the preceding principle must be applied. - I say 2: of itself it does not oblige; for by accident violation of a promised secret can be a grave sin, namely, if because of this violation grave damage is caused to the neighbor. - I say 3: ordinarily it does not oblige except under light matter; for it can happen (although rarely) that someone promises under grave matter that he will keep a secret; e.g., I promise you the secret so firmly that, if I break it, I shall pay 1000 francs. - The principle taken with these clauses is proved in this way: Violation of a promised secret is only violation of a gratuitous promise or of fidelity. But the virtue of fidelity, which is a certain part of truthfulness, does not oblige of itself except under light matter, as was said above, n. 165 and 170, concerning lying. Therefore violation of a promised secret of itself is only a venial sin. - Nevertheless, violation of a promised secret is greatly to be avoided, because quarrels and grave enmities often arise from it.

n. 179.

179. Principle 4. An entrusted secret obliges of itself under grave matter, and indeed more gravely than a natural and a promised secret.

The reason is 1. because in an entrusted secret there is always a contract (implicit or explicit) of not revealing those things which are known, and 2. he who violates an entrusted secret wounds the right both of the neighbor and of society. For the neighbor would not have revealed his secret except under the condition of faithfully guarding it. Besides, the good of society demands that all can safely seek counsel or help from those who, from a special office approved by public authority, are able to furnish it. But if those officials could, without a legitimate and urgent cause, reveal secrets entrusted to them, no one would now approach them; and this would certainly bring great inconvenience for the common good. - Hence civil Codes also gravely punish the wounding of an entrusted secret.³⁵⁰

As appears from what has been said, the obligation of diverse secrets is diverse. As a general rule it can be held:

A secret obliges according to the quantity of damage which is unjustly brought upon either the public good or private good from its violation.

³⁵⁰ Cf. German Penal Code § 300.

n. 180.

180. Just causes of manifesting a secret. Just as the neighbor's material thing can lawfully be taken away under certain conditions, so equally also a secret, to which otherwise the neighbor has a right, can sometimes be revealed, indeed must be. For the keeping of a secret is prescribed on account of both private and public good. But the general principle is: When the end of a law ceases contrarily, i.e., when the law has become not only useless, but even harmful, the law itself ceases. Hence in the case in which the law concerning keeping a secret by no means profits but rather harms private or public good, this law ceases; or in other words: a just cause of manifesting a secret is urgent necessity of public or private good. For in that case the neighbor is irrationally unwilling that the secret be revealed; or he is considered to renounce his right concerning the keeping of his own secret.

Therefore urgent necessity of the public good demands the manifestation of a secret; and therefore the Angelic Doctor: "Against the common good it is lawful to receive no secret."³⁵¹ But I say: urgent necessity; for if only some utility is present, it is not lawful to disclose a secret. For this reason the same principles are to be applied here which above were established concerning the obligation of denunciation. E.g., a physician is held to denounce some sick person who could easily infect others gravely.
Necessity of a private good regards either a) the one knowing himself, or b) a third person, or c) the very one who handed over the secret.

a) The proper good of the one knowing is then a just cause of manifesting a secret when otherwise grave damage would follow for him. This damage indeed ordinarily must be graver than that which follows for the other from revelation of the secret. If there is question of keeping a secret which is altogether necessary for the common good, it can in no way be revealed, even if death threatens; e.g., a soldier captured by enemies can in no way reveal the secrets of his fatherland. But if there is question only of the secret of some private man, then almost always no one is held to keep a known secret with great damage to himself, because no one is supposed to undertake such a secret with so great an inconvenience. The exception is if someone explicitly promised to keep the secret even with the greatest inconvenience. For then, according to the truer opinion, the promise is to be kept. There are nevertheless several authors who even in this case permit violation of the secret from a most grave reason.³⁵²

b) The good of a third person requires revelation of a secret if otherwise he would unjustly suffer great damage. E.g., Peter, knowing under secret that Paul is preparing death for Andrew, must first, as far as he can, turn Paul away from a perverse plan of this kind; but if he does not wish to desist, Peter must make Andrew more certain concerning the danger threatening him. Or a physician, knowing by force of his office that a bridegroom, who feigns himself healthy, labors under a grave and contagious syphilitic disease, must turn him away from marriage; but if this will have been vain, he can manifest the matter to the bride, in order to forestall the greatest danger to her and to the offspring perhaps to be born. Thus at least from natural law. For in practice the statutes of positive law in this matter must also be attended to, because otherwise grave penalties are usually inflicted.³⁵³

But what must be said if Peter knows from an entrusted secret that Titius is the murderer, but in his place innocent Sempronius has been accused, condemned, and is now about to be punished by death? The general rule is: I am held to keep an entrusted secret so long as the one entrusting the secret has a right that I not betray it. But in that case Titius is not held to confess his crime with the most immediate danger of his own death. Therefore he retains the right to the secret. Therefore Peter cannot manifest the entrusted secret for saving Sempronius.³⁵⁴ - Nevertheless this opinion does not seem sufficiently proved. For although the rule proposed is excellent, nevertheless it is not sufficiently proved that in that case Titius still has a right to the secret. For although he is not held to betray himself, because he can love his own life more than the life of another, nevertheless it by no means follows from this that neither can nor ought I betray him for saving an innocent man. For in this case two lives are endangered, namely, the life of the innocent man and the life of the guilty man. Now, other things being equal, I ought rather to save the life of the innocent man than the life of the guilty man. But the guilty man cannot be reasonably unwilling that I save the life of the innocent man, although this cannot be done without revelation of the entrusted secret.

c) The good of him who handed over the secret permits or requires manifestation of the secret if otherwise great damage would come to him. For he is not presumed to be unwilling in that case, and if nevertheless he resisted the manifestation of the secret, he would be irrationally unwilling. Hence if someone secretly entrusts to you that he wishes to enter marriage notwithstanding the impediment of bond, and you cannot impede him otherwise, you are held to reveal this impediment to the proper pastor, so that concubinage may thus be avoided.

³⁵¹ S. theol. 2, 2, q. 68, a. 1 ad 3.

³⁵² Cf. St. Alphonsus, Theol. mor. l. 3, n. 971; St. Thomas, S. theol. 2, 2, q. 70, a. 1 ad 2.

³⁵³ Cf. German Penal Code § 300.

³⁵⁴ Thus Laymann in Noldin, De praeceptis n. 670.

n. 181.

181. Scholion. On reading another's letters.

He who reads another's secret letters or writings without the consent of the sender or recipient, or without legitimate authority or a just cause, or otherwise by force or fraud fishes out another's secret, sins against justice. Thus rightly Billuart.³⁵⁵ The reason is that he acts like a thief or robber who unjustly takes goods away from another. For a secret is a good to which the neighbor has a strict right. This sin will be mortal or venial according to the quantity either of damage, or of danger, or of the intention of damaging gravely or lightly. Hence he sins only venially who opens letters which he knows with moral certainty contain nothing except greetings or matters of lighter moment. On the contrary, he sins mortally if he knows or even doubts that they contain matters bringing infamy, or matters which it much concerns him who sends or receives that they remain secret.³⁵⁶ In practice all who unjustly intercept or read another's letters must be corrected severely. Modern criminal Codes also are accustomed to punish gravely those who violate epistolary secrecy.³⁵⁷

But I said 1: another's secret letters or writings, such as closed letters, or even open ones if they are kept in a secret place, e.g., in a cabinet, or even by chance have been lost; otherwise, if they have been thrown away, because then they are regarded as abandoned. But letters torn into minute pieces and thrown into a public place are nevertheless considered secret. Wherefore with St. Alphonsus³⁵⁸ I judge that he sins against justice who astutely gathers, composes, and reads the fragments. The reason is that it is too difficult to burn all letters or destroy them in another way than by tearing. But such a throwing into an accessible place by no means signifies (as Lugo³⁵⁹ wishes) that the owner yields his right in letters thus torn into minute pieces, the reading of which he cannot prevent.

I said 2: without the consent of the sender or recipient. This consent indeed can be express or tacit. Thus a husband ordinarily does not sin by reading the letters of his wife, since she does not wish to conceal anything from her husband.

I said 3: or without legitimate authority. In several religious and also civil institutes (e.g., in prisons, in hospitals of the insane, etc.) it is established that superiors can or must read the letters of subjects. Excepted, however, are letters directed to major superiors or sent by them. Statutes of this kind are not unjust, because anyone either freely entered such an institute, and then is considered to have given consent concerning his letters, or because of his moral or physical defects he is compelled to enter such an institute, e.g., into prison, and then the opening of letters is either a just penalty or is necessary for the common good. But if these letters open secrets of conscience, let the superior abstain from reading.

I said 4: or a just cause. Namely, for averting grave damage either to oneself or especially to the republic. Hence in time of war the leader of an army can lawfully open the letters of enemies. The father of a family can read the letters of his children, at least if they are minors. A private man who foundedly fears that some letter may unjustly bring grave damage upon him can read it.

³⁵⁵ De iure et iust. diss. 15, a. 4, appendix.

³⁵⁶ Cf. Billuart, l.c.

³⁵⁷ Cf. German Penal Code §§ 299 and 354 sqq.

³⁵⁸ Theol. mor. l. 5, n. 7.

³⁵⁹ De iust. et iure diss. 14, n. 151.

Konings, Theologia Moralis

Anthony Konings, C.SS.R. — 5 passages

Vol. I, TREATISE ON THE PRECEPTS O…, APPENDIX: ON THE VIOLATION OF A SECRET

n. ¶539.

- A secret in general is called whatever is hidden: as regards our matter, we call secret whatever either from its own nature, or from a special contract, ought to be kept hidden.

A threefold secret is distinguished:

1° Natural, which, without any contract, arises from the mere nature of the thing, as if you cannot manifest it without harm to another, either in estimation, or in goods, etc.

2° Promised, which someone, hearing from another or learning by chance, promises by the gratuitous contract of promise to preserve.

3° Committed, if someone manifests something to another, and at the same time tacitly or expressly demands silence from him concerning it.

n. ¶540.

Principles. - I. A natural secret in a grave matter obligates of itself under grave sin, and indeed from justice, unless a just cause excuses. The reason is that from the revelation of the secret there follows of itself damage to the neighbor, who has the right not to be harmed without reasonable cause.¹

II. A promised secret obligates of itself gravely or lightly according to the quality of the matter (which namely would demand a natural secret apart from any promise), and the nature of the obligation undertaken, which, unless it is clear concerning the intention of the one promising wishing to obligate himself from justice, for the most part is from fidelity alone. The reason is that the contract is contained in a simple promise, which of itself obligates only from fidelity and according to the intention of the one promising, as was said concerning a vow.⁴

III. A committed or communicated secret, which is also called rigorous, obligates of itself under grave sin from justice, and indeed more strictly than a merely natural secret, and also than a promised one; because beyond the natural obligation there urges also the obligation from an onerous contract expressly or tacitly undertaken.⁵

n. ¶541.

Questions. - Quaer. 1° What are the just causes of manifesting a secret?

Resp. 1° The rightly presumed consent of him whose interest it is that the secret be concealed. - 2° Divulgation of the matter arising from elsewhere. - 3° Damage to the Republic or to private persons that is going to follow from the secret. Yet if there is question of damage already inflicted, you cannot licitly reveal a committed secret, until the one causing the damage himself is bound to betray himself. And in this a committed secret differs from a merely promised one: that in this latter the one promising did not receive knowledge of the matter by force of his promise, but gratuitously promises secrecy about knowledge received in whatever way. Moreover, while afterward he promises this, even with an oath added, he cannot by his promise exempt himself from an obligation by which he is already held. Therefore since each one questioned legitimately by a judge is bound to open the truth, the promise of secrecy cannot be extended to the case of the judge legitimately questioning. But the contrary happens in a committed secret. For the common good demands that men not, from fear of revelation, be deprived of the convenience of seeking necessary counsel or help, which nevertheless they would never seek unless they were certain of secrecy to be observed. Therefore the common good demands that as long as the one committing can licitly preserve his secret, he retains the right that the other not betray it. Hence the reason why physicians, advocates, midwives, theologians consulted, etc., are not bound to open to even a judge questioning the matter known by a committed secret; indeed why they are bound not to open it, which nevertheless, insofar as it concerns physicians, surgeons, and midwives, is not acknowledged by our common law, nor can it be demanded by those committing, since this disposition of law is judged known to them.

Quaer. 2° Can you reveal a secret if you promised to preserve it even with loss of life?

Resp. 1° In the affirmative, if the common good demands it, because a promise made against the common good is null.

Resp. 2° In the negative, if there is question of your own damage simply grave, because it is better to preserve a secret promised by this special contract. In the negative also, very probably, if there is question of your extreme damage, because you have expressly renounced your right, nor is it illicit to omit the conservation of life, that you may keep a promise. - Thus Lugo, Lacroix, and St. Alphonsus.² - Yet St. Author deservedly says the opposite also is sufficiently probable.

n. ¶542.

- Quaer. 3° Does he sin gravely who reveals a secret to one or another upright man under the same secret?

Resp. In the negative, probably, of itself; because in this case a grave injury toward another does not seem to be committed, provided it is not revealed to a person to whom the one committing the secret to you is deservedly presumed to have specially wished it to be concealed.¹

I said, of itself; because in practice, on account of the circumstances, revelation of a secret easily becomes grave, namely when you suppose too lightly that the persons to whom you commit a received secret are so discreet that they will certainly preserve it, especially if there is question with women. For a secret was committed to you because you were thought discreet; but if you violate it, do you think another, in whom you confide, will be more discreet than you yourself?

Quaer. 4° Does he sin gravely who opens or reads the letters of another?

Resp. In the affirmative of itself, or from its own genus. The reason is that by natural right and by the law of nations there is an obligation of leaving the secrets of letters unharmed; otherwise human commerce would be ruined. - St. Alphonsus,² and others commonly. And indeed in this way there will be committed in genus a sin against justice and against charity; but only mortal against charity, if it is thought that matters of small moment are contained in the letters, and he to whom or by whom they are sent is to be gravely saddened by it. - The same is valid for those who, against the master's will, read another's writings by stealth, and probably for those who join and read letters torn into small pieces. - But damage perhaps inflicted against justice must be repaired.

Except the following cases: 1° if the tacit or presumed consent of him who writes, and of him to whom the letters are sent, is present; 2° if it is known or presumed that the letters contain matters of slight moment; 3° if it is done from a just cause, for example, for averting public or private damage even of another, provided one has the right of opening the letters for driving away that evil, and reads no more than is necessary for this end. In what cases one enjoys that right, see above n. 518. - 4° If the letters are opened from levity or from some inadvertence.³

n. ¶543.

You will resolve. - 1° A promised secret obligates in no way whenever otherwise you were held to manifest the matter, for example if you are legitimately questioned by a Superior or by a judge.¹

2° A committed secret must generally be preserved by you, even if you are questioned by a Superior or judge, etc.; but you must answer that you know nothing about this; since you have knowledge of this sort just as if you did not have it.²

3° A secret only implicitly or tacitly committed must be preserved in the same way as if it had been expressly committed. Thus, strictly speaking, counselors of Princes, leaders of war, advocates, physicians (concerning physicians cf. what was said for this region n. 541, question 1° at the end), theologians consulted concerning some question, and universally all to whom a secret is committed for the sake either of counsel or of solace or of help, are bound to secrecy.

4° A religious Superior licitly opens the letters of his subjects or of others sent to them either by the statute of the Religion, or by custom, or from prudent suspicion that they contain something less right.³

5° Yet the Superior cannot open and read letters which subjects send to mediate Superiors and in turn those Superiors to subjects; for the right manner of governing demands that supreme Moderators be able to communicate freely with all subjects.¹

6° "He who by culpable revelation of a secret has harmed another must repair every damage, whether of reputation or fortune, which he at least foresaw in a confused way as going to arise therefrom for another, by title of damage unjustly inflicted."

7° "There is given an obligation of justice, grave from its own genus, of not seeking out the secret of another unwilling person without sufficient cause, neither by deed, namely by observing from a hidden place the things which others secretly do, nor by words, namely by scrutinizing and questioning others who know hidden things. Because each one has a strict right in his own secret, as in a thing of his own. - It is said: without sufficient cause, because it is licit to seek out another's morals, even secret ones, for avoiding one's own or another's damage, for example where Matrimony is to be contracted. It is said: grave from its own genus: hence the things which according to what has been set forth above excuse from grave fault, or from all fault, the revelation of a secret, also fall upon the one fishing out the secret itself; therefore also he who seeks out a secret with the intention of betraying it to no one does not seem to sin mortally, unless the other feels from this some other grave damage, or wishes to conceal it in a special way."

Marc, Institutiones Morales

Clement Marc, C.SS.R. — 7 passages

Vol. I, Pt. II, Sect. II, Tractate VIII: On the Eigh…, Ch. I, Article III: On Violation of Secrecy

n. ¶1184.

DEFINITION. Secret or hidden matter in general is called whatever is occult. But here is understood whatever, either from its nature or from a special contract, must be preserved occult.

DIVISION. Besides sacramental secrecy, concerning which we shall treat later, a threefold secrecy is distinguished: 1. NATURAL or simple, which arises from the nature itself of things, from the fact namely that a thing known by chance cannot be manifested without damage or displeasure of neighbor; 2. PROMISED, which namely someone promised to preserve after accepting knowledge of the matter; 3. COMMITTED or rigorous, embracing namely those things which have not been revealed to someone except under an express or tacit pact of preserving silence.

A tacit pact is judged to be present when from the fact itself it is established that the matter is committed under secrecy, for example if recourse is had to a physician or to an advocate for remedy or counsel. To committed secrecy is reduced that which is revealed to a priest outside confession under quasi-sacramental secrecy.

It comes to be said: 1. of revelation; 2. of inquiry into and use of another's secret. For anyone has a right that his secret not be explored, manifested, and finally that no illegitimate use be made of it.

Etude sur la malice intrins. du Mens., by a professor of Theology (Paris, 1899); cf. Berardi, Theol. mor. (1905), II, n. 976.

Vol. I, Pt. II, Sect. II, Tractate VIII: On the Eigh…, Ch. I, Art. III, § 1. On Revelation of a Secret

It is easily understood that another's secret cannot be revealed without a proportionate cause; and that the sin of one revealing is more or less grave, according to the nature of the secret, or the gravity of the damage inflicted.

n. ¶1185.

PRINCIPLES. I. The obligation of preserving a natural secret is in general under grave matter. The matter is plain of itself, since this obligation arises either from charity or from justice.

Whence he who knowingly and unjustly manifests a secret is held to reparation of the damage. But a just cause of revealing it would be the necessity of avoiding damage threatening oneself or neighbor, which from the law of charity he is not held to undergo (IV, 49). See the things to be said n. 1198.

n. ¶1186.

II. The obligation of preserving a promised secret is diverse according to the diversity of the intention of those promising. Therefore it will be either grave or light, according to the intention of the one promising, who is not judged to have contracted a grave obligation unless this is established. The reason is that a mere promise of secrecy is a gratuitous contract, which therefore is subjected to the rules of a contract of this kind (cf. n. 1062).

Wherefore: a) A simple promise of silence does not oblige, per se, with grave damage of the one promising. b) Likewise, a promise of silence, even sworn, does not oblige against the common good and justice; where namely silence would yield to grave detriment of the community, to the condemnation of an innocent person, to grave sin of the one to whom the promise was made (for example if there were concealed a diriment impediment of a marriage to be contracted by the one to whom the promise was made); where finally the one promising is legitimately interrogated in judgment under the faith of an oath. c) He who seriously promised silence even with the loss of life, and can preserve it with the common good uninjured, very probably is held to stand by the promise. Yet the opposite opinion is also sufficiently probable, because it is licit for no one to squander life (III, 971; H. Ap., V, 18).

n. ¶1187.

III. The obligation of a committed secret is grave from its genus. Thus especially if the secret was committed from necessity or utility, as happens with physicians, notaries, advocates, or theologians consulted. For such a secret has the nature of an onerous contract, and it is of concern to the whole of society that it be guarded inviolably.

Hence, by reason of office and of the public good, men of this kind are often held to silence even with danger of grave proper damage. Nor are they released from silence by the authority of a judge legitimately interrogating, unless the matter is already known in another way, or unless there is present from elsewhere a just cause of revealing: for the judge cannot abrogate the right of nature (III, 970, 2).

IT IS ASKED. When does the obligation of preserving a secret CEASE?

Resp. 1. The obligation of a secret, even committed, ceases where revelation is necessary for the common good, for the safety of an innocent person, for the good of the one committing it himself.

Hence, a physician licitly warns some bride about the contagious disease of the bridegroom, if he, having been warned, would not desist from marriage. You licitly are silent about the true favorer of some crime, although another were accused, unless the guilty person unjustly strives to accuse the innocent.

The obligation of a secret, even committed, also ordinarily ceases if it is a question of avoiding grave proper damage. The reason is that your right prevails, and charity does not oblige with so great an inconvenience (see n. 1182).

Therefore you licitly reveal the author of a homicide if you have been suspected, provided another means is not present for freeing yourself.

In all these things, however, account must be had of the common good, which in some cases must prevail over one's own good and over the good of the one committing the secret. Thus, for example, an advocate, knowing the fortune of his client to be unstable, cannot warn his own brother, the creditor of the client. A physician, an advocate, to whom impediments of marriage are revealed for taking counsel, cannot reveal them to the parish priest, as we shall say n. 2065. An official to whom secrets of State are committed is not freed from the obligation of secrecy even by fear of death.

Revelation of a secret is likewise excused from sin, at least grave sin, where the consent of the one committing it is reasonably presumed; where the secret is (or is certainly believed to be) of slight moment; where finally it has been notably made common. Nor is it grave, probably, if the revelation is made to one upright person; provided that this person truly preserves the secret, and provided he is not such a one from whom the one committing it specially wished the matter to be hidden (III, 971).

Vol. I, Pt. II, Sect. II, Tractate VIII: On the Eigh…, Ch. I, Art. III, § 2. On Inquiry into and Use of Another's Secret

n. ¶1188.

PRINCIPLES. I. He who unjustly inquires into another's secrets, or extorts them, sins against justice, and cannot use a secret so acquired. The reason of the first is that he does injury to him who possesses a right to the secret. The reason of the second is that no one can licitly continue and perfect an unjust action. Whence you cannot use a secret unjustly acquired even for avoiding your own damage (III, 969; V, 70, 5).

He sins more gravely who extorts secrets with the mind of using them for the damage of neighbor. He sins only venially who in exploring secrets is led by curiosity.
The gravity of the sin must be judged according to the object of the secret, that is, according to the utility which the secrets have for the possessor, insofar as the privation of them brings harm to him, whether in goods of fortune or in his reputation. Nevertheless, the gravity of the sin cannot, for every inquiry, be stated from this rule. For sometimes this inquiry can be assimilated to revelation which is made to one discreet and taciturn man (cf. n. 1200, Question 4).

From these things you conclude: a) He sins who without cause (or without at least the presumed permission of the owner) opens and reads letters (or other private writings) which the owner hides, or has lost by chance, or has torn in such a way that the will of concealing their argument became known.

b) Postal officials of themselves always sin gravely by opening and reading letters. The common good, which from contract they promised to preserve, and the very strict civil law impose this grave burden on them. Cf. Linz. Quart. Schr., 1903, p. 42.

c) They sin gravely who deliberately take pains to hear an accusation of sins made in the confessional (Ami du Cl., 1905, p. 971; Linz. Quart. Schr., 1906, p. 353, 829). Nevertheless, if they use knowledge acquired in this way, so that, for example, they accuse a thief more securely before a judge, they do not by that very fact become the efficacious cause of the damage which the thief suffers from the sentence of the judge. Linz. Quart. Schr., l. c.

n. ¶1189.

II. It is licit, with a just cause or the permission of the owner, at least presumed, to inquire into another's secrets, and to use those acquired in this way. The reason is that no injury is given where the owner consents or reasonably ought to consent. But then he ought to consent when, on the part of the one inquiring, there is present a certain and stronger right: namely a just cause. Finally, it is plain that the use of a thing justly acquired cannot constitute injury.

But a just cause is the necessity of averting grave damage impending to the community, or to you or yours.

Hence, they can licitly open and read another's letters: 1. Public ministers, as often as the public good requires it, for example in time of war. 2. A Superior of a community, from legitimate custom, or from probable suspicion of evil, or even by force of the rule; excepted nevertheless are letters which are sent to Superiors of a higher order, or are received from them. 3. All, insofar as is necessary for protecting themselves or their own from unjust vexation of the writer. We say: from unjust vexation of the writer; for, as St. Alphonsus warns, "it is not licit for you to open the letters of another, for procuring your good, or for avoiding some evil, because this would be against the common good of human commerce; for authors permit this only for protecting oneself from unjust vexation of an enemy" (III, 969; V, 70). 4. All to whom the care of a minor subject is committed, for example parents, tutors, Superiors of a school. Except, as regards matters pertaining to the inmost conscience.

But husbands illicitly read letters sent to a wife. Say the same concerning masters as regards letters which are sent to their servants. Always except if they truly suspect something evil.

Note. a) Friends of friends, sisters of sisters, often do not sin by reading letters, because there is present a tacit consent of the other party to these things. b) If you have justly accepted knowledge of someone's secret, nevertheless you must preserve silence from charity, as often as damage of someone could proceed from revelation. Indeed, by revealing a secret of this kind, you will sin against justice if you understand that the hearers are going to use that knowledge for inflicting damage unjustly (V, 70, 6). Cf. the things said n. 948.

Merkelbach, Summa Theologiae Moralis

Benedict Henry Merkelbach, O.P. — 37 passages

Vol. II, Special Moral Theology: On…, Treatise: On the Cardinal …, Fifth Part: On the Virtues…, Section E: On Truth, Question Two: On Violation of a Secret

852. A secret, subjectively taken, is knowledge of a thing hidden from others and to be hidden, or the knowledge and obligation of not manifesting some hidden thing; objectively, it is the hidden thing itself and to be hidden, which can be very diverse: an invention of art or science, or some fact, for example that an office is vacant, or an unknown crime. In the present matter, secret is chiefly taken subjectively. It is threefold:

a) Natural, whose obligation arises without contract from the very nature of the thing, because it cannot be manifested without harm or displeasure of the neighbor, and accordingly without his being reasonably unwilling. Thus if by chance or by effort you know another's money laid away, an invention, or a hidden crime, it is not licit to manifest it.

b) Promised, whose obligation arises from a gratuitous promise following upon knowledge of the matter, or because someone has promised to keep it, even if the matter from its nature does not induce an obligation of secrecy; for example, if someone concerning a thing previously known or now already received, spontaneously or at a friend's request, promises silence.

c) Committed or rigorous, whose obligation arises from an onerous promise antecedent to the reception of the secret, or because it is committed under an express or tacit pact of keeping it and is thus accepted by another.

Namely, first, expressly or tacitly, it is promised that it is not to be revealed: expressly indeed if someone says that he will not manifest the matter except under the express condition that the other keep silence about it (a private secret, which is required on account of a private good); tacitly when from some fact it is clear that the matter is committed under secrecy and that the other accepts it thus, as if it is committed to someone who by office, by force of the duty he bears, or by the special title of kinship or friendship, is bound not to manifest it (an officious or professional secret, which is required on account of the public good), for example, to a counselor, physician, midwife, advocate, theologian, confessor, visitor, parents, friends, etc., to whom a matter is manifested only because it is supposed to be faithfully guarded by them.

Consequently a committed secret obliges in varying degree: less when it was committed wholly freely, more if to a private person for the sake of counsel, still more if to one established in office, most of all when it is committed to a counselor in a public cause.

853. Principles. - Everyone has a strict right to his own secret. That right is proximately founded partly in dominion over one's own thoughts and the fruits of one's own genius or labor, partly in the right to reputation and external goods, insofar as, namely, from a violated secret there can be harm to reputation or fortune, or ceasing gain; ultimately it is founded in the common good. Hence the right of secrecy is relative and limited. Therefore of itself it is illicit, and indeed gravely, 1. to explore a secret; 2. to manifest a secret; 3. to use knowledge of a secret.

I. To explore a secret is illicit without legitimate authority or a just cause. For a secret is another's thing; therefore one who illegitimately explores it, for example by force, deceit, or fraud, usurps another's thing and takes it away from its owner. The gravity of this sin depends on the gravity of the thing which is extorted.

Hence a) of itself and generally it is illicit to listen at a wall or door, or to open letters, or to break open a chest, or to corrupt servants or workers in order to know another's secret, even an invention of art or science.¹

¹ An invention of art or science can licitly be detected by art or study; but this properly is not directly to explore another's secret, but to devise a similar invention by one's own ingenuity, whereby another's secret indirectly becomes known.

b) From legitimate authority, superiors (bishops, magistrates, judges) sometimes can and ought to explore secrets on account of the common good, for example, for detecting crimes committed or to be committed; and parents can do so on account of the good of children and of the family.

c) From a just cause, for example to avoid unjust harm, whether proper, common, or of an innocent third party, it is licit to explore the secret of him from whom harm threatens, for example, a crime committed or probably to be committed against oneself or against an innocent third party, the forces and positions of enemies in a just war.

II. To manifest a secret of itself is illicit, as being against charity and at the same time against fidelity or justice, because it is apt to be done with harm or displeasure of another, or also violates a promise or pact.

III. To use knowledge of a secret for one's own advantage or that of a third party, against the owner's will, is illicit, especially if it is done with his harm; a fortiori it is illicit if someone has detected the secret unjustly, because it would be to continue injustice.

Unless, however, it is in those circumstances in which there is a sufficient just cause for exploring a secret. But one who by unjustly using another's secret, as by revealing it, has brought harm upon another, is bound to restitution.

n. 854.

854. What the obligation of secrecy is. - I. A natural secret obliges from justice, by reason of harm; and one who violates it without just cause commits a grave sin from its genus.

n. 854.

II. A merely promised secret of itself obliges from fidelity alone, by reason of a simple promise; and one who violates it without just cause commits a venial sin, unless he intended to bind himself from justice, or the secret is at the same time natural.

n. 854.

III. A committed secret obliges from justice, by reason of a special contract; and one who violates it without just cause therefore sins gravely, and indeed more gravely, other things being equal, than for a natural secret. Especially if the secret is officious, because the common good regularly demands that it be preserved inviolate: for it pertains to the common good that all may safely seek counsel or help from those who by office or special title are able to furnish it. Hence such a secret ought not to be manifested to a judge or superior interrogating, and it also obliges if otherwise it would have had to be manifested; so that it is never to be revealed unless the common good demands it and by the law of nature it must altogether be revealed.²

² St. Thomas, II-II, q. 70, a. 1, ad 2.

855. There is a threefold just cause for manifesting a secret, on account of which the obligation of secrecy ceases:

The consent of him whose secret it is, at least reasonably presumed; for example, if a subject is denounced under secrecy, the superior can manifest, not indeed the denouncer, but the offense, in order to correct the delinquent.

Divulgation of the matter made from elsewhere; hence it is licit for him who had otherwise known a committed secret to speak about the secret, or to speak with a man who has knowledge of it.

The necessity of averting harm: generally it is licit to reveal a secret whenever this revelation is necessary for averting proportionately grave harm, public or private, proper or another's; indeed charity and legal justice sometimes require this manifestation. But a greater necessity is required the stricter and graver the obligation of keeping the secret is, which depends both on the nature of the secret and on the harm to be brought by manifestation.

But a fourfold necessity is given on account of which it is licit to manifest a secret as much as is sufficient for averting harm:

a) Grave common harm of civil society or of the Church: for the obligation of secrecy, which is principally introduced on account of the public good, ceases where the public good requires the manifestation of the secret, according to the adage: the safety of the republic is the supreme law. Therefore not just any harm to be avoided suffices, for example from the fact that otherwise some guilty man remains unpunished, but urgent necessity from a most grave impending harm.

Thus if someone under secrecy, even committed secrecy, has known another's purpose of greatly harming the city or the Church, from which he cannot otherwise be recalled, he can and ought to reveal the secret to authority. So also a physician is bound to denounce a sick person who could easily infect others gravely.

b) Grave harm of the very person committing the secret: for then he cannot be reasonably unwilling.

Thus, to prevent a marriage from being invalid, a hidden impediment which someone has known under secrecy must be revealed to the proper priest.

c) Grave harm of an innocent third party to be averted by revelation of the secret of the harmful person: for charity demands that we prevent grave harm of an innocent person, even with harm of the guilty person.

Yet if the matter concerns a committed secret, especially an officious one, it will not be able to be manifested unless the harm is still to be inflicted and by the very person who committed the secret about the harm to be inflicted. For the common good regularly requires that such a secret be kept, except in the case in which the one committing it is himself an unjust aggressor, against whom the innocent person can be defended. Thus if someone from a committed secret should know Peter to be a murderer, he could not reveal the matter to free Paul unjustly accused; yet he could do so if the accusation had been made by Peter himself. Likewise a physician, knowing by professional secrecy that a bridegroom is infected with venereal disease, could manifest the matter to the deceived bride, indeed he ought to do so, if the bridegroom, having been warned, would not desist from marriage.

d) Grave proper harm, for example danger of death, even if similar grave harm threatened another: for no one is judged to have bound himself with so great an inconvenience, unless he has expressly promised it and the promise was valid.

Yet if the matter concerns a committed secret, it will not be able to be manifested with great harm (for example, of life) to the one committing it, unless the danger comes from him, because then he is an unjust aggressor; otherwise, however, it is illicit. But in practice, the one committing it can first be warned about taking precautions against the harm which threatens him from the revelation to be made. Thus one who is falsely accused of homicide, whose author he knows from a committed secret, if it is necessary, can reveal the name of the guilty person after he has warned him to protect himself by flight.

Let it be noted that a secret can never be manifested, even for averting a most grave harm of death, proper or another's, if the common good demands that the hidden matter be wholly kept, as if the custody of the secret is altogether necessary for the security of society or of an army. Thus the secret of the seal of the sacrament of Penance can never be violated, because the greater good of religion and the salvation of the faithful always demands that it be preserved inviolate.

856. Corollary: on the secrecy of letters. - To open another's letters, or to read those already opened and kept in a closed place, for example in a desk, or lost by chance, of itself is a sin grave from its genus against justice: for everyone has a strict right to his own secret; and one who explores it without the owner's consent acts after the manner of a thief.

Hence they sin gravely who intend to know in this way secrets of great importance (matters regarding family, business, or conscience), or expose themselves to the danger of knowing them.

Nevertheless the sin will be only slight: a) of itself, if it is morally certain or can reasonably be presumed that nothing is found in these letters except matters of lesser importance, such as greetings, narrations of lesser events, commercial notes, and that grave infamy or grave harm cannot arise therefrom; b) accidentally, if letters are read from levity of mind or without full advertence, for example, to know news, to laugh at a barbarous manner of writing, and the reading is interrupted as soon as it appears that the matter is grave.

There will be no sin: a) if the consent of the sender or recipient is present, express or tacit, which nevertheless is not easily presumed: thus if spouses or friends are accustomed to hand over to each other letters received from a common friend to be read; b) in communities, institutes, or colleges in which it has been established by law, rule, or custom that superiors can read the letters of inferiors; in which case, however, letters sent to higher superiors are exempted, and in other letters those parts which it is clear deal solely with secrets of conscience; c) if on account of entirely grave motives someone judges that the letters contain injury, and the reading is necessary for averting harm threatening himself or others or the republic: nevertheless he will not be able to read more than the end requires. Thus in time of war it is licit for combatants to intercept the letters of enemies; likewise parents can read the letters of children, the rector of a college those of students, the rector of a prison those of the justly detained, a religious superior those of subjects; but not a master the letters of servants, nor a husband the letters of his wife, unless they judge with moral certainty that something harmful is contained in them.

Letters thrown away by the owner or knowingly left in a public place can be read without injustice, because he is deservedly judged not to vindicate his strict right; yet if something is contained there which, if revealed, would turn to the detriment of the owner, by reason of harm it must be kept hidden. But to read torn letters whose fragments are thrown away is not licit, at least if they are torn into pieces so small that the parts cannot be compared and the letter read except by an exquisite diligence which men are not accustomed to employ. For such tearing, by common estimation, is as it were destruction.

One who has acquired knowledge of a secret by unjustly opening letters nevertheless seems able to use it when circumstances have so changed that he now has the right of procuring for himself knowledge of that secret.

Sabetti-Barrett, Compendium of Moral Theology

Aloysius Sabetti, S.J., and Timothy Barrett, S.J. — 7 passages

Vol. I, Tr. VI, On the Eighth Precept of t…, Chapter V. On Violation of a Secret

n. 323.

Here a secret is called whatever, either from its own nature or from a special contract, ought to be kept hidden. - A threefold secret is distinguished and is 1st. natural, if it is imposed by the very nature of the thing to be hidden, e.g., if you know something which you cannot manifest without grave injury to another either in estimation or in goods, etc.; 2nd. promised, if someone, hearing a secret from another or learning it by chance, promises that he will not reveal it; 3rd. committed, if someone manifests something to another and at the same time tacitly or expressly requires silence from him concerning it.

n. 324.

I say 1st. A natural secret in a grave matter obliges under grave matter, and indeed in justice, unless a just cause excuses. The reason is that from revelation of the secret harm follows to the neighbor, who has the right not to be injured without reasonable cause.

I say 2nd. A promised secret, besides the obligation of a natural secret, which by reason of the matter it can sometimes bring with it, by force of the promise alone obliges gravely or lightly according to the intention of the one promising; lightly, if the one promising binds himself only from fidelity, as often happens; gravely in grave matter, if he wished to oblige himself in justice.

I say 3rd. A committed or communicated secret, which is also called rigorous, obliges under grave matter in justice, and indeed more strictly than a merely natural secret and also than a promised one; because besides the natural obligation there also presses an obligation from an onerous contract expressly or tacitly undertaken. - Cf. St. Alphonsus, n. 970. - Baller., note (a) and (b), p. 440.

n. 325.

Questions

Question 1. What are the just causes of manifesting any secret whatsoever, even if it is committed?

Response. They are 1st. the rightly presumed consent of him whose interest it is that the secret be hidden; 2nd. divulgation of the matter arising from elsewhere; 3rd. harm that will follow from the secret to the commonwealth, or to innocent private persons, or to the one entrusting it, or even to him to whom the secret is committed. I said, that will follow, because if it concerns harm already inflicted, a committed secret cannot licitly be revealed as long as the one causing harm is not himself bound to betray himself, although a natural or promised secret can, indeed ought, to be manifested to a judge legitimately interrogating, so that the harm already inflicted may be redressed. The reason for the difference is that the obligation which affects a natural or promised secret is essentially conditioned, and as it were supervenes upon the pre-existing obligation of responding to a judge legitimately interrogating. But if the matter concerns a committed secret, a judge or superior cannot abrogate the right of nature, which requires that it ought to be kept, unless the matter is already known by another way. - Cf. St. Alphonsus, nn. 970 and 971. - Baller., note (a), p. 441.

n. 325, Q. 2.

Question 2. Can you reveal a secret if you promised to keep it even with loss of life?

Response. Affirmatively, if the common good requires it, because then a promise of this kind is invalid by its own nature. But otherwise one must answer if it concerns your own simply grave harm, because you expressly renounced your right, and it is not illicit to permit yourself to incur grave harm for keeping a promise. - Cf. St. Alphonsus, n. 971.

n. 325, Q. 3.

Question 3. Does he sin gravely who reveals a secret to one or another upright man under the same secret?

Response. Negatively, probably of itself; because in this case grave injury against another does not seem to be committed, unless nevertheless it is revealed to a person from whom the one entrusting the secret to you is rightly presumed to have especially wished it to be concealed. - I said, of itself; because in practice, on account of the circumstances of the secret, the revelation will easily become grave, namely when you suppose too lightly that the persons to whom you commit the received secret are so discreet that they will certainly keep it. - Cf. St. Alphonsus, n. 971.

n. 325, Q. 4.

Question 4. Does he sin gravely who opens or reads another's letters?

Response. Affirmatively, because by natural right and the right of nations there is present a grave obligation of preserving the secrets of letters inviolate; otherwise human commerce would be overthrown. Except, however, the following cases: 1st. if there is tacit or presumed consent of him who writes, or of him to whom the letters are sent; 2nd. if the letters are known or presumed to contain matters of slight moment; 3rd. if it is done from a just cause, e.g., for averting public or private harm, provided no more is read than is necessary for this end; 4th. if the letters are opened from levity or from some inadvertence. Cf. St. Alphonsus, de Peccatis, n. 70; and Hom. Ap., nn. 5 and 6.

n. 325, Q. 5.

Question 5. Can you ever use knowledge unjustly acquired for freeing yourself, for example?

Response. Affirmatively, in the case in which, if you had not had that information, you could, by your own right, in order to provide for yourself, have searched it out and inquired into the secret even by deceit; otherwise you cannot. Therefore this can be done 1st. when that possessor of the secret vexes you unjustly, since it is licit to repel force by force; 2nd. when he is held to reveal the secret, because then he does not have the right of retaining it; 3rd. when it is of interest to the commonwealth that it be manifested for the common safety. Yet you cannot use it on account of some good of yours resulting from the revelation, or some evil of your own to be avoided, nor on account of that evil for the sake of which you can reveal a justly acquired secret. But if that were permitted, a door and license would be opened of searching out, by right and wrong, the secrets of one's neighbor for our utility; letters would be intercepted and other frauds employed to the ruin of human commerce and public quiet. Such a person unjustly acquiring another's secret steals his good: nothing is more intimate to a man or more his own than the secret of the heart; it is a right belonging to him from intrinsic principles, which God protects by concealing it in such a way that not even angels penetrate the secrets of man. Against this right acts he who obtains a secret by fraud or deceit and communicates it to others. Hence there would be a violation of a most strict right if someone employed the new instrument which is commonly called a dictograph, against the peace of human society: e.g., while an advocate hears his clients, or such privileged persons receive most secret things, or officials communicate hidden things of government to one another. Thus Lugo, disp. 14, nn. 100 and following.

Slater, Cases I

Thomas Slater, S.J. — 12 passages

Slater, Cases I, The Eighth Commandment, Case 2. A Professional Secret

Titius, a Catholic advocate, asked a confessor in the sacred tribunal whether he was bound to reveal an occult impediment to marriage in these circumstances. The banns were recently proclaimed concerning the marriage soon to be entered into between Julius and Julia. Titius, however, had recently been consulted by Julius concerning the sum of money to be assigned for the support of his offspring begotten from secret fornication with the sister of Julia. Hence the confessor asks:

What is a secret, and how many kinds are there?

Is it lawful to reveal secrets, and for what cause?

What kind of obligation does the proclamation of banns introduce?

What is to be said of the case?

Solution

What is a secret, and how many sorts of secrets are there?

A secret is some hidden matter concerning another, which can not be made known without causing him injury or displeasure. Besides the secret of the seal of confession, which is treated of elsewhere, divines distinguish three kinds of secret: the natural secret, the promised secret, and the secret which is communicated under an express or implied contract of secrecy.¹

1 Manual of Moral Theology, vol. i, p. 470.

n. ¶8.

May secrets be revealed sometimes, and for what cause?

n. ¶9.

Natural and promised secrets may be revealed when the public good requires it, or when an innocent person can not otherwise be defended. Even professional secrets may be revealed when the public weal would otherwise suffer seriously, and when he whose secret is in question abuses the privilege of secrecy to do harm to an innocent person.¹

1 Manual of Moral Theology, vol. i, p. 471 and following.

n. ¶10.

What sort of obligation is imposed by the proclamation of banns?

n. ¶11.

A grave obligation is imposed of disclosing to the priest any known impediment of the marriage. Even if the impediment be known under natural or promised secrecy, the obligation to disclose it will arise. It will not arise usually if the secret be of the third and stricter kind.²

2 The same work, p. 265.

n. ¶12.

The case. Titius, a Catholic lawyer, wishes to know whether he is bound to make known to the parish priest the diriment impediment of affinity in the first degree in the collateral line which in his professional capacity he has learned exists between Julius and Julia, who are going to be married. No; he should not tell the parish priest, as the matter is a professional secret, but he should take an opportunity to warn Julius about the impediment, if Julius does not know of it, so that a dispensation may be applied for in time before the marriage.

Rickaby, Moral Philosophy

Joseph Rickaby, S.J. — 9 passages

Pt. III, Ch. III, Section III. Of the keeping of Secrets without Lying

There are natural secrets, secrets of promise, and secrets of trust. A natural secret is all a man's own private history, which he would not have made public, as also all that he discovers by his own observation of the similar private history of his neighbours. If a man finds out something about his neighbour, and, after he has found it out for himself, the neighbour gets him to promise not to publish it, that is a secret of promise. Lastly, if one man comes to another, as to a lawyer, or a surgeon, for professional advice, or simply to a friend for moral counsel, and in order thereto imparts to him some of his natural secrets, those secrets, as they are received and held by the person consulted, are called secrets of trust. This latter kind of secret is privileged above the other two. A natural secret, and also a secret of promise, must be delivered up on the demand of an authority competent to inquire in the department where the secret lies. But a secret of trust is to be given up to no inquirer, but to be kept against all who endeavour to come by it, except where the matter bodes mischief and wrong to a third party, or to the community, and where at the same time the owner of the secret cannot be persuaded to desist from the wrong. This proviso does not hold for the seal of confession, which is absolutely inviolable.

The main art of keeping a secret is, not to talk about it. If a man is asked an awkward question, and sees no alternative but to let out or lie, it is usually his own fault for having introduced the subject, or encouraged the questioner up to that point. A wise man lets drop in time topics which he is unwilling to have pressed. But there are unconscionable people who will not be put off, and who, either out of malice or out of stupidity, ply you with questions against all rules of good breeding. This direct assault may sometimes be retaliated, and a rude question met by a curt answer. But such a reply is not always prudent or charitable, and would not unfrequently convey the very information required. Silence would serve no better, for silence gives consent, and is eloquent at times. There is nothing left for it in such cases but to lock your secret up, as it were, in a separate compartment of your breast, and answer according to the remainder of your information, which is not secret, private, and confidential. This looks very much like lying, but it is not lying, it is speaking the truth under a broad mental reservation.

Mental reservation is an act of the mind, limiting the spoken phrase so that it may not bear the full sense which at first hearing it seems to bear. The reservation, or limitation of the spoken sense, is said to be broad or pure, according as it is, or is not, indicated externally. A pure mental reservation, where the speaker uses words in a limited meaning, without giving any outward clue to the limitation, is in nothing different from a lie, and is wrong as a lie is always wrong. A good instance is Archbishop Cranmer's oath of fealty to the Pope, he having previously protested—of course out of hearing of the Pope or the Pope's representative—that he meant that oath in no way to preclude him from labouring at the reformation of the Church in England, that is, doing all the evil work which Henry VIII. had marked out for him in the teeth of the Roman Bishop.¹⁸ Even broad mental reservation is permissible only as a last resource, when no other means are available for the preservation of some secret which one has a duty to others, or grave reason of one's own, to keep.

¹⁸ Strype's Cranmer, i., pp 27, 28; ib., ii.,
Appendices 5, 6; ed. Oxon., 1812.

The point to make out is that no lie is told. To speak under a reservation is a lie, if it is speech against the mind of the speaker. But how can it be aught else than speech against the mind, when the heart thinks yea, and the tongue says nay? We answer that, in the case contemplated, the thought of the heart is, secrets apart, nay; and though the word on the lips is nay simply, yet we must not take that word as the whole locution, but as a mere text, to which the situation of the speaker and the matter spoken of form a commentary, legible to any observant eye. The word is an annotated text; nay in the body of the page, with secrets apart inscribed in the margin. The adequate utterance is the whole page, text and gloss together; that speech answers to the thought in the speaker's mind; therefore it is no lie.

Vol. I, Case L: The Medical Secret · Vol. V, Case XXX: The Manifestation of a Secret · Vol. V, Case XXXI: An Illegitimate Child’s Question Regarding his Identity

The essential requisite is that the gloss, secrets apart, be not written in the speaker's private mind, but be outwardly and publicly manifest in the matter spoken of, which must be one that clearly admits of secrets, and in the circumstances of the speaker, who is driven into a corner, and obliged to answer something, and yet cannot by any prudent man be expected to answer out of the fulness of all the knowledge that he may possibly possess.

n. 6.

Nor let it be said that all confidence in the replies given to our questions is hereby destroyed. For most questions are in matters that do not admit of a secret. There the qualification, secrets apart, which may be said to attach to all answers, has no value and meaning: it is mathematically equal to zero; and we may take the answer in full assurance just as it reaches our ear. Again, when a person volunteers a statement unasked, he cannot be supposed to be reserving secrets. But when delicate subjects are touched on, and inquiry is pushed to extremity by an unauthorized questioner, secrets apart is the handwriting on the wall.

n. 7.

But why is not this qualification spoken out with the tongue? Sometimes it safely may be, and then it should be so added. But, as the addition is unusual, our taking the trouble to express it would often certify to the inquirer that his suspicions were correct, though we ought not to tell him so. Our aim then must be to give such an oral answer as we should return, were the suspicion quite unfounded. Our questioner, if he is a prudent man, will piece out our phrase with the addition, secrets apart; and he will understand that he can get nothing out of us either way, which is exactly what we wish him to understand. His unauthorized interrogatory has been met by speech that amounts to silence, arguing indeed our prudence, but leaving him as wise as before on the forbidden topic. If he is a thoughtless man, he is deceived, not by any intention or election of ours, but indirectly so far as we are concerned, an incidental deception which he has brought on himself.

n. 8.

This then is a convention that obtains, not of positive institution, but dictated by nature herself, that on a matter which admits of being secret, any answer elicited under stress of necessity must be so construed, as that any grave secret that may be touched, not being morally in the power of the respondent to reveal, shall be taken to remain reserved.

n. 9.

We may therefore sometimes avoid seeming to know what we know, or to be what we are. But we may never of our own proper motion step forward and court observation as being what we are not, or knowing what is against or beyond our knowledge. We may dissemble occasionally, but not simulate. The dissembler of a secret wishes for obscurity and silence: he wants to have the eyes of men turned away from him and their curiosity unroused. Whatever he says or does is to divest the idea of there being anything particularly interesting about him. But he who simulates—call him pretender, impostor, or quack—is nothing, if not taken notice of. The public gaze is his sunshine: obscurity gives him a deadly chill. His ambition is to appear out of the ordinary, being really quite within common lines: the dissembler is in some respect beyond the ordinary, but wishes not to show himself otherwise than as an ordinary mortal with ordinary knowledge. The pretender is on the offensive, challenging attention: the dissembler is on his defence against notice. "Simulation," says Bolingbroke, "is a stiletto, not only an offensive but an unlawful weapon, and the use of it may be rarely, very rarely, excused, but never justified. Dissimulation is a shield, as secrecy is armour: and it is no more possible to preserve secrecy in the administration of public affairs without dissimulation than it is to succeed in it without secrecy." (Idea of a Patriot King.)

Readings.—De Lugo, De Just. et Jure, 14, nn. 135, 141, 142; The Month for March, 1883; Lockhart's Life of Scott, v., 26.

The Casuist

Various; ed. S. Woywod, O.F.M., and J. A. McHugh, O.P. — 27 passages

Vol. I, Case L: The Medical Secret

A recent work on "Social Diseases and Marriage" (Prince A. Morrow, M.D.) quotes the following case: "The father of a young woman asks information relative to the health of a young man (your patient) who is engaged to his daughter. 'I wish to ask, under the seal of secrecy, certain details as to his malady. I beg you to say whether I can or can not accept him as a son-in-law. I hope that you will take into consideration the embarrassment of a father placed between the desire to give to his daughter the husband of her choice and the fear of the results the marriage may have, if the hints that have been given me are unfortunately true.' In the case given above should the physician, entrenching himself behind the Hippocratic oath and the proscriptions of the law, guard an absolute silence, or, only interrogating his conscience, should he make it the judge of the secret confided to him, to divulge it, or be silent, according to circumstances?"

Answer.—Secrets committed to professional men, v. g., physicians, lawyers, etc., by reason of their profession are known in theology as "secreta commissa rigoroso." They impose an obligation, arising from strict justice, ex stricta justitia, and, therefore, in a grave matter they bind under pain of mortal sin. They impose a graver obligation than "secreta naturalia," or "secreta promissa." These latter are binding, ordinarily, "ex fidelitate tantum." The "secretum commissum rigorosum" binds under circumstances where otherwise the secret would have to be revealed, because the good of the public demands that the secret be kept inviolate. And, therefore, even though a judge in a court of law or other superior should lawfully ask for information that would involve the betrayal of a "secretum commissum," it would not be right to answer, and if there were no other means of guarding the secret, the physician or lawyer, etc., may and must answer by a flat denial of any knowledge of the subject. Of course the laws of civilized countries protect professional men in the keeping of professional secrets. In the work mentioned above the author quotes the opinions of a number of medical men, bearing on the case he cites, which it may be interesting to quote in this connection, as showing the attitude of the medical fraternity toward the duty of a physician to guard under any and all circumstances the medical secret. Dr. Langlebert, from whom the above case is cited, indicates the physician's duty in the circumstances as it appears to him as follows: He would answer the young woman's father, who wished to learn from him the condition of health of his prospective son-in-law, thus: "I regret that I can not give the information you ask. The best you can do, if you intend to carry out this project of marriage, is to inform the young man of the warnings you have received, or have him come with you, or send me a writing by which he authorizes me without restriction to say whether he can or can not espouse your daughter." The physician ought to interdict all kinds of information as to the health of a patient on the occasion of marriage; as a professional principle, an invariable rule of conduct, he should take refuge behind the proscriptions of the law. The alternative is cruel. It requires a certain courage in such cases for the physician to remain master of himself and faithful to his duty. If it be a misfortune to society, it would be a much greater damage to permit the enfeeblement of the tutelary principle of the medical secret, which is one of the necessities even of the social order.

Dr. Gaide, commenting on this case, says: "If a client affected with constitutional syphilis, which resists all treatment, does not fear to solicit the hand of a pure young woman, who is the joy of her family; if the father of this young woman comes to demand of me in confidence, if he can in all security give her to this man, who would soil her by his first contact and leave her as her only consolation children affected by his malady, shall we respond with a silence which may be misunderstood, and thus render ourselves accomplices of a marriage, the fruits of which will be so deplorable? Never would I have the courage to obey the law under such circumstances. My conscience would speak higher than it, and without hesitation I would say, 'No, do not give your daughter to this man,' and I would not add another word."

Juhel Renoy maintains that it is not only lawful, but even compulsory for any doctor who is a man of honor and courage, to oppose and even denounce any criminal projects his patients might entertain in regard to marriage. He cites two instances in which he had undertaken the cause of young girls who were about to fall into a trap of this kind, and as his patients were without conscience, he refused to listen to the moral reason he adduced, he declared that he did not feel bound to secrecy toward them any longer, and that he would either go or send to the parents of the young women and warn them. Under this threat one of these marriages was broken off, but a more direct interference was required in the other case. He sent for the girl's father by one of his confreres, and replied without hesitation to the question put to him, "No, sir, do not marry your daughter to Mr. X," with so much emphasis that the marriage was broken off.

Commenting on this action of Renoy, Dr. Jullien says: "If the result was fortunate, the method employed was detestable. It was treason, perpetrated with the best intentions, but still treason, for it is all very well to say the patients were warned, but it was not until they were no longer masters of their secret, which would no doubt not have been revealed if they had known what use there was to be made of it. Strict duty would have required that before receiving this confidence our confrere should have warned the parties interested, that he would publish the information if he saw fit."

Dr. Morrow, from whose excellent work these extracts have been made, expresses his own opinion on this subject in the following words: "While the obligation of the medical secret is in the general interest of the social order, and should be maintained as a fixed principle of professional conduct, it may be admitted that a situation of a peculiarly aggravating character may present itself when the patient shows himself an exceptional sort of brute by the obstinacy with which he adheres to his criminal purposes after he is assured that he will almost certainly infect his wife—in such a case the physician, knowing all the circumstances and fully appreciating the tragic significance of such a step, must be guided by his own lights and conscience. If he should consider the criminal intent of this monster as entirely without the pale of professional protection, and refuse to stifle his own feelings as a man of heart and conscience, who shall condemn him? Such a man is far more likely to prove loyal to the highest ideals of ethical duty in his relations with his patients in general than the man who views these social catastrophes with a cold-blooded indifference, disclaiming all personal responsibility, and considers that in guarding the dissolute secret of his patient he is doing his whole professional duty."

It is clear from these extracts, and from the opinions of many other medical men which might be quoted, that the medical fraternity is not at all united as to the ethics of revealing the medical secret, even in an extreme case, like the one we give. The subject indeed is fraught with much difficulty. Those who hold that it is never allowed to betray the medical secret, not even to prevent the commission of a crime, maintain that the social welfare would suffer more, eventually, by the revelation of the secret than by its keeping. For the very ones who have most need of confiding in a physician are the very ones who would be most deterred from such confidence, by the knowledge that the physician might under certain circumstances lawfully betray their secret. And it was in this conviction, they say, that the laws of many countries make it a crime for the physician to reveal his patient's secret for any purpose whatsoever, even to protect the innocent or to prevent the commission of a crime. Thus the French Penal Code, art. 378, decrees that "physicians, surgeons and other officers of health, also pharmacists, midwives and all other persons, the depositaries, by their state or profession, of secrets which have been confided to them, outside of cases where the law obliges them to denounce, who shall reveal their secrets shall be punished with imprisonment from one to six months, and by a fine of from one hundred to five hundred francs." And recently in England, the House of Lords sustained the decree of the lower court, punishing an eminent physician by an enormous fine for having revealed to the wife, to protect her from contamination, the medical secret of her husband, who was one of his patients.

n. ¶8.

A German court, on the other hand, decided in 1903 that the obligation to secrecy on part of the physician ceases when a higher moral obligation urges him to divulge the truth. In the instance of husband and wife the court considers the physician as permitted} and even in duty bound, even against the expressed will of the sick partner, to apprise the other of a danger of infection. The court adds that such higher moral obligation may well be present also in instances other than between husband and wife.

n. ¶9.

In the case before us it must always be kept in mind that the patient, who has committed his secret to the physician, is going to commit a crime, a moral, if not a legal crime, most odious in its nature and most far-reaching and destructive in its effects. The physician is the only one who can prevent the commission of the crime, because he alone knows the secret. All his pleading, all his admonitions, all his denunciations to the patient in private are of no avail. The crime will be committed, unless the physician breaks his professional silence and reveals the secret of his patient. Does strict justice toward the patient oblige the doctor to secrecy under these circumstances? Does the welfare of the social order demand that even in this extreme case the secret of the criminal shall be guarded inviolate, though he is about to perpetrate a great wrong? The theologians are unanimous that in a case like this neither justice toward the patient nor the interests of the social order require of a physician that he keep inviolate the secret of a patient who is determined to commit a crime, the cause of which crime or the incentive to it is contained in the secret.

n. ¶10.

This is the doctrine of St. Alphonsus (de oct. praec. 971): “An entrusted secret may be disclosed for a just cause, namely, if keeping the secret would result in common harm, or harm to another innocent person, or even harm to the person who entrusted it, because then the order of charity demands that it be revealed.”

n. ¶11.

Salmanticenses (tr. xiii., de restitut. cap. 4, n. 82): “Likewise, even an entrusted secret must be revealed whenever its observance tends toward common harm or the harm of some innocent person, because a secret cannot bind against the charity owed to another; rather, from charity we must ward off harm to the community and to the innocent person.”

n. ¶12.

Lugo (de Just. et J. disp. 14, n. 142): “Even an entrusted secret has no place in those cases in which the very person who entrusted the secret unjustly harasses the commonwealth or another innocent person and is unwilling to desist from the injury; for then, insofar as it is necessary to avert the injury, you may reveal the entrusted secret, even if you had promised and bound yourself to endure death and any evils whatsoever for keeping the secret. For this does not prevent one afterward from repelling force with force.”

n. ¶13.

This is the doctrine also of modern moralists, v. g., Lehmkuhl, Konings, Genicot, Noldin, etc., as will appear from a consultation of their treatises on the eighth commandment. It can scarcely be maintained with any good show of reason that the interests of society demand that a criminal be shielded, while committing a crime, by guarding his secret. It will not interfere with the free and confidential relations between physician and patient if it is understood by the patient that his secret may be revealed if such revelation be necessary to prevent him committing a crime. The physician's duty toward society and toward an innocent third party outweighs and ought to outweigh his duty toward a patient contemplating a crime against the community at large or an innocent private citizen. It would make for immorality to close the mouth of a physician in such circumstances. Of course, the physician must endeavor by every other legitimate means in his power to dissuade the patient from committing the crime before it becomes lawful for him to have recourse to the extreme measure of revealing his secret. But it can be no part of the contract entered into by patient and physician, that the physician shall be silent when his silence becomes immoral, as it does when it aids and abets the commission of crime.

n. ¶14.

To this line of reasoning it may be objected that it calls into question the morality of the laws of many civilized nations, prohibiting the revelation of the medical secret even in as extreme a case as the one under discussion. To this we answer in the words of the author quoted above:

n. ¶15.

"It is worthy of note that in Europe there is manifest a growing dissatisfaction upon the part of many medical men, amounting in some instances to an active protest, against the intangibility of the medical secret, especially its inflexible application in cases where the question of marriage is concerned. As indicating the drift of professional sentiment in this direction, in the discussion upon the 'Sanitary Guarantees of Marriage,' before the Societe Franchise de Prophylaxie Sanitaire et Morale, July, 1903, many authoritative voices were raised against the dogma of the professional secret in the matter of marriage. M. Forin demanded 'that the law authorize the physician to no longer respect the professional secret, when it comes to a project of marriage.' In the opinion of M. Crequy 'the medical secret ought to have exceptions which in the superior interest of the race, should also apply to venereal maladies.' MM. Cruet and Valentino presented essays demanding the relaxation of the medical secret in cases where the interests of the individual protected were opposed to the general interests. M. Valentino declares that professional secrecy is the most powerful obstacle to all real hygienic progress, as by keeping concealed all morbid conditions, it impedes the efforts of the social forces against the spread of disease, renders ineffective the law for the compulsory notification of infectious diseases, and prevents the sanitary protection of marriage."

n. ¶16.

It is hardly necessary to remark that the physician is bound toward the innocent third party only "ex caritate." Toward his patients he is bound "ex justitia"; toward others "ex caritate." Now charity does not bind "cum tanto incommodo." Consequently wherever the physician would incur serious risk, as legal prosecution, or loss of practice, etc., he is not obliged to protect an innocent third party from injury, by revealing the medical secret.

n. ¶17.

N. B.—What is said here about the medical secret, applies to all secrets committed to priests outside of Confession, to lawyers, midwives, nurses, druggists, dentists, in short, all professional men who by reason of their profession are made the guardians of the secrets of others.

Vol. V, Case XXX: The Manifestation of a Secret

Case.—Charles, a tutor in a college, and much trusted by most of the young men of the institution, receives a visit from one of the students, James, who requests a promise of secrecy in a matter he is about to confide to the tutor. Charles without hesitation gives the promise, and then learns that William, a member of the senior class, is corrupting the morals of the boys in the lower classes, by secret and depraved practices. Now it so happens that William is looked upon by the faculty as a boy of irreproachable character, a model in every sense. After a few days’ reflection, the tutor informs James that it is his duty to denounce the depraved student to the college authorities. This James stoutly refuses to do. He cannot bring himself to squeal and be looked upon as an informer. Then Charles takes the matter himself to the college faculty. An investigation follows and William is dismissed.

Question.—Did Charles do the proper thing or was he still bound by his promise of secrecy?

Solution.—A secretum commissum of which the above is an example, binds under pain of serious sin, by the very terms of the contract which beget an obligation in justice. Yet common sense and the teachings of theology tell us that under certain circumstances it must always and ever be lawful to reveal certain knowledge received under promise of secrecy. We could even go further and admit that the possessor of such secret knowledge may be bound in conscience to make it known. In the present case, we consider, that the circumstances are such that they make the revelation not only lawful, but they compel its manifestation. In the first place the danger to many innocent charges of the school, sent there for the uplifting purposes of a moral education, and entrusted by parents who would quickly remove them from such an atmosphere did they know the real condition of things, makes the revelation necessary. Secondly the fact that harm had been and was being done to many of the pupils, imperatively called for immediate action, and therefore charity demanded that some way be found to put a quick end to the presence of so baneful an agent. No other way was at hand save the denunciation of the guilty party to the governing board of the school. This involved the breaking of the promise of secrecy, which in the given instance was entirely lawful. A third consideration would be the good name of the school itself. Although hidden at the time, it is absolutely certain that the condition of affairs would eventually become public property. The shock and the scandal thus produced would cause much detriment to the school; might even put an end to its existence, as now-a-days no school could endure which had lost its reputation. It is clear then that the school should be protected against the malign influence that threatened its life, and this could only be done by following the course pursued by Charles. It is true that James was unwilling to have the knowledge he confided made use of. But he was unreasonably unwilling, and his attitude was justly ignored by the more practical and more experienced tutor. His fear of being held as an informer might be classed as mawkish sentimentality, too prevalent at times in the young and more deserving of censure than silence. Charles did the only possible thing under the circumstances, and his action is not only licit, but praiseworthy.

Vol. V, Case XXXI: An Illegitimate Child’s Question Regarding his Identity

Case.—Ximenes was born twenty-one years ago, outside of wedlock. His parents gave up all claim to him the day they left him, a helpless babe, with a foundling asylum in charge of Sisters. He was reared in a charitable institution, and is now a sober, steady worker at his trade, ably supporting himself. He is anxious to know who are his parents, and how he ever came to be under the care of the good Sisters. To give him the requested information would be to make known to him the facts of his illegitimate birth and the evil life of his parents.

Question.—Am I justified in refusing his request?

Solution.—In the abstract it would seem to us that the young man in search of his identity has a right to the information necessary to establish that identity. The natural relations existing between parents and child put forth a claim, as evidenced in the activity of Ximenes, which calls for satisfaction. We would not deny that he is following an instinct natural to the race, and that he could lay claim therefore to an instinctive right.

But the question on the whole must be considered from another viewpoint, and must be decided by the influence of other conditions. Granting that fundamentally he has a certain right to the knowledge he persists in obtaining, would it invariably follow that he should be put in possession of the facts concerning his origin? We do not think so. We can conceive of cases, we know of some, where success in gathering such knowledge was not only of no benefit, but was eventually exceedingly harmful. A case in point was that of a young lady who had been adopted by an excellent Catholic, though childless widow. The child was brought up a strict Catholic and lived an exemplary life for twenty years. An accident led to the discovery of facts, and this so overwhelmed her with a sense of shame that she cursed her real mother, and despite the efforts of the widow, who had a real affection for her she grew lax, rejected the admonitions of her confessor, and ultimately abandoned herself to the allurements of the forbidden path.

This may be considered an isolated case, but such is not our view. At all events it has to be reckoned with. So, in the case before us one would have to reflect upon the harm that would probably come to the child of such parents, and would likewise have to consider the present condition and circumstances of the parents, not forgetting to reckon with the rights of society itself. In almost every case the child receives a severe shock, is broken in spirit by the appreciation of the “taint,” and cannot shake off the feeling of being an outcast. Continuous brooding, then, leads to pernicious results.

Again, the parents may be dead, and charity would ask that they be allowed to rest in peace. Or, if not dead, they have wantonly abandoned their child, and it could hardly be expected that they could exercise the wise control, the uplifting influence, of a good parent on their offspring. Nor can the unhappy child be expected to love and reverence the parent who conceived and abandoned it in sin. It will more likely hate its progenitors and repay disgrace by disgrace. Of course some may act otherwise. But exceptions are rarities. Society does not gain by the knowledge supplied to illegitimates. Experience proves that in ignorance of their natal conditions, such children acquire better moral control over themselves, and lead more useful and more contented lives.