Everyone knows that you shouldn't tell a lie.Return to the Capax Dei main page.But what about really small lies, like when you're asked, "Does this dress make me look fat?"
And what about really important lies, like when you're asked, "Are you hiding the man I want to murder?"
Are these really lies? If they are lies, is it okay to tell them? If they aren't lies, then what are they? Do we even have a meaningful definition of a lie?
These are difficult questions, and even within Catholic moral teaching there is a wide spectrum of answers. Below are links to some of the approaches to the problem of lying that have been taken through the centuries.
- St. Augustine took a famously hard stance against any sort of lie in his De Mendacio.
- St. Thomas Aquinas considered lying as it is opposed to the virtue of truth in his Summa Theologica.
- Ven. John Henry Cardinal Newman wrote Apologia Pro Vita Sua to combat the charge that he taught, "Truth, for its own sake, had never been a virtue with the Roman clergy." He included an appendix on "Lying and Equivocation," outlining various Catholic and Protestant treatments, as well as his own opinions.
- Walter Farrell, OP, wrote the four-volume A Companion to the Summa, following the teachings of St. Thomas. He referred to truth as "the unceasing social debt."
- The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls lying "the most direct offense against the truth."
Page maintained by Tom
Kreitzberg. Comments may be sent to tak@smart.net.
Created December 28, 1999.