ANSWERS IN GENESIS

Lying
Catholic Encyclopedia, New Advent 

Excerpt:

But if the common teaching of Catholic theology on this point be admitted, and we grant that lying is always wrong, it follows that we are never justified in telling a lie, for we may not do evil that good may come: the end does not justify the means. What means, then, have we for protecting secrets and defending ourselves from the impertinent prying of the inquisitive? What are we to say when a dying man asks a question, and we know that telling him the truth will kill him outright? We must say something, if his life is to be preserved: he would at once detect the meaning of silence on our part. The great difficulty of the question of lying consists in finding a satisfactory answer to such questions as these.

St. Augustine held that the naked truth must be told whatever the consequences may be. He directs that in difficult cases silence should be observed if possible. If silence would be equivalent to giving a sick man unwelcome news that would kill him, it is better, he says, that the body of the sick man should perish rather than the soul of the liar. Besides this one, he puts another case which became classical in the schools. If a man is hid in your house, and his life is sought by murderers, and they come and ask you whether he is in the house, you may say that you know where he is, but will not tell: you may not deny that he is there. The Scholastics, while accepting the teaching of St. Augustine on the absolute and intrinsic malice of a lie, modified his teaching on the point which we are discussing. It is interesting to read what St. Raymund of Pennafort wrote on the subject in his Summa, published before the middle of the thirteenth century. He says that most doctors agree with St. Augustine, but others say that one should tell a lie in such cases. Then he gives his own opinion, speaking with hesitation and under correction. The owner of the house where the man lies concealed, on being asked whether he is there, should as far as possible say nothing. If silence would be equivalent to betrayal of the secret, then he should turn the question aside by asking another — How should I know? — or something of that sort. Or, says St. Raymund, he may make use of an expression with a double meaning, an equivocation such as: Non est hic, id est, Non comedit hic — or something like that. An infinite number of examples induced him to permit such equivocations, he says. Jacob, Esau, Abraham, Jehu, and the Archangel Gabriel made use of them. Or, he adds, you may say simply that the owner of the house ought to deny that the man is there, and, if his conscience tells him that this is the proper answer to give, then he will not go against his conscience, and so he will not sin. Nor is this direction contrary to what Augustine teaches, for if he gives that answer he will not lie, for he will not speak against his mind (Summa, lib. I, De Mendacio).

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Is It Ever Right to Lie?
By Dr. Jeff Myrus
April 11, 2008
Catholic Culture.org

The moral question of lying is one of the most interesting and most difficult to resolve perfectly and precisely. It has occupied the attention of moral theologians since the Patristic Age, yet we still don’t have a complete understanding of what “lying” means. Most of us have a deep intuition that it is morally acceptable to speak falsely in some circumstances, but the Church has not yet offered an official explanation as to why this is the case. Presumably, there is room for doctrinal development here, and I find the question fascinating.

The Lie Problem

Using an example to illustrate the chief difficulty, let’s consider the case of a man with a house guest whom a group of thugs wants to murder. The thugs come to the door. Because they don’t wish to create an outcry before they’re sure they’ve found their quarry (giving him time to escape, for example, from a neighboring house), they don’t force their way in to search. Instead, they knock on the door and simply ask whether their intended victim is within. Note that this case is not unlike the classic example of Christians hiding Jews from the Nazis. In both cases, the problem is simple: If you answer the door, and you don’t trust the thugs’ intentions, do you have to tell the truth?

The vast majority of well-formed Catholics would answer this question in the negative. Under these circumstances, it is perfectly permissible to deceive the thugs at the door. But even well-formed Catholics can’t explain why this is the case, or at least they can’t explain it in a way which is universally-accepted by sound moral theologians down through the ages, nor in a way that has (yet) been endorsed by the Magisterium of the Church. Most of us believe we can (and indeed should) lie under these circumstances, but we don’t know exactly why. This problem so agitated Catholic thinkers during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries that their less subtle Protestant brethren began to question whether Catholics believed in telling the truth.

What Constitutes a Lie?

It is best to begin our own examination with a definition of “lying”, and indeed some theologians believe that the solution must be found in the definition, much as “murder” is always wrong but “killing” is not. One of the stronger theological traditions, endorsed by Aquinas and rooted in Augustine, is that lying is speaking deliberately contrary to one’s own mind. (Throughout this discussion, “speaking” means any sort of communication.) This was the most common definition among the Scholastics, and it became a staple of theological manuals in the first part of the 20th century. As Fr. John Hardon puts it in the Modern Catholic Dictionary, “When a person tells a lie, he or she deliberately says something that is contrary to what is on that person’s mind; there is a real opposition between what one says and what one thinks” (an opposition that cannot be merely apparent, explained by ignorance or misstatement).

The first thing to notice is that this definition emphasizes the moral intentionality of lying; the truth itself is not necessarily contradicted. If a person thinks something is true and deliberately states something to the contrary, he has incurred the moral guilt of lying. While this may be so subjectively, it leaves open the possibility that such a person, believing a falsehood, could actually speak the truth by speaking against his own mind.

Because this definition is divorced from the objective truth or falsity of the statement, many theologians have sought an alternative definition. Some have proposed that the proper definition of “lying” is “speaking a falsehood with the intention of deceiving.” In the early 20th century, the article on “Lying” in the highly-regarded Catholic Encyclopedia dismissed this definition (though it is also traceable to Augustine) as a new and minor opinion which raised more problems than it solved. By the late 20th century, however, it was precisely this definition that made it into the Catechism of the Catholic Church (see #2482).

The definition in the Catechism has the virtue of anchoring a lie in objective reality. To be properly termed a lie, a statement must fulfill two conditions: (a) It must be objectively false; (b) It must be spoken with the intention to deceive. This definition also makes it easier to dismiss falsehoods obviously told in jest (though supporters of the other definition could argue that a falsehood told in jest is not in any meaningful way contrary to one’s own mind), but it does not as easily capture the moral failure of the person who intends to lie but, because his understanding is wrong, inadvertently tells the truth. And neither definition appears to address the question of why it is moral to lie to murderous thugs.

Refined Definitions and Exceptions

Some moralists have argued that we are obliged to state the strict truth no matter what the consequences, on the principle that the end does not justify the means. But this makes a presumption that most thinkers would not admit: that the only reason to shy away from the truth is fear of an evil consequence. In the case of the murderous thugs, however, most people really believe it would be morally evil to reveal the location of the intended victim. It is, in fact, something that only an unimaginative coward would do. Other moralists argue that we are not strictly obliged to speak the truth, but we must not speak falsely. We may, for example, try to change the subject, keep silence, or openly refuse to answer. However, even very moral onlookers might well ask, somewhat contemptuously, whether this was the best we could do. Therefore, to more effectively address this critical problem, a great many moralists have tried either to tweak the definition or to suggest grounds for exceptions.

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⁷⁵And Peter remembered Jesus' words, when He had said, Before a ^[a]single rooster crows, you will deny and disown Me three times. And he went outside and wept bitterly.