Mr Shea,
  I seem to have come to the same conclusion. Deceiving Planned Parenthood in order to expose their lies, albeit for a very good and righteous purpose, is counter-productive and, I believe, wrong.  Using deception as a tool for good can only come back to bite us in the butt.  As you said:
  ‘Founding a culture of life on a culture of lies is just bound to come to grief no matter what the short term  
    gains may be.’
This reasoning can be extended to basic engineering; you cannot build a strong building on a flawed foundation, just as you can’t build a good case against Planned Parenthood on flawed methods. 
 
  However, I am wary about you reasoning for using the videos and for using the data collected by the Nazis.  Something strikes me as ‘off’ about these comments.  I don’t know if it’s because it is so similar to the justifications I’ve heard for embryonic stem cell research (though admittedly not exactly the same), or if there is something else to my hesitation.  I believe it is essential to always try to take the just path, despite dire circumstances.  Using data from the Nazis seems to indirectly justify their sins.  However wasteful or inconvenient it may be, and despite all the good that may come of it, I cannot seem to be able to justify these actions.
I’d love to hear what you think.

Thanks for this article Mark.  This is a form of “social justice” that is defiling many areas of Catholic teaching.  Or so the proponents kid themselves. I think it was Benedict Groeshel who said “God does not use evil that good may come of it.”  Souls are endangering themselves and relying on themselves, which is a grave sin because it is really a lack of FAITH in God.  Our times make me think of Jesus wondering, “Will the son of man find any faith when He returns?”  I also agree with Matthew because I think the flaw in using the data is that it subtlely encourages more wrongdoing. Someone, thinking themselves heroic, will take on the sin to prevent some greater sin.  But that’s not God’s way.  That’s thinking like men.

Having read what I said above, I did write my Congressman asking him to defund Planned Parenthood because of what was exposed.  That was before I read your article.  I think I would have stayed out of this one if I had read your article first.

Somewhere in the catechism is an example of what a lie is. Going back to Nazi Germany, if a German soldier werewa to come to your house and ask if there were any Jews there the correct response would be no. That is the correct response regardless of the facts or truths. Why, becouse the person asking does not have a legitamate/ moral need for the answer. They have no standing. The deception is justified and appropriate.
Planned Parenthood is engaged in a great evil. Deception is not a problem.

I agree.  As I have been thinking about this situation, another analogy came to mind.  In my time teaching NFP I have met many good-hearted people who truly are surprised to discover contraception is wrong.  They weren’t told it was wrong by their parents (they themselves are using), have never heard it was wrong in Church (it makes priests uncomfortable) and in that they see commercials about it on TV they conclude it ‘must be okay’.  Once we take them down the road of the how’s of contraception, the history and the truth of the Church many (but never all) come to the difficult decision they must stop using it.  And, yes, it is a very difficult decision.  When your very bedroom intimacy must change, it is not easy.

Many couples struggle seeing the difference between the licit use of NFP vs. the illicit use of contraception.  The conclusion is the same - spacing children so why does the method matter?  They want to split hairs - in that condoms do not have the risk of early abortions like the Pill or IUD, they aren’t ‘as bad’, are they?  Of course, we know it’s all wrong.

Lying is something all of us struggle with and it surrounds us daily.  Like contraception, families might not discuss it.  Parents aren’t willing to call it “wrong” as they do it themselves.  This same hesitancy is even seen within the Church as priests have the same struggles we do.  We see it in air-brushed models, it makes great humor on TV and it goes unpunished everywhere from the government to campuses.  Lying ‘must be okay’ as everyone does it.  Like contraception, lying is one of those sins that seemingly becomes okay depending on your reason for using it and how big the lie is. 

In that contraception isn’t okay; lying isn’t either.  They both are the easy way out.  What I want to see is the minds behind Lila Rose use their creative energies to think outside the box in this regard.  Don’t take the easy road, don’t do what everyone (PP especially) is doing.  Don’t use their tactics but strive, as Mark has reminded them, to do God’s work without using the tactics of the world.

Both good points ladies.  Mark C.: Lying to the Nazis is to defend the lives of the Jews you are hiding is not necessarily an absolute good.  For instance, it may make things worse.  The Nazis could decide to come into your house anyways and find out that you were lying, putting you, and possibly your extended family, in an even worse situation (if that’s possible) and adding onto it the sin of a lie. That tends to be the way with lies.  They lead to other lies and more sin.  Also, by lying, you are taking God out of the picture.  As I said in the earlier posts, I believe the best thing to do (morally) would be to not answer and pray to God.  You can argue the practicality, but we are discussing what is right and not what we would be tempted to do. Just some food for thought.

I don’t believe misrepresentation is always wrong.  Are actors being dishonest when performing a play, movie or doing a television commercial? Are law enforcement and intelligence agents immoral when working undercover?  Wasn’t Lila Rose in her undercover sting against PP performing a “play” of some sort or acting?

Using this argument, then you would also deem what undercover police officers do as immoral to catch drug dealers, prostitutes, organized crime, pedophiles, etc…  I know that large businesses have people pose as customers to see how customer service is, security, etc… St. Padre Pio said that you can’t fight the devil with the devil.  I think Live Action was in the okay to do this.  If they falsified or withheld evidence from the video to make PP look worse then they allready do, then I would agree with your premise.

Perhaps I was unclear in my above post. I believe what Lila Rose did was perfectly acceptable. No different behavior than what actors or undercover intelligence agents do.

I’m not so sure about all that has been said in this article.
What if you are defending your life or the life of someone else?  Is it still wrong to use a lie?  What would we call spying for the purpose of national security? Is it not also lying (deceitful)?
I know the end does not justify the means.  I am no theologian but somewhere in St. Thomas Aquinas I believe it is said that it is not wrong to defend your life… ergo probably this applies to the defense of another life that cannot defend itself (as the unborn child).  I imagine a lie would be acceptable in this case.  Of course using a life of one human being “in cold blood” as Nazis did in their experiments in order to “possibly” save the lives of their pilots, is not the same as spying to save an unborn child.
Also what has been discovered by the Nazis is a law of nature. It is a cientific truth that doesn’t belong to them. That this truth was discovered by the wrong means (terribly wrong) does not alter the truth discovered. I don’t see what is wrong in using what was discovered. 
Christ was brutally murdered and he let himself be murdered but if it were not for this act of giving his life for us, we would not have been redeemed. Can a person take his own life?  In the case of saving another it seems to be OK. 
Therfore, I don’t see what is wrong in using what was discovered by the spying method used by those who exposed Planned Parenthood.  A lot of us taxpayers are unwillingly funding abortion becaus of Planned Parenthood activities and I don’t consideer spying a bad way to go about defending lives. Are we not called to be meek as pidgeons and crafty as serpents?

Planned Parenthood is a huge perpetrator of the objectively mortal evil of abortion, and is a force for social evil in the United States and around the world.  By political coercion they have been protecting themselves from investigation.  What Lila Rose uncovered has been witnessed and reported since at least the 1980’s - in the Pro-Life news channels.

Again and again we heard strong evidence of forced abortions, coverups of statutory rape, running to abortion-friendly judges, and other objective evils in which Planned Parenthood directly acted and about which they have consistently lied.  The dominant news media ignored it.

Laws like parental notification and parental consent were enacted in the name of voters who clamored for these reasonable restrictions.  But these voters are left uninformed about the fact that these laws they wanted are routinely ignored by Planned Parenthood and by abortion-friendly judges - voters are uninformed because the conventional news media uncritically propagated the criminal falsehoods of Planned Parenthood.

It took undercover video to demonstrate the truth of what we have known for decades about Planned Parenthood’s systematic criminal behavior.  Even this would not have come about had not the removal of the “Fairness Doctrine,” and the emergence of cable TV and the Internet, allowed real people to communicate around the information wall erected by CBS, NBC, ABC, the New York Times, and the Washington Post.

At this point I consider Lila Rose to be no different from any other kind of news reporter operating ‘under cover.’  It’s no different from “Black Like Me.”  This is an investigation shunned by the major media into how Planned Parenthood operates under laws governing the critical political issue of abortion.  Voters need to know this information, and Lila Rose is the only one who has not just reported the known issues but finally demonstrated them in ways that are highly credible.

Purveyors of evil like Planned Parenthood don’t play by the rules they want us to follow, and ignore the laws we erect to prevent abuses as they perpetrate them.  That is evil way beyond a reporter’s phony cover story.

Just wondering - what would you say if it had been the police doing the undercover investigation?  Would that be OK? Or is all undercover police work immoral lying too?

I would tend to disagree that the sting operation would fall under the sin of lying -

From the CCC:
2483 Lying is the most direct offense against the truth. To lie is to speak or act against the truth in order to lead someone into error. By injuring man’s relation to truth and to his neighbor, a lie offends against the fundamental relation of man and of his word to the Lord.

For the sake of space, I’ve quoted only this line, but the rest build on it.Something to be noted here - “...against the truth in order to lead someone into error”.
Here it wasn’t to lead anyone into error, on the contrary,it was to expose the error. And there was simply no personal gain involved as well.
On one side, I would tend to think it was applying a test scenario to show if everything was what it was supposed to be.
Don’t think it’s right to classify the operation as evil in this case.

ABC and Jimbo: You have valid points, but there are seem to be some flaws in your logic.  To say that what undercover police and spies do is absolutely immoral might be a bit of an overstatement, but the very nature of deception is not without its negative consequences (note ABC that the intent is to knowingly deceive, not to act). For example, undercover police officers often walk a fine legal line bordering on entrapment.  Undercover police have very strict legal (not considering moral here) laws which they much abide by.  Them asking for drugs from a dealer in an undercover sting operation is different from telling a lie.  Although you can argue the semantics, most officers would agree that they walk a fine line regarding the law., not to mention moral law.  With regard to spies, the very nature of spies breeds mistrust between men (and more spying) where one can never be sure if the others intents are genuine.  Surely, something that has these negative effects cannot be considered wholly good.

Following up on my earler post, was Great Britain’s government behaving sinfully when they displayed inflatable figures of tanks and aircraft on airfields and at ports to deceive the Nazis reconnaisscance efforts during World War II?  Deception and misrepresentation are not always an evil act.  I don’t recall the Vatican condemning this activity.  Why? Because it was morally legitimate behavior.

Excellent article, Mark.  If we truly want to end abortion it must be through sacrifice.  We must be willing to give up what comforts us with everyone who was at the pro-life demonstrations hitting the road from one coast to the other and doing nothing but praying the Rosary until they cannot be ignored and the superficiality of everyday life stops.

All newspapers reporters trying to get a story who pose as people who they aren’t should be fired?
All policemen, FBI, CIA are evil?
Any servicemen posing as a civilian is sinning?
Any Mexican priest who used to wear disguises to deliver communion and avoid the police is not really a saint.
Any nuns who hid Jews and lied to others to save them are evil?
Any Christian right now in the Iran who pose as something else to protect their families are sinners?
Sorry, you’ve not made your point well enough.  Do you have any priest or legit moral theologian to back your argument on this one?
For sure all actors are in sin that are in TV commercials for endorsing a product they don’t like?
I am not any moral theologian, a little nobody but your use of St.Paul’s quotes did not convince me.

I think this is oversimplified. 

Catechism of the Catholic Church excerpts:

2483 To lie is to speak or act against the truth in order to lead someone into error.

2484 The gravity of a lie is measured against the nature of the truth it deforms, the circumstances, the intentions of the one who lies, and the harm suffered by its victims.

That barely scratches the surface.  Live Action didn’t lead Planned Parenthood into error.  Their intentions were to pursue justice and to protect the vulnerable.  PP suffered no “harm” based on Live Actions’ sting.

One way to consider the morality or immorality of lying is to consider deception as a form of intellectual violence, of deliberately causing harm to the other person’s view of the world. Viewed this way, it is possible to see where lying, like violence, is generally wrong, though there are circumstances in which one would be morally justified in attempting using physical violence (e.g., against Nazis rounding up hiding Jews) if it were practical; and in those same circumstances, the analogy suggests, one may also be justified in attempting intellectual violence.
 
Of course either attempt might fail, and a failed attempt at resistance, whether by physical or intellectual violence, could easily lead to worse consequences than no resistance at all. But that doesn’t speak to the potential legitimacy of either type of resistance. It is also true that Christians are called to a radical ethic of truthfulness, and many Christians including St. Thomas have argued that lying can never be right. But we are also called to a radical veneration of life, and some Christians (not St. Thomas) have argued that violence can never be right, yet Christian moral thought has rejected this absolutism.
 
Extrapolating from cases like Nazis at the door to cases such as undercover policework or the work of Live Action may be possible, though it’s not perfectly straightforward. For example, had Live Action gone into abortion clinics and started shooting people, few of us would care to defend them. Intellectual violence in this context is not subject to exactly the same kind of defensive logic as intellectual violence against Nazis. However, it is possible that further reflection could resolve the issue in favor of Live Action. I’m inclined to think that such a solution is possible, although I’m not without reservations.

I am having trouble understanding why this is such a big issue with this one situation when obviously it is and has been done forever to uncover the truth and protect the innocent.  And if this is wrong, we need to start protesting against policemen and the military—and lawyers!  How many lawyers defend someone they know is guilty.  The fact that nothing has been said about the years and years of “lies” being told by all of these other people but now we are concerned about Lila Rose has me confused.  Why aren’t we protesting all narcotics departments and those uncovering child pornography groups?  They do the same thing as Lila Rose did.  We need to be consistent and if it is a big deal, I would think that the Church would have addressed the issue by now.  All you undercover cops, did your priest or bishop ever tell you that you were sinning when you were undercover?

I would think that the whole situation would be determined by whether these people have a right to know the truth.  I’m not sure that they do.

I refuse to argue this point further, so just for the record I am completely in favor of what Lila Rose did to expose the evil of Planned Parenthood. I will continue to pray for you fence sitters though.

Nanette, sinning doesn’t make one evil, merely a sinner.

Here’s a question I have about lying vs. deception. My father was asked by a store manager to be a “mystery shopper”, pretending to be upset about something in order to test how the cashier would react. He did it. He wasn’t really upset, but the words he spoke to the cashier were untrue. He was, in a sense, acting, but the cashier didn’t know he was acting (which is the “out” for professional actors…we know they’re acting, therefore it’s not a true lie because we aren’t really deceived and led into error, nor is that their intent). Did my father sin by doing this?

Once in a blue moon, Mark, I am forced to disagree with you, and this is one of those times. I just do not believe that Live Action’s actions constitute a lie as the CCC defines it.

Plus, Dawn Eden is prettier than you, so I’ll happily agree with her.

It seems like some people are missing the point here. We, the Catholic Christians who are reading and responding to this blog are called to follow Christ faithfully. On the narrow road.  The article is questionning whether a follower of Christ would use this method.  The WORLD definitely uses this method and it does it sometimes thinking it is for a good - like the undercover policeman or the actor or the spy or the newspaper reporter.  They are following the ways of the world.  Christ gave us a different way but we live in the world.  Our way is faith, prayer, grace, the sacraments. Ask and you shall receive.  Our way is love, humility, dying to self, preaching the truth of the Gospel. It is supernatural.  Sometimes as Christians we are asked to do worldly things like going undercover as part of a job we have.  We need to realize it is not Christian necessarily, but it may be permitted.  It definitely is something a serious Christian would want to discuss with a HOLY priest. Even if we were to do it, wouldn’t a Christian bring prayer and God to the situation?  Also,not everyone lies when asked about something they don’t want to discuss.  Alot of people, and probably alot of nuns who protected Jews, learn to deflect questions and not really answer them.

To Matthew A. Siekierski:
  While I am always hesitant to criticize my elders (especially another persons father), what your father did by pretending to be an upset ‘mystery shopper’ may not have been the best idea.  If this person didn’t handle the upset shopper properly (as can happen on a bad day) and found out that it was really a hoax, that person would have felt deceived and manipulated. It may also cause that person to lose his job.  Also, the words that he spoke to the cashier (even though he didn’t really mean them) could have been hurtful to that person even if they did handle the situation properly, regardless of whether or not they found out it was a hoax.  I’m sure your father had the best intentions, but I do find some serious flaws in justifying the action as purely good (whether it’s a sin or not is more God’s area of expertise ;) ).

By the way good point Pam.  Also Pam, I think that calling your congressman to defund Planned Parenthood is a perfectly fine thing to do (although to base it solely on the videos may have been a misstep).

@ Matthew A. Siekierski: Here’s one possible way of looking at the mystery shopper question:
 
Since a big part of the point of mystery shopper programs is to induce employees to treat every customer as a potential mystery shopper, probably the employees in question were aware of the program and worked at the store on the understanding that mystery shoppers were part of the deal. Perhaps one might say, then, that there is a social contract between the clerk and the mystery shopper whereby the clerk cedes to the mystery shopper the right to play the role of an aggrieved customer.
 
It seems to me that this is potentially comparable to the use of placebos in double-blind testing. Obviously it would be wrong to give someone a sugar pill if he had no idea that not everyone in the study was getting an actual drug, but there’s certainly nothing wrong with giving someone a sugar pill if he explicitly understands that’s what it is, nor is there anything wrong with giving someone a sugar pill if he understands that it might be a real drug or a sugar pill. Likewise, there’s nothing wrong with acting a role onstage where the audience knows you’re playing a part, and it would seem there is nothing wrong with acting a role in a department store where the “audience” knows you may be playing a part.

I think you meant to say, “the Church is in the forefront of those who *oppose* those who take it upon themselves to commit murder….”

Good point.

*God point Mr. Greydanus

*Is* lying always an *intrinsic* evil?  I’m just wondering…I don’t know.  If killing is sometimes justified (not intrinsically evil), then is lying under some circumstances?  That being said, if the undercover operation here is unethical, I would tend to say don’t use the results.  Don’t use the results of Nazi experiments.  Don’t use existing stem cell lines from already killed embryos.  It just encourages more of the same evil.
Another question—what about undercover cops?  Surely that’s not something forbidden to Christians?  I believe the apologists at Catholic Answers disagree with you on this one.  I’m still not sure how I feel.  I am uncomfortable about the lying.  It does raise the question—do we *really* have faith in Jesus and his power if we have to lie?
Good discussion!

I respectfully disagree, Mark.  So, the results of the experiments at Dachau, used for the “benefit” of all (I’d have to research that one myself) is on the same level as Lila Rose’s results, both were based on a lie?  I am amazed at how you came to your conclusion.  Maybe it is because I come from a “common sense” generation or maybe it is because my husband was in law enforcement for years, but I am literally just shaking my head.  It is too much for me to wrap my head around.

My question is, “Is there another way to stop abortion other than the ways we are conditioned to use which are the ways of the world?”  The methods employed by the world keep us stuck in a materialistic worldview and limit the expression of our faith thus weakening our faith.
Our faith is built on sacrifice and giving up everything to be a disciple of His.
I challenge everyone to come up with a spiritual solution that unites all of us.  I doubt that anyone will take this seriously.

Mr. King,
  Peaceful prayer and reason is all I can offer now.  Only when we realize that we are capable of nothing without God, and that God is capable of doing amazing works through us can we finally be able to fully answer that challenge.  I’m not there yet.

Good article, though the Church is *not* “in the forefront of those who take it upon themselves to commit murder to stop abortion.”  That would mean that the Church is leading the murderous charge against abortionists, not that the Church places herself between the abortionists and those who would kill them… Just thought I should mention it, since there are rather a lot of people who think that “out to kill abortionists” is an accurate description of the pro-life movement and, of course, it isn’t.

Again division sets in- crippling the Catholic Church.  Lila Rose has been courageous and should be supported by fellow faithful who idly stand by behind our computer screens watching as our tax pay dollars go to support something we disagree with.  Why don’t Mark and Dawn use their voices to make suggestions for improvement instead of picking apart the work she has done? I imagine it is not easy to set up the undercover investigations and do the research and fundraising behind the scenes to take on the giant of Planned Parenthood.
It is easy to write a piece that causes division instead of union-  from a warm seat, safe from the harm of really putting yourself on the line.

Comparing apples and oranges doesn’t work. Take your misplaced scrutiny to a higher authority. War has been waged on the unborn, period. As in war we use spies to disarm our enemy. Nothing more nothing less. I applaud the whole hearted effort that is being made…to save the life of one soul including an infant. And let’s not forget… The enslavement of women and young girls. The picture is so much bigger than you indicate. And yes to save the life if a baby, I would lie. To save the life of an enslaved 10 yr old, 11, 12, .... You get the message. Think more like St. Joan of Arc, please!!!!

I guess I still am not completely convinced, in all honesty perhaps in part because this seems like too good an expose` to lose and I don’t want to be convinced (though I’m trying to read all of both sides with an open mind since I’m pretty sure I don’t have all the answers here), but also because the LiveAction folks phrase their questions as hypotheticals.  The clinic workers are meant to draw the conclusions that they do, but they conduct the stings with “if we were to…” kinds of questions, rather than direct lies.  Though I realize that there is a “weaseling” kind of danger there too, but still, small differences *do* often make the difference.

Dear Mark,

Justifying evil is never acceptable. If data gathered is true, it does not diminish truth if gather method was immoral. Although satan misuses God’s word, it’s truth is unchanged and undiminished.  Welcome to “the fog of war” and ROE…Rules of Engagement.

When evil is active, the first temptation is to protect oneself…by averting our eyes, removing ourselves from the situation and of course, prayer.  Evil has no interest in ROE which is basically “playing fair”.

Is “playing the part” in these opportunistic videos “lying”?  Or, to use a legal term, are they “entrapping”? 

From the videos I have viewed, there is no entrapment.  Therefore, no lying.  The videographers are playing a role in order to present a scenario and the PP folks fail to stay “on the legal path”. 

Therefore, in my view, the videographers actions are courageous in face of and exposure of evil. They merely presented a situation, a scenario, to which the PP folks responded in apparent compliance with their “Planned Parenthood policies”.

If we are to create a ROE that says we cannot present “scenarios” to elicit discussion, where would that lead?  Will this affect our “evaluation of conscience” in preparation for the Sacrament of Reconciliation?  Will clergy no longer be allowed to use valid comparison of the human condition in homilies?  No, that doesn’t make sense.

So, we don’t “judge” the person.. do not “cast the first stone”.. but we do judge the situation and the facts.  In John 8, Jesus evaluates the scenario’s presented to him.  In the first scenario, a woman “caught” in adultery, to me, immediately brings up the question, “Where is the man?”. So, it is clear that I am not Jesus…

In closing, I believe these videos drag back the cloak of secrecy on the evil of abortion, revealing the truth.

To Jesus Christ be all the glory, Forever!

To anyone who believes abortion is murder, are you willing to start a national pilgrimage walking from coast to coast praying the Rosary and relying on nothing but faith in God and our fellow Catholics to care for us and raise awareness about the suffering of women and their unborn children while also raising millions to provide safety and care for them.  In addition, are you willing to make the conviction to stay on the road until the view of abortion and the unborn child is seen in the light of the love of God?
If you truly believe this is murder against millions of unborn children and harms their mothers even more are you willing to make the necessary sacrifice of faith to help them?

Crap. I really should not post before I’ve had my morning coffee.

Mr King,
WOW. Talk about a calling.  I’m seriously considering (though that would mean giving up my education and leaving my pregnant wife and one-year old behind).  Let me pray about this.

Matthew, There is a way to do this without that much sacrifice.  Thousands of people could take turns on the road.  EWTN has a mobile broadcasting vehicle and the hosts of their shows could get off their seats and do their shows on the road.  This idea came to me on a morning Rosary Run 4 years ago and I submitted it to EWTN and all of their hosts with a response of “I will pray about it and get back to you.”-a lie.  I am not saying you are lying.  I truly believe that if EWTN had initiated this into action abortion would have been drastically reduced and a lot of conversions would have taken place.
If we have faith this Rosary Pilgrimage would work.  I do not want to do this, but it came to me out of nowhere while praying the Rosary.

Maybe one of us should contact a bishop to see how the Church looks at this issue.

Thanks for catching my stupid typo.  I have fixed it.

Sean: Ha!  I’m glad you had your coffee.  Dawn and I are on the same page, though she is prettier than me.

All:  thanks for your morally serious remarks.  I’m still thinking this one through and I’m not entirely happy.  But I don’t see how to avoid it given what the Church says.  The whole point of having a Magisterium is not that it is right where we are right, but that it is right where we are wrong.  “Intrinsically immoral” means what it means, whether I like it or not.  Comparisons to war break down because, well, this is not war.  Comparisons to acting break down because acting (like fiction writing) is a particular kind of speech act in which both parties agree that the speech being spoken is pretend, not real.  Claims that “This is not about leading into error, but toward the revealed truth of God” break down on the quote from Paul.  If that’s not clear, think of it this way:

The justification for the video is “We’re not lying to lead anybody into error, but to lead to the good end of demonstrating the truth of the goodness and dignity of human life and exposing the lies of PP.”  Fine.  Suppose Paul’s enemies were right and Paul was going around lying about his miracles and his associaton with the apostles in order to persuade more people to renounce the devil and become Christian.  That’s an even higher and better end than saving lives.  But it is precisely this charge (lying to save souls) that Paul is denouncing in the passage above.

I don’t see a way around this, much as I’d like to.

PS. Thanks to the overwhelming majority of you for not going all polarizing on me and denouncing me as a traitor for my honest opinion.  I don’t have all the answers here and am still conflicted on extreme examples.  But on the other hand, what I note is that when everday moral decisionmaking has to continually be propped up by appeals to incredibly rare scenarios, that’s generally a sign that something unhealthy is being advocated.  It’s a factor in our calculus nobody has raised yet and I think we should ponder it.  Hard cases make bad law.

Lauretta:

From what I can tell, the Church has not made up it’s mind about this either, and you can get a real good argument among theologians about what, exactly, constitutes lying.  My remarks on this represent a “good faith effort” to apply the Catechism’s teaching and are still, in part, provisional.  I suspect that if you put a roomful of bishops together to chew this one over, you’d not get a monolithic verdict.

Mr King,
  I have always been in awe of those soldiers who left their loved ones to defend what is right.  I have also always admired the disciples who simply dropped everything and followed Jesus.  I know that your challenge can truly make a difference.  Marching from the west coast, continually gathering others as the march progressed.  Two years later, with all the media coverage and prayers and followers converging on Washington DC for the March for Life.  That would be amazing.  AND WILL WORK.  It’s just such a big leap of faith.  Something that requires much prayer (I think EWTN did at least intend to pray- though they may have forgotten and need reminding) and discussion with my family.  Thank you.

That deception is ALWAYS impermissible would no doubt come as a great scandal to the disciples of Jesus who met him on the road to Emmaus, but who were prevented from recognizing Him (i.e. who were - actively - deceived). Obviously, there was some greater good intended to come out of this deception (Jesus could build the faith of his disciples by quizzing them), so it was permitted.

I don’t think a Nazis officer coming to a door would allow a deflective answer to a yes or no question.“Are there any Jews here?”  If I was Jewish during Hitlers time and some of you were hiding me, I would probably be found and taken to prison to clear your consciense. Not what the pope had the convents do.
You are right being evil is not the same as sinning.
I do not believe they are harming Plannned parenthood by exposing them.  They maybe saving their souls.

Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves.

Shouldn’t the question be, does the act of deceit have the same moral weight of the act of killing of an innocent human being?

the disciples of Jesus who met him on the road to Emmaus, but who were prevented from recognizing Him (i.e. who were - actively - deceived).

What a silly thing to say. Please prove that Christ was actively deceiving them, or lied to them at any time.

Mark Shea: “what I note is that when everday moral decisionmaking has to continually be propped up by appeals to incredibly rare scenarios, that’s generally a sign that something unhealthy is being advocated.”

Mark,

I have to disagree.  I don’t think the scenarios used to support LiveAction here –- government sting operations to get inside the mafia, spies infiltrating Al Qaeda, undercover journalism that catches pedophiles—are “incredibly rare scenarios.”  In fact, I think the burden is on Ms. Eden et al. to explain why, if the Catechism’s defintion of lying is intended to be the defintive, complete, exceptionless definition for all time and circumstances, neither the bishops nor Pope has ever spoken out against such fairly pervasive and routine government “lying.” 

Moreover, if you’re willing to say, as you have previously, that “if the Gestapo comes knocking for the Jews in the wine cellar, I lie and figure out the fine points later,” then I don’t think you’ve really, truly come to believe, as Ms. Eden suggests, that all intentional falsehoods are objectively wrong.  If you really believed that, you wouldn’t lie to the Gestapo. 

I’m pro-life, and I love the Catechism—it is our surest summary of Catholic morality at a general level. But it’s not meant to be a textbook of moral theology, and I don’t think it’s addressed to every situation. I actually would bet serious money that if the question were squarely put to the Pope whether it would be wrongful to lie to protect a hiding Jew, he would say no. He may not have thought it was right to qualify the general moral lesson taught by the Catechism regarding lying, but I don’t think he would take the strict position advocated by Ms. Eden et al. here.

I have the feeling that many in this debate are treating the Catechism like Protestant fundamentalists treat the Bible. We’ve become so scared that if any sentence or clause isn’t read as the literal, definitive, infallible, complete truth for all time and in all circumstances, then we have opened the door to consequentialism and our entire faith and moral system will collapse.  I don’t think that’s the right way to read the Catechism, and I have more confidence that our faith, Church, and strong moral positions are built on a surer foundation.

A quick thought.  Ruses in war presuppose spying by the enemy.  That is, they presuppose the attempt by an enemy to gain access to information to which he has no right.  Depriving the enemy of information to which he has no right is not the same thing as lying, just as my refusal to share with you the contents of my last confession is not a violation of your rights.  Lying is, as it were, aggressive.  If I seek you out for the express purpose of telling you a falsehood, that’s a different thing than leading you to think something that you are already set on thinking (as, for example with the phony tanks, etc.)  This is part of what bothers me about the tactics deployed against PP.  Lila Rose went to them and, well, lied.  They didn’t come to her demanding information to which they were not entitled.

And, again, the appeals to sting operations and ruses in war fail for the same reason that Lila Rose can’t fire a rocket launched grenade into Planned Parenthood.  She’s not a competent authority to either wage war nor act as an agent of Caesar.  As to the morality of police stings and lying in wartime, I am still frankly conflicted. My instinct is to say “They’re fine” but my instinct is not the measure of all things. Our culture’s absolute favorite moral heresy is consequentialism and I am highly distrustful of our tendency to err in favor of this heresy rather than against it.  The extreme ease with which many American Catholics view even the use of torture and atomic mass murder for a good end as just ducky does not persuade me we are likely to be thinking clearly when it comes to much lesser (but still intrinsically immoral) means such as lying.

So it would be Ok to hide Jews behind fake walls in Nazi Germany, but not to hide the truth with words? Hiding people is a form of deceit. It seems to me that historical references break down quickly when we formulate an argument for or against Live Actions’ actions.

It would be great for the USCCB to weigh in, but I’m not holding my breath.

“So, for me, it seemed pretty clear that there was no point in making the deaths of these victims utterly pointless by refusing to use the data in order to save lives.  Obviously, that did not mean we should ever again permit such monstrous research.  Merely that now that the research was a fait accompli, we could not change history, but we could take a step to redeem it.”

WRONG!!! The experiments were murder, and you cannot advocate murder by claiming they were okay for the pseudoscientific fruit they produced.

I agree with Terri K and the relevance of intent and circumstance; many are called to the “war” against the evil of abortion, and like war, I believe God’s plan, the Master tactician, will include all of mankind’s talents and tools. I don’t think I have the courage or intelligence to pull off the undercover ops, but praise God for using using another “soldier” with the proper training to command another battle. We all have a role….pray that our mission is revealed today, and if we stumble in our interpretation, Lord have mercy on our souls!

WRONG!!! The experiments were murder, and you cannot advocate murder by claiming they were okay for the pseudoscientific fruit they produced.

True.  Which is why I don’t say it.

An important nuance lost in this discussion of whether every act of deception is a lie or whether this particular act of deception is excusable given the context is the fact that the LiveAction folks are not simply lying to the PP workers - they are tempting them into sin, something which is never OK.  Never.

We would all agree (I hope) that aiding prostitution and child trafficing is a grave moral evil.  Likely an objective mortal sin.

And Catholic teaching is clear that the spiritual consequences of our acts are dependent not on their effect but on the intent.  If we choose to do something that is wrong then we’ve separated ourselves from God and the moral law, even if we are not “successful” in committing the sin.  In God’s eyes, attempted murder and murder are the same thing (separated only by the degree of competence of the moral agent).  Indeed, Jesus went so far as to equate anger with murder. 

And so consider what’s going on here:  LiveAction agents are going into PP offices, lying to the workers there in such a way that sets up a scenario that invites them to commit a great sin, and does so with a reasonable expectation that a certain percentage of those workers will commit the sin (otherwise, why bother with the sting at all?).

Watch the tapes.  Workers take action to cover up prostitution (at least, that is their intent).  This is evil.  Buts its an evil act that they would not be committing had the LiveAction actor not lied to them about being a pimp.  In other words, a sin occurs that would not have occured in the absence of the sting. 

There is no way this is acceptible under Catholic moral teaching.  These stings further endanger the immortal souls of the PP workers that are the subject of the stings.  They are still morally responsible for their own conduct.  But a drug addict is responsible for his own conduct too.  If however I use deception to set him up with a temptation to use drugs then I too bear moral blame. 

The fact that the PP workers in question likely commit mortal sins every single day is of no matter whatsoever.  It is not given to human beings to decide that they can tempt others to sin - even for otherwise admirable ends.  LiveAction wanted to catch PP workers doing evil things on video tape, and to do that they had to use deception to manufacturer a scenario in which evil things would get done.  Alarm bells should be going off in all of our heads over this.

The “hard case” hypotheticals being thrown around here are irrelevant.  Lying to Nazis about the Jews you’re hiding in your attic doesn’t tempt the Nazis in question to do evil.

Mark,

All other commandments are subservient to protecting innocent life, with the exception of sacrilege. Period.

No, I don’t think Dawn was right. I think it was a fundamentalist reading of the catechism. Just as many read ‘Do not kill’ to say that war is always wrong. The Macabeeans I think had it right. The teachings in the catechism are to be applied to individual relationships, which don’t apply here. Just as do not kill do not apply to the state or in self-defense etc. Many of her examples just don’t cut it.

@sd
Excellent point.

Mark,
I’m thrilled to see the way that you have wrestled with this issue! I also believe that the LiveAction operations went too far—and involved lies.

More than that, however, I think you are a good example of taking an honest account of the situation and being led more by Christ than by current politics. [not only in this issue, but in many others as well]

Dr. Miller has offered a very good piece defending LiveAction; personally I disagree with her, but she is very balanced and scholarly.
As you know, I have been writing about this topic quite a bit over at New Theological Movement.

I am troubled by the respondents who speak of the intent of the PP workers.  We have no idea of their intent - was the intent to ignore what LA was presenting to allow a crime - I don’t know; was thier intent to gather as much information as possible to notify the authorities (which what most laws dealing with reporting of sexual activites with young people requires); was the intent something even less obvious - not knowing what to do as this is not an everyday event, even for PP.  I think that as we condemn abortion for the evil it is, we must be careful not interpret what we see without seeing all.  The ultimate travesty is that this event may cause PP to gain sympathy because of the application of as intent to its employees by outside forces.
As far as telling a lie - to tell a lie, whether it hypothetical or not, whether it is merely play acting is wrong.  No I do not have a Biblical source to support this other than Jesus did not lie to trap people.

There was this carpenter who did a ‘cover-up” for this pregnant virgin. Rather than expose her to the law, he decided that stepping in as the “father,” even though this was not the strict truth, was a greater good. Perhaps he was wrong?

It may have been pointed out, but an important point is that Eden’s group did not lie .. they deceived.  They did this to expose lies that lead to death. A deception as such is no different that an undercover police conducting a sting. Are the police “liars”?  Are they wrong?  Now, if the sting lead to harm, then it must be evaluated closer.  But that was not the case.

Sigh.  Calling St. Joseph a liar because he assumed responsibility for Jesus’ care is to distort the term “liar” beyond recognition.  This is part of what I mean when I say that lying for Jesus can’t end well.  You wind up, not justifying the lies, but pulling the saints down and declaring them liars.  One reader has repeatedly, for instance cited the passage where Jesus said he was not going up to a feast (when asked to join a pilgrimage) and then went up anyway alone.  The reader seems to think he is rebutting the Catechism’s teaching that lying is intrinsically evil.  But, in fact, the effect of his questioning is to suggest that Jesus was a liar who was justified in lying for some holy purpose.  This is *exactly* what Paul condemns in the passage I cite above.

Jesus was not a liar.  Neither is the Catechism wrong to teach that lying is intrinsically immoral.  Instead of striving to make nonsense of both biblical and ecclesial teaching in order to save the principle that you can lie for a good end, I suggest a better way is to try to make *sense* of both biblical and ecclesial teaching.

It may have been pointed out, but an important point is that Eden’s group did not lie .. they deceived.

No.  They lied.  They sought out somebody and gave false names, occupations, and purposes.  That’s lying.  The did not deflect somebody who was intruding into their private affairs by asking for information to which they had no right.  They aggressively sought out somebody for the express purpose of lying to them.  Big difference.

PS.  It was Lila Rose’s group, not Dawn Eden, who did the lying to PP.  Dawn is the one questioning the morality of lying for Jesus, as she is right to do.

Mark, tend to you make my point. It is the hairsplitting that is insane. The St. Francis thing (cited on another bog) or the Miguel Pro thing (cited on this blog) are just two examples.  If folks can condone such deliberate deceptions as acceptable, then what is wrong with Lila rose? What is the DIFFERENCE?

It is immoral to use the result of evil even if for good.  For example, if a cure for some illness arises out of research using stem cells from an aborted embryo, the result is tainted and can not be used.  We can give no excuse for evil or honor to evil.

Seattleite:

The point is simple.  If you simply embrace the consequentialist logic which says that good ends justify evil means, then you destroy Catholic moral teaching down to its very foundations.  That’s what’s at stake here.  That’s why it’s extremely important to be careful what we say.  As I say, consequentialism is The Favorite Moral Heresy of Americans (including the majority of American Catholics).  As long as something “works”, Americans are typically fine with it.  The problem is, this thinking undergirds not just the people who support Lila Rose, but the people Lila Rose opposes.  Abortion “works”.  It solves a problem.  Embrace ends-justifies-the-means thinking and you destroy the logical basis for opposition to abortion too.

It is immoral to use the result of evil even if for good.

Then God was immoral to use the betrayal and crucifixion of Jesus for good.

PPS.  ESCR is a different case entirely than the Dachau data.  With ESCR, to use the cells is to participate in the killing.  With the Dachau data, as with, say, autopsy results on a murder victim or studies of the collapse of the World Trade Center with a view to designing stronger building on the future, you are not participating in the evil committed, merely trying to redeem what has already been done with no cooperation from you.

St. Francis and Miguel Pro look like consequentialists to me.

Seattleite:

Yes.  But then so did St. Joseph.  So I don’t put a lot of stock in that judgement.

Also, bear in mind that the Church’s thinking about consequentialism, as about slavery, torture, the rights of women under law, Trinitarian theology, the Immaculate Conception and a quite a number of other things has developed over time.  Appealing to the example of saints in order to trump developed Church teaching on consequentialism is as sound as appealing to St. Catherine of Siena (who said God the Father told her personally that Mary was not immaculately conceived) to disprove the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.  For a good discussion of the current state of the question of consequentialism, see Veritatis Splendor.

I don’t understand why this is so hard for people to get.

It’s right there in the Catechism: lying, by its nature, is to be condemned.

That means its nature is evil and can’t be redeemed.

The definition of a lie is right there: speaking at variance with the mind in order to lead someone into error.

“Error” isn’t just about religious, metaphysical or “important” issues. If you tell someone something that is objectively untrue about a minor detail, e.g. your mother’s dress is blue not red, that’s an error.

So when the pimp in the Live Action video says that his girls need treatment, when he has no such girls, that’s a lie. He’s not acting. He’s telling the PP worker things he knows are not real to make the PP believe something that is not true. His words are not ambiguous; you can’t put two interpretations on them. He’s telling PP something that’s false.

And regarding what is intrinsically disordered or not: when we see the phrase “intrinsically disordered” we think that it refers to a really grave sin. It doesn’t have to be. It just means some actions are consistent with the nature of God or creation (including man) and some are not. So gluttony is not intrinsically disordered because it’s a sin of excess. Eating is necessary. Just don’t overdo it. It’s consistent with nature. So that’s not intrinsically disordered. Stealing can be a grave sin or a minor sin; it is also not intrinsically disordered, because of the principle of the universal destination of goods. But minor lies are intrinsically disordered. Using God’s name in vain, even though it is usually a venial sin, is intrinsically disordered, because God is our final end, and when our souls disrespect God that way, it violates God’s intended mode of operation of our souls, i.e. honouring God and ultimately our union with him.

So when we commit an act that is intrinsically disordered, we’re violating God’s intended mode of operation for us. It’s like you can’t stick a toaster in a bathtub; that’s intrinsically disordered for the toaster. It won’t work and you’ll end up hurt. The gravity of the intrinsically disordered act depends on how much damage you do.

And this is why lying is never allowed, but killing, i.e. disarming an an unjust aggressor, is allowed. But the idea behind disarming an unjust aggressor is that you only use as much physical force as necessary. Sometimes the only force that will do the job is killing. Self-defense by use of force is built in our nature. Whereas our souls were created for truth. Every kind of truth.

Dawn Eden is NOT right! A deception is a lie but not all lies are deceptions. The answer to the question of whether it is right to deceive resides in the deceiver’s intentions. I distinguish moral intention from justifying the means by the end.

When a man goes fishing, he uses bait. In other words, he lies to the fish promising him an easy meal when his real intentions are to catch and eat him. The man is not immoral. He simply wants to continue living and to do that, he must eat.

Likewise, when an investigator enters an abortion clinic and offers herself as bait, she promises the abortionist that she and her unborn child will be easy victims. She, likewise to the fisherman, is not immoral. She simply wants that unborn children, her brothers and sisters in Christ, will be born and live, as her Lord intended.

She knows that the abortionist lies about his activities. She knows that the only way she can expose him is to get him to expose himself. She knows that he will not do that if he doesn’t feel safe to do so. She offers him the bait to which she knows he will be attracted.

The first thing a sinner needs in order to be saved is to be confronted with his sin. Forcing the sinner out of the security of a treatment room in an abortion clinic and into the critical light of the public is a good way to accomplish both the protection of the unborn and the salvation of the sinner. If the sinner is uncomfortable in the light of his exposed activities, then he should come to God and resolve his difficulties.

Fighting against the murder of the unborn is not a private cause. It is service to God. Failure to use every moral means to stop abortion is itself a sin. If every word of God is Law, then we are all compelled to be committed to a culture of life.

If those who pick at the propriety or impropriety of these tactics are disinclined to participate in the fight for life because of the tactics, let them take action similar to what Jesus did in the temple with the moneychangers: let them go to the abortion clinics and stand between the knives and the unborn.

Calling these tactics lies and characterizing them as immoral betrays a delicacy of character that is itself inconsistent with Christianity. I see no issue in deceiving the abortionist and then turning to him and saying: “Brother, I have forced you into the light that I might save the unborn and that I might offer you the chance to redeem yourself; now, let me show you what I know of the way.”

I liked what Papalex had to say about a fundamentalist reading of the catechism.  Some of the “Catholics” surrounding me aren’t even pro-military for self-defense because of the usefulness of fundamentalist translation of scripture.  But I agree—next time, LA needs to pay big bucks to a real pimp and prostitute to get the same answers.  Nothing against the law or a lie, as no sex act would have been gotten for the money and the sex trade folks really do have need for answers to these questions!  Win Win!

I must disagree with Cardinal O’Connor on one point.  Killing can indeed stop killing when an unjust aggressor is prevented from murdering an innocent victim.  This is a moral dilemma I have puzzled over, grateful that I have very little chance of encountering it in reality:  Suppose one find’s oneself in the presence of a person clearly about to murder a child in the womb.  Does he not have a moral right, even an obligation, to prevent the murder even if his actions lead to the death of the aggressor?  Why would this situation be any different from acting to prevent the murder of an adult, including oneself?
AMDG
jsa

But Mark, remember that the Church’s correct teaching against consquentialism is that evil cannot be done to achieve a good result.  That depends on defining what is evil.  One could simplistically say that all killing is wrong, but the Church does not say so.  The intrinsic evil that the Church has defined is always murder—not any killing, but intentional killing of an innocent person.  The debate here is whether all intentional falsehoods are evil.  The positon some are proposing here is that lying is properly defined more narrowly than any intentional falsehood:  as only intenional falsehoods given to someone with the right to know the truth.  That obviously makes the analysis more complicated and requires a consideration of cirucmstances—in the same way that a rejection of pacificism makes the moral analysis more difficult.  But it doesn’t mean that any circumstances can justify an intentional falsehood, or that one is supposed to weigh the benefits of an intentional falsehood against the harm to determine whether it’s OK.

@George Hood—yours was the most amazing commentary I have read in a long time.  So well thought out and presented.  The fishing metaphor was marvelous.  Gives whole new facets to “fishers of men”.  THANK YOU!

Likewise, when an evangelist fakes a miracle and offers himself as bait for the gullible, he, likewise to the fisherman, is not immoral. He simply wants new brothers and sisters in Christ to be born again and live, as her Lord intended.

Sorry.  But it seems to me your argument is pure consequentialism, George.  It’s precisely what Paul is condemning.

@George Hood: Bravo! Ditto to Twonail. Simple, intent and circumstance but not in defense of consequestialism. Assuming the folks at Live Action have a well formed conscience, what is the problem? Maybe I’m just too simple…

Pius XII gave a speech to American Journalists on Journalism Ethics. I read it a while ago and I believe it touched on this sort of issue. However I cannot find it online now that I am looking for it again. It was delivered in 1958. If we are considering what Lila Rose did as a form of journalism, which it seems to be, then we should look at what the popes and bishops have said about journalism ethics.

By the way, George, I think what you *meant* to write was “A lie is a deception but not all deceptions are lies”, which is true.  The Church says lying is intrinsically immoral, not deceptions which involve withholding the truth from people with no right to it.  When Athanasius told the cops who were looking for him “You are not far from him” he deceived, but did not lie.  When Lila Rose’s people approached people who were not intruding into their lives to demand information they were not entitled to and proceeded to lie about their identities, occupations, and intentions, they were, well, *lying*.  Just as much as my phony evangelist example was lying.  That they had a good end in view for their lies does not diminish the fact one iota that they were lying.  And lying, says the Church, is intrinsically immoral.  I don’t see any way around that.

Rob wrote:

“Assuming the folks at Live Action have a well formed conscience, what is the problem?”

Well that’s the question.  If what they are doing is wrong, but they believe it to be right, then the Church would say two things:

1)  Their culpability for the wrong may be diminished (i.e. God cuts them some slack in weighing their actions because they sincerely believe they are doing the right thing).
2)  They are still doing something that’s wrong and thus their conscience is not in fact properly formed.

It seems to me that we are debating the wrong question: PP staff is already in error and supporting intrinsic evil then,

Our sole purpose should be to lead PP staff (and all our brothers and sisters) out of error and into external salvation.

Is Lila helping those who are in error about PP, and those in error about CCC 2483,—To lie is to speak or act against the truth in order to lead someone into error.

Well the only excuse I can possibly see is invincible ignorance which Lila and crew is doing alot to rectify.

We can’t use the excuse I really don’t know about the abuse of women at PP anymore so I am dismissed of the requirement to help their souls out of error.

Start with prayer and go where the Holy Spirit leads you.

@ Luke:
 

“All other commandments are subservient to protecting innocent life, with the exception of sacrilege.”

 
An extraordinary thesis for which there is no justification whatsoever in Catholic moral theology.
 
How about raping children? Would you rape children to save innocent life?

Alexander:

I respect your argument, but here’s where I think it goes wrong:

1)  The nuance that perhaps a falsehood is not a lie (and thus not wrong) if the hearer has no right to the information is one that was present in an early unofficial draft (1994) of the Catechism but was taken out in the final version (1997).  Its generally significant when a clause is in a document but is later removed.  Recall that the prepararion of the CCC was ultimate overseen by then Cardinal Ratzinger.  In any event, the official version does not have that particular “out cluase.”

2)  Even if so, it is clear that PP workers have the right to the information “why are you here?”  The ultimate end they are working toward may be evil, but that doesn;t mean that every single they do is inherently evil.  When

3)  Even if so, that still doesn’t get the LiveAction people off the hook for what is, in my opinion, their greatest wrong here - tempting the PP to sin.  There can simply be no instance whatsoever in which deceiving someone so that they might do something wrong can ever be morally acceptible, regardless of the consequentialist “greater good” you’re working toward.

What they did is no different than ‘Undercover Boss’ any TV undercover investigation sting.

Saving Souls:

I started with prayer.  The Holy Spirit led me to the teaching of Holy Church which says that lying is intrinsically immoral. The arguments that are being put forward in defense here are only showing that most people don’t know what “consequentialism” actually means because they are repeatedly saying that, so long as you have a good end in view,  you can indeed go ahead and do what the Church calls “intrinsically immoral”, as though a happy result from your lie makes the lie not a lie.  I repeat, this is like saying that if somebody fakes a Marian apparition or a miracle, that’s fine so long as it results in a lot of converts since Jesus wants people to be born again.  It is *begging* for trouble, in addition to being, well, intrinsically immoral.

Another article to read on this idea is Solzhenitsyn’s article “live not by lies” which goes into this point of not lying or remaining silent in the truth. He recommends some actions to be taken in the face of Lies which I think would apply perfectly here.

Papalex:

As far as I know, Catholics are not typically expected to form their moral judgements based on reality TV shows.

This whole discussion continues to be very interesting.

Is lying evil?  Yes.  Is all deception lying?  No.  Is the kind of deception in the Live Action videos lying?  Probably.  Should this particular tactic be abandoned?  Yes, for reasons of prudence as well as morality.

People keep comparing this to questions of killing, self-defense, etc.  I think the same set of questions applies: is murder evil? Yes; is all killing murder; no, is killing in self-defense evil; no, is driving around in a vigilantemobile armed to the teeth in the dead of night in some crime-ridden city in the *hopes* of being able to use deadly force morally questionable?  Probably.

Does this make Batman’s activities morally questionable?  Why, yes, it does—and I think that this is a key to our problem condemning Live Action.  Because we Americans *like* vigilante heroes, whose fictional backgrounds include plenty of explanations like “The whole police force is corrupt/there’s no other choice/we really need this caped or masked hero to make things safe…” etc.

In fiction, such things may be fine—fiction operates under the rules of imagery and metaphor, and the lone hero’s tortured struggle for a higher purpose is more symbolic than literal.  But in real life, vigilantes have a tendency to put themselves and others in danger while failing to “fix” the problem of crime.

And in real life, when people pose as pimps or prostitutes to trap Planned Parenthood workers into saying stupid things on camera, there are a whole host of possible bad effects—which become statistically more likely the more PP workers’ awareness is raised to the possibility that they are being scammed.  And that’s only going to make it harder for legitimate law enforcement to enforce existing laws concerning the protection of minors in statutory rape situations, in the long run.

@sd
If their intentions are good and noble and they understand these specific circumstances justify their actions, who am I to question their culpability. I couldn’t agree more with Saving Souls or at least am not convinced otherwise to support Mark in this case, which is unusual.

Actually a good reference for this can be found at catholicculture.org with the following link:

www.catholicculture.org/commentary/projects/girding_for_battle/index.cfm?id=1

Nobody’s talking about culpability, Rob.  What we are talking about is what actions are morally permissible according to the Church.  Lying is “intrinsically immoral” according to the Church.  It is not ours to judge the liar’s culpability.  It is ours to judge whether the act of lying is immoral or not.  That applies, by the way, to the far more serious acts of the people at Planned Parenthood, whose culpability we also cannot judge, though we judge the act of abortion to be intrinsically immoral.

@Mark:

The good we need to keep in view is saving our soul and helping our brothers and sisters, even those at the clinics and those fence-sitting Catholics who see no intrinsic evil at PP, save their souls.

I still am not convinced that the Lila Lying theme is helpful.

Next time, trying praying at an abortion clinic while they are doing abortions.

God bless.

I think what you need to do is to quit the blog and stop commenting on the catholic faith.  Your cutesy and, I might add, narcisistic comments to do not serve any good.  Quite frankly, as a recent catholic revert, I am quite disgusted by your writing and your trying to be so cute. The Lord said, let your yes be yes and your no, be no.  Your comments, to try to make yourself be so cute, are really quite disturbing, and do nothing to further my faith.  It would be better if you spend your time dwellving deeper into the catholic faith, instead of commenting on it.

Thank you for your kind comments. I hope that I may serve God in what I write though I suspect that He can find much better than me to defend His cause.

I did not misstate myself when I wrote: ” A deception is a lie but not all lies are deceptions.” A lie is simply a misstatement of the truth. A lie is defined generally as speaking untruthfully and intending deliberately to mislead or deceive. In other words, a deception is a kind of lie. The difference lays in the intention of the person who deceives. A lie is always immoral. A deception is not.

Jesus tells us that we might commit sin simply by thinking it so if I lust after my neighbor’s wife, I have sinned even though I do no more than think on the acts I might commit. Was Jesus a consequentialist? In other words, did He hold that the consequences of one’s conduct should be the only basis for any judgment about the morality of that conduct? Of course not because if He believed that we would have a situation where one might lust after his neighbor’s wife if the result were that she would become more chaste for his lusting.

The intention of one who enters an abortion clinic to bring the awareness of God’s active presence in this world is easily distinguished from one who hopes that what he does will turn out well or yield a moral end.

The deceiver uses both moral means and holds moral intentions. She does not hope that the result would justify her actions. Whether she is victorious or not is of no consequence as to the rightness of her conduct.

So the deceiver enters the clinic and solicits that to which she would not be entitled under the secular law. She seeks to deceive the abortionist into revealing what he is really doing so that it might be judged before all the people, so that it might be examined by their consciences.

She does not expose him for personal gain. She does not expose him to cause him harm. On the contrary, her actions are to save both him and his victims by forcing him into a situation where he will be confronted by the truth in a way that he can only deny by making a moral decision either to continue in his sin or to quit it and to come to God.

How is this consequentialism?

George:  It is consequentialism because it is lying to achieve a good end in exactly the same way that an evangelist who fakes a miracle in order to save his victims by tricking them into believing in Jesus Christ is lying for a good end.  It’s good to believe in Jesus.  It’s bad to lie to get people to do it.  If I fake up a Marian apparition and get some sinful sucker to believe in it and seek baptism confessing his sins, I am nonetheless a liar even if the sucker is never the wiser and dies a saint.

Barbara:  I have no idea what you are talking about.  I consider this an extremely serious discussion and one that goes to the core of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.  Sorry that bothers you.

I guess I’m struggling with the the morality test. If we are saying that the ends are the public humiliation and subsequent dismissal of the PP manager, and that was the intent, with the means being acting and the circumstances lying, than the action is immoral. But if I consider the consequence of more public outcry and exposing PP for what it is, with this intention, employing the object of acting or deception, than I have a tough time calling it Intrinsically evil. Either scenario for that matter. All of the examples in favor seem irrelevant. Maybe it’s a symptom of my formation?

To clarify….

A lie told to advance oneself (for selfish cause) is always immoral. It is a malicious lie. Other the other hand, a deception is a lie that transcends one’s own welfare. For example, if I lie (deceive) to protect innocent life, I have not sinned. If I lie to deprive you of your money, I have truly sinned.

Malicious lies and deceptions are all lies but that is where the similarity ends. A deception is a misstatement of the facts without the moral color of a malicious lie.

Thanks

George and Rob:

Both of you are arguing that the ends justify the means.  When you give examples of “bad” lying, what you are both doing is imagining some scenarios where the *ends* are bad (“I want to get rich from lying!  I want to advance myself!  I want to publicly humiliate my enemy!”) and saying that lies in pursuit of bad ends are bad.  This, while true, is beside the point.  When the Church says something is intrinsically immoral, it means that it is not possible to do it, even in pursuit of a good end.  So, for instance, not matter what your Higher Purpose might be, it is intrinsically immoral to, say, rape a kid. (That’s why Luke’s simplistic “end justifies the means” argument that everything but sacrilege is allowable to save life falls apart, as Steve Greydanus points out.)

The problem with saying “We can lie for Jesus to save lives” is that it’s also an arguement that we can lie for Jesus to save souls.  There are plenty of religious zealots who have no desire for self-advancement and no intention of personal monetary gain who would argue that if you can fake a miracle for Jesus that will “win souls” then you should do it.  Paul says “their condemnation is deserved”.  That’s because, as he says, you cannot live by the principle, Let Us Do Evil that Good May Come of It.  That is, in the end, what is being argued for when you say that you can lie in a good cause.

By the way, anybody remember just a few weeks ago when we were all being told how peculiarly immoral Muslims were for their concept of Taquiyya or lying in defense of Islam and how almost inhumanly different these barbarians are from us good Christian folk?

How long ago that seems now.

Mark Shea, God did not use the evil of the crucifixion to do good.  And God is not immoral.  God asked Jesus to love to the point of death.  He asked Him to be obedient out of love to the point of death.  He used Jesus’ love for the good that came from His willing sacrifice.  He DID NOT use the evil of scribes, pharisees, romans and us.

Mark, you’re stating that I believe that tricking someone into exposing his own sinful conduct is itself wrong and that the consequence of that, if it is good, morally justifies the trickery.

That is not what I am saying. I am saying that the deception itself is not immoral.

An example: A robber enters my home and demands to know if anyone else is there. Am I obligated to tell him that my wife and teenage daughter are hiding upstairs? Of course not, I can deceive him lawfully all day long. The act of deception is intrinsically neither moral nor immoral but takes its color from the intentions of the deceiver. That said, there are always two parts to any act: the intention and the means. Both must be lawful for the overall act to be proper.

There is a great deal of difference between the evangelist who fakes miracles and the deceiver who enters the clinic. They both have good intentions. The evangelist, however, defiles God by falsifying His miracles. The deceiver who enters the clinic simply places the abortionist in the position of being exposed for what he is actually doing.

To be moral, an act must be both well intended (lawful) and executed morally (lawfully).

Of course, I really like the example of Jesus in the temple. How about a trip to an abortion clinic with that example in mind? Any takers? Of course not! Most critics of the tactics being used by the pro-life movement would rather sit comfortably in front of their computer screens debating the morality of the actions as a pretext for doing absolutely nothing.

Pope John Paul ll regularly recieved intelligence briefings from CIA representatives. I wonder if he ever worried if any of that information was obtained as a result of deception, which I’m sure it was.  Just as recieving property that has already been stolen is a crime, wouldn’t it have been wrong for JPll to recieve and use this information? 
There is also the example of the Pontifical Russian College (Russicum) which some say was established to train priests who were sent to Russia to spy. If this is true, and I admit there is an “if”, here is more decption, not only being sanctioned, but initiated by the Vatican.
When I see the “blathering pundit”(Mr. Shea’s words), as well as others critizing Lila Rose for taking couragous action to stop the killing of babies, it reminds me of when the pharacies got mad at Christ for healing someone on the Sabbath.  Come on now, the law is the law!  Do we really allow the law to be used by the evil one as a weapon to kill us? Mr. Shea, you wouldn’t really allow someone to die (the Nazi chasing the Jews example) in order not to lie…or would you.

George:

I’m saying that lying about your name, occupation and purpose is lying, even if you want to accomplish something good by lying.  You are trying to make the case that if you really *really* want to do something good then it’s okay to lie.  I repeat, many a bad evangelist would agree, but Paul would not.

Pam:

Of course God brought good out of the evil of the crucifixion:

“Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs which God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know—23 this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. 24 But God raised him up, having loosed the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.” (Act 2:22-24)

I don’t criticize her for taking courageous action any more than St. Thomas criticized the Hebrew midwives for fearing God.  I criticize her for lying and I criticize the bad reasoning being given here which tries to justify lying (just as St. Thomas said that the lies of the Hebrew midwives were not “meritorious”).  I hope we can have a million more like Lila Rose.  I also hope that, in their holy fear of God they will pursue their good ends in ways keeping with the Church’s teaching on the morality of lying.

Mark, The plan and foreknowledge was knowing that man, confronted with good would prefer the darkness and wipe out the light, and therefore Jesus’ LOVE and OBEDIENCE would find a true test and that LOVE AND OBEDIENCE would bring the GRACE of our REDEMPTION.  Our redemption didn’t come from the evil but from the good. Jesus was “obedient even unto death.”

Mark:

If you were fleeing from, let’s use the tired example of the Nazis, because of your religious beliefs, would you be acting immorally to deny who you were thus avoiding arrest? Were the Apostles who denied Jesus immoral or were they simply unable to summon courage from their faith at that desperate moment. Will God punish them for denying Jesus on that day?

It would be ideal if we could all find the courage that Jesus exemplifies in His life. We should all strive for that but I do believe that we have these other means lawfully available to us. In the end, every act is either moral or not. Are you saying that any deception, whether simple lie or malicious one, is unlawful? In your eyes are the Apostles guilty?

If you would deny the pro-lifers their deception then I would hope that you would find that such moral caution also calls for a strong balance of moral courage.

I’ll tell you what. If you deny the propriety of the deception in this case and find the moral courage of your faith then I am sure you will see it your obligation to make your way to the nearest abortion clinic to defend innocent life.

So if you are going to be a “stand up guy, I’ll tell you what: I’ll meet you at that clinic and we together will march on the murderers. No lies, no deceptions, no exposure, no anger, no violence – just you and me and the Word.

Pam:

I didn’t say redemption comes from evil.  It comes from God making use of the evil we do in crucifying Jesus to bring about our redemption through his obedience.  God’s redemption of our evil acts does not make our evil acts unevil.  That’s more or less the point I’m trying to make here.  I don’t think we are disagreeing.

“George:  It is consequentialism because it is lying to achieve a good end in exactly the same way that an evangelist who fakes a miracle in order to save his victims by tricking them into believing in Jesus Christ is lying for a good end.  It’s good to believe in Jesus.  It’s bad to lie to get people to do it.  If I fake up a Marian apparition and get some sinful sucker to believe in it and seek baptism confessing his sins, I am nonetheless a liar even if the sucker is never the wiser and dies a saint.”

 
@ Mark: I appreciate the complexity here, but this analogy seems really unhelpful to me. Whether or not the opposing view is correct, clearly it hinges on the idea that the person you’re deceiving—whether a Nazi at at the door or an abortion clinic director—is directly engaged in acts so heinous that in interacting with them the normal applications of the eighth commandment don’t apply, on something like a self-defense or defensive rationale. The moral circumstances around lying to someone to trick them into faith are so different that the analogy simply doesn’t grapple with the opposing position.
 
Theft is intrinsically evil—but there are circumstances in which you can help yourself to another man’s goods without his knowledge or consent, and it’s not theft. Murder is intrinsically evil, but there are circumstances in which you can put a bullet in someone’s head and leave him dead on the ground and it’s not murder. Is it possible that lying is intrinsically evil, but there may be circumstances in which you can give someone false information and it’s not lying?
 
I’m not saying the analogy proves anything. Counter-example: Adultery is intrinsically evil and there are never times when you can go through the motions of committing adultery without actually doing so. But then part of this is how we define the words: “Adultery” is a word that includes circumstances, not just actions. So does “theft” and “murder,” it turns out. Might it be that lying does too? Might it be that just as “theft” means “helping yourself to your neighbor’s goods against his reasonable will,” so “lying” might mean something like “giving false information to a person with a right to the truth”? Or something?

Is the story of Rahab in Joshua relevant?

Joshua 2:4 And the woman taking the men, hid them, and said: I confess they came to me, but I knew not whence they were: 5 And at the time of shutting the gate in the dark, they also went out together. I know not whither they are gone: pursue after them quickly, and you will overtake them.

And then:

James 2:25 And in like manner also Rahab the harlot, was not she justified by works, receiving the messengers, and sending them out another way?

Steven:

All analogies limp, of course, but what I was trying to get at was the “We’re doing this for their own good in order to save them from the evil they are doing” logic that seemed to underscore George’s argument.  For me, the distinction about the hoary “Nazis at the door” analogy and this situation is precisely who is doing the knocking on the door.  In this case, it’s prolifers knocking on PPs door for the express purpose of coming in and lying to them, not hapless victims trying to fend off people with no right to the truth.  I just don’t see how that can be justified by any reasonable understanding of what the word “lying” means in English nor by any reasonable understanding of what the Catechism means when it declares: “A good intention (for example, that of helping one’s neighbor) does not make behavior that is intrinsically disordered, such as lying and calumny, good or just.”

Believe me.  I’d love to find a loophole here.  But, well, I can’t get around the fact that what I’m desperately looking for is a loophole in much the same way that every other scoundrel who wants to dodge the bleedin’ obvious meaning of clear language does whenever they want to do something they know perfectly well is wrong.  So I’m forced, even in the attempt to bend language out of all recognizable meaning, back to the fact that I know what “lying” means, I know what the Church says, and I know this is lying for a good end, which is as wrong here as it is when faking up a miracle to save somebody’s soul.

By the way, a quick note to George: I have participated in 40 Days for Life vigils at Planned Parenthood clinics on multiple occasions.  It is needlessly poisoning the well to say or suggest that those who question the morality of lying to PP “would rather sit comfortably in front of their computer screens debating the morality of the actions as a pretext for doing absolutely nothing.”  I trust you will not indulge in such rhetoric again.

Mark, I don’t think you will convince those opposed to you otherwise.  What is the motivation of the lie in this situation?  The motivation is to set up PP to commit an evil act when we already know they are committing acts of evil.  What is the underlying disposition of this entrapment?  Is it love or hate?  Is the enemy the people who work at PP or is the enemy evil?  If we see the enemy as the people who work at PP then the obvious tactic is to go after them?  Evil wins and history repeats itself.
If the enemy is evil itself then the tactic becomes spiritually faith driven and will be something that is sacrificial and something that will attract others to belong to some mystery that is bigger and more important than the comfort of their easy chairs and writing on blogs.

One final point, George.  You ask, “Were the Apostles who denied Jesus immoral or were they simply unable to summon courage from their faith at that desperate moment.”

This is a rather infelicitous way of trying to make the case that lying is just fine under certain circumstances.  Were the apostles immoral cowards when they denied Jesus?  Hell yes!  And they felt the burning shame of it.  That’s why Peter wept when the cock crowed. Trying to make the case for the morality of lying by appealing to the denial of Jesus as a precedent is like trying to make the case for the morality of murder by saying that Caiaphas’ judicial murder of Jesus ended well for us, so it’s all okay.

It is therefore a bit a of a shell game to suddenly introduce the radically different question, “Will God punish them for denying Jesus on that day?” to the discussion.  I’m not talking about the culpability or the eternal destiny of people who lie, whether for a good cause or to save their own skins.  Obviously, God has forgiven the sins of the apostles in denying Jesus.  What he has not done is say, “It was morally right to deny Jesus.  After all, you were saving yourself and your fellow apostles, Peter.”

Does God forgive lying for a good cause?  Of course he does.  Nor am I particularly persuaded that lying in a desperate situation (because you can’t think of what else to do and are doing the best you can) is much more than a venial sin (called, in English, “fibbing” or “telling a white lie”).  I, at any rate, would not lose much sleep over it.  But constructing a carefully planned strategy of aggressively lying is not like that and is, I think, a very morally precarious scaffolding upon which to build the future hopes of the prolife movement.  We’ve already seen it come crashing down once with Lila Rose’s friend James O’Keefe.  We shouldn’t be surprised if it explodes in our faces again since, as the Church has warned, lying is intrinsically immoral.  Those who do not know their master’s will and do not do it (like the person who is suddenly in a desperate situation where he can’t think of anything to do but lie to save a life) will be beaten with few blows, says our Lord.  Those who do know the Master’s will (like the person who knows that it is intrinsically immoral to lie but set out to create an entire prolife strategy based on lying to Planned Parenthood) will be beaten with many blows, says our Lord.  I think the prolife movement should consider strategies which do not involve us in telling lies and inviting judgement.  We’ve got enough on our plate and a lot of other ways of fighting the Father of Lies than adopting his tactics.

Rachel M. from Wed at 08:34

What will you do when you discover that NFP is also a lie?

TTS

@Mark I really have no idea how you can say “Comparisons to war break down because, well, this is not war.”  How many millions of abortions since 1973?  What kind of social conflict are we in, then?

Please respond, also, to the ‘investigative reporter’ analogy.  And if you’re conflicted about things like military spying and police undercover stings, why are you so convinced about Lila Rose?

How do you get the truth out of an organization long overshadowed by evidence of systematic criminality and deception?  By asking them extra-politely, “oh, and won’t you please admit that you have no problem helping sex traffickers get discreet abortions for their slaves?”

I can’t believe you take abortion seriously enough to stand outside PP forty days, but that you are more worried about Lila Rose taking on a cover than about PP employees systematically covering up sexual abuse.

“Is the story of Rahab in Joshua relevant?”

It is as relevant as the story of Jephthe (Judges 11; Hebrews 11:32ff).

St. Augustine explains why certain lies in the Old Testament seem to have been rewarded:

“For if a person who is used to tell lies for harm’s sake comes to tell them for the sake of doing good, that person has made great progress. But it is one thing that is set forth as laudable in itself, another that in comparison with a worse is preferred. It is one sort of gratulation that we express when a man is in sound health, another when a sick man is getting better. In the Scripture, even Sodom is said to be justified in comparison with the crimes of the people Israel. And to this rule they apply all the instances of lying which are produced from the Old Books, and are found not reprehended, or cannot be reprehended: either they are approved on the score of a progress towards improvement and hope of better things, or in virtue of some hidden signification they are not altogether lies.” (De Mendacio 7)

Hope this helps.

Andrew:

It’s not war because you are not authorized to spray your local Planned Parenthood center with machine gun fire, shoot bazookas into the offices of their national headquarters, or bomb the government institutions that fund them.  You are a citizen.  So are they.  Your government has not declared war on them.  No troops have been drafted to fight them.  If you do take it upon yourself to shoot one of them, you will rightly and properly be arrested, charged with murder in the first degree, and jailed.  Do not mistake metaphor for reality.

Who said I was more worried about Lila Rose taking on a cover than about PP employees systematically covering up sexual abuse?  I’m not a *complete* idiot.  I merely am saying that Lila Rose lying is not the way to end the monstrous evil of Planned Parenthood because, as Holy Church says, “A good intention (for example, that of helping one’s neighbor) does not make behavior that is intrinsically disordered, such as lying and calumny, good or just.”

The state had a right to try and even execute Lee Harvey Oswald.  That doesn’t mean that Jack Ruby does.

James Ryan:

What will we do when we discover you are troll bent on dragging the conversation off topic to some personal obsession of yours?  Ignore you, I fervently hope.

Someone said that if we break one commandment we break them all.

I am reminded of an incident in 1 Maccabees. There were two groups who initially opposed the Greeks,  the first would not fight on the Sabbath and were destroyed.  The second fought on the Sabbath and ultimately won their “freedom”.  I believe that those who say a sting operation is “evil” are in the same camp as those Jews who were slaughtered by their Greek overlords.

Calling the actions of Lila Rose intrinsically evil is fairly Pharisaical.  If any sort of lying is evil, then Santa Claus is evil.  The Easter Bunny is evil. Any of the score or so childhood conceits that we commonly share with our children are intrinsically evil. Undercover police are evil,  Consumer reporters are evil In the Bible,  Rehab would be Evil as well, yet she is celebrated and is even the ancestor of our Lord.  Despite what I have read from Mark and others, I cannot believe that God is frowning upon Lila Rose.  But I could be wrong…

I apologise if someone else has already made this point, but, glad as I am to see PP shown in their true light, this seemed to me a case of causing scandal.

If someone had secretly videoed an actual pimp trying to do this, and the Planned Parenthood person cooperating, that would, it seems to me, have been the right thing to do.  But as I understand this case, the supposed pimp was acting.  Thus it seems to me to be a case of trying to get the PP person to commit a sin, one that the person could not have committed otherwise.  Note that I am not saying that a real pimp might not have been handled the same way.  No doubt he would.  But this particular sin - the one of trying to do this on this particular day and time and in this particular place - could not have happened without Live Action’s actors.

So it seems to me completely indefensible on this ground alone.

jj

@John Thayer Jensen

Exactly!

The last hurdle for me in coming right out and condemning the actions of LiveAction is that I am so in awe of Lila Rose and her courage.  Intellectually, I understand the concerns about the methods used in exposing PP and I also understand the concept of consequentialism, but man does this girl have nerve and conviction which pales in comparison to anything I’ve ever done on behalf of the unborn.

Mark, this is why combox discussions are so valuable.  When the story first broke, my initial reaction was “Good for Live Action!  Good for Lila Rose!”  Now, after several days of reading commentaries both in defense of and critical of the videos, I’ve come to appreciate the Church’s position (and actually learned a lot about lying and deception and Thomas Aquinas and Augustine).  Finally, it is edifying to see the pro-life community questioning and examining itself in the wake of this episode.  The other side never does the same.

I still hope PP is defunded.

@Nerina

I couldn;t agree more.  Clearly Lila Rose has her heart in the right place and is willing to put herself on the line in ways that are clearly admirable.  But neither good intentions nor otherwise sterling character make a wrong act into a right act.

Mark Shea, I’ll have to take your word for it on this one- that we agree. God does not use evil to do good. George, the problem with your scenarios is that they aren’t loving. God doesn’t force himself on us. Someone trapping someone to straighten them out is not doing unto others as they would want it done to them.  Can you really imagine Jesus forcing anyone like that?

Nerina:

Thankss.  As I say, I hope God gives us a million Lila Roses.  I admire her courage a great deal.  I merely hope that she channels it into means which are not described by the Church as intrinsically immoral.  May she do great and good things to defend the defenseless against our culture of death.

Scott:

It would really help if you could back off the polarizing Manichaean rhetoric and deal with what is actually being said.  Nobody said Lila Rose is evil.  One can commit an intrinsically immoral act like lying with all sorts of levels of culpability.

I agree this isn’t war.  But neither are these videos engaged in killing, so it doesn’t seem necessary to ramp the crisis up to war to justify them.  It seems to me that there may be two crucial questions, which require some patience to consider. 

First, can the police conduct undercover investigations that involve lying because of their public authority.  Suppose we consider it and decide they can.  That doesn’t justify them killing suspected criminals at will.  For the state to kill an even higher standard would be needed, the standard of inflicting capital punishment.  But if the state can engage in undercover investigations that involve lying, it is no response to say that justifies the state doing whatever it wants including assasination. It doesn’t—the state’s burden to do something less harmful, lying during investigations, is lower than to just kill people—much lower. 

And Second, if the police can conduct undercover investigations that involve lying because of their public authority, and if we live in a society where the government has so abdicated its police duty that not only does it not investigate abortionists it protects them and pays them with tax dollars, can a citizen in such a lawless society under narrow circumstances conduct a police function—parallel to a citizen arrest—if their action is sufficiently low harm (lying, which is revealed shortly thereafter, and no other unjust harm or consequences and no violence) and socially beneficial.  To say citizens in an essentially policeless situation can conduct a modest level of nonviolent police activity is also not to justify spraying anyone with machine guns, again for the same reason saying the real police can conduct stings doesn’t justify them killing whomever they want.  The higher cost proposal requires a much higher burden.  But perhaps it would be possible for a minimally low social harm citizen police sting, assuming the police could do it themselves.

@Nerina:

I merely hope that she channels it into means which are not described by the Church as intrinsically immoral.

For what it’s worth, it’s important to see that lying, and enticing to evil, are not immoral because the Church says so.  Aristotle knew they were wrong.  The Church says they are wrong because reason tells us they are.

This is true of so much in modern discussions, including about things like abortion.  I think we Catholics are hampered in our discussion with people because we often think we have to invoke the authority of the Church against torture, lying, pornography, abortion, and other evils.  For the non-Catholic, it’s so easy just to think, “Well, I’m glad I’m not a Catholic, then!” - and I think some Catholics are puzzled by the response.

Some things are matters of revelation - the Trinity, the two natures of Christ, etc.  Lying and enticement to evil are knowable by reason.

jj

@Scott:

assuming the police could do it themselves.

I don’t know about the law in the States, but here in New Zealand, the police cannot entice someone into committing a crime - I mean such evidence cannot be used.  Using deception to detect a crime is legal.

Deception, though, is not necessarily lying.  You are letting the person deceive himself.  If a cop dresses like a hoodlum, and uses a secret camera to video a crime, he hasn’t lied.  The criminal has allowed himself to believe that the guy isn’t what he seems.

Deception can easily be used for immoral purposes, certainly, but it isn’t lying, and can certainly be justified in particular cases.

jj

JJ, it’s not as simple as saying the police don’t need to lie.  At the end of the day to gather evidence by undercover techniques they do.  There isn’t a way to salvage the tecniques by allowing for non-lying deception.  Maybe it’s ultimately OK to scrap the techniques, that’s fine; but you can’t have your cake against lying and eat it too.

@maybe police:

JJ, it’s not as simple as saying the police don’t need to lie.  At the end of the day to gather evidence by undercover techniques they do.  There isn’t a way to salvage the tecniques by allowing for non-lying deception.  Maybe it’s ultimately OK to scrap the techniques, that’s fine; but you can’t have your cake against lying and eat it too.

You may in practice be correct.  What I was talking about, however, was enticement.

Detecting and apprehending someone in a crime, whether by the use of deception or not, is an act of mercy.  Enticing them to commit a crime is not.  It is involving yourself in their sinful act.

Whether lying is necessary depends on what lying is, which is a complex subject.  Ed Feser has an excellent discussion of the subject here.  I don’t know enough about police practice to say anything here.  I just wanted to point out that even criminal law says you can’t lure someone to commit a crime they wouldn’t otherwise have committed.  I mean you can’t use the evidence, at least not in New Zealand.  I don’t think the law goes after the cops in such a case but don’t really know more about it.

jj

Mark, Don’t be a smart ass. I was saying that people on that show are noting ‘liars’ or committing evil by being deceptive to their employees. Of course we’re not as learned as you. You do seem to suffer from scruplosity and pharaseeism however.

Papaalex:

Aside from calling names (fundamentalist, smart-ass, scrupulous, pharisee, we’re not as learned as you) is there something you could contribute to the discussion which actually addresses the problem of the Church’s description of lying as intrinsically immoral?  Appealing to a reality TV show and then emitting a small spew of insults when this appeal is questioned seems less than helpful.  Others have been able to disagree with me here and in Pat Archbold’s space without suggesting that trying to think with the Church is phariseeism.  I think those who disagree with me here are acting in good faith.  Can you attempt to do the same with me, Dawn and Mr. Doino?

CCC #2483 To lie is to speak or act against the truth in order to lead someone into error.

Lila Rose and her sting operation were not trying to get an innocent person to confess to something they didn’t do.  She was getting them to admit what they were truly guilty of.

If PP would have said “yes, we routinely aid and abet sex traffickers by helping them obtain birth control and abortions for their underage “sex workers,” then no need for the sting operation.

Lila Rose didn’t “lead them into error,” she got them to confess the TRUTH.

Mark, I do repent for my sophamoric comments.
Kathy, That is the truth, finally. In my humble opinion.

papaalex:  Thanks.  Don’t sweat it.

Kathy:  If I fraudulently represent myself as the recipient of a miraculous healing and persuade somebody to truthfully confess their sins, repent and seek baptism in the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, can I likewise confidently declare that I didn’t lead them into error, but got them to confess the TRUTH?

Your argument seems to me to be pure consequentialism.  It boils down to, “So long as there is a happy ending, feel free to lie.”

Mark, I see a real difference between the motives in your miraculas healing scenario, and Lila Rose.

The “healer” started with a lie to intentionally decieve.  The lie forced a chain of events that were based on that lie. (That would be the leading into error.  God REALLY does heal, but this was a sham.)

Lila Rose started with the truth.  PP does participate in criminal activity.  PP really does cover up rape, and sex trafficing. Would a real pimp have been better?  Yes, but perhaps real pimps are hard to find? (That could be a whole different discussion!)  Anyway, whether it was a real pimp or an actor playing the part did not change the answer given by the PP staff. The results are the same.  PP revealed its willingness to participate in criminal activity. (Lila Rose did not lead them into error, she got them to tell the truth.)

sorry about the spelling…trying to do too many things at once!

Kathy, I see no real difference between the motives in my miraculous healing scenario and Lila Rose.

Lila Rose started with a lie to intentionally decieve.  The lie forced a chain of events that were based on that lie. (That would be the leading into error.  PP REALLY does do evil, but this was a sham.)

To argue against this, you might as well say:

My Evangelist started with the truth.  Jesus does work miracles and call us to salvation.  Would a real miracle have been better?  Yes, but perhaps real miracles are hard to find? (That could be a whole different discussion!)  Anyway, whether it was a real miracle or an actor playing the part of a recipient of miraculous healing did not change the answer given by dupe who believed in the miracle. The results are the same.  The convert revealed his willingness to confess his sins and place his trust in Jesus. (My evangelist did not lead the convert into error, he got them to tell the truth that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.)

See the problem with your argument?

The *motive* is the same in both cases: Lila and the phony evangelist desire a good end.  What is in question is not the motive, but the means: namely, lying.  The motive for both lies is a good end (as is usually the case).  Precisely what is the problem is the claim that you can pursue a good end by evil means like lying.  The answer of the Tradition is clear: you can’t.

PAM

What is loving? If a man sins in this life, he very well might suffer for the wrongs he does during his time here and so his suffering in this world is but a preview of the torment to come. Can I sin in private and conduct myself as a righteous man in public? Who do I fool?

If I did so and my true nature were to be discovered, I would want to be exposed. I would want to be forced to confront and answer for my wrongs because I understand that I would be fooling no one but myself by concealing my sin. The Lord is all knowing and He is the judge. I would only be fooling myself.

Sinners are people who have fallen under the spirit of evil, that is, disobedience to God. I see nothing unloving about exposing a sinner to himself and his fellow human beings and then saying to him: “Brother, you are a sinner and so am I. I have tried to learn. Let me show you what I have come to know thus far in my life”.

It is not “unloving” to expose men to themselves and to their fellow men when they act sinfully. I would argue that, in truth, it is the only Christian act one can take in circumstances like these. One cannot use violence. Interposing oneself between the abortionist and his victim would only lead to arrest.

The secular law legitimizes the murder of the unborn but a believer answers to a different and higher law. While this calling compels a higher morality, it doesn’t prevent us from using deception to achieve a good end. All acts that are motivated by proper intention AND executed using lawful means are lawful.

It is lawful to deceive and there are numerous examples of deception being used lawfully both in the Bible and in the history of the early church. In the practical world, there are also many examples that will appeal to almost anyone;s reason. Consider the following. A young man runs into a restaurant pursued by various gang members. He pleads for help and the waitress directs him to the back. The gang enters and asks about him The waitress deceives them and they leave. Should she have told them where he was? Was she wrong in deceiving them? Would it have been more loving to reveal the young man’s location? Is “loving” even an issue?

We all agree that just about everything in the Bible has a contextual meaning. We are told not to kill but did David sin when he killed Goliath? We are also told not to lie but, in this context, I cannot see a sin.

If, however, the actors who posed as the pimp and his underaged prostitute were motivated by some idea of gaining fame from their exploits, I would then say that they sinned. In other words, deception is a tool just as the rock that David cast at Goliath was a tool. The rock was neither intrinsically good or bad. Deception is also neither intrinsically good or bad but telling lies with malicious intent or to idly deceive is sinful.

It is lawful to deceive.  It is not lawful to lie, George.  That’s why the Church says that lying intrinsically immoral.  Comparisons to David and Goliath are, once again, invalid because David killed Goliath in single combat on the field of battle.  Unless you want to suggest that it is likewise legitimate to go into PP with grenades and machine guns, the analogy is invalid.  And, once again, the claim that because you have in mind the good of the PP worker soul, you have leave to lie is just as applicable to the notion that you have the right to fake a miraculous healing in order to save her soul as well.  It is still consequentialism to say that you can lie for a good cause.

Mark, I’m not sure you have addressed sufficiently the question of police operations.  What about those who get on computers, pretend to be children and arrange for a sex abuser to meet with them at a certain time and place?  Surely lying and deception are taking place in this situation.  Are Catholic policemen forbidden by the Church to participate in such jobs?

@ Mark,

Do you believe that undercover police are guilty of the sin of lying in performing their jobs?

Also curious about priests going undercover in Catholic persecuting countries to deliver the sacraments, and using some lying in the process.

Kathy/Lauretta:

I haven’t made up my mind since a) I don’t know what the Church says about such matters with respect to state actors and b) I don’t know the details of what police do.  What I *do* know is that Lila Rose is not the police and therefore the equation is different for the same reason that Lila is not authorized to arrest you and put you in her broom closet till somebody posts bail for you.  When private citizens do the things police can lawfully do, we call it “assault”, “kidnapping”, and “murder”.

Kathy:  I can’t help but notice that, instead of engaging with my refutation of your argument you have simply chosen to change the subject.  This typically signals “I don’t know how to answer your point but don’t want to acknowledge that” in net.speak.  I would appreciate some sort of response to my point besides silence and subject-changing.

In the Catechism it states in para. 2489 that one does not have to reveal the truth to someone who has no right to the truth.  Could it then be argued that the PP people have no right to the truth of the identities of the LA people?

Mark, I don’t know what the Church says about undercover operations either, but it seems to me that the criteria ought to be the same as they are in the torture debate.  That is, if a police officer actually *lies* then that is morally wrong regardless of the circumstances.  However, my extremely limited understanding of undercover operations suggests that outright lies aren’t really needed (and may, as John Jensen points out, lead to inadmissible statements/evidence anyway).

In other words, when a police officer pretends to be a drug dealer, he dresses like one, goes to places where dealers hang out, suggests in roundabout and evasive conversation that he’s looking to purchase something, etc.  He doesn’t have to say, “Hi, there, I’m a drug dealer—not a cop—and I want to buy drugs to sell to other people so I can get rich.”  In fact, saying any such thing will probably get him killed.

Now, he may occasionally slip up and tell an actual lie—but while I have sympathy for that sort of thing, my sympathy and his circumstances don’t change the morality of the action, do they?  Just like my sympathy for the interrogator who loses his temper with a smug detainee and punches him in the mouth doesn’t make *that* action morally acceptable, even though the interrogator is the “good guy” in the situation and has various authority granted to him by the state—the state can’t grant him the authority to break the moral law, right?

But to the extent that the police officer may dress up and act a part in the pursuit of his duty—that, I agree, is different for private citizens, and can easily become vigilante activity when civilians do it.

I don’t want to take this too far off topic—just trying to think this through.

@dcs

Yes, your post was just what I needed to read. Thank you.

Lauretta wrote:

“In the Catechism it states in para. 2489 that one does not have to reveal the truth to someone who has no right to the truth.  Could it then be argued that the PP people have no right to the truth of the identities of the LA people?”

Paragraph 2489 does not excuse the LiveAction folks.  Two reasons:

1)  Any person or group can do evil, illegitimate things but still retain legitimate rights.  In this case, PP owns property and conducts a (unfortunately for now) legal business in that property.  They have a right to ask people who walk in their front door who they are and why they are here.

2)  Even then, the clause in paragraph 2489 does not authoritze lies (deliberate false statements), it authorizes widthholding information.  So even if we granted that PP had no right to know the identities or the reasons for being there of the LiveAction agents (a proposition which is clearly false per #1 above) then the most that the LiveAction people could morally do would be to refuse to give their identities and reasons for being there.  They are most certainly NOT morally authorized to give out false information about their identities.

I have read a letter from the lead doctor in the Dachau research to his superior at the museum at Dachau.  It is one of the most profane things I ever read and seemed to me to encapsulate the evil of the regime that gave birth to concentration camps.  He describes the status of the experiments and ends lamenting the warm weather that had occurred, which prevented them killing more prisoners by exposure.  He said, “Gott sei dank, es wird jetzt frieren.”  Thanks be to God that it will now freeze. 

My interest was more than casual.  My grandfather, a member of the German Communist Party, may have been imprisoned there prior to being sent to Italy as a part of a forced labor battalion to pick up unexploded munitions on battlefields, which eventually led to his death.  Two of my uncles were fliers in the Luftwaffe, so the experiments had a direct bearing on their lives.

Opposing a evil thing with good is frustrating to us, because we may not live long enough to see the results.  The ultimate extension of this would have led Jesus to hide in the mountains of Judea to cheat the Pharisees and Sadducees of the pleasure of seeing Him humiliated and killed.  The warring Jewish factions would have still brought on the destruction of the Temple in 70AD.  By that time, He would have been a footnote in Josephus, along with the 13 other pretenders to be Messiah.

Mark, you said, “I can’t help but notice that, instead of engaging with my refutation of your argument you have simply chosen to change the subject. This typically signals “I don’t know how to answer your point but don’t want
to acknowledge that” in net.speak. I would appreciate some sort of response
to my point besides silence and subject-changing.”

No.  I was trying to find some common ground that we could agree on, to further build my point in a way that you could accept.  (Not necessarily agree with, but at least understand my point of view.)  The first step to come to some common ground was to see if you think our undercover police officers are indeed “liars,” by the very nature of their job.

Back to your “Fake Healer” vs. Lila Rose analogy.  You posted higher up a “Marian Apparition” vs Lila Rose analogy, and Steven G. Greydanus said in response…

I appreciate the complexity here, but this analogy seems really unhelpful to me. Whether or not the opposing view is correct, clearly it hinges on the idea that the person you’re deceiving—whether a Nazi at at the door or an abortion clinic director—is directly engaged in acts so heinous that in interacting with them the normal applications of the eighth commandment don’t apply, on something like a self-defense or defensive rationale. The moral circumstances around lying to someone to trick them into faith are so different that the analogy simply doesn’t grapple with the opposing position.

Mr. Graydanus received in response…silence.  Care to respond to his good point now?

You said yourself “From what I can tell, the Church has not made up it’s mind about this either, and you can get a real good argument among theologians about what, exactly, constitutes lying.  My remarks on this represent a “good faith effort” to apply the Catechism’s teaching and are still, in part, provisional.  I suspect that if you put a roomful of bishops together to chew this one over, you’d not get a monolithic verdict.”
On that point we can agree.
Bottom line, I don’t believe that Lila Rose’s actions constitute a lie as defined by the CCC.
One last thought…please correct me if I’m wrong.  My understanding about posting etiquette on blogs was that you were free to leave a comment, and to leave the discussion when inclined.  Steven G. Greydanus left thoughts that mirror my own, and yet you ignored him completely.  Then you try to prod me into a debate.  Why?

@Mark
what if the grenades are cameras and machine guns are pens and notepads? is the deception immoral yet not intrinsically evil, thus justified?

@Lauretta,
“Mark, I’m not sure you have addressed sufficiently the question of police operations.  What about those who get on computers, pretend to be children and arrange for a sex abuser to meet with them at a certain time and place?  Surely lying and deception are taking place in this situation.  Are Catholic policemen forbidden by the Church to participate in such jobs?”

If you think about it, not only are police officers likely lying in such situations, they are also suborning others by enticing them to commit sins they might not otherwise have committed.

I didn’t ignore Steve.  I replied to him, Kathy.  I still fail to see how seeking somebody out and then lying about your name, occupation and purpose is magically transformed into “not lying” because you have some good end in view.  Your bolded text is simply assertion—an assertion in defiance of common sense and the ordinary meaning of English.

Rob: It was not mere deception.  PP didn’t come to them demanding information to which they had no right.  They went to Planned Parenthood and lied.  Lying is intrinsically immoral.  The ends do not justify the means.  Really.  It’s what the Church teaches even when inconvenient to the goals of prolife activists.

Is lying pro-life?  The culture of life is built upon love for one’s enemies.  How are we to show love for those who are blind to the evil of abortion?  When the woman who was caught committing the sin of adultery was brought before Our Lord, well, we know what He did.  To be sly like foxes does not imply that we lie or entrap somebody, rather, it is followed by the statement to be as innocent as doves.  Doves represent the Holy Spirit and the Spirit is always seeking to bring souls to God through the Peace of the Spirit.  Violence occurred within the souls of all those involved in the situation at PP.  It is violence that hardens the heart and influences the choice to have abortions.
There is a better way.

Mark you said: “It is lawful to deceive.  It is not lawful to lie, George.  That’s why the Church says that lying intrinsically immoral.  Comparisons to David and Goliath are, once again, invalid because David killed Goliath in single combat on the field of battle.  Unless you want to suggest that it is likewise legitimate to go into PP with grenades and machine guns, the analogy is invalid”. My last post was in response to this post; are you saying that the action would be justified in this case? Aren’t we at “war” with the culture of death? Isn’t this an uprising of the people, a liberation, against an injustice?

Mark,
Yes, my bolded text is assertion…you are stating YOUR opinion, and I am stating MINE.

You further went on to say my assertion was “in defiance of common sense and the ordinary meaning of English.”

That’s an interesting point, considering that you have already stated…

“From what I can tell, the Church has not made up its mind about this either, and you can get a real good argument among theologians about what, exactly, constitutes lying.  My remarks on this represent a “good faith effort” to apply the Catechism’s teaching and are still, in part, provisional.  I suspect that if you put a roomful of bishops together to chew this one over, you’d not get a monolithic verdict.”

So in the roomful of bishops, those who hold that Lila Rose’s actions did not constitute lying would also be “in defiance of common sense and the ordinary meaning of English?”

Mark,

My appolgies, I scrolled through and saw where you did indeed answer Steven.

In the spirit of civil discourse, let me ask your opinion on this aspect…

You said “In this case, it’s prolifers knocking on PPs door for the express purpose of coming in and lying to them, not hapless victims trying to fend off people with no right to the truth.”

Is it possible that an argument could be made that Lila Rose (and actually ALL of us in the USA,) are involved in funding PP through our taxes.  She wants to stop the Federal funding of PP.  She is already entangled in the mess of funding the killing of innocents.  The babies killed are the “hapless victims,” in your above statement. 

In your opinion, does that change anything?

I keep reading these responses (all very thoughtfully presented) and think, “That’s it!  Next time, the LifeAction actors need to actually & officially incorporate as pimp and prostitute, including submitting W-4’s. THEN they may go to PP ‘sin-free’ and ask questions without lying!” (As long as they’re only incorporated and haven’t actually engaged in loveless intercourse for money, I think they’ve met all the official criteria you all are seeking.)  But wait!  They’ll have “lied” to the government!  No . . . thousands of businesses “fail” every year due to lack of initial investment and enthusiasm.  A Catholic-owned prostitution ring would naturally fail due to lack of investment and enthusiasm.  Whew!  I think we’ve worked out the kinks.

I don’t think the distinctions are being paid attention to in much of this conversation. It is true, all lying is a sin. The second question in moral theology would be regarding culpability and the gravity of the sin.  As St. Thomas says in ST I-II 110 a4. there are differences in lies. Is it venial or mortal. The sin is venial if there is no intention to will evil on the one being lied to. I think the argument that LA lies made people do evil things is false. They only revealed services that they do and certain “work arounds” that are regularly done in the practice. The intention, and this is a guess since I do not know Ms. Rose nor have I read anything about her intentions, is to stop the organization from performing evil acts on the scale that they do. This would also lead those working for the organization to not work for an organization that performs evil acts.    The distinction between deception and lying made above is a false distinction, deception is a lie. Pius XII issued thousands of false baptismal certificates to help Jews escape persecution and death. This was a lie but the venial-ness of it is obvious. It was a risk that the possibly blessed Pius XII was willing to take.

Mark,

I don’t think Steven’s argument is consequentialist.  If a man can seek out and ‘steal’, in the ordinary sense of the word, food, and not be guilty of the sin of stealing because of the circumstances in which he ‘stole’, then why can’t there be some situation in which lying, in the ordinary sense of the word, isn’t the same as the sin of lying?  The consequentialist says that one may indeed do evil so that good may come, but this argument would say that an action that is usually evil - stealing, lying, killing - is actually not evil in certain situations.  We already know that this concept applies to stealing and killing.  Why not lying?

Pius XII did not have to lie.  He could have offered himself as a sacrifice instead of all the other innocents.  Who was the priest/saint who did that in WWII.
The “cultural war” is not a war fought externally.  It is the war that rages internally in each one of us in which we are to be aware of how we have been shaped by the culture to react in cultural ways that are self-destructive and harmful to self and others.  The culture must be transformed from within through knowing oneself through the love and forgiveness of God.  It requires total honesty with oneself and how each of us believers creates the culture of death through our thoughts, feelings and actions that are in opposition to Our Lord.
The “cultural war” must end, otherwise, we continue to be creators of the culture of death.

May I offer a thought (though I still need more time to reflect on it)? Is it possible that lying and deception are wrong in all cases?  Lying to the SS. Lying to directly save a life.  Lying undercover. Deception in war. Lying about Santa.
First, lying to the SS.  This is clearly an issue of ends justifying means. Despite the good intentions and the fact that the SS don’t have a right to that information, the lie still affects your soul as a sin.  Also, lying to the SS doesn’t mean the Jews you are hiding are safe.  The SS could (and I’m sure did in many cases despite the word of the homeowner) just come in and search the place.  They also often used the tactic of spying on the house or getting neighbors to tell them about anything suspicious.  It is so easy to get caught in a lie.  And to get good at it, one seems to really have to do it a lot.  Also, if they somehow find out you lied and are harboring the Jews, anybody else who kept that secret is also in grave danger because of your lie (your lie may have forced them to lie and so on).  I think the best thing to do morally (though not the easiest) would be to not answer and pray, taking all of the power out of your hands and into God’s.
Second, lying directly to save a life (as compared to killing to save a life). It is hard to think of a better example of saving the Jews, so I will just talk directly about the videos.  Lying about who you are in order to catch someone in the act of aiding ‘sex traffickers’ and INDIRECTLY possibly prevent the killing of innocent babies, when put this way, is obviously wrong.  So, at best, the direct purpose was to show that these people are capable and willing to aid those involved in the sex trafficking of children.  While sex trafficking is truly nauseating, a lie with the intent to cause another person to sin is wrong.  Planned Parenthood can use (and has used) the videos as a way to make themselves out to be the victims. All they have to say is ‘we were victims of a hoax’ and further reinforce within their ranks that people are out to stop what they do by deceptive means.  Lies can lead to nothing but problems, and so are intrinsically immoral. Another example of the ends justifying the means.
Thirdly, regarding undercover policemen.  Despite these brave men having a duty to defend and protect the people, undercover work is a very grey area in terms of the law, and many lawyers are wary of the process.  Undercover policemen walk a very fine legal line.  As is often the case, they can be accused of entrapment or the case can be thrown out because the illegal action was caused by the cop.  This is merely the legal side.  When we enter the moral side it gets even harder to justify.  You are lying/deceiving in order to make another person commit a crime.  Also, lies breed lies.  Undercover cops, as with spies, must face the effects of lying.  Lying makes it harder to tell the truth, whether that be at home or in the battlefield.  Spies breed spies and distrust between men.  It ends up being the opposite of TRUTH.
  Lies, however good the intention, are just that: lies.  They still have the effects that all lies have (especially on the soul) and push us farther from TRUTH.  Let’s aim for truth.  There are other methods to every circumstance I’ve stated, and just because they are more difficult or involve otherworldly powers (GOD) doesn’t mean that it’s not the RIGHT path.  Just some food for thought.  God bless.

We cannot use the tool of the enemy for good.  Lying and deception are not good.  At best you can say that this is a grey area.  They are certainly not ‘of God’. I am struck by the wisdom of a certain fantasy writer and the clarity that the main theme of the story delivers to this matter.
The story I speak of is, of course, The Lord of the Rings.  I feel like this discussion board (along with Mr Shea’s) is the council of Elrond. We have Boromir here, a great hero and steadfast defender of his people who wants to use the power of the ring to save his people and middle earth from an unimaginably powerful and great evil.  His intentions are purely GOOD. However, the ring is a tool crafted by the enemy, and even the greatest men with the best intentions cannot wield it without succumbing to its evil.  It perverts the will of man to its own ends, betraying Boromir. 
Just as sin can corrupt a person, the ring can also corrupt turning Smeagol into Gollum (note- all you that confuse one that sins as being evil; that, despite all of his wickedness, there is still good in Gollum- just because someone tells a lie does not make them evil, just the act.) You cannot get past the fact that the act of lying hurts the soul and can lead to more sin.
These people at Live Action are GOOD people with GOOD intentions.  However, using the tool of the enemy to do GOOD is counter-productive and very dangerous.

Rob:

I don’t know how many time I can say, “You cannot lie” before you will believe me.

Kathy:

If you can find me a bishop who will say “I’m just fine with lying to Planned Parenthood about my identity, occupation and purpose just so long as it’s for a good purpose” then your argument will really have something going for it.  However, since you won’t, and I still have the bleedin’ obvious teaching of the Catechism which says “A good intention (for example, that of helping one’s neighbor) does not make behavior that is intrinsically disordered, such as lying and calumny, good or just” I think the burden is still on you to show that this obvious lie is not a lie merely because it is done for a cause we happen to approve. 

As to your “taxpayer” idea, I’d love to buy it, but you might just as well say that I am therefore authorized to cheat on my taxes, lie on my census, or lie to a pro-abort Congressman.  As I say, it’s a formula for vigilante moral chaos to say that I am permitted to lie to anybody I deem a sinner.

Elijah:  I never said Steven’s argument was consequentialist.

Mike:  Pius XII never issued fake baptismal certificates.  It’s an urban legend.

Twonail: In your snark, you seem to have forgotten that the options are not “lie or hire prostitutes” but “try the many *legitimate* means of opposing abortion that already exist like 40 Days for Life.”  Unless you mean to say that prayer, legitimate civil disobedience, sacrifice and all the other means the Church legitimately deploys are dullsville and not as sexy as this latest (and, unfortunately, immoral) means.

@ Mark: You write:
 

“For me, the distinction about the hoary ‘Nazis at the door’ analogy and this situation is precisely who is doing the knocking on the door.”

 
Two points.
 
1. Unlike the “ticking time bomb” scenario so beloved by torture apologists, there is nothing hypothetical or imaginary about the Nazis at the door scenario. The actual European citizens in the Netherlands and elsewhere who hid Jews in their houses and had to face Nazis at the door deserve to have the moral questions they faced taken seriously, as I’m sure you agree, and calling the question “hoary” doesn’t seem to me to shed light on anything.
 
2. If the absolute prohibition on lying really covers all instances of deceptive false statements without exception, then who is knocking at the door, as interesting a point as that might be given a more nuanced approach to the morality of lying, is a red herring. Intrinsically evil is intrinsically evil, and lying to Nazis is the same offense as lying to PP clinic workers. Is that really your position?

Mark,

Perhaps you were in a hurry; I’m sure you have other things to do besides watching this message board, but there was more to my post than just the first line. 

Also, I did not mean to put any words in your mouth, but you did say of Steven’s argument ‘I still fail to see how seeking somebody out and then lying about your name, occupation and purpose is magically transformed into “not lying” because you have some good end in view’.  The ‘good end in view’ part would seem to indicate that consequentialism was at least one of your concerns with his point.

1. Unlike the “ticking time bomb” scenario so beloved by torture apologists, there is nothing hypothetical or imaginary about the Nazis at the door scenario. The actual European citizens in the Netherlands and elsewhere who hid Jews in their houses and had to face Nazis at the door deserve to have the moral questions they faced taken seriously, as I’m sure you agree, and calling the question “hoary” doesn’t seem to me to shed light on anything.

To be sure.  I didn’t mean to say such situations never arise, merely that appealing to them isn’t much use in dealing with the specific question of Lila Rose lying.  The instant flight to such situations and the swift conclusion “...and so it’s okay to lie when we think the situation justifies it” happens in way too much of a hurry.  As I’ve said, were I hiding Anne Frank, I’d lie through my teeth most likely since I’m not fast on my feet.  But I wouldn’t pretend I wasn’t lying and I wouldn’t pretend that lying is not a sin.

2. If the absolute prohibition on lying really covers all instances of deceptive false statements without exception, then who is knocking at the door, as interesting a point as that might be given a more nuanced approach to the morality of lying, is a red herring. Intrinsically evil is intrinsically evil, and lying to Nazis is the same offense as lying to PP clinic workers. Is that really your position?

No.  As I’ve said repeatedly deception can be legit, but lying is by it’s very nature, to be condemned.  That’s the Catechism talking, not me.

The issue, in part, is the gravity of the lie.  Lying to Nazis banging at the door is one thing (though it should be noted that Pius XII not only refused to lie about baptismal certificates but also discouraged those clerics who were doing so).  Seeking out people to lie to seems to me to be quite another.  Give that moral theory its head and you license every Christian to lie to anybody he deems a sinner.  Given that we are far more in danger of justifying our lies than we are of encountering Nazis, I think the prolife movement would be well advised to focus on not justifying lying for Jesus rather than on coming up with rationales for lying based on scenarios that aren’t really analogous.

Everything I have researched, granted that isn’t everything there is to read, tells me that Roncalli did issue the false certificates with the knowledge and blessing of Pius XII, including first person accounts. I am curious where you find this to be not so. As a professor in theology I like to think I am not prone to putting forth “urban legends” so please, in all humility I ask truly, where do you find this?

Steven:

One distinction it occurs to me that nobody is clearly making here is between those who are suddenly caught in a situation of desperate moral import (Jews in the closet) and are doing the best they can and those who are, at their leisure, noodling the morality of given acts.

We are clearly in the latter camp—thinking things through slowly and checking our assumptions against the teaching of the Church.  Here, as in many places, it is quite likely that one’s first and instinctive gut responses to some moral dilemma will change as we really give some thought to what the Church actually says.  This happens repeatedly, which is why the average American gut response to, say, abortion in cases of rape and incest gives way to the (often stunned)realization by the convert that the Church says these too are wrong.  It’s why the instinctive response of “Sure.  Torture the !@#$%” gives way to the realization that torture is wrong even when it’s some hairy thug we suspect might know something important.  Our natural moral sense about things is vital and, if it’s all we’ve got to go on in a pinch then we should do the best we can by the light of our conscience and pray that God supply what is lacking in our response.  But we are still obliged to form our consciences as best we can in light of the Tradition.

My uninformed gut response to “Can you lie to save a life?” is “Hell yes.”  But my gut is not the measure of all things.  When I consult the tradition, it says “Lying is intrinsically immoral”.  That doesn’t mean “Let the innocent die and keep your pretty little conscience nice and clean.”  It means “Think now about how to defend the innocent without lying so that you won’t create huge problems for yourself by embracing consequentialism.”  I think, in fact, there are lots of ways of defending innocent human life without lying. Hugh O’Flaherty’s disguises were one such example.  Depriving snoopy Nazis with no right to the truth of his identity of that knowledge was not lying, any more than our Lord keeping his identity hidden from the Emmaus disciples was.  But neither O’Flaherty or Jesus lied about who they were.

Bottom line: here in this space, we have leisure to consider the morality of lying.  People in the Netherlands in 1942 were not in an ethics seminar.  They were trying to do the best they could in a survival situation.  The problem with Lila Rose’s tactics is that she *does* have time to consider the ethics of what she is doing just as we do, and she has (thus far) chosen to lie to PP and claim that it is justifiable to do so. I don’t see how that claim can be sustained without doing violence to the Church’s plain teaching.  And I think the fruits of her justifications for lying will ultimately be pernicious, not only in terms of long term benefits for PP, but also (and more seriously) in terms of yet again persuading American Catholics that consequentialism is just fine. We don’t need any more encouragement to embrace this most popular of moral heresies.

Mike:

William Doino, who co-authored the article with Dawn Eden is an expert on this.  Go to their article and read the comboxes, where he discusses this.  I was surprised too.

George, Love is Jesus Christ.  In Him there is no darkness.  He did not use deception. He actually spoke against plotters and those who contrived ways to keep control.  Deception is not a good.  The fruit of all this is shown in some of the remarks: “If the police or govt. have abdicated their role then whats wrong with a citizen’s arrest   scenario” or words to that affect. Vigilanteism.  I speak from experience.  Having made some powerful enemies they have threatened to traumatize me to the point of making me commit a crime and they believe they can do it. Meanwhile they cast doubt on my character and create a hostile environment.  The fruit is rotten George.  It is not good.  God is pure and holy and omnipotent.  He doesn’t need us to fix or control anything.  He needs us to be about the business of holiness.  That would not be exposing others sins but conquering our own.  Neither you nor anyone but God knows what anyone’s sins are.  People are being lead woefully astray trying to catch the bad guy.  If they tackle the one they see in the mirror they will go a long way to catching all the others.  What you propose is NO ACT OF LOVE OR MERCY. IT IS FEAR OR DESIRE FOR CONTROL OR SELF-RIGHTEOUS JUDGEMENT OF OTHERS!  God bless.

I would have to go back and review the videos again word by word, but it seems to me that the couple in the video stated a lot by implication rather than direct lies. For example saying that they were in the “sex business” rather than saying I am a Pimp and I am a Prostitute. There were a lot of “what ifs” ( the girls were illegal immigrants or as young as fifteen or sixteen. I don’t recall direct statements that would be classified direct lies but a lot of pretty strong and leading implications. (Very successful in humble opinion, we all came to the same conclusions about who they were and what they were into, but I think it’s more case of drawing conclusions rather than what was actually stated. Vivat Jesus!

Hibbelwaithe just seems to put it out there that it is a myth. I will have to do more checking into this. The orders for convents and other Church offices to hide Jews were given and these are facts. One thing we do know is that this was a form of deception and entails deception. Again the distinction between deception and lie does not hold as much water as some may think. Deception is a willful act to put forth a false witness. Again the culpability issue is where the debate seems to fall. Deception and telling falsehoods are sinful. Were Pius and John Paul (in dealing with Communism)and presumably others, able to find a way to understand their work in a virtuous context?

From C.S. Lewis’ “The Great Divorce”, “The spell must be unwound…If we insist on keeping Hell(or even Earth) we shall not see Heaven:  if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell.”
We are told by Christ “...to be perfect as the Father in Heaven is perfect.”

Wow, Mark—“snark?”  It was intended more as comic relief, which I thought was apparent from my “Whew! Problem solved!” ending that is so at odds with the surrounding deep debate.  I apologize that you perceived offense.  I think even the most “Catechismically” intellectual deserve moments of relief from unexpected asides.  I’ll keep my humor within my own, mostly less intellectual, Catholic community from now on.  :-(

Mark,
 
The distinction between being caught in a desperate situation and thinking over moral issues at our leisure, like the distinction of who’s knocking on whose door, may be relevant to subjective culpability, but neither affects the objective moral status of an intrinsically immoral act. I take it for granted that neither of us thinks we are in the position to judge a terrified citizen saying to the Nazi at the door, “Jews? No, of course not. There’s no one here but my family.” The question is: Is this an intrinsically immoral act?
 
Has anyone yet mentioned Jeffrey Mirus’s excellent article “Is Lying Ever Right?” that ran in This Rock magazine a few years back? This is not a settled point of moral theology.

Steven:

Don’t I know it.  And yet, Holy Church say what she says: By it’s very nature, lying is to be condemned.  So, yeah.  Lying is an intrinsically immoral act.  As to the gravity of the lie and culpability of the liar, that’s a whole ‘nother story.  I think the gravity of the Dutch guy lying to the Gestapo is both very small and likely very small in the culpability department.

I think it much more serious that people in comboxes today are trying to figure out ways of rationalizing a deliberate campaign of lies for prolifers to pursue.  I think it will only end in disaster if prolifers take that route.

Mr. Shea is right to question Miss Rose tactics.  He raises the question as to when, how, and under what circumstances deception can it be used, if at all.  I believe Miss Rose tactic of deception can be used if neither the means and/or the ends can be intrinsically evil and reasonable efforts are made to protect the innocent.

In war the art of deception, making your enemy think one thing while you plan on doing another, is morally legitimate againas long a both the mean and end are not intrinsically evil and reasonable efforts are made to protect the innocent.

I believe that Miss Rose and for that matter all who are pro life are in a legitimate war with Planed Parenthood on the abortion issue.

It appears to me that Miss Rose is using the art of deception under the conditions as stated in the second paragraph in her war with Planned Parenthood.  The only ones who are being deceived are those Planned Parenthood employees who have declared war on the unborn.  They are legitimate targets for deception.  I don’t see any harm perpetrated on the innocent: the mothers, fathers and unborn as a result of her actions.

Yes, lying is wrong by its nature. So is theft, but as I noted above the definition of theft turns out to be fuzzier than one’s initial common sense definition would think. Just because you’re taking what isn’t yours against the owner’s wishes doesn’t mean you’re stealing.
 
As Jeffrey Mirus points out, there is some momentum being tweaking the definition of lying to something like “speak or act against the truth in order to lead into error someone who has the right to know the truth.” In fact, this sentence was included in the first draft of the Catechism—which obviously isn’t an endorsement, since it got axed, but neither is the axing a rejection. It’s a point that Catholic moral theology is still sussing out.
 
Personally, I suspect that definition still needs some work. And even if something like that turns out to be the case, I’m not sure it would mean that Live Action’s actions are morally justified. I’m also far from sure that they aren’t.
 
P.S. Do read Mirus.

Steven, may I ask a question about Mirus’s article?

It seems that the examples he uses (e.g., the ones where moral theology is still at work parsing the possibilities) involve either the necessity of giving an answer to someone who doesn’t necessarily deserve the truth, such as thugs looking for their victim whom you are harboring, or the necessity of preserving a secret under certain conditions (such as the lawyer who refuses to comment on his client’s guilt or innocence).  In other words, these are what we might call passive situations, in that someone is pressing us for a truth to which they have no right and which we may not justly give.  Obviously, an evasive or misleading answer is preferable in these instances to an outright lie, but even IF (and it’s a big if for a reason) moral theologians were to posit that under certain limited situations of this nature what might seem like a lie really isn’t for reasons of double-effect or whatever, that still does not speak at all to the situation under discussion, that is, the Live Action videos.

This is because the Live Action situation is what we might call an active situation.  The Live Action operatives aren’t hiding a truth under some sort of duress—they are presenting themselves falsely and telling at least some lies as part of the process of their false representation of themselves.  They are the ones seeking the conversation, in other words, and they do so knowing it will be necessary for them to lie as an integral part of the conversation they mean to have.  As sympathetic as I am to their ultimate goals and aims, I just can’t see any sort of “wiggle room” in the moral law that would condone the deliberate engagement in a conversation built on lies, regardless of the noble purpose at hand.

Am I misreading Mirus?

The first edition of the Catechism had it right, and offered a legitimate development of doctrine. It was a mistake to take out the “person with a right to the truth” qualification, as I argue here:

http://www.insidecatholic.com/feature/cancel-my-mental-reservations.html

If Pius XII was willing to print false baptismal certificates to fool the Nazis, I’m not going to be presumptuous enough to say he was wrong.

When you use the word WAR in relationship to PP, or any other system you may want to oppose, you automatically categorize those people who are part of that system as a negative object.  They become dehumanized and then one can RATIONALIZE the sin of lying in order to obtain a good outcome.
We are not to wage war.  Christ did not wage war.  He allowed them to kill Him.  He asks us to do the same.  There is no sin in the Kingdom of Heaven.  Why would you allow yourself to sin if the Kingdom of Heaven is with you now?
Stop lying to yourselves, please.

John:

Pius didn’t print fake baptismal certificates.  See the article by William Doino and Dawn Eden.  Doino’s an experts on this matter.

Steven:

I agree with Erin.  The tradition does not seem to give much license for seeking out people to lie to them, though it gives the escape hatch of legitimate “passive” deception by means of evasion, suggestion, misleading, etc.  I can’t see how Ms. Rose’s direct and aggressive lies to PP were anything other than lies.

John Zmirak: same objection as I offer to the Mirus article provided by Steven Greydanus in this thread just above—even IF moral theology has developed to the point that speaking deceptively to persons not entitled to the truth is not considered lying in situations involving duress where information is being unjustly demanded by those people not entitled to the truth, how is any of that relevant to people entering a clinic with the premeditated intent of lying to the people to whom they speak in order to get those people to incriminate themselves?

“even IF moral theology has developed to the point that speaking deceptively to persons not entitled to the truth is not considered lying in situations involving duress where information is being unjustly demanded by those people not entitled to the truth, how is any of that relevant to people entering a clinic with the premeditated intent of lying to the people to whom they speak in order to get those people to incriminate themselves?”

 
Now, that is a fair objection. Here is where some moral-theological heavy lifting needs to be done. (Edit: Erin, not Mark, sorry!)

Steven:

Just so.  That’s why I said above that it matters who is knocking on whose door.

Mark: My point was, the “Who’s knocking on whose door?” question only becomes potentially relevant once we acknowledge that deception even to the point of stating a direct falsehood in at least some circumstances (e.g., Nazis at the door) may not constitute the sin of lying. Erin seems willing to grant Mirus that point, but doesn’t think that this is sufficient to justify Live Action’s deception. I agree. That’s not to say that it can’t be justified, but more analysis is needed.

If this topic is, as Mark says, one which has not been definitively decided by either moral theologians or bishops, I believe that all of this discussion in a very public forum is going to cause more harm than good.  For one thing, we are making the pro-life cause look divided and harsh.  Maybe we should leave this to those who have the skills to decide this in the privacy of their academic world and we can focus on things that are more valid for us to be discussing.

Lila Rose and her co-workers are engaged in a very difficult work.  I hope that they have consulted with those in authority to examine the morality of what they are doing.  They may have done that, and we are having these heated discussions for no reason.

I have wondered why we are so concerned about this issue since most of us commit sins regularly that have the potential to cause more harm than this issue.  We could discuss the damage caused when we treat our children or spouses harshly; the damage we cause our families by running around doing “good things” while neglecting the less glamorous needs of those in our home; the damage we do to our families by being “so dedicated” to our jobs that we are never home; the hurt we cause by gossiping; the sinfulness of lusting after another—even our spouses; etc.  We tend often to minimize the sins we commit against our own families but I think that often they are the most damaging.

This comment is just in order to get it to stop e-mailing me the comments!  (No time to follow :-))

jj

John Thayer Jensen: You can unsubscribe from the emails you get without posting another comment. Of course, if you’re not following, you may not see this ... so maybe I’ll drop you an email, when I get a chance. :)

@Steven Greydanus,

This is not a settled point of moral theology.

Yes, as a matter of fact it is a settled point of moral theology that lying is intrinsically evil.

So, Mark Shea, all Lila Rose needed to do was get a REAL pimp to work for her, to go into Planned Parenthood and ask ALL the VERY SAME questions that the ‘not-a-real-pimp’ Live Action employee did?

As long as a REAL PIMP asked all the SAME questions, Live Action would be somehow be MORE RIGHT?

Lauretta,  I believe Lila Rose is engaged in this type of activity is because we as Catholics have not left the comfort of our homes to do the necessary sacrifice to stop abortion.  It is easy to attend 40 Days for Life and then go home.  Christ’s suffering and death on the Cross united Him to all of the suffering and death in the world and beyond.  We are called to do the same.  We must unite ourselves to the suffering of the mothers who abort their children and unite ourselves to the death of those innocent children by suffering ourselves.
The Cross is the clue, but we seem to gloss over the deep spiritual significance of how the Christ on the Cross is to be lived in this global influence of abortion.

@ dcs:
 

“Yes, as a matter of fact it is a settled point of moral theology that lying is intrinsically evil.”

 
Yes. Just as it is a settled point of moral theology that stealing is intrinsically evil. What is not a settled point of moral theology is that “to speak or act against the truth in order to lead into someone into error,” full stop, is a sufficiently rigorous definition of lying to account for all cases.

@Steven D. Greydanus: “Mark: My point was, the “Who’s knocking on whose door?” question only becomes potentially relevant once we acknowledge that deception even to the point of stating a direct falsehood in at least some circumstances (e.g., Nazis at the door) may not constitute the sin of lying.”

This is the CRUX of the issue. The CCC prttey much indicates that ‘lying’ involves BOTH the falsehood AND the use of that falsehood ‘lead the other into error.’  Merely uttering that which isn’t exactly a true representation of the physical is NOT LYING.  There needs to be INTENT to ‘MISLEAD into error.’ 

Did Live Action send in actors to cause PP to do wrong? Or, did they use actors so that in answering, PP would not be led to LIE to us?

According to Sr. Margherita Marchione, the leading Catholic biographer of Pius XII, whose book “Pius XII: Architect for Peace” I helped edit, both the apostolic nuncio for Hungary, and Angelo Roncalli (e.g. the Bl. Pope John XXIII) made public statements that they printed such baptismal certificates at Pius’ orders. This was during his lifetime, and he did not contradict them.

So much mental gymnastics. Somewhere in the Bible we are told to love (not like) everyone because we cannot know who God will choose to give the grace of conversion and who he will not.  If a Nazi asks if you are hiding someone and you say “NO” you know you are lying.  You are not kidding yourself although you are hopefully kidding them.  You have chosen to lie rather than to hand someone over to certain death. A person of faith would pray and God would intervene.  The Nazi’s would fall for their deflection (because they would not lie.)  The Nazi would be distracted just as they were about to open the door that would reveal the Jews etc.  Because God IS active in our lives and that’s the kind of thing He does when He answers prayers.  Holy people would not lie.  They would deflect and trust God and pray, pray, pray.  When our political system fails us and immorality has the upper hand to the point that we prefer to kill our children than bear the shame or hardship of having them then the answer is to repent.  If we don’t want to, God won’t make us.  Fighting the evil we all allow by who we elect is a desperate act.  Men’s HEARTS must change.  Calling the clinic worker the bad guy makes conversion for them harder. It sets up a battle and Jesus came to CALL sinners.  This just seems a worldly scheme that will have some effect but not the spiritual one Christ would want.  For those who did lie to save Jews, it would seem to be a venial and not a mortal sin but if it were me, I would confess the lack of faith in God.

Pam, I am disappointed, but they will not pay attention to the truth that you write.  They are getting too much enjoyment out of their discussion.

John:

I’d be interested in your conversation with Doino on this point.

ATHOMEMAMA.CJ:

No.

Taking something that does not belong to me against the wishes of the owner is also an ‘active situation’ and most likely premeditated (unless the guy just left his stuff unnattended right inside my house), but isn’t the sin of stealing in all cases.

@ Lauretta

You said I believe that all of this discussion in a very public forum is going to cause more harm than good.  For one thing, we are making the pro-life cause look divided and harsh.  Maybe we should leave this to those who have the skills to decide this in the privacy of their academic world and we can focus on things that are more valid for us to be discussing.
Lila Rose and her co-workers are engaged in a very difficult work.  I hope that they have consulted with those in authority to examine the morality of what they are doing.  They may have done that, and we are having these heated discussions for no reason.

Excellent points!

John Zmirak offered his personal witness of Sr. Marchione’s writings, and to add a reference to it, here is a link;

http://www.sistermargherita.com/antidef.htm

Here is an excerpt, in Sr. Margherita Marchione’s own words:

It was Pope Pius XII who authorized false baptismal certificates to save Jewish lives. He also distributed visas for Jews to enter other countries, and ordered the superiors of convents and monasteries to open their doors and hide Jews and other victims of the Nazis and Fascists. Angelo Roncalli (Pope John XXIII) who also distributed many certifcates stated that all he was doing was following the Pope’s directives.

@Steven Greydanus,

What is not a settled point of moral theology is that “to speak or act against the truth in order to lead into someone into error,” full stop, is a sufficiently rigorous definition of lying to account for all cases.

That is not actually the definition of “lie” in the Catechism. The definition is in para. 2482 (you can see it is defining the term here because it is in italics):

A lie consists in speaking a falsehood with the intention of deceiving.

Now, one might argue that this is a loose translation of St. Augustine, for what the Saint actually wrote was this:

But none doubts that it is a lie when a person willingly utters a falsehood for the purpose of deceiving: wherefore a false utterance put forth with will to deceive is manifestly a lie.

That is, one who tells a falsehood with the intention of deceiving another is lying, but is possible that one who says something he believes to be false lies even though his intention is not to deceive. In other words, if there is a controversy in the Church’s moral theology about what constitutes a lie, it is whether there are lies that don’t meet the definition given in the Catechism, not whether there are false utterances that fall under the definition but are actually OK.

@Mark - 50 million dead babies is a WAR.  Only one side needs to be armed, aggressive, and malevolent to make war.  Many armies have committed war crimes against unarmed populations.

We are facing a war of physical and social violence, but we counter-“attack” with spiritual charity.  Weren’t you the one quoting Paul “we do not war against flesh and blood”?

Please respond regarding the morality of investigative reporting under cover—apart from Lila Rose.

50 million dead babies is a WAR.

A war is where you shoot the enemy.  If you shoot a Planned Parenthood worker, you will be properly arrested, tried, and convicted of murder in the first degree.  Watch what you say.  It can inspire unstable nuts to act on your rhetoric.

We are in war metaphorically speaking.  We are not in a literal war.  Precisely the reason the Church insists on war being declared by competent authority is that it is fatally easy for lone nuts to decide to grant themselves the right to killing people with whom they violently disagree.  See “Brown, John”.

I’m not convinced that investigative reporters have any more right to lie than Lila Rose does.

Once again, let me note my dismay at the speed with which prolifers are battening on the strategy of lying as our last and only hope—as though the thousands of other legitimate means for opposing abortion are worthless and this is the only possible strategy.  It’s pernicious and dangerous that prolifers are so quickly embracing lying as the central pillar of their approach to the problem.  It will, I forebode, only end in tears.

We are in war metaphorically speaking.

I agree, Mark, and we use words as our weapons, not bombs and bullets.  We just want the aggressors to stop, we don’t want to kill them.  We bring their sin into the light of day so that they can hopefully begin to see its ugliness and repent.  And while we are at it, we would like to stop funding their immorality which can only happen if their deeds of darkness are brought into the light of public scrutiny and public opinion turns against them and demands that the government cease funding them.

Only in a lily white tower can we condemn the people who are actually on the battlefield.  I find this whole debate disgusting. 

I imagine that the next logical step would be to go and find REAL pimps and prostitutes and ask them to wear a wire? Would that satisfy you?

Jarvey,  Nobody is condemning them.  A sin is a sin.  Someone wrote in another blog that “if you use the instruments of the devil to defeat him, you have already lost”.

“Planned Parenthood ... the evil organizaton they really are.”  Not everything the organization does is evil. Pedophile priests and bishops who protect and hide them does not make the Catholic Church an evil organization. Although lying is intrinsically evil that does not mean every lie has the same moral gravitas.  How evil it is depends on the circumstances, e.g. lying in telling a joke is not as seriously sinful as lying to convict an innocent person of murder.

“of course I am not hiding any Jews here”
a lie possibly told in the Forties somewhere in Nazi ocupied Europe.

And while all the Catholics wring their hands over whether it is okay to deceive serial killers, Planned Parenthood has murdered another 2,000 babies today.

Just saying folks. 

But please, Church, do go on quibbling.  It’s such a threat to the Kingdom of Satan when we do.

P.S.  A lie is speech contrary to mind with the intention to deceive to someone who has the right to know.  What is really manifest here is the revelation of mass ignorance of Catholic ethics.  God help us.

@Mark,

To see the effects of this sort of thing, we have only to look at what James O’Keefe was doing last August:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_O’Keefe#CNN_correspondent_incident

As the saying goes, Sin Makes you Stupid.

“Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the evil one.” (Matthew 5:37)

Barbara, a lie is not necessarily speech.  I could say something that is true, but by grimacing and shaking my head I could imply that what I said is not true.

An interesting essay by Peter Kreeft on this topic:
http://www.catholicvote.org/discuss/index.php?p=14306#more-14306

Peter Kreeft, the Thomist philosopher, has weighed in on this controversy, pointing out that our “gut” instinct to support investigative journalists trying to expose exploitative abortionists is not NECESSARILY irrational or irrelevant: http://www.catholicvote.org/discuss/index.php?p=14306

Again, this whole argument is simple to the point of silliness. I will sum it up in clear logical terms that really ought to let everyone go home and get some sleep:

Murder is always wrong. Not all killing is murder.
Lying is always wrong. Not all deceit is lying.
Stealing is always wrong. Not every confiscation is stealing.
Tyranny is wrong. Not every government is a tyranny.

The position on deceit preached by these ultraliteralists (following Augustine), if applied to war, would amount to pacifism. Indeed, we’d have to practice Amish style nonviolence and refuse even to defend ourselves or our families from immediate attack. The foolishness of this linguistic Gandhi-ism was so patent, that “mental reservation” was developed as a way around it—an unsatisfactory and unconvincing one, where one keeps the INTENT to deceive, but does so cleverly enough that a loophole is left through which your conscience can sneak away.

The draft catechism made a more honest and principled revision to this flawed, non-infallible teaching, in light of the experience of the Holocaust. (By the way, Karol Woytjla was in the Polish underground, running an illegal theater. Did he never deceive the Nazis? Perhaps he was clever enough to keep his mental reservations in order. If he hadn’t been, and had chosen to let Jews and Poles die to keep his conscience “clean,” the Christian God would not be impressed—though perhaps the “god” of Caiaphas would be.) The status of unborn children in America is as bad as that of Jews in Nazi-occupied countries. They do not, and for the foreseeable future will not have, any protection by the State. So we as individuals must step forward and offer what protection we can. Since “citizen arrests” would backfire, and violence against abortionists does not meet the Just War criterion (ONLY because it would not succeed), we use what means we can. We act like members of the Polish or French Resistance.

The new version of the Catechism removed it without explanation—as it removed one of the venerable justifications for the death penalty.

This teaching is still in flux, the new Catechism makes no claim, on its own, to teach infallibly (though where it repeats previously defined doctrines and dogmas, it participates in their authority), and the result is something of a mess.

So we should follow our moral instincts, and realize that Augustine wasn’t infallible (he placed unbaptized infants in Hell), nor was Aquinas (he allowed for torturing suspects but not deceiving them), nor were the editors of the new Catechism.

Here’s a simple test: If someone presents to you as the “teaching of the Church” something so repugnant that it MAKES YOU CONSIDER LEAVING THE CHURCH, it probably ISN’T the teaching of the Church. That’s how I realized the Feeneyites were wrong, and how I know that ultraliteralist, verbal pacifists are too.

One more clarification:

Lying is never okay. Murder is never okay. Lying, as the Church teaches, is an unjust deception. This entire argument has been over the definition of lying, and whether denying someone with manifestly no right to the truth, if need be by tossing them something else to distract them, amounts to sinful lying. The whole canard of “mental reservation” amounts to an attempt to deceive while fulfilling the LETTER of the putative law that we may never say things that are untrue, even to those who don’t deserve the truth.

I will AGAIN use a simple metaphor. Truthful information is a good; let’s use as a concrete example the formula for a medicine an inventor has developed. He wishes to sell this formula to drug companies who will use it for a medicine. But a drug dealer breaks into his lab and tries to get it from him at gunpoint. Instead of giving them the real formula, he gives them a fake one. That is the equivalent of telling untruths to the Nazis at your door, or to the abortionists you’re investigating as a journalist. For this to be sinful, the thief would have to have the right to the formula. If the only way to keep him from getting what he has NO right to (the real formula) is to give him a decoy (a fake formula), I argue that it is just, and no more amounts to lying than it does to stealing.

John:

“Ignore Augustine, Aquinas and the catechism and trust your instincts” strikes me as a dodgy formula for moral reasoning.  Sorry, but it does.

The more I think about it, the more wary I get of the notion that The Holocaust Changed Everything.  The obvious way to approach the Nazi at the door is not to lie well, but to make sure you hide your Jews well.  If you lie, he will still search your house.  If you say, “Look for yourself!  Would you care for some tea?” you not only don’t lie, you reduce the chances of a return visit.  So I think that’s false dilemma (though I can certainly imagine scenarios where lying would need to happen and I can’t see it as anything other than a venial sin of failing to prepare for the event).

As to the attempt to extend this extreme situation to a general prolife strategy of Lying for Jesus (and it is actively lying, not merely “deceit” or “withholding the truth from those with no right to it”), I think it is a formula for disaster that is seductive with its promise of short term gain, but will yield only long term moral chaos since it is, at the end of the day, just one more species of consequentialism.

As to the gut check theory of evaluation of Church teaching, I see no difference between that and Anne Rice’s rationale for leaving the Church.  I don’t want a Church that agrees with my instinctive gut. I wnat a Church that is right where I am wrong. My instinctive gut tells me that who marries who is none of my business, that abortion of horrendously deformed children is a mercy, that euthanasia is a kindness sometimes, that people trapped in loveless marriages should be allowed to remarry, that decent people go to heaven and Jesus need not enter into the matter, and a thousand other things my untutored and fallen moral sense would gladly believe without correction from Holy Church.

If you want me to trust my gut, here’s what my gut is telling me: The weird stampede of the prolife movement toward the embrace of “Ignore Aquinas, Augustine and the Catechism, Trust your Feelings, Use the Force and Lie for Jesus” feels like a panic, not an act of clear moral reasoning.  It is, as I say, like all the healthy means of resistance are being chucked aside as old and busted and this extremely dubious moral theory is being shoved in my face as the New Hotness (with shrill cries of “Pharisee!” if I express doubt or suggest proceeding a bit more slowly).

Reginaldus at the New Theological Movement reports that zealots for this new theory were a) charging him with secretly supporting Planned Parenthood and b) suggesting he should be stabbed to death.  If somebody had told me even a month ago that the prolife movement would be a bastion of staunch defenses of lying for Jesus, I would have called such a claim a calumny. Now….

I’m reminded of the reading, from just this last Sunday (Sir 15:20) “No one does he command to act unjustly, to none does he give license to sin.”

We’re supposed to believe that even a tiny amount of Faith can move mountains and we don’t have the Faith that we will be delivered from a difficult situation without needing to resort to a Sin?

I have to say, though, that I don’t see why there would be an exception for Police Officers, Spies or even in military situations.  This gives me a lot to think about.

Perhaps Planned Parenthood representatives don’t have a right to the truth?  They’ve demonstrated that they will look the other way with regard to a young woman’s status as a minor, so Lila can represent herself as a minor as they aren’t really asking.

Mark, I’m not ignoring Augustine and Aquinas, I am critiquing them. I await a cogent answer to any of the distinctions I raised concerning the definition of lying, or the strictly applicable analogies I raised. You yourself reject Aquinas’ position on torture, which is why I raised it. The Holocaust didn’t change everything, but it did force the Church (as historical crises tend to do) to rexamine her position. The rise of artificial birth control, caused by the decline in infant mortality and industrialization, forced the Church to develop a theory allowing for Natural Family Planning, a practice which (in its primitive form) Augustine denounced. (He also taught that it’s a sin to have intercourse during pregnancy.)
If the Church’s teaching authority is not to confront the implications of history, but simply to repeat old formulas, I don’t see why we need it.
I did not rely in my arguments on the “instinctive” reaction, but offered a complete (and still unrefuted) analysis showing that “lying” is not a truthful definition of what we do when we use decoys to keep the good that is the truth from killers.
Let me ask you right now: May U.S. interrogators make false statements to terrorists in order to gain vital information? Yes or no?
If yes, your whole argument vanishes into a puff of smoke.
If no, then do you wish to go back to the healthy medieval practice of torturing them, as Aquinas allows?

John:

If the Catechism is to be believed, then interrogators can mislead, but not lie.  As to what interrogators actually do, I haven’t the foggiest idea since I don’t know what the normal rules of engagement are.

Meanwhile, however, my focus is not on what interrogators can do, but what we can do as prolifers.  What continues to bother me is that we are basically pushing to establish the principle that we can lie, not deceive, not mislead, lie for Jesus.

As to the claim that the Holocaust forced the Church to re examine her position, I don’t get that.  If that’s the case, why does the Catechism still say, as ever, that lying is intrinsically immoral?  It looks pretty much in continuity with Augustine and Aquinas.

By the way, apropos of nothing.  I stayed up way too late last night reading you book.  Damn funny stuff and I also learned a few new things.  Good work!

What we’re arguing about is not the immorality of lying, but its definition. Your repetitions of the formula don’t change that fact, any more than Feeneyites refute the baptism of desire by continually repeating that baptism is necessary for salvation. Please address my argument, stated again below, and explain where you find any flaw in the logic, if you can.

“Truthful information is a good; let’s use as a concrete example the formula for a medicine an inventor has developed. He wishes to sell this formula to drug companies who will use it for a medicine. But a drug dealer breaks into his lab and tries to get it from him at gunpoint. Instead of giving them the real formula, he gives them a fake one. That is the equivalent of telling untruths to the Nazis at your door, or to the abortionists you’re investigating as a journalist. For this to be sinful, the thief would have to have the right to the formula. If the only way to keep him from getting what he has NO right to (the real formula) is to give him a decoy (a fake formula), I argue that it is just, and no more amounts to lying than it does to stealing.”

Would it be wrong for that inventor to hand over a false formula, if it were the only way not to hand over the real one to a thief?

Someone asking for the truth who has no right to it is a THIEF. Keeping it from him, even taking it BACK from him, is not stealing. Repetitions of “stealing is wrong,” and “the end doesn’t justify the means” do not change this stark fact.

So what an interrogator would do in making false statements to a terrorist would NOT BE LYING, any more than retrieving or defending one’s property from a thief is stealing. If this is the case, then Church condemnations of lying simply DON’T APPLY here.

By the way, I think you should be more discriminating in your choice of sources. Make sure they’re really on our side. On the Pius XII question, the article you’re relying on cites as its only source (ex-Jesuit) Peter and Margaret Hebblethwaite, viciously dissenting Catholics, as more reliable sources on the life of the Bl. John XXIII than Sister Marchione, who works closely with the Vatican on Pius XII’s canonization. Why should we trust Peter Hebblethwaites, a crassly anti-papal commentator who wrote the book “The New Inquisition? Schillebeeckx and Küng,” denouncing Pope John Paul’s attempt to defend orthodox theology? Peter Hebbelthwaite called then-cardinal Ratzinger “an inquisitor” on British TV. He and his wife were firm supporters of the ordination of women. “I’m very firmly committed to women priests. It’s an issue of urgency and justice,” Margaret Hebblethwaite told Alice Thomas Ellis, who reported it in her book “Serpent on the Rock,” p.122.

I checked the Hebblethwaite book. It offers no convincing documentation, but merely cites a secondary source. Marchione’s book cites the testimony of a Jewish survivor, who personally distributed the baptismal certificates provided him by the Hungarian nuncio—as well as some secondary sources.

I am contacting the promoter of Bl. John XXIII’s cause for canonization to resolve this question, and will report what I learn in a future column on Insidecatholic.com.

Stand on your laurels while the slaughter of the innocents goes on. In the mean time, Lila Rose has just lit a fire in the House of Representatives who have consequently voted to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood. This is historic. She has done far more than all your hot air ever will.

John:

With respect, your analogy breaks down in this sentence: “That is the equivalent of telling untruths to the Nazis at your door, or to the abortionists you’re investigating as a journalist.”

Precisely the question here is whether you can pass from deflecting inquiries that are not someone’s business, or mislead people like the cops looking for Athanasius, and go on to seeking out and actively lying to people.  A theif breaking in and demanding a formula is like a Nazi coming to the door.  He has no right to the truth and a decoy is perfectly acceptable.  But (if the catechism, Augustine and Aquinas are to be believed) we are not permitted to walk up to people, even very bad people, and lie to them. If I walk up to you and give you a false identity, occupation and purpose, I’m lying to you.  Lying is, says the Catechism, to be condemned by its nature. I honestly can’t see a way around that, which I’d love to do.

Talking as though this exhausts our moral options in fighting abortion is, I think, a sort of panic. 

Re: Pius.  I will be very interested to see the resolution to this one.  I think Doino will be publishing something about it next week.  Please do keep me posted on what you find out at your end.  I’m gone now for the weekend.  I’m exhausted.

Mr. Shea,
I would like for you to consider a analagous scenario that a dear Jewish friend offered:

During World War II there were rumors of the goings-on in Nazi concentration camps, but the accounts were so disgusting and diabolical that neither German civilians nor the Allies believed them. These “rumors” were chalked up as wartime propaganda and grotesque sensationalized gossip.

But what if a German civilian who heard the rumors and lived close enough to Dachau to be suspicious decided to masquerade as an SS trooper, gained access with his disguise, and took pictures and videos of the crematoriums, the slave camps, the starving prisoners, the mass graves, and published them around the world? Would you honestly denounce him as a Liar for actively deceiving the Nazis with the purpose of exposing their evil regime? Are you willing to say that this act of deceit would have saved lives, but it was fundamentally wrong and he should not have done it, that it was a grave sin? Is it really your contention that even though the Nazis were conducting a holocaust it would be a sin of the highest order to “lie” (by misrepresenting yourself) to them in order to expose them?

Planned Parenthood is conducting a holocaust that has killed exponentially more children than the Nazis killed Jews. The tragic difference between the hypothetical German “Liar” and Lila Rose is that the German is, alas, hypothetical. Would that a German during WWII had the courage of Lila Rose.

To the insistance of some that my hypothetical German and Lila Rose could have extracted the same information without their disguises just by walzing up and asking questions is absurd. Can you imagine? “Hey, are you guys making soap out of people?” to the Nazis or “What if an underage sex slave came in with her pimp and asked for an abortion, what would you do?” to Planned Parenthood. You can’t really be so naive as to believe that.

When something is intrinsically evil it cannot be condoned even if it seems to bring about good. Is this the case with Lila Rose’s “stings”? Are they evil?

Firstly, I wonder about the the drama of it all, the playacting that Lila and her crew do. They pretend to be persons they are not, dressing and talking like a !@#$% and her pimp, or dressing and talking like a troubled 14-year old who is being abused by a 30-year old man. They are playing the role that a real !@#$% and a real pimp, or a real teenager would also play (albeit not before a camera at least no voluntarily), that is, they are representing something that really does exist, something that is neither phantom nor make-believe. They know this, and they also know that when the sting is over they will take off their masks and make-up and return to their lives. When the sting is over the deception ends, the purpose is not deception, but rather the opposite! And this purpose is not thwarted.
________________________________________

Secondly, one must ask: When does the practice of deception become sinful? Is all deception sinful? In war time don’t submarines hide under the water? In police work don’t undercover agents pose as non-policemen? When Corrie Ten Boom hid Jews wasn’t she being, in a certain sense, deceitful, right from the get-go, long before anyone interrogated her? She pretended to the Germans to not be hiding Jews. The very act of hiding carries with it the will to deceive. Is it the speaking the deception make it sinful? Is that the test, when it is spoken?

What about a Joseph who hides his identity from his brothers as well as his ability to both speak and understand their language. This is intrinsically evil? What about Rahab, the harlot in Joshua 2 who hides Jewish spies, lies to the authorities about it, and earns a place in the bible hall of fame in Hebrews 11 for doing so. Augustine claims Rahab was wrong to lie but that she did not know better because she was a Pagan, not a Jew and did not know the 10 commandments. That seems weak to me, especially given her reward in the New Testament. Furthermore, the the law forbidding lying certainly belongs to the category of “natural”—things we can’t not know, laws that don’t require revelation for us to be bound by them. In other words even Pagans know it is wrong to lie—and so do Hindus and Buddhists. The golden rule (I won’t lie to you because I don’t want you to lie to me) does not require any “thus says the Lord;” it is written in the human heart.

Was Strider sinful in hiding his identity from the Hobbits at Bree? Were the twin boys Cor and Corin in C.S. Lewis’s The Horse and His Boy sinning for masquerading for a good part of the story? All of the great stories of heroes masking their true identity now need to be banned?

When Jesus tells us to hide the fact that we are subjecting ourselves to the rigors of fasting by oiling our hair and washing our face, is he asking us to do something sinful? When the Christians let Paul escape down the walls of Damascus they did so at night, very much hiding their actions from the eye of the authorities. Isn’t that deceptive? Does one really think they were obliged, if asked, to tell the authorities which direction he went? Or . . . they needed to have command of verbal trickery to tell a truth that does not help the authorities find him? Really? Where does this end?

To me it appears that lying to protect the life of the innocent, far from being sinful, can even be virtuous.

When it comes to “sting operation” journalism such as Lila Rose’s I am not at all convinced that it is intrinsically evil. The attempts to do end up like those defending absolute pacifism. They do not work.

Tom in Ohio

Thanks, Tom in Ohio. A brilliant summary. Just be careful in your terminology: We can’t say “lying to protect the life of the innocent” is right any more than we can say “murder to protect the life of the innocent”
would be. Lying MEANS sinful deception. Murder MEANS sinful killing. Precisely what we’re arguing about is whether ALL verbal deception is wrong—which sounds weird to us, since we know that all physical killing is not. Pacifism and Gandhi-Amish style non-violence are the PERFECT analogies here. They show up the absurdity (yes, I said it and I’ll say it again) the ABSURDITY of the Augustinian position. Good thing he wasn’t pope, speaking ex cathedra. But hey, if a much more systematic thinker like Aquinas could be wrong about the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of Our Lord, let’s cut Augustine some slack. How many people are right 99.44% of the time, and write as beautifully as he? I hope some day to chuckle with him over this one in heaven.

There are a lot of hypotheticals being tossed around, lots of examples of deception being apparently acceptable.

Let’s talk about specifics.  When a Planned Parenthood worker asks someone who presents themselves for medical care, does the Planned Parenthood worker have the right to know the age of the person presenting themselves or not?  I would think that not only do they have the right to know the truth, the one being presented to them has no right in even being deceptive or evasive about this important fact.

The fact that the Planned Parenthood worker misuses or ignores the information gathered is not relevant to the request for this information.

“..something else be done”? You *are* a blathering pundit. Bereft of ideas, and dead wrong. It was wrong to use the WW2 research and here you are wrong again. I’ll bet you are a very accurate contrary bellwether.

Wow. I got a comment from the likes of John Zmirak! One of my favorie guys on the blogoshere. I stand corected, using deception to protect the innocent is not always sinful and can be virtuous.

John, I just started blogging and can be found at http://meaningfulconversation.blogspot.com/

stop by!

Will Dawn and Mark reject Aragorn’s effective disguise? Will they step forward and fault Rahab and Joseph for their deceptions? It seems they must if they are to maintain their argument.

Equally BTW: scrupulosity is also a sin.

Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. Once we grant (as Mark apparently granted in the case of those hiding innocents from murderers) that not EVERY instance of deceptive speech is intrinsically evil, we move to the question of someone’s right to the truth—which is analogous to other human rights, such as someone’s right to his reputation. The Church forbids detraction—the needless destruction of someone’s good name through gossip. However, she also makes exceptions for cases of necessity, such as reporting criminals, evaluating employees, giving job references, etc. She further makes distinctions according to one’s profession. A journalist, for instance, has more leeway in writing negatively about people than someone who’s merely gossiping—just as a policeman has wider leeway in using violence than a mere civilian.

All clear so far? So if I, just out of perverse curiosity, decided to “investigate” a Planned Parenthood clinic the way LiveAction did, so I could gossip about it to my friends, then I might indeed be violating the clinic workers’ right to the truth. Conversely, if I were a police investigator working undercover, I’d be completely justified in using deceptive language in a sting. LiveAction’s investigation falls somewhere in between, in the realm of investigative journalism. Here is where intent becomes critical. If the LiveAction reporters had intended to blackmail, or simply harass, the clinic workers, their actions would be sinful. Since their intent was journalistic, to turn up a violation of the law that was not being investigated (since abortion clinics are notoriously left unregulated, as the butchery in Pennsylvania recently showed), these journalists were not violating the clinic workers’ right to the truth. Hence their actions were justified.

The SAME thing would be true if journalists applied an analogous sting to a pro-life pregnancy shelter that they had good reason to believe was violating a just law. Since so FEW of the laws concerning abortion are just, it is hard to imagine the hypothetical.

@John,

I don’t understand why the Planned Parenthood clinic worker doesn’t have the right to the truth from anyone who presents themselves for “treatment” at their facility.

Planned Parenthood’s stated policy is not to provide certain care to minors without parental consent.  They have to verify the age of the person presenting themselves to reasonably exercise this policy.  Why is it acceptable to lie to them? 

I could perhaps accept an argument that we have strong reason to believe that they are discarding information about rape and violation of their own policy with regard to minors and thus, they have given up their right to the truth.  I didn’t really see that argument above.

You just appealed to to what police investigators and journalist do.  Maybe what the police and journalists are doing is wrong as well.

Is it always acceptable to lie to uncover evil?  Isn’t this consequentialism?

@John Zmirak (and Tom in Ohio, too)- Thank you, Thank you! You have relayed my very own thoughts, albeit in a much more clear and direct manner.

@Mark Shea- As John Zmirak notes above in his post, “The Church forbids detraction—the needless destruction of someone’s good name through gossip.”  I am wondering why you didn’t take up your concerns with Live Action itself, instead of faulting thier actions as ‘sinful’ across the blogosphere.  For all the worry you had that their actions were precariously founded and as such would betray the Pro-Life movement, I think you have caused more consternation amid Pro-Lifers and for Pro-Lifers.

My 2 cents. That clears out my pocket.

@Mark Shea in your response to John Zmirak: “But (if the catechism, Augustine and Aquinas are to be believed) we are not permitted to walk up to people, even very bad people, and lie to them. If I walk up to you and give you a false identity, occupation and purpose, I’m lying to you.”

“Lying to you” only IF the CCC defines LYING as merely giving a “false identity, occupation and purpose.”  Where does the CCC state that giving a “false identity, occupation and purpose” = LYING?

@John Zmirak,

I asked about “Is it always acceptable to lie to uncover evil?  Isn’t this consequentialism?”, of course, I know the answer is that it’s never acceptable to lie.  The question is what constitutes a lie and what constitutes an acceptable deception.

Let me rephrase:  Are those suspected of evil never owed the truth?

The question of who has the right to the truth and when is a more complex one. I’ll address it in my next Insidecatholic piece. But FIRST we must establish that this is the ground of the discussion—not the rigid literalism which asserts that false statements may never be made, no matter to whom or under what circumstances. That is the vampire I’m trying to drive a stake through. It’s like trying to disprove pacifism; we can argue about the conditions for Just War later, but only once we’ve driven Gandhi from the table.

So check Wednesday’s edition of Insidecatholic, where I’ll explore all the implications of this debate. Thanks!

@Elise, Your example of the brave person sneaking into Nazi camp and taking pictures to confirm the horrors is different.  The person spying is risking their life to find out the truth, but not leading anyone else into sin. No one was lied to.  The real problem is that while this example of Lila Rose is very understandable, it is !@#$% to justify all kinds of active lying to set people up who people suspect of something. It is used by jealous people to spy on those they envy and to set them up for failure.  It is used by the powerful to keep down those who disagree with them.  It is used by the insecure to make them feel better about themselves by making someone else feel bad.  It makes me think of Einstein and the atomic bomb (I think it was the atomic bomb). He is thinking of an energy source and someone uses it to destroy two cities of mankind.  Things done man’s way get out of hand VERY fast! Look at the homosexual agenda and the TV you watch now and the TV you watched ten years ago.  The rationalization that is going on to support this behavior is so clear yet the people involved compare themselves to victims of racism. It is the same desire to be God and make the rules rather than trust in Him and use His methods. It is a lack of faith, sometimes unknowingly, but still a lack of faith. Spiritual battles are won by HOLINESS and PRAYER.  They always have been.  Everything else is a lie and it causes ripples of sin we have unknowingly caused. Our first concern should be to obey GOD.

Don’t know where the dollar sign stuff came from.  Had typed the word “used” there.  Sorry.

Can’t wait, John!

John Zmirak, You are kidding yourself.  Just because the world permits certain actions by certain professions does not mean they are acceptable to Jesus Christ.  The world is being the world.  And just because someone with a lawful position is permitted to act in a certain way, doesn’t mean that everyone with an axe to grind can do the same.  That, my friend, is anarchy.  Saying something not true is lying.  Saying you are a pimp or prostitute or prospective client when you would never on your mothers grave be or do any of those things is lying.  The process you are following is called rationalization.  It is definitely not the narrow road.  “Will many be saved,” Jesus was asked?  “Take the narrow road,” He replied.  You are trying to widen the road sir.  If you don’t come to realize it you may pay an incredibly high price. Please see my comment to Elise.  This thinking is being used as a weapon by unscrupulous or desparate people, like homosexual activists who want to slander people who call homosexual relationships sin. 
@CherylLynn: If it’s not the truth, its a lie. If you gave the info to get the answer someone with that name and occupation would get, you were lying.  You were setting up the speaker. Jesus admonished us, “First, speak the TRUTH.”  Without that foundation, there is only chaos, suspicion, nasty and sad consequences.  Do you really think God intends for you to live in a world of lies? Do you really think that is why Jesus suffered and died for you?  It’s not love and it’s not what He asked.

At John Z. Are you aware of the vision of Pope Leo XIII?  It explains alot about why things are as bad as they are right now!

Um, Pam, the NAZIS were “lied” to. No civilian could just waltz into Dachau without “lying” about who he was. Maybe you don’t know that much about this (my family is from Munich and I’ve been to Dachau many times), but the Nazis guarded their concentration camps like Fort Knox b/c they knew if anyone found out what they were actually doing their jig was up. The SS meticulously recorded every single entry and exit from Dachau, therefore, not only would someone have to dress up in a Nazi military costume, but would have to “lie” with a fake name and a fake rank in the SS in order to get both in and out of the concentration camp. So, once again, would it be wrong to “lie” to the Nazis in order to expose them? Yes or No?

Your first stop on this train ride should have been the Catechism. I have to say I agree with Terri K.  Is all killing murder? There was no attempt here to lead others to evil or to provide cover for evil. This was a performance intended to elicit the truth. Otherwise, all movies, plays, novels, everything that is not a bona fide representation of the reality of Truth is a lie and therefore immoral in the Book of Shea.

Go back to Genesis.  God asks Adam why he’s hiding.  Of course God knew that Adam had eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, yet he made the inquiry as if He did not know. Was Adam deceived?  Sure.  Does that make God a liar? There are a dozen examples like this throughout Scripture.

On another note, wasn’t this act intended to “bear witness to the truth”? “Witness is an act of justice that establishes the truth or makes it known.” (2472).  Did this act make known the truth?  Of course it did, which speaks against it being a “lie” at all.  The Catechism also takes into account that some situations may require a weighing of the obligation to tell the truth: “This requires us in concrete situations to judge whether or not it is appropriate to reveal the truth to someone who asks for it.(2488).

Even if one considers this to be a “lie” forbidden by the Church, at best it is a venial sin (see 2484).

I’m just going to say it flat out: This whole discussion began with an act of detraction, of needless pointing out the faults of another, committed against Lila Rose, by little-known writers who seemed eager to publicize themselves by attacking someone with a big name. Once it was public, it was legitimate for Mark Shea to comment on it, though he should have refrained from detractive language such as “Lying for Jesus,” as Sean Dailey of Gilbert Magazine pointed out.

Detraction entails pointing up someone’s flaws when it is not strictly speaking necessary to preserve the good. If all this tempest is concerning the possibility that LiveAction may have, in their zeal, committed a venial sin in their attem…pt to expose the criminal actions of mass murderers, it would take a great deal to convince me that this would be worth pointing out—except in a private letter to the individuals, and then if they didn’t respond, to their bishops.

One would have to think LiveAction’s sting is a chink in the dam, after which we’ll see a tidal wave of escalating lies and fraud on the part of pro-lifers, for it to be worth turning inward and agonizing over the tactics that produced this potentially great political victory. Then again, the original article that provoked this controversy cited the malicious Catholic dissenter Peter Hebblethwaite as its source for denying that Pope Pius XII used deception to save tens of thousands of Jews—as if this would have been a blot on Pius’ character. That is when I began to feel a deep moral disgust, which remains with me.

While some people (like Mark) are genuinely troubled by the principles here, I think that some others are

a) preening over their “purity” and trying to outflank their fellow Catholics on the “right,”

b) envious of the effectiveness of LiveAction, compared to their own lack of impact, or

c) secretly trying to sabotage the pro-life movement because they don’t really support it.

The intensity of my disdain for those motivated by a), b), or c) has perhaps made my tone too sharp towards the sincere people engaged in this debate, and for that I apologize. And with that I move on from this train wreck.

Elise, Lying is a sin.  The person doing it would not deny the sin, I wouldn’t think. I would imagine they would do it despite the fact that it was a sin.  It would be a less perfect way to accomplish their goal. (I was thinking they dug under a fence.)
John Z.  Lots of hostility toward those who disagree! And lots of negative motives put to them.  Everything is possible with God.  If we work to be closest to Him things will be better because it will be His will that is being done and not ours.  It is not (at least on my part) any kind of attack on Lila Rose. I actually wrote my Congressman about what she discovered before Mark pointed out the method might have been improved and i believe he’s right.  He’s giving us an opportunity to grow in holiness.

I know I hadn’t really thought about the morality of the Live Action activities until it was pointed out to me by these little known writers, via Mark Shea.

It’s not detraction when you warn the faithful against acts that you see as sinful.

I’m still not sure where I stand on this issue.  I’m sometimes convinced that the Planned Parenthood workers don’t deserve the truth, but I worry that this is a rationalization.  I’m glad this issue was brought to my attention because it hope it will clarify my views here.

All right you guys, this is a brilliant discussion, but what I REALLY want to know is, how do we take down PP?  Any concrete ideas? 

Not so easy, is it.  Besides our wonderful 40 Days for Life prayer warriors, and helping women individually, are you all ready to write your congressperson and the IRS and tell them no taxes until they defund PP?

I’m game. 
Or do you guys have another idea for how to combat the world’s biggest network of liars, including International PP, the United Nations, and every single group who is pushing condoms, contraception, and abortion on the world’s innocent children?

Let’s give Lila Rose and her wonderful team some solid ideas for the next phase in bringing down, as Mark puts it, Murder, Inc.

God bless.

Erin, you talk about the “world’s biggest network of liars”, but who isn’t a liar?  The Church doesn’t claim to have fewer liars than other groups.  If we really want to “take down” or “defund” a group of evil doers, why shouldn’t we take down and defund ourselves?  We’re not holier than thou, are we?

Erin, Throughout history Catholic nations and individuals have overcome wars and all kinds of evils through prayer.  Portugal won a war with the rosary.  Two or more people of faith can do amazing things!

Thanks to John Zmirak for his comments.

I think we need to keep this thing in perspective.

First, and most important for addressing the original question; if any lie is attached to this, the lie is in the secular world in which we live in. It would be a lie to ‘get’ Planned Parenthood. I think it would be wrong to let our assumptions change it to: a lie for Jesus.

Secondly, some are setting a pretty high standard.

I would suggest that we all practice this deception on a daily basis. For who do We claim to be? Do our lives show it to be true?
If we claim to be Christian would there be enough evidence to convict us?

Perhaps it is time to overlook the speck it their eye and spend some serious time looking to beam in our own eye.
I thank the Lord for Confession.

Thirdly, it’s interesting that the Nazis medical experiments was brought up. In our dialogue about being pro-life it might be time to start talking about the horrors of the research being done on a daily basis in our research hospitals. They prey on the sick and their families with the lie of; ‘giving your life for the greater good’ when, in reality, it’s about who develops the next billion dollar therapy.

In Closing, there are many battles to be fought, but let us remember, Jesus has already won the war! Let us look to our own sanctification, so that We may speak in Truth, leave the others to God.

Please check out my latest commentary on this question:
“Arrest that Protestant Banker!”
http://www.insidecatholic.com/feature/arrest-that-protestant-banker.html

“Founding a culture of life on a culture of lies is just bound to come to grief no matter what the short term gains may be.”

“...the intrinsically evil means of lying”

Embracing as an Absolute a Relative Truth such as “it is always wrong to lie” simply leads to greater immorality. For example, when the Nazi’s came to the house Anne Frank and her family were hiding in, and asked them, “do you know where Jews are hiding”? Lying, in this situation, is the morally correct choice, and to argue otherwise is simply morally indefensible.

Likewise, lying to expose the far greater evil of orchestrated mass murder that exceeds that of the Nazis, and in it’s own way is even more evil, as it is based, not on a cultural delusion in the belief of the evil of the “other” as it was in Nazi Germany, but is rather based on mere convenience, selfishness, and narcissism - sins far harder to forgive than a delusion based on the evil of the other, that was in turn largely based on a delusion of the exclusion of the Jews from salvation.

This being the case, it is perfectly moral to lie in order to expose evil. Comparing this with the experiments performed by Nazi scientists is a nice rhetorical touch, but they are completely different cases morally, on a number of levels - here are a couple:

  1. No one is advocating murder in order to establish the murderous evil of Planned Parenthood. Premeditated murder and lying are categorically different acts
  2. The position of the scientists and of Mark’s boss at UW was that there were no absolutes - that in all cases, the ends justified the means.

The actions of those who are trying to save lives are asserting the Absolute right to life of the innocent, and are engaged in a deliberate subordination what constitutes a Relative Truth - it is good to avoid lying and deception - to an Absolute Truth: that premeditated murder is always wrong.

In Reality, as opposed to mere Dogmatic Assertion, the morally correct choice often involves subordinating a Relative Truth to an Absolute Truth. In making the logical and moral mistake of codifying moral truths that are relative to the situation as being equal to Absolute moral truths, the proponents of such codification unwittingly enable the existence and perpetuation of far greater evils. To compare the act of lying to the act of murder is, quite simply, both logically and morally absurd.

“Lying, even to glorify God, is evil.”  So it was evil to lie in order to save the lives of Jews hiding from certain death? This is ridiculous, both morally and logically.

“…lying, which the Church calls intrinsically evil…” If this is indeed the case, then the Church is wrong. All sorts of potential evil arise from attempting to codify as an Absolute a moral truth that is relative.

Yes, 99.9% of the time, lying is wrong. But any one of us would lie in order to save the lives of our own children, and many, throughout history, have indeed done so - ticking bomb arguments don’t apply. Lying is NOT always wrong. To equate it with murder may score a few points rhetorically, but has no relationship to actual moral reality.

Thomas Paine, Your arguments are secular. They display a lack of faith. We aren’t a bunch of humans left on our own.  We have a God who is active in our lives. He can do ANYTHING and NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE for HIM.  He has counted the hairs on your head.  Saying a wrong is wrong is not the problem.  Relying on our lies and machinations is the problem.  We should turn to Him about everything. We are admonished to pray without ceasing.  Believe!

This is the moral equivalent of pacifism and, like pacifism, a (sometimes) admirable but never obligatory position for Roman Catholics.  Lila Rose did what she did because, like all good muckraking journalists, she identified an evil and injustice to which the public authorities had turned a blind eye.  We would not be having this discussion if the police or public health authorities, using undercover methods or “testers,” had nailed Planned Parenthood for its dereliction of legal duty in failing to report obvious instances of child sexual abuse. Or if a newspaper, also doing its duty, had done the same thing.  These are crimes we are talking about, and if the public authorities are complicit in failing to expose them, then it is the task of journalists to do so.

If we have learned anything in the past decade, the mystique of “credentialing” in journalism is gone.  Lila Rose could have been working for “60 Minutes” or “Dateline.”  The fact that she is working free-lance means not a whit—her methods were aggressive, but so were those of many who have courageously ferreted the truth from those, in the public and private sector, determined to keep that truth unknown, and to do great harm in the process. 

So let’s stop thinking about Lila Rose as a “pro-lifer,” although that is where her sympathies lie.  Let’s think of her as a journalist, and her methods comparable to the “tester couples” used to expose real estate agents, banks, and others engaged in discriminatory lending and home-selling practices.  They were not married to each other, and they had no genuine interest in buying a house or taking out a mortgage.  Immoral?  Ithink not.  Unless you are willing to say that no Catholic, as a police officer, government official, journalist, espionage agent, etc., etc., can in good conscience engage in acts of deception in carrying out official duties, then you should give Lila Rose a break.  And if you are willing to take things that far, then you need to seriously reconsider your position, lest you confuse the faithful.

The Catechism prohibits the telling of falsehoods that is intended to lead the hearer into error.  Precisely what error is Lila Rose leading PP into—and how can one lead an entity, as opposed to a person, into the type of “error” to which the Catechism is surely referring.

Edward, I think your comments have been answered in earlier comments. Ends don’t justify the means.  Faith means believing God has a plan.  He does not use deceit or evil to do good.  If someone has a job that entails using deceit like an undercover policeman there are safeguards for citizens to protect them from entrapment.  A devout Catholic might very well have trouble with this type of job and WOULD want to consult with a holy priest about it.  The young woman at Planned Parenthood was put in a state of sin by people who asked questions that would not have been asked if the “journalists” weren’t there.  Jesus would not get at the truth by putting someone in an occasion of sin.