Comment by Eleison23 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Eleison23 | Hacker News Reader

Lying has been a source of controversy for Christians since the beginning. The Old Testament recounts at least two instances of righteous Gentiles: women who lied for the sake of Israel. The Egyptian midwives save the Hebrews' male progeny from death, and Rahab the harlot hides spies in the heart of Jericho. It's unambiguous that God deals kindly with them, and Rahab becomes an ancestor of Jesus.

The most frequently cited technique is that of mental reservation. If Nazis knock on your door and ask, "Are there any Jews here?" you can stand in your foyer and say "There are no Jews here." because "here" means the foyer, not your attic or closet.

Fast-forward to the present day. The Catechism of the Catholic Church revised a few paragraphs on lying: #2483 and #2508. While this doesn't constitute a change in teaching or doctrine, it makes the present stance stricter and less permissive, as well as obscuring the controversial history of the thing, and now we're unable to reconcile the OT pericopes with what the Catechism says.

https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?rec...

"To lie is to speak or act against the truth in order to lead into error s̶o̶m̶e̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶w̶h̶o̶ ̶h̶a̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶i̶g̶h̶t̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶k̶n̶o̶w̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶t̶r̶u̶t̶h̶."

That's a pretty major change. (and I would argue that while telling people who don't have a right to know "Mind Your Own Business" is the best course of action, in some power dynamics that is much riskier than lying. In the latter case, I was prepared to argue here that there is almost an affirmative obligation to lie, from the same "what if the behaviour was generalised" argument as TFA)

(idle query: are rationales for catechism changes public?)

[Edit: I am impressed that 2493-2499 cover "The Use of the Social Communications Media". and at least this change to 2483 and the blanket 2508 seem to be subordinate to 2510, which posits using the golden rule to discern whether or not it would be appropriate to reveal the truth to someone who asks. cf 2511

https://www.usccb.org/sites/default/files/flipbooks/catechis... ]

That’s a fascinating take, given that much of what Catholicism actually is is defined by the lies it’s routinely using for all kinds of purposes, from providing a safe heaven to child groomers to spreading the hate speech.

> If Nazis knock on your door and ask, "Are there any Jews here?" you can stand in your foyer and say "There are no Jews here." because "here" means the foyer, not your attic or closet.

That is some next level tortured reasoning. So if they first ask "Who lives here?" should the answer be "Nobody", because nobody lives in the foyer? Or does the meaning of "here" vary from second to second? If they say "To the best of your knowledge, do you know the location of any Jews or other minorities that the state considers unwelcome within this house or in a 100 meter radius around it?" should a devout Christian just give up the Jews hiding in the closet/cellar/shed because they couldn't find a way to twist the question, and lying would be wrong?

It's generally better to avoid taking a position based on extreme or hypothetical scenarios.

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