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A listener asks us if it is wrong to say bad things about others, especially online, if the bad things are true. Turns out, it is, and theologian Dr. Scott Hefelfinger explains why.
Cy Kellett:
When’s it wrong to share the truth about someone? Augustine Institute Professor Scott Hefelfinger, next.
Cy Kellett:
Hello and welcome to Focus, the Catholic answers podcast for living, understanding and defending your Catholic faith. I’m Cy Kellett your host and Tony in Canada sent us an email about doing an episode on detraction. And we discussed it for a long time, whether we wanted to do that because we weren’t sure we wanted to do episodes based on questions from people in Canada. But we decided one Canadian every now and then, it’s fine.
Cy Kellett:
Detraction is a sin, but why is it a sin? Why is it wrong to tell the truth about people sometimes? And then particularly online, we become a little bit addicted to saying nasty things about one another. Sometimes even just with an emoji. Is that wrong? Or when is it wrong? We decided to ask a moral theologian and we found a great one. They’ve got a lot of great theologians over at the Augustine Institute in Colorado. And so Scott Hefelfinger is here to discuss the sin of detraction.
Cy Kellett:
Scott Hefelfinger from the Augustine Institute. Thank you for being with us.
Scott Hefelfinger:
Oh, thanks for having me.
Cy Kellett:
So we asked people to send us their questions and topics they would like to cover. And we got a very good request to talk about the sin of detraction and the request was related to the possibility, this might shock, you the possibility that there might be some detraction going on in social media. So first of all, is that possible? Is it possible to sin via social media?
Scott Hefelfinger:
Yeah, I think it absolutely is. Media is a form of communication and so our speech can come out as we usually just talk face-to-face or over a video conference or it can come out across written media, whether they’re books, articles or social media. So certainly, we have a certain responsibility and we can do good and we can do bad in that realm.
Cy Kellett:
Well, when my children were small, they became lawyers at about three years old and they would say something nasty about one of their brothers or sisters. And their lawyer approach was, “Well, it’s the truth.” So, were they good lawyers and good moral theologians in saying that they could say this nasty thing because it was true?
Scott Hefelfinger:
Yeah. Truth is a funny thing, right? It’s a double-edged sword and my kids had the same tendency, so I think it’s probably a natural thing with children that they become lawyers soon after they can talk. And what I try to tell them is what is speech for? And we talk about, well, God gave us words to speak the truth in love. And not every time we speak the truth do we do that in a way that’s loving. And there are all sorts of ways that we can fail there. And we don’t need to sort of discourse on all of them right away with our children, but in a certain context, yeah, we point out maybe where they fell short, even though what they said might be true.
Cy Kellett:
Now I’m feeling bad about my answer to my kids. It wasn’t even close to that good. It was just, “Go to your room.” So, all right. Well, one good father, one bad father here. So tell us about the sin of detraction. All of this that we’ve actually been talking about thus far is related to what the Catholic church and possibly others, you may know, I don’t know if this is just a Catholic term or a general moral philosophy term, what are we talking about when we’re talking about detraction?
Scott Hefelfinger:
Yeah. Well, I think it’s more general than just the Catholic church, but we do have a pretty robust tradition of thinking about language I think you could say and putting it in the context of truth, which sits in the still broader context in a way of justice. And so to understand detraction we, I think, need to zoom way out and see that there are certain things we owe to each other in justice. And those things that we owe are related to things that we naturally want and naturally can and ought to have.
Scott Hefelfinger:
And one of those things has to do with our good honor, our good reputation, the esteem that others have for us. And so if we speak in a way that unjustly denies somebody that good esteem that they may be owed, that’s wrong. And we can do that whether we speak something truthful, right, we reveal a failing about someone and oh that’s true, and that’s sort of like the example of our kids, right?
Scott Hefelfinger:
But it might not be the right time or the right place or the right context to do that. And so that would take away something that’s owed to them. We can also do it through falsehood and that’s a different sin whether calumny or slander. So detraction has to do with speaking a truth that reveals usually a hidden failing about someone in an unjust way.
Cy Kellett:
Okay. Maybe you could help me then with, so that’s detraction could you make a distinction then between calumny and slander? In a general way, I would maybe think of those as virtually the same thing that you’re just talking bad about somebody, but if there’s a distinction, what’s the distinction between calumny, slander and detraction?
Scott Hefelfinger:
Yeah. So calumny and slander are, as far as I understand, basically coterminous. They mean basically the same thing. But that involves speaking a falsehood about somebody, right? So you’re upset with someone, you want to do them one, and usually, you’re wanting to dishonor them or reduce their honor or reputation. And so you say something false about them, right? I think we sometimes use the word defame them as well.
Scott Hefelfinger:
And so calumny or slander always involves a false hood. And so there’s an added evil to that. St. Thomas Aquinas, when he talks about this, he’ll say, “There’s an added degree of evil because not only are we doing somebody wrong and injustice, we are lying.” Right? And so there are two things that coincide to make that double the evil, you could say.
Scott Hefelfinger:
So unlike that there’s only one evil, which is still enough, we don’t want any evil. There’s only one evil when it comes to detraction and that is the evil of injustice. So we say something truthful, but it’s not just to make that statement about that person in that context.
Scott Hefelfinger:
So maybe another contrast here that’s helpful is it’s not wrong to correct somebody. In fact, we have a duty, particularly to those who are Christians with us to fraternal correction, right? And so we can correct somebody and in fact, we have a duty to correct them if they make a moral mistake. And so we can speak truthfully about a feeling they have, ideally privately if it’s a private wrong and offer them correction.
Scott Hefelfinger:
But I think we can see how different that is from saying something truthful about a wrong someone did in the public forum or to dishonor them or reduce their good name or reputation.
Cy Kellett:
Would there be a difference, a moral difference, when someone is a public figure. And maybe even let me distinguish between types of public figures, like a government official and say a celebrity. So we recently had the emergence of the Metoo movement where women were encouraging one another, look, let’s not just keep all these nasty things that have been said and done in the dark, let’s talk about them. And when that happened to you, say Metoo and tell about that person.
Cy Kellett:
Well, say a person was a government official. And the thing that the woman said was not false, would it be detraction for her to say, “For example, this person assaulted me in a sexual way or made overtures to me that ruined my work experience,” or whatever the Metoo thing was. Is that detraction for her to do that? And now I’m talking specifically about a government official.
Scott Hefelfinger:
Yeah. I think that’s pretty complicated. I mean I think the basic starting point here that we can talk about is any wrongdoing has both a personal aspect and a public or communal aspect. And so when St. Thomas talks about correcting someone, for example, the idea is, well, it’s right to correct a person for their own good, their own salvation and coming to do better. But there’s also a need for correction that can arise from the public dimension of it.
Scott Hefelfinger:
And so, for example, he’ll say, “Well, if there’s a great public sin, then that needs to be countered so to speak or corrected in a public way, because it can be cause for scandal, or it can lead others into sin.” And that’s very serious. Whereas if it’s something that’s a hidden, private sin, then the proper course of action is to address that privately, at least first.
Scott Hefelfinger:
What’s complicated about the situation that you raised here is if you have some interpersonal sin, possibly sexual sin, like in relation to the Metoo movement, and it’s a public figure, that falls in a gray area between it being a private relationship with someone and needing private correction but then also having possibly very public consequences depending on who observed it, how it might be observed.
Scott Hefelfinger:
And so I don’t know that there are really clear standards here for dealing with this. Certainly, we have legal procedures that we follow, whether or not it’s right for someone to jump immediately into the media spotlight, that, to me, seems to have more possibilities of detraction. But even then, depending on the figure, I’m not sure that I would say it’s completely ruled out and there might be certain circumstances where that kind of a public redress is actually necessary or to be recommended. But these are very complex things.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Right, right. Okay. So certainly, they’re complex things and they require a precision of thought that our public discourse often moves too quickly it seems to me for any precision of thought.
Scott Hefelfinger:
Right. I think that’s absolutely right. And one of the things about detraction too, the catechism takes it up very briefly but I think in a pretty profound way in the context of the eighth commandment, thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor. And the idea is that we owe certain things to our neighbors based on justice and truth. And so detraction takes away from what we owe to our neighbor, especially through our speech.
Scott Hefelfinger:
But one of the other sins that’s taken up there is rash judgment. And rash judgment, I think, is something that we can all rush into very, very easily. It’s a result of our fallen nature. And so, yes, our public discourse suffers from this. We’re not very well able to separate the sin from the sinner which is a necessary thing to do. We’re not very well able to make some of these distinctions and therefore, we’re not very well able to see the path forward or how to redress certain wrongs or when to approach someone privately or when to take it public and when scandal is involved. These are complicated things. And I think the complexity shouldn’t sort of paralyze us, but it should give us pause. We should, I think, slow down and be careful how we approach these things.
Cy Kellett:
Because you started by saying to your children, but actually, this is extremely helpful to all of us that the purpose of speech is to share the truth in love and that you’re violating its purposes. It’s easy for us to go, “Well, clearly, I’m violating the purpose of speech when I’m lying.” But if the purpose of speech is not just to speak the truth, but to speak the truth in love, which I would guess comes from our understanding that God is love and this is the highest good and this communicative function can’t violate the nature of the reality God has made, well, then all kinds of things, like my tone of voice and my intention come in, not just whether something is technically true or not.
Scott Hefelfinger:
Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s absolutely right. And some of that gets lost in digital media. This is one of the challenges I think, and there are all kinds of interesting studies on this, about how nuance and accurate perception and all of these things are lost really in whether we’re sending a text message to somebody or we’re launching a tweet or whatever.
Scott Hefelfinger:
And so we do have to be, I think, particularly careful in those areas where we don’t have … We have to be already careful, right, if we’re in face-to-face normal contact. We still can injure with our words. We still have to pay close attention. But all the more so do we need to be careful when we’re in the realm of the digital, because we are not digital creatures, right? We are rational, bodily creatures. And so much of our communication is layered on to the words that we speak through our body language, through our gestures, through whether our countenance rises or falls. And we have a duty to be attentive to that when we communicate with others.
Cy Kellett:
All right. I’m going to give you the question as it was posed to us to that brought this whole conversation up. I think we’ve covered enough to be able to attack this question. But it’s a little bit long. So here it is, it’s in two parts. Do things like sarcasm, satire, and even trolling constitute detraction? Or can public discourse on social media and the light be carried on in a way that attacks those who teach evils, such as racism and abortion? In other words, what is fair game doing battle against bad ideas and what constitutes going too far?
Scott Hefelfinger:
Yeah, there’s-
Cy Kellett:
It’s a lot out there.
Scott Hefelfinger:
There is a lot there. Well, let me try to take it in order as I remember what you said. Things like satire, or even wit, there’s a place for this. And St. Thomas even brings this up when he talks about some of these sins in speech against justice like detraction. And he says, “Being witty at the expense of another person is fine as long as the purpose is to amuse. And as long as the content, the harmful part there, the joke of it, isn’t too serious.”
Scott Hefelfinger:
Humor and wit, that belongs as well to the art of conversation. And it belongs to a certain kind of friendship, I would say. But friendship is really the key term to realize that even in civil discourse, it ought to happen within the context of civic friendship. Meaning at some fundamental level, we’re on the same team and we ought to correct each other, but there are ways of going about that that are appropriate and ways that are not.
Scott Hefelfinger:
And so one way that is not appropriate, the language in the question as you put it was interesting, can we attack those who do such and such? Well, we don’t want to attack the people. And the question even went on to make a distinction, if we’re fighting against bad ideas, right? And that’s the important thing. It’s fine to go after bad ideas in a way that is loving, in a way that is respectful. We don’t want to go after people, right?
Scott Hefelfinger:
If we start to attack a person’s honor, their reputation, that’s not what we want to do. We certainly can correct errors that they make. And if that, in a certain sense, harms their reputation, that’s a by-product of that, right? If someone makes a mistake, we assume, well, we all desire the truth by nature. So we should all want to be corrected because that leads us to the truth, myself included. Right?
Scott Hefelfinger:
And so if we correct someone, they should welcome that. And it actually adds to their reputation to be docile to the truth. Now, how often does that actually happen in the social media sphere? I think we struggle with that. It’s hard, we’re falling creatures. But correction is fine. Some satire is fine as long as it doesn’t cross a certain line. There was another term in there besides satire, I’ve forgotten now. Trolling.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, trolling, yeah.
Scott Hefelfinger:
I mean, I don’t even know how to define trolling exactly.
Cy Kellett:
Let me give you a trolling example. Somebody puts out a tweet saying, “In the 20th century, American morals were badly degraded.” For example. Or, we lost our way morally. And so somebody else says, this is trolling, “So you want to go back to slavery in the 19th century?” Okay. So that’s trolling because clearly, this is not what the person is talking about. But you’re trying to provoke a reaction with what is basically a ridiculous statement.
Scott Hefelfinger:
Yeah. I mean, I think trolling is maybe then the kind of modern digital equivalent of the reductio ad absurdum, the argument that reduces something to the absurd. And I think there’s a place for that. I mean, the problem with things like that could be that if we limit ourselves to those kinds of punchy, rhetorical questions, so you want to go back to this, that’s a pretty limited form of conversation.
Cy Kellett:
I see, yeah.
Scott Hefelfinger:
So if it’s a moment in a broader conversation or if it’s a technique that then actually fosters real dialogue, I think there can be a place for that. But I think it’s a limited place. And if we think about, sometimes people make these comments not to encourage a conversation, but actually as a conversation stopper where it’s like, “Oh, this is so ridiculous. I won’t even speak to this person.” And that might be going too far. It’s just unhelpful.
Scott Hefelfinger:
But I think there’s a place for pointing out logical incoherence or fallacies in a strong, rhetorical question. I just think there’s more to reasoning than that and more to conversation or argument than that. And so we shouldn’t lean in that direction too often or too strongly, I think.
Cy Kellett:
Okay. So social media also involved a kind of a detraction that … I mean, this is a very hard one, but the person here specifically mentioned it. So I want to get to it. They talked about abortion, but they also talked about racism and there is a quickness to call someone a racist and one doesn’t want to deny racism. One doesn’t want to deny the harms of racism, but it does seem that it’s sometimes used as a rhetorical device. Maybe something like trolling, I guess.
Cy Kellett:
So, let’s say for example, someone sincerely believes that someone else is a racist. Okay. So someone says, “I think we should have voter ID in the United States.” Okay, well, voter ID in the United States is different than it would be in any other country because voting restrictions have a racist past in the US. But maybe the person innocently believes in voter ID as a general principle and is not connecting to that racist past at all. But the other person says, “That’s racist and you’re a racist even for suggesting it.” Is this detraction to do this because the person did say the thing.
Scott Hefelfinger:
Yeah. I mean, first of all, I think that would be rash judgment. There can be an issue that’s obviously a serious issue, that’s obviously something that needs to be the topic of a public conversation. But racism, because it’s such a grave evil, we should be not so quick, I think, to ascribe that to someone. And we should also be not so quick because there are differing understandings of racism.
Scott Hefelfinger:
So when people talk about structural racism, that’s a different thing than accusing a particular person of being racist. And even if someone supports a policy that another person views as contributing to structural racism or something like that, that at the worst would be a cooperation in a kind of evil that wouldn’t necessarily make the person racist in the strongest sense of that term. And so I think this is where we talk about dialing down the tone or the level of the rhetoric where I think we need to not rush to judge and ascribe those terms to people, even when there are serious concerns like racism.
Cy Kellett:
All right. Just one more social media related detraction question and then I want to get out into the real world. I guess this is the real world. It’s just something we have to deal with in the real world. But the tactic of digging up the old tweet. So someone did tweet this thing. A famous case is there’s a movie director who’s actually a very good movie director, I think. And years ago, he made a joke and the joke included a reference to pedophilia.
Cy Kellett:
It’s not a good joke. It’s not a good reference. He shouldn’t have done it. But he was really young and he wasn’t advocating pedophilia in it. But it was a joke that was in very, very poor taste. Years later, after he becomes this successful movie director, people dig up this tweet and he gets fired from his job as a movie director. Is that detraction to go back and do that?
Scott Hefelfinger:
Wow, that’s a great question. I’m not sure. I mean, it seems like what’s really … Detraction is revealing an otherwise hidden failing and given that that was public, it’s not exactly hidden.
Cy Kellett:
I see, yeah.
Scott Hefelfinger:
The real question is, to what extent is that a failing? And part of the problem with the way that digital media makes permanent sort of our histories is that that record is different than memory. Memory sees things in proper context, but a digital record doesn’t acknowledge that context. And so when we raise something like that up from the past out of context, and often, in our context here and now with particular concerns that we rightly have about pedophilia, for example, there’s a mismatch there. And so that, I think, actually strays closer to falsifying something than it does revealing a truth about someone to dishonor.
Scott Hefelfinger:
There’s a falsification that happens when the context is so very different, which, again, is not to justify what was done. It’s just to say, “Look, the failure, there was a different kind, right? Maybe it was an imprudent joke. Maybe it was poor taste. But it’s not sort of a capital offense as we might consider it today.” And if you were to do the same thing today, the gravity would be more serious because our context is different. So there’s a falsification I think there that makes it different from detraction, simply speaking.
Cy Kellett:
All right. I want to ask you, I said real world, but I mean the face-to-face world, I guess. It’s all part of the real world. But we often associate detraction with gossip. It does seem to me that a great deal of detraction takes place in the realm of gossip. I know because I’ve been involved in it many, many times myself. Not all gossip is like that. For example, you get people together and they want to know what’s so-and-so up to. But then we can easily slip into the comment that detracts the person.
Cy Kellett:
So I wanted to ask you about gossip in general. We sometimes think of gossip itself as a sin and maybe it is. Maybe you could clarify that for me whether gossiping about others is a sin? But just maybe also say something about the traditional concern about detraction is in fact these things that are said in these little conversations where we’re just sharing the news, so to speak.
Scott Hefelfinger:
Yeah. I mean, gossip, I think doesn’t enjoy as precise a moral linguistic pedigree as does something like detraction. And gossip, I think, can mean different things. So, for example, gossip doesn’t necessarily mean … You can’t limit it to speaking falsely about somebody, right. It could be true. But you also can’t limit it to revealing a true fault that somebody has, because sometimes, we’ll say maybe a good thing that somebody did. But we’re just sort of gossiping about it. Maybe we do that with the intention of interfering with another friendship.
Scott Hefelfinger:
And that goes in the direction of what St. Thomas Aquinas calls tale bearing. Another term. You reveal something that’s not even necessarily a bad thing, but maybe this other person might not like it. And so you’re trying to dismantle a friendship and that makes it very wrong because friends are very important.
Scott Hefelfinger:
So gossip is a little more nebulous. And I want to throw in one other thing here where I think one of the greatest dangers of gossip is the sin or the vice of curiosity, right? We just want to know the latest goings on. And this I think is actually the most common failure when we gossip where it’s just like, “Oh, I just want to know what’s going on. I want to be in the in-crowd. I want to know. I want to be up to date with the latest.” But that’s a disordered desire for knowledge and in this case, interpersonal knowledge, and that is the vice of curiosity.
Cy Kellett:
That’s so fascinating. I’m so poorly educated. I never thought of curiosity as a vice. But I can see that, that makes perfect sense. That there’s times where we want to know things that we don’t really have a right to know, or there’s no purpose for us to know that.
Scott Hefelfinger:
Right. That’s exactly it. It’s what is the purpose? And I want to just qualify. We use curiosity in a very positive way and that’s fine. We mean a kind of natural inquisitiveness. But curiosity, the vice, means a disorder desire for knowledge, because we enjoy learning. We’re built to want to know the truth. We’re built to enjoy that. But is it the right time for that?
Scott Hefelfinger:
When I go online, and this to me is one of the best examples of curiosity, and I click one hyperlink, I go to this article, to that article, I start off just wanting to know the news and 45 minutes later, I think this did not contribute to the good of my overall life. That’s a perfect example of curiosity.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. But you know something? When you check out at the supermarket, all of those magazines, they couldn’t be there if we didn’t have the sin of curiosity. It’s all about what Brad Pitt did or whatever. I don’t have any right to know that or need to know that.
Scott Hefelfinger:
Right. And does it actually contribute to my human good? Most of the time, I would say not at all. Right. There are better things that we ought to be concerned with. And is this knowledge ordered to knowing God better, loving Him better and making Him known and loved? That’s the ultimate criterion.
Cy Kellett:
Well, so again, we go back to the beginning and I thank you so much for this very precise and helpful conversation about detraction, but essentially, this is what I’m taking away from this. If I’m focusing on speaking the truth in love, I’m going to be all right.
Scott Hefelfinger:
I think that’s right. We can correct each other in love. We can fight against bad ideas while doing so in a respectful way. If we imagine that the other person is a friend whom we want to love, we will correct them very differently than if we think of them as an enemy. And so, yes, speaking the truth in love, I think, is what it comes down to.
Cy Kellett:
Well, again, Scott Hefelfinger, thank you so much. Appreciate that lot.
Scott Hefelfinger:
My pleasure.
Cy Kellett:
I love everything you guys do at the Augustine Institute. Maybe tell your children tonight when you see them that they got a better father than my children did.
Scott Hefelfinger:
I doubt that, but thank you for having me. And it’s been a pleasure.
Cy Kellett:
Thank you so much.
Cy Kellett:
Speaking the truth in love. That’s what I’m going to take away from this one. Man, I wish I had had that little phrase. I really do. I wish I had had that phrase when my kids were three and four years old and saying, “But it’s the truth, dad, I’m allowed to tell the truth.” And that’s exactly how my children’s spoke by the way. But it’s detraction to say that. I shouldn’t tell that about them. I’m sorry. I just committed the sin of detraction. Don’t commit that sin, especially online, I think, where we are more and more tempted to actually behave like three and four year olds. There’s something about the anonymity of it maybe that makes us behave badly. And so don’t, don’t do it.
Cy Kellett:
It really is a sin to tell the truth sometimes. To tell the truth is a sin sometimes and we can teach that to our three and four year olds. And we could teach that to the three and four year olds within our own hearts as well. Hey, if you would like to have Dr. Hefelfinger come and talk at your parish, he comes and speaks at parishes, you can find out all about that at the Augustine Institute website. Just check the Augustine website, and you’ll get that information.
Cy Kellett:
Also while you’re there on the internet, why not support us? You can go to givecatholic.com and give us a little money so we can keep doing this. Put a little note there to say that it’s for Focus so that we know what the money was given for and we can direct it to keeping this going, this bi-weekly, maybe soon tri-weekly, podcast going.
Cy Kellett:
A special thank you to Tony in Canada for sending us a question. We appreciate that. If you want to send us a question, send it to focus@catholic.com and don’t forget the five star review, a few nice words about what you’re getting from Focus. Those really help wherever you get your podcasts Apple, Spotify, Stitcher. And if you are on YouTube, if you’re watching on YouTube down here somewhere, there’s some things where you can like and subscribe. I believe there’s a bell involved. Please do all of that because that really helps to grow with the podcast. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. We’ll see you next time right here at the Catholic Answers podcast.