Tue Feb 2, 2010 8:31 am
Mental Reservation
The temptation to deceive when the truth hurts haunts us all at times, hence the advice of Jesus: "But let your statement be, 'Yes, yes ' or 'No, no'; anything beyond these is of evil. (Matt 5:37)
The recent Murphy Report about clergy sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Dublin, Ireland (paragraph 58.19-21) explained that, "Mental reservation is a concept developed and much discussed over the centuries, which permits a churchman knowingly to convey a misleading impression to another person without being guilty of lying." Cardinal Connell explained it as follows: "Well, the general teaching about mental reservation is that you are not permitted to tell a lie. On the other hand, you may be put in a position where you have to answer, and there may be circumstances in which you can use an ambiguous expression realizing that the person who you are talking to will accept an untrue version of whatever it may be -- permitting that to happen, not willing that it happened, that would be lying." (?)
The Irish hierarchy is sinking, and by calling these bishops to Rome, the Pope risks dragging himself into their mire and failing to find his way to higher ground. If he does not condemn "mental reservation" as inappropriate in the context of child abuse, he will not achieve the kind of new beginning that is urgently needed for the Catholic Church in Ireland and beyond.
An internationally recognized authority on clergy sexual abuse, Fr. Thomas Doyle, O.P., has this to add:
"Under the present circumstances some claim that it is morally justifiable to lie in order to protect the reputation of the institutional Church. The lie generally is formulated in either an active form such as denying that a person has sexually abused children, or in a passive form, such as failing to inform a pastor or a parish that an assigned priest or cleric is a known abuser. In either case and under any guise there never fulfills even the most remote circumstances for applying mental reservation. The concept of the “good of the Church” never allows for enabling sexual abuse or covering for sexual abuse since the "church” is hardly limited to the clerics or the hierarchy but includes the abused and the lay faithful susceptible to abuse.
"In short, mental reservation is an unacceptable and unapproved doctrine that some appeal to in order to justify lying.
"The concept of mental reservation is not and never has been included in Canon Law. It has never been officially approved by Catholic Church authority but has been debated in years past by the scholars of the law and of moral theology." (THE DOCTRINE OF MENTAL RESERVATION, Thomas P. Doyle, O.P., J.C.D.)
The short take on this is to listen very very carefully when anyone, especially those in high places, denies wrong doing.
Comments