the intention of saying what he knows to be false. If what is not true is said in joke without any intention of lying, and in such a way that ordinary hearers would understand, there is no lie. To speak ironically is not to lie.
An officious lie is a lie of excuse, or a falsehood which, while procuring some advantage, does nobody any harm.
A hurtful lie does an injury to someone.
2. According to the common Catholic teaching, lying of every kind is intrinsically wrong; so that, inasmuch as we may not do evil that good may come of it, we are never justified in telling a lie, not even if the life of another or the safety of the world depended on it. St Augustine, St Thomas, and other Catholic Doctors and theologians gather this doctrine from the teaching of Holy Scripture which in many places seems to forbid all lying as absolutely as it forbids theft or homicide. [1] Pope Innocent III gives expression to this teaching when he says in the Decretals, " Since Holy Scripture prohibits lying even to save the life of another." [2] Reason teaches us the same doctrine. For a lie is something inordinate in itself. It is a perversion of the moral order which the law of nature prescribes should be observed between the mind and the expression of it in our intercourse with others. We are endowed with the faculty of making known our thoughts and feelings to others; right order requires that the external expression should agree with the internal thought, that the machinery should be correctly regulated, that there should be no contradiction between the parts of the same agent, as there is when a lie is told. The moral turpitude which there is in such a contradiction between the mind and its external expression is well seen in the vice of hypocrisy. When a man pretends to be other than he is, there is the same perversion of right order that there is in lying. It is like a monstrosity in nature; the parts of one whole do not fit harmoniously together; they are out of gear and offensive to the view. There is, then, a special virtue of veracity which prescribes that when we have to make known our thoughts and feelings we should do it truthfully, or, in other words, we should make the outward expression agree with the thought. This virtue of veracity exists and is of obligation apart from any right to the truth that there may be in others. Veracity is something which we owe to ourselves as well as to our neighbour. It is true indeed that society is very much interested in sincerity and veracity. Social intercourse is very much hindered by
