In a recent episode of Scott Hahn’s The Road to Emmaus podcast, Fr Gregory Pine OP defended the position that it is never permissible to lie. The two presenters briefly discussed the popular hypothetical involving a Gestapo officer showing up at your door during the Second World War. You are hiding several Jews in your basement, and the officer asks you point blank if this is the case. What should you do?
In the podcast discussion, Fr Pine articulated his view that in this situation your only moral recourse is to try to use evasive language “in an artful way”. Here Fr Pine follows St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas in arguing that in normal speech, that is, speech not involving joking, hyperbole, metaphor or the like, it is never acceptable to tell a deliberate falsehood, even if doing so might save a person’s life. According to Pine, therefore, the decision to falsely tell the Gestapo, “No, sir, there aren’t any Jews in this house,” would constitute a venial sin.
