Fr. Walter Ciszek SJ : One More Example of the Morality of 'Undercover Exposes'

I have covered the whole "lying" while working undercover issue before but it looks like I may have indeed struck gold in finding an example which shows how realistically, that telling a lie in certain circumstances, such as in cases of saving souls while facing possible death or while saving lives is not a sin.  I found this great summary on A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics of Fr. Walter Ciszek's life.

From Veneremurcernui:

"I was reading the story of Fr. Walter Ciszek, SJ last night.  He was an American Jesuit who spent 15 years in the ‘Gulag Archipelago.’  He was in Poland in 1939, ministering to Polish Catholics.  When the Russians invaded, he realized he could finally achieve his dream of ministering to Russians.  The Russians, of course, had been very thoroughly doing everything in their power to kill or imprison every Orthodox or Catholic priest they could identify, destroying churches, etc, and essentially driving the Faith totally  underground – where it could persist at all.  So, Fr. Ciszek had a fake identity created so he could enter Russia as a Polish laborer to work in the factories in the Urals and minister to the Poles and Russians there.  He did this with the approval of his religious superiors and the Cardinal Archbishop of Lvov.  They all knew fake papers had to be obtained in order to enter Russia.  If he and his White Russian priest partner tried to enter Russia openly as priests they would likely be shot on the spot.

When presenting himself to the Russian work agency looking for laborers for the factories in Poland, he misrepresented himself, of course, saying he was a Polish widower.  His compatriot did this, as well.  His religious superior and the Cardinal Archbishop approved of this.  The entire basis of what was to be a 1 year period of service to Russians (but wound up being 23 years in and out of prison) was based on a forged identity – just like Lila Rose and O’Keefe.  He had to lie repeatedly in the furtherance of this mission, and all his superiors including the Cardinal knew this.  Fr. Ciszek, whose cause for canonization is underway, does not express any ‘regrets’ over this sin he committed, nor does he report that his superiors or the Cardinal Archbishop had any moral qualms about his repeated acts of lying."

In my post Realism vs. Idealism, Dr. Peter Kreeft addresses the moral idealists legitimate but misguided objections to Live Action's methods but points out how they are wrong. 

Dr. Peter Kreeft points out: 

"The closest analogy I can think of to Live Action’s expose of Planned Parenthood is spying. If Live Action is wrong, then so is all spying, including spying out the Nazis’ atomic bomb projects and saving the world from a nuclear holocaust.

If you say that morality changes in wartime, I reply that police ‘sting’ operations are an example of legitimate peacetime spying. An undercover policeman saves children from becoming drug addicts by pretending to be a drug customer to expose the drug dealer. Is this pretending ‘lying’ or not? I don’t much care, except as a professional philosopher and logician. I do much care that the ‘sting’ works and my kids are protected. Do you care more about protecting your own moral correctness than protecting your kids’ lives?

If lying is always wrong, then it is wrong to lie to a nuclear terrorist (the “ticking time bomb” scenario) to elicit from him where he hid the nuclear bomb that in one hour will kill millions if it is not found and defused. The most reasonable response to the “no lying” legalist here is “You gotta be kidding”—or something less kind than that. Thomas Aquinas said that even torture is sometimes justified; in emergency situations like that; if torture, then a fortiori lying."

If 'undercover exposes' are immoral and unjustified then how in the Church's eyes could a Catholic ethically or/and morally be allowed to be a policeman?  Plus, as the earlier version of the Catechism pointed out there are people who do not have a right to the truth.  But, after the 'undercover exposes' have ended it is more probable than not that the person who was once not privy to the truth will be privy to the truth after the investigation is over.  

Realism vs Idealism

In a recent post I raised the question Is It Ever Morally Licit to Lie? with regard to the Lila Rose: Live Action debate occurring across the Catholic blogosphere.  The debate has continued on.  I recently came across an article by Dr. Peter Kreeft which takes up the same question.  He pins the realist point of view versus the idealist point of view.

Here is his article:

When I talk about abortion, I often surprise most of my audience, even some prolifers, by saying that not only is abortion always evil but that it is not a “complex issue,” that deep down we all know that it is evil; that Mother Teresa is very clearly right when she says “If abortion isn’t wrong, nothing is wrong.”

I want to say a similar thing about Live Action: not only (1) that its actions were right but (2) that they were very clearly right.

An immediate objection arises to my second point. If it was very clearly right, why do some sincere and intelligent pro-lifers insist that it was wrong?

This is not surprising, for many sincere and intelligent people disagree with the even more obvious truth that abortion is always wrong. Not all pro-choicers are insincere or stupid. Some are both sincere and intelligent, like the pro-lifers who disagreed with Live Action.

The controversy about Live Action probably is rooted in a controversy about method in ethics, specifically about which should have priority, (1) clear definitions of general moral principles and valid logical reasoning from them (“casuistry”) or (2) moral experience, instinctive moral judgments about concrete situations by our innate moral common sense. I think it is (2) and I think these critics think it is (1). I think they are so (rightly) afraid of moral relativism that they have (wrongly) fallen into moral legalism.

I teach Logic, I have written a Logic textbook, and I value logic very highly. On some other occasion I may take the time to argue logically against the serious arguments of the pro-life critics of Live Action, and about the proper definition of “lying.” But in this short piece I want to appeal to something that I think is prior in importance, in clarity, and in time, namely our immediate, intuitive moral experience. For that is what I find missing in their arguments.

The question of method in moral reasoning has a long and heavy history. Beginning with Ockham (Nominalism), exacerbated by Descartes (Rationalism), and even more by Kant (his ‘Copernican revolution in philosophy’), our concept of ‘reason’ has been increasingly separated from experience and narrowed to something more and more resembling what computers do. The Aristotelian and Thomistic (and, more generally, pre-modern) meaning of ‘reason’ is broader. It had to be, to justify the definition of man as ‘the rational animal.’ It included the immediate, intuitive understanding (‘the first act of the mind’ in Aristotelian-Scholastic logic) and intuitive judgment (‘the second act of the mind’) as well as inductive or deductive reasoning (‘the third act of the mind’).

CONTINUED

Is it Ever Morally Licit to Lie?

Is it ever morally licit to lie?  As Christians we are taught that it is never okay to lie but is that really true?  We know that in the scriptures Jesus tells us that telling a lie is a sin but does he ever let us know that telling a lie is morally acceptable or even considered good in God's eyes?  For instance if a person is a part of a sting operation, such as the type that Lila Rose has been participating in, is it morally permissible to lie in order to catch a criminal?  Is it morally permissible for a person to lie in order to save a person's life, like those who lied to Nazis during World World II?  Do you think lying in these types of circumstances will harm your soul?  Or do you think that God would look upon you with favor since you saved or at least were trying to save an individual's life?  Even though lying may be acceptable in these circumstances do you think that taking part in confession would be in order?  Here are a couple Bible passages which show individuals lying for good reason:

Exodus 1: 15-20

¹⁵ The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, ¹⁶ “When you are helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.” ¹⁷ The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live. ¹⁸ Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, “Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?”

 ¹⁹ The midwives answered Pharaoh, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.”

 ²⁰ So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. ²¹ And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.

Joshua 2:2-14

 ² The king of Jericho was told, “Look, some of the Israelites have come here tonight to spy out the land.” ³ So the king of Jericho sent this message to Rahab: “Bring out the men who came to you and entered your house, because they have come to spy out the whole land.”

 ⁴ But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them. She said, “Yes, the men came to me, but I did not know where they had come from. ⁵ At dusk, when it was time to close the city gate, they left. I don’t know which way they went. Go after them quickly. You may catch up with them.” ⁶ (But she had taken them up to the roof and hidden them under the stalks of flax she had laid out on the roof.) ⁷ So the men set out in pursuit of the spies on the road that leads to the fords of the Jordan, and as soon as the pursuers had gone out, the gate was shut.

⁸ Before the spies lay down for the night, she went up on the roof ⁹ and said to them, “I know that the LORD has given you this land and that a great fear of you has fallen on us, so that all who live in this country are melting in fear because of you. ¹⁰ We have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amorites east of the Jordan, whom you completely destroyed. ¹¹ When we heard of it, our hearts melted in fear and everyone’s courage failed because of you, for the LORD your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below.

 ¹² “Now then, please swear to me by the LORD that you will show kindness to my family, because I have shown kindness to you. Give me a sure sign ¹³ that you will spare the lives of my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them—and that you will save us from death.”

 ¹⁴ “Our lives for your lives!” the men assured her. “If you don’t tell what we are doing, we will treat you kindly and faithfully when the LORD gives us the land.”

Since in one passage God was kind to the midwives, people multiplied and the other passage shows how Rahab believes in God and is delivered when Jericho is attacked one might conclude that it is morally licit to lie in some circumstances, albeit not the norm.