A. Defaming by Charge of a False Crime

253. About the first I say he must restore his reputation by retracting what he charged against him, because otherwise he does not keep justice by returning to his neighbor what is his neighbor’s own - and retracting it publicly if he charged it publicly.

254. The contrary seems to be the case, because it seems he should be more zealous for his own reputation than another’s; but he could not, by retraction of his own word, return the other his reputation without defaming himself.

255. I reply: as I said [d.15 q.2 n.200] to the sixth argument in the first question about restitution, that goods of the body or external goods are only to be loved in their order to the good of the soul and to God, and this is not so save as they could justly belong to him who loves them. And therefore, just as I said about love of one’s own bodily life, so do I say here about love of one’s own reputation, that anyone to whom reputation can justly belong ought to love it more than the reputation of another to whom it can also belong. But if it can belong to him only unjustly and to the other justly, he should love reputation for the other, to whom it justly belongs, rather than for himself, to whom it unjustly belongs.

256. And so it is here: for reputation justly belongs to the one accused of a false crime, and unjustly belongs, after such accusation, to the accuser - not only because he has lied in the accusation but because he has publicly lied, wherein he has sufficiently and radically defamed himself. And therefore, after showing the innocence directly of the other (to whom in this matter he is bound), and his own guiltiness indirectly, he does not then properly defame itself but does then remove the false praise, of which, after the lying accusation, he is unworthy.

257. An example: someone commits fornication, with three seeing it; when they presently accuse him of the crime, they do not defame him, but he himself has defamed himself in that public deed; for, in brief, by committing any crime whatever publicly, he incurs harm to his dignity and thus loses his reputation, as far as it depends on him. Nor does the publication afterwards, by which that harm is made known, take away his reputation, but only makes come to public attention more what from the first was, by the nature of the act, simply public.

258. And if you ask, “someone does not charge such crime against another in public, but murmurs it and speaks of it indiscreetly, or tells it in the presence of many yet not as something certainly known to him but that he so heard - is he bound to make restitution?” I reply: “Therefore is trust rare, for many speak much.”From the anonymous ‘Sayings of Cato’ I n.13 (Baehrens ed., Poetae Latini Minores III, Leipzig 1881) ³³ And therefore he who says he only heard, unless he show from his manner of speaking some greater certitude than that of common report, does not, by the nature of his act, take from the opinion of others the person’s reputation, because if they firmly conceive the person being talked about to be criminal, they are shallow, because “he who believes quickly is shallow in heart,” Ecclesiasticus 19.4.

259. However, because one should beware of scandalizing the weak, according to the remark of Paul I Corinthians 8.13, “If I scandalize my neighbor, I will not eat meat forever,” and there are many weak like this, shallow in believing evils; therefore, it is dangerous in their presence to relate to them things like this heard by report. And if it is done in an evil spirit, namely by harming him whom one’s speech is about, it is not easy to excuse it of being against charity, and consequently a mortal sin. But if it is done by inadvertence in their presence, it is hard for it to surpass the category of venial sin, because the tongue is in a slippery place, and “he who offends not in word is a perfect man,” James 3.2.