Mental Reservation

"Lying without lying". It just keeps getting worse.

From The Irish Times...

One of the most fascinating discoveries in the Dublin Archdiocese report [which revealed that the Catholic Church and the Irish police colluded in covering up decades of child sex abuse by priests in Dublin] was that of the concept of “mental reservation” which allows clerics to mislead people without believing they are lying.

According to the Commission of Investigation report, “mental reservation is a concept developed and much discussed over the centuries, which permits a church man knowingly to convey a misleading impression to another person without being guilty of lying”.

It gives an example. “John calls to the parish priest to make a complaint about the behaviour of one of his clerics. The parish priest sees him coming but does not want to see him because he considers John to be a troublemaker. He sends another of his clerics to answer the door. John asks the cleric if the parish priest is in. The cleric replies that he is not.”

The commission added: “This is clearly untrue but in the Church’s view it is not a lie because, when the cleric told John that the parish priest was not in, he mentally reserved the words '…to you’.”