Two scenarios to ponder:

No. 1: Edgar is 20 years old and in his third year of university studies. He is trying hard to get into law school and wants desperately to get good grades in all his classes so as to ensure his future success.

Presently he finds himself urgently trying to complete a research paper for one of his courses. Unfortunately, he spent most of Friday and Saturday wasting time with his fraternity buddies and now is faced with too little time to do too much school work. He decides that his future is too important to place in jeopardy over one paper.

Edgar considers himself a generally honest and truthful person. He also knows that he is a fairly good student who does his own work. But in this one case, he believes it would be OK to cheat and copy a paper from the fraternity's files, a paper that was written by another fraternity brother and used in the same course but a couple of years ago and for a different professor.

He doesn't believe he will get caught and his future could depend on this little "white lie." He copies the paper and hands it in under his own signature.

No. 2: Lydia is 16 and thinks her parents still treat her like a baby most of the time. Recently her friends have successfully encouraged her to try cigarettes. She has also experimented with the alcohol and marijuana available at a few of the parties she has attended.

Her mom has told her that she smelled tobacco on her when she came home from being with her friends but Lydia simply said that it was on her clothes because some of her friends' parents were smokers. She actually doesn't enjoy smoking or drinking alcohol, and she knows her mom would ground her, or worse, if she found out.

But she feels that if she doesn't do what "everyone else is doing," she won't be accepted by the girls she hangs with. She feels lying to her mom is justified.

Being a person of truth
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that false witness, perjury, rash judgment, detraction and calumny are all offenses against the Eighth Commandment, "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." Cardinal Roberti's Dictionary of Moral Theology states:

"Lying is intrinsically evil, that is, sinful by its very nature. Hence it is never lawful nor permissible, not even to attain a noble end or to avoid some evil or injury. Whatever is intrinsically evil may not be used as a means to a good end nor can it be justified by a good or noble end" (p. 721).

In fact, being a person of truth is at the very heart of the moral life for both individuals and society. The very definition of a person of character entails that the person can be trusted to express, in their words and actions, what is true. Truth is defined as a correspondence between what exists and our expressions of that reality. Character has been defined as "who you are when no one is looking."

People of integrity don't portray themselves or reality to be anything other than what it is. They do their own work on exams, don't pretend to be something they are not, don't plagiarize, spread rumors, take off their wedding rings when traveling, and they willingly take credit for their sins and failures as well as for their virtue and success. In other words they don't lie to others or themselves.

Lying or 'misspeaking'?
Sadly, truth seems to be more and more a casualty in contemporary society. Apparently, it has become fashionable, even acceptable, when caught in an untruth, to excuse oneself as having "misspoken." Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said in one interview, regarding a statement he made to authorities about his indictment, "I misspoke one sentence, and they have based all of this on one sentence." Similarly, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said that she "misspoke" when she said that she ran from sniper fire when she landed in Bosnia in 1996.

What is society saying about the importance of truth when lying is easily excused, or explained away as having "misspoken" when the truth comes out?

On March 6, 2007, Lewis Libby Jr., the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was convicted of lying to F.B.I. agents and grand jurors investigating the outing of a C.I.A. operative. Ultimately, he was ordered to serve a 30-month prison term for the crime. On July 3, 2007, President Bush commuted Libby's prison sentence.

In his justification of this action, President Bush said in part, "…a jury of citizens weighed all the evidence and listened to all the testimony and found Mr. Libby guilty of perjury and obstructing justice. They argue, correctly, that our entire system of justice relies on people telling the truth. And if a person does not tell the truth, particularly if he serves in government and holds the public trust, he must be held accountable. They say that had Mr. Libby only told the truth, he would have never been indicted in the first place." Yet, despite this admission by the president, still he commuted his sentence.

On May 15, 2008, the Associated Press reported that a 49-year-old Missouri woman was indicted for her alleged role in perpetrating a cruel hoax on the online social network MySpace against a 13-year-old neighbor, Megan Meier. Lori Drew, of suburban St. Louis, allegedly used a MySpace account in the name of someone who didn't exist to convince Megan she was chatting with a 16-year-old boy named Josh. Megan hanged herself at home in October 2006, allegedly after receiving a dozen or more cruel messages, including one stating the world would be better off without her. Even if Lori Drew was trying to protect her daughter from false rumors, as she has protested, can her lying be justified?

The moral question for Christians is: What does this say about the importance of telling the truth? Ultimately, all lies do violence to others. Relationships that are authentic, like marriages and friendships, indeed, even society itself, can only be built on a commitment to truth which is the most solid foundation for trust.

We can only trust our government our families and friends, and ultimately ourselves when we are truthful to one another and to ourselves. Every addict seeking recovery takes the step of "owning their addiction." They ultimately have to leave behind every excuse to justify their behavior and admit the truth to themselves and others, they are an addict.

The ancient Greeks taught that the foundation of all wisdom was summed up in the command, "Know yourself." Honesty with others is built on transparency with self. The compromises being made by Edgar and Lydia in the scenarios presented earlier will eat away at their character and make it less and less likely that they will be the kind of person they want to be, that they indeed think themselves to be. What happens to society when truth becomes the victim of expediency?

This leads to the second application of the eighth commandment. Does the Eighth Commandment only apply to individuals? What about governments, even business? In fact, the Eighth Commandment does challenge lies wherever they may be and however widely they are accepted. Social lies can be even more debilitating that personal ones.

For example, the Holocaust was the result of terrible lies, perpetuated by the Nazi regime of Germany and accepted by many people that the Jewish people, along with some other "undesirable" minorities, were responsible for the world's economic and social problems and were therefore less worthy of human rights, including the right to life, than others. Even in the contemporary world, racists of all stripes, including white supremacists, spread the lie that all people are not equal.

But there can be other lies that are destructive and difficult to unmask because they are hidden in plain sight. Let's look at three examples of these: the growing phenomenon of allowing businesses to characterize human persons as "resources or capital"; the use of racial epithets; and finally the desire to make "exclusive male language" normative.

Characterizing humans
1) Wikipedia defines human resources as "a term with which many organizations describe the combination of traditionally administrative personnel functions with performance, Employee Relations and resource planning. The original usage derives from political economy and economics."

There was a time when this office was called the "personnel department." But when the business world decided to redefine persons as "resources" and "capital," they intentionally reduced people to the level of commodities inseparable from all the other resources needed by business, like paper clips, staplers, technology, copiers, etc. Reducing personnel to "resources" made it easier to deal with employees as "things" rather than as persons. Isn't it easier to say, "downsizing resources" than "firing personnel"? Could this be one reason why it has become more and more difficult for employees to acquire the benefits like health care that should be part of their employment packages?

Pope Leo XIII made it clear in the first social encyclical of the Church, Rerum Novarum, that it was wrong for business to treat employees like commodities. Unfortunately the ideology of "human resources" has crept its way even into every corner of society, such that it is not uncommon to find a human resource office in institutions like hospitals and universities, even Catholic ones.

The very prophetic nature of the Church should challenge the lie hidden in this term and call for its removal. Wouldn't it be more correct for the Church and her institutions to preach the truth about the dignity of the person by returning to the term "personnel"? Is this an example of the world evangelizing the Church rather than the other way around? Should Christians let economics and business redefine the nature of the human person, rather than Scripture where the truth is clear that persons are "the image of God"?

The truth of the Gospel of Life at the heart of the Church's pro-life message demands, among other things, that people be seen and recognized as persons, not as "resources" from the moment of conception and throughout their lives. Neither human embryos nor employees are simply "resources" at the disposal of society.

The derogatory I-word
2) The use of racial epithets, is one of the ugliest of all the lies throughout the history of humankind. Racial epithets should not be tolerated in society, and certainly not in Catholic homes or schools. The use of derogatory terms to characterize persons of specific ethnic and cultural backgrounds is contrary to everything a Christian is called to be.

One of the newest racial slurs is the usage of the term "illegals" that has crept into our society. All too often one hears talk show pundits and their callers grousing about the "illegals" that are in the country. The use of the term in such a way not only is poor grammar, since the word is an adjective, not a noun, but is not Christian since it is also a reduction of persons to things. A human being is never an "adjective" but a subject.

Describing undocumented people as "persons in the country illegally" at least recognizes the fact that we are talking about people, and accords them some of the dignity afforded them by their Creator, nor does it prevent further discussion about how to approach the issue of illegal immigration. The use of the "i" word as a noun to describe people can never be justified in the Christian context. Christians must never buy into any term that by its nature denigrates others by defining them by a characteristic. Doing so lies about who they are.

Appropriate inclusive language
3) Lastly, insistence by some on using male terms exclusively to describe humanity also needs to be challenged. The Church has come to understand that neither the European culture nor the white race is acceptable as the absolute norm for measuring the value of persons, peoples or cultures.

In her 20th century social encyclicals, the Church condemned many of the evils that accompanied the colonization and neo-colonization of the non-European world. Today's Church understands the difference between the essential nature of the universal truth of Christ's Word and the accidental nature of the cultural roots of its missionaries.

Similarly, to insist that the word "men" means "everyone" in every culture or even in any culture is nothing more than a social convention, and holds no absolute meaning. The equality of women and men is clearly the Christian norm. Insisting that male pronouns are essential or preferred in every case, where clearly men and women are meant, sets a tone, even if unintended, for furthering "male" as a norm. If "men" really does mean "men and women," then males shouldn't be upset or even surprised if women take over all the restrooms in public venues.

Appropriate use of inclusive, rather than exclusive language, is not ideological, nor is it the adoption of a "politically correct" or any other type of hidden agenda. Quite the contrary, the use of appropriate inclusive language should be every Christian's preference because it acknowledges the presence of women and men and everyone's essential dignity as having been created in the image of God.

Conclusion
The Eighth Commandment needs to be taken seriously. It challenges us to be individuals of integrity and honesty, and it challenges society in its language and actions to acknowledge the truth about the dignity of persons. Honesty needs to be applied in our personal lives and it needs to be applied in our society. Indeed, as Jesus says in the Gospel of John (8:32): "The truth will set you free."

Vincentian Father Richard Benson is academic dean and professor of moral theology at St. John's Seminary, Camarillo. His column appears monthly in The Tidings.