Monday, May 28, 2012

Flying in the face of truth


My moral theology class wanted to hear stories about my time in the Oxford movement and I had promised to spend some time doing just that. Nevertheless they did have an exam the next day and I wanted to be sure that they were able to use technical terms properly. So I opened the class as follows:

But first - business - economy, class, is the term from moral theology to discuss the telling of a falsehood. It is distinguished from lying because it is sometimes held that the telling of a falsehood may not be wrong - i.e. a lie - but still a falsehood hence economy. This is why Newman has a discussion in an appendix to the Apologia on the Economy. He is not discussing the balance of trade or anything like that.