Chapter 36 of 66
Training in Sincerity (3)
THE best way to encourage a child to be truthful at all times is to use strong positive appeals.
Appeal to personal dignity and pride: General de Lamoriciere used to say, “I shall die without ever having told a lie.” And little Guy de Fontgalland, “I have never lied; I have too great a horror of untruth.”
Beneath the doorway of the Church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, at Rome there is an immense slab of antique marble on which is drawn a face with a wide open mouth—The Mouth of Truth, La bocca della verita. Legend has it that it closes mercilessly on the fingers of liars. The biographer of the Empress Zita relates that when she was a little girl she used to plunge her fingers into the bocca positive of withdrawing them intact because as she explained, “I have never lied.” Is not the reproach, “you are a liar” one of the most devastating?
Appeal to Courage: The story of George Washington and the cherry tree is a classic. We all know it. The father appreciated his son’s courage and praised him with the words: “Your honesty is worth more than the most beautiful cherry tree.”
According to Corneille, to be honest is to be a gentleman:
He who calls himself a gentleman and lies as you do Lies when he says it, and will never be one. Is there vice more vile, is there stain more black More unworthy of a man . . .
- __Appeal to Love for Peace: __Corneille wrote his play “The Liar” to show that he who deceives others is not happy. Once he has entangled himself in the web of deceit and dissimulation, he needs a good memory for all the tales he has invented. What if he were to give himself away, reveal his deceit? That must be a constant worry.
How truly psychological was the answer of the individual who responded to the question, “Are you really telling the truth” with the statement, “I never lie; I am too busy; lying would befuddle me too much, get me too involved.”
Truthfulness is further a guarantee of success. Sincerity is the best policy; we mistrust one who is known as a sly fellow, a dissembler, without integrity. We are not wary of an upright person. To be honest is the best way to be clever.
In general, a frank admission of guilt disarms. Madame Acarie, an outstanding Christian of the seventeenth century often said to her children, “Even if you would turn the whole house topsy-turvy and destroy it, but admit it when questioned, I should pardon you; however, I will never pardon you the smallest lie. Even if you were as tall as the ceiling I would get some women to help me hold you rather than allow a lie to slip by without punishment; nor would the whole world together succeed in getting me to pardon you.”
The conclusion is evident. I will strive to give my children the Gospel principle, “Let your words be yea, yea; nay, nay.”
The example of that upright soldier General de Maudhuy could well be an inspiration for me; he composed the following soldier-prayer for his boys, “My lord, Saint Louis, Sir Bertrand du Guselin et Sir Bayard obtain for me the grace to be brave like you and never to lie either to myself or to others.”