Honesty and Tact

TO TEACH children to be honest and at the same time to develop in them a feeling for the requirements of tact so that they learn to keep to themselves opinions that might wound or embarrass others is a delicate undertaking.

While a child may occasionally be given to lying, he is, unless perverted, much more inclined to speak the truth. He will blurt it out regardless of place or circumstances. Has he not often won for himself the epithet terrible for no other reason than his disconcerting honesty?

“Godfather, are you going to stay a long time this evening?”

“Oh, just about the usual time. Why?”

“Because, Mamma says there’s just no way of getting you to leave.”

It is necessary but not easy to make the child appreciate where sincerity ends and indiscretion begins; to teach him, without dulling the luster of his honesty, that it is not always good to say everything just because it is true and that politeness and even charity require us to practice self-restraint and not give free rein to the expression of all feelings.

In his play “The Misanthrope,” Moliere gave us the character of Alceste who on the plea of honesty flung the unpleasant truth about others into their very face. He succeeded not in converting them but in bringing shame upon himself and wounding seriously the self-respect of those he insulted with his intemperate frankness.

Always to mean what one says is not the same as saying all one thinks or all one knows.

Human beings are called to live together in society and there can be cases where social life requires that words, those external symbols of thought and feeling, be used outside of strict material meaning or even contrary to it. We should not call such statements lies or we will create a disturbing confusion in the mind of the child who must be thoroughly convinced that a lie is never justifiable.

Much of the difficulty will be cleared away if we make the child understand that the purpose of speech is not only to express the truth but also to foster life in common. We must insist that lying is absolutely forbidden but likewise explain that to defend one’s secrets against the curious, one’s purse against thieves is a legitimate act which need not involve a lie.

Catholic morality is the morality of truth and honesty; but being human and social, it is also the morality of prudence, of justice and of charity.