Espionage

[ardillacid]

Hi, I was wondering about the morality of espionage and undercover police work. Both require the spy/cop to live a life of deception and shady work, so how does the Church view this work?

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='notardillacid' post='1640160' date='Aug 28 2008, 12:41 AM']Hi, I was wondering about the morality of espionage and undercover police work. Both require the spy/cop to live a life of deception and shady work, so how does the Church view this work?[/quote]
This is an interesting question. A lie is always wrong, and since we are not to sin for any reason, we can't lie.

The Church does allow "moral evasion." Watch "The Scarlet and the Black" and you'll get an idea what this means. We can allow a person to be deceived without really doing the deception ourselves, in other words, we can allow a person to perceive things incorrectly, so long as we're not morally bound to straighten out their perception (for instance, if the person was a parent or authority or someone we should correct out of justice). There's a story about a woman who did this in WWII. She built a large crib in her attack and hid allied soldiers in it if they would come to her safehouse needing protection. When the Nazis would come to the door, she would let them assume these were here children. If they asked "are these men related to you?" or "how do you know these men?" or a similar question, she replied, "I've known them since they were in the crib," allowing the Nazis to perceive something that wasn't entirely accurate without actually lying.

So espionage can be done morally, but I doubt the US government practices it. Moral evasion comes in handy, though. If someone asks you about a secret you know, you can respond, "I can't say," which is an expression in English for "I don't know," but literally doesn't actually mean "I don't know," it means "I can't say." Indeed, if it's a secret, it would be perfectly valid to tell someone you can't say (when you mean that you could, but won't) and let them assume that you don't know anything.

It would be very difficult to be involved in undercover work or espionage programs the way most governments run them today.

I hope this helps.

God bless,

Micah