2. An officious or polite lie is one that is useful for someone and
Sin with one, or harms one to a greater or lesser degree regarding any other temporal good, the gravity of the lie is weighed according to the good lost, so that it is more or less grave on this score, and generally every such lie that deliberately asserts what is not known to be such or the opposite of what is known to be true is a mortal sin. It is simply forbidden by the precept: "Do not bear false witness against your neighbor." This refers not just to testimony in court, but to any deliberate assertion of something that is not known or is the opposite of what is known. Hence, whoever says the opposite of what he or she knows to be true with the intention of deceiving the person spoken to or of giving misinformation about the person spoken of, and by so speaking injures the one addressed or spoken about, is bearing false witness against a neighbor. Whether lack of deliberation excuses one from guilt will be treated in the following question.
2. An officious or polite lie is one that is useful for someone and hurts no one.
3. A jocose lie is a story which all hearers know is not true; neither is it told as something true, nor are those who hear it deceived; neither does the speaker intend to deceive, nor are the words he uses of themselves deceptive, because it is not the sort of tale that is apt to be believed by those who hear it, but rather it is recognized as something told without the purpose of convincing one of its verity. Similarly a lie is jocose when someone jokingly intends to deceive in such a way that the victim is truly deceived but not as regards something that would inflict any great harm and where those who play the joke know him to be deceived. And one can be formally joking, as Augustine says was the case with the lie of Joseph, who truly wished to deceive his brothers in saying: "You are spies," etc., though he himself, because he knew the truth, could have been joking about the deception and fear which they suffered; and others also, if they had known the truth and finally recognized that this was not said seriously, they too could have joked about this.
As for these two lies, namely, the polite and jocose, it is commonly conceded that neither sort is a mortal sin in imperfect men, because neither of itself violates charity, nor do they militate against anything necessary to the status of the persons who tell such lies.
[Re states of perfection] But some claim both of these lies are mortal sins in the perfect [Le., those who are in an exalted position or state of perfection], because they destroy the authority such are entitled to, and they demean their status itself as well as scandalizing those who hear them tell such lies.
But against this, others argue that no circumstance makes something that is venial for one a mortal sin in another unless the one is