Well, if at the time you make the statement you believed it to be venial sin but did it anyway, then you did in fact commit a venial sin ... due to your subjective belief it was a sin and doing it regardless. If you were undecided or up in the air about it, then if you apply the principles of probabilism, then you may not have sinned.
Objectively, however, I would consider this a legitimate mental reservation. Whether it was because you didn't have time or even were too lazy to dig them out, your statement that they would not be AVAILABLE until the afternoon was a factually true statement. You may have committed a venial sin or at least imperfection / fault against charity if you didn't assist the customer out of laziness (vs. being busy with other duties that took priority).
So, an approved moral theology book about lying that was posted here brings up a very similar scenario of mental reservation. There's a man selling fish at a market, but he's keeping some back in his van for his family. After he sells the last one he has out for sale, someone comes up to him and asks, "Do you have more fish?" So the man responds "No" ... even though he does have more. So, the context of that statement is ... Do you have more fish FOR SALE? This man has no reasonable expectation nor any right to know the absolute truth, namely, that you do have some but they're simply not for sale.
If you told the guy you had more in your van, perhaps he harasses you or even goes to steal our fish, etc.
I think that there has been too much a focus in terms of lying about whether the proposition is materially or objectively correct or true (in some absolute sense) so that the formal aspect of the sin can be lost.
So, if Bishop Williamson is teaching class and utters the proposition "2+2=5", that's materially a false proposition. But is it a lie, formally speaking? No. He says that as an example of a falsehood. Or people often say the OPPOSITE of what is true in the expression referred to as sarcasm, or in satire. Are those lies, simply because the air generated by the individual's mouth put words together that happened to not be true?
So, what, then, is the formal essence of lying. Lying consists of implanting some THOUGHT in your audience's mind that is contrary to objective truth ... WHEN THE INDIVIDUAL HAS A RIGHT TO KNOW THAT TRUTH.
So, for instance, the Jesuitical view of "mental reservation" allows you to say stuff with the deliberate intent that the individual you're speaking to gets a false proposition in their mind, while keeping the sentence or sentences materially correct. Very often mental reservation consists of statements that are true with some missing causal link. So, for instance, you get to work late. Your boss asks you why you're late, and you say, "One of my kids is sick." Now, that may in fact be true ... but it had absolutely nothing to do with WHY you're late. You were late just because you were a bit slow and lazy getting ready that morning. So the answer is MATERIALLY correct, but you clearly said it with the intent that your boss would interpret the statement as meaning that you were late BECAUSE of a sick child, which a boss would be inclined to let slide, vs. if you told him the absolute truth that you were just being kindof lazy that morning.
Similarly, a parent might ask a child. "Did you clean your room?" And the child responds, "Yes, I cleaned my room." ... leaving out the qualifier of "last month." It is in fact true that the child cleaned his room ... a month ago. But clearly the INTENT of the parent was to find out whether you had RECENTLY cleaned your room and that it is in a clean state at the time of the interrogation. You know that's what the parent wants to know, so you wordsmith some sentence that's materially true, but with the deliberate intention that the parent get the WRONG answer to the question they truly intended to ask. Now, a parent has a right to know the answer to that question, so you lied. Despite the words being technically accurate, you formally lied to your parent and committed a sin. Even the proponents of mental reservation would admit this, that you can't use it when the individual to whom you're communicating false information has a right in justice or in charity to know the truth.
So if one focuses less on the material words themselves, some of those classic "dilemmas" about lying pretty much vaporize. Someone comes to your home looking for someone who's being unjustly sought for execution. Clearly that individual has NO RIGHT WHATSOEVER to that information, so you commit no sin if you say, "No, he's not here." If you start to equivocate looking for the right mental reservation also, you could easily give it away that you're trying to hide something and inspire the perpetrator to thoroughly search your home, whereas if you give a confident answer that he accepts, he could just move along. So in a sense, in that type of scenario, you have a moral obligation NOT to share the truth with such an individual and there's nothing wrong with falsehood entering that individual's mind. Similarly with a priest and the Confessional seal, if someone interrogates the priest about the contents of someone's Confession, the priest has grave obligation to NOT share this truth with the individual.
So the formal aspect of lying is all about whether some individual has a RIGHT to the truth, in justice and/or in charity. "Do I look fat in this dress?" or "Does this blouse make me look ugly?" Well, in charity you may be obliged to withhold the ugly truth, lest you offend the person. But, then, if the person truly does look hideous, charity and justice may warrant finding a very delicate way of persuading her to change. Of course, you may utter the mental reservation, "You're beautiful." ... where you mean, generally speaking, or even just spiritually ... but that is NOT what the person is inquiring about, and YOU KNOW IT. So you can wordsmith all you want, you're still putting something into the individual's mind that's incorrect, and that's your intention ... so it matters little how you break wind and make airwaves with your mouth, tongue, and diaphragm.
For those scrupulous about the material aspect of lying, there's always the universal mental reservation of "... as far as you're concerned." "I have no more fish" ... as far as you're concerned and have any right to know, much less is there a right for you to have possession of this fish. Let's say this is not in Confession and you can't use the seal as your reason and that you're friends with a guy who was engaging in some sinful behavior, let's say consorting with prostitutes. At some point some other guy comes up and asks you, "So is he going to prostitutes?" That individual asking has no right to the information, and you'd be committing the sin of detraction if you revealed the truth. At the same time, hemming and hawing like, "I cannot say." might as well be, "If I tell you, it would be detraction." ... which basically means, "Why, yes, yes he is." So you can just without any scruple whatsoever answer, "No, he's not." [as far as you're concerned and are permitted to know]. This individual walking away with the false proposition in his head of "He's not going to prostitutes." is precisely the end result required by justice and charity, so that is what you did by firmly answering no. Absolutely speaking it's a false proposition in his mind, but he's not permitted to have the correct proposition in his mind. Now, the reason I bring up this type of scenario is to set up the contrast with the following. So, let's now say the guy is married and his WIFE comes up to you and asks the same question, "Is he seeing prostitutes?" in that case, since she has a right to know, for various reasons, since she's being deprived in justice of something owed to her and also even because it might impact her health (catching various STDs), so in that case you must answer with the truth. "Yes, I'm afraid he is. I'm so sorry." In that second scenario, NOW it would be a lie to say, "No" ... as far as you're concerned. On the contrary, it most certainly DOES concern her, i.e. she has a right to know this truth, so that mentally-reserved part is actually a complete lie, and you deprived her of knowledge that she had a right to in justice.
So, IMO, we need to focus less on the air that we move to make sounds, or the pen that we use to write words and more on the formal aspect of lying, which can be defined as deliberately putting into the head of someone who has a right to know the truth a proposition that contradicts the truth. When the individual has a right, in justice or charity, to know the truth, your depriving them of that right would be a sin against justice and/or charity, no different than stealing something that belongs to them, or better, refusing to hand something of theirs to them when asked to do so. If you found $100 on a table, and the owner of it comes to ask you for it, you'd commit a sin refusing to hand it over. If you found $100 on a table, and someone you know is NOT the owner of it and does NOT have a right to it asks you for it, and you hand it over, you actually commit a sin by handing it over. So in the first case you commit sin by NOT handing it over, and in the second you commit a sin BY handing it over. It depends on who has the rights to it. That's the essence of lying, formally speaking, and not so much material propositions.
Topic: How to avoid lying? (Read 5319 times)