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Author Topic: What is gossip?  (Read 1528 times)

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Re: What is gossip?
« Reply #5 on: July 15, 2025, 02:15:03 PM »
My town has one, and only one Café. I never go there...the mostly senior customers search for gossip topics. "Coffee Row", they call it. The source of much misinformation. Nothing much happens in town, so any activity is discussed and imaginations have free rein. Reality gets twisted, and the Prots keep grudges. Gossip is sinful for the most part. We will have to render account for every idle word!
Anyway, here's a very short story about the evil of "Calumny".
*****
http://catholicapologetics.info/morality/general/btongue.htm

Rufinus of Aquilea relates the following incident: Some brothers had been sent by their monastery to visit hermits living here and there in the desert. They came first to an elderly anchorite who gave them sincere and cordial hospitality. To relieve his road-weary visitors, he resolved to treat them as well as he could and openheartedly offer them all he had. Poverty can be generous in its way, not in what it gives but in the dispositions with which it gives. The old man wanted to show this religious magnificence so that his guests, seeing his liberality, would be at ease and freely receive what his charity was not embarrassed to give them. They said evening prayers after a very congenial supper, and then the old man bedded down his guests while he went to rest in another room.

To bring on drowsiness, our travelers began to talk. And one of them said, "What do you think? These hermits eat better than we do in our monastery... ". The old man heard all these remarks. He was hurt because his guests were returning his kindness with calumny, but he kept silence. At dawn the next morning, the brothers said they were going to go and visit another hermit As he bid them goodbye, the old man said to them, "Give my greetings to the hermit who is my dear friend, and tell him simply this: 'Take care not to sprinkle the oil.'"

The brothers repeated his message faithfully. The other hermit understood the recommendation at once, and he served his guests an extremely frugal table, the main meal consisting in dry bread, salt and a little vinegar: that was the substance of the banquet. Soon tiring of such cold hospitality, our travelers moved out that very night with as little fanfare as possible. (22)

(22) Rufinus of Aquilea, Pelagius, Book 10, No. 5.

My friends, stop slandering those who treat you with kindness. Learn to stop backbiting their generosity..."


...But backbiting is so sweet!' you say. Yes, but not backbiting is sweeter still..."

***
Be kind, pray.
I never heard this story before!  Thank you for sharing! 

Re: What is gossip?
« Reply #6 on: July 16, 2025, 07:14:08 AM »
This is entirely secular, but I recall in second grade, in response to an untrue rumor and hurtful  gossip about a certain girl, everyone in my class had to write 25x for homework, 

“Is it kind?
Is it true?
What if it were 
said of you?”  


Offline Twice dyed

  • Supporter
St John Bosco on gossip.
« Reply #7 on: July 16, 2025, 10:32:35 AM »
That 'secular' saying has a good moral, I like it. I notice the Manitoba gov't web site dedicates 4 pages about the evils of gossip, and pagan of course, ...but even they conclude gossiping is bad for morale/ community . 

There's that story about some lady who went to St John Bosco (?) for confession. So she confessed sins of detraction, slander etc. St. John Bosco then told her she would have a penance , but in two parts. First he told her to get a pillow and go on a hill and throw all the feathers of the pillow to the wind.  So the woman was really wondering: 'what a strange penance!??' Of course she obeyed our saint. 
When she returned to our Saint  , she then asked him ' Now what is the second part?  St. John Bosco told her: 'Now  you go and pick them up!'

~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~

Hey! These feathers even have "EYES"  ☆

Re: What is gossip?
« Reply #8 on: July 16, 2025, 11:21:08 AM »
It depends on whether the information you shared was public/common knowledge or necessary for some reason to mention. 

If not, it probably was gossip.  I think the idea is that if you share such information it should be done without mentioning the person's actual name if possible because it could detract from his good name.

Saint Francis de Sales in his Introduction to the Devout Life has several sections discussing what is appropriate and not good in conversations.  I highly recommend reading it if you have time.

Here is a link to where you can read it online for free:

https://archive.org/details/IntroductionToTheDevoutLife
My favourite religious book AMDGJM. God bless you!!

Re: What is gossip?
« Reply #9 on: July 16, 2025, 01:35:13 PM »
One thing that "sealed the deal" for me in embracing Catholicism was the teaching on detraction, viz. revealing unflattering but true facts, hitherto unknown, about someone.  I'd never heard this before in the Protestant environment in which I was raised.  Some people are in the height of their glory when they can relate an unflattering, hurtful truth about someone else.  It's a sin against the Fifth Commandment, and can be a very grave one.