He who does moral evil offends in the sight of God and forfeits God’s esteem and friendship.  But it does not follow that he should also forfeit the esteem of his fellow-men.  The latter evil is nothing compared with the first; but it is a great misfortune nevertheless.  If a man’s private iniquity is something that concerns himself and his God, to the exclusion of all others, then whosoever presumes to judge and condemn him trespasses on forbidden ground, and is open to judgment and condemnation himself before his Maker.

All do not live in stone mansions who throw stones.  If there is a mote in the neighbor’s eye, perhaps there is a very large piece of timber in your own.  Great zeal in belaboring the neighbor for his faults will not lessen your own, nor make you appear an angel of light before God when you are something very different.  If you employed this same zeal towards yourself, you would obtain more consoling results, for charity begins at home.  One learns more examining one’s own conscience than dissecting and flaying others alive.

It may be objected that since detraction deals with secret sins, if the facts related are of public notoriety, there is no wrong in speaking of them, for you cannot vilify one who is already vilified.  This is true; and then, again, it depends.  First, these faults must be of public notoriety.  A judicial sentence may make them such, but the fact that some, many, or a great many know and speak of them will not do it.  The public is everybody, or nearly everybody.  Do not take your friends for the public, when they are only a fraction thereof.  If you do you will find out oftener than it is pleasant that your sins of detraction are sins of slander; for rumors are very frequently based on nothing more substantial than lies or distorted and exaggerated facts set afloat by a calumniator.

Even when a person has justly forfeited, and publicly, the consideration of his fellowmen, and it is not, therefore, injurious to his character to speak of his evil ways, justice may not be offended, but charity may be, and grievously.  It is a sin, an uncharity, to harp on one’s faults in a spirit of spite, or with the cruel desire to maintain his dishonor; to leave no stone unturned in order to thoroughly blacken his name.  In doing this you sin against charity, because you do something you would not wish to have done unto you.  Justice itself would be violated if, even in the event of the facts related being notorious, you speak of them to people who ignore them and are not likely ever to come to a knowledge of them.

If you add, after telling all you know about a poor devil, that he did penance and repaired his sin, you must not imagine that such atonement will rehabilitate him in the minds of all.  Men are more severe and unforgiving than God.  Grace may be recovered, but reputation is a thing which, once lost, is usually lost for good.  Something of the infamy sticks; tears and good works will not, cannot wash it away.  He, therefore, who banks too much on human magnanimity is apt to err; and his erring constitutes a fault.