Learn How To keep A Secret

(By: Logue, Ferrer & Condez)


            I remember once seeing an amusing cartoon. It featured five feminine heads, all looking one way and all with their mouths open. The head was small and the mouth proportioned to the rest of the features; the next was rather larger, with a much wider mouth; the third was larger still, and so on. This picture portrayed in a capital way what often happens in small towns when some trifling incident in passing from one mouth to another is magnified by the gossips ‘till it attains the proportions of quite an important event; and thus, a “mountain is made out of a molehill”.

            How greatly a man may be wronged, what injury may be done him, if some trifling fault has committed is magnified by the tongue of scandal-mongers and spread out by evil speakers who wish him ill. And yet these people will not admit that they are much to blame. They give all kinds of excuses for their conduct.

            Some persons say, “We had not the least intention of injuring our neighbor’s reputation by what we said”. But what good does that do him? It injures him all the same; it is detrimental to his good name.

            Others seek to excuse themselves by asserting that they were not the first to discover these failings, but mentioned them only because they had heard of them from others. And yet they imagine there is no great harm in repeating what they have heard to those who were ignorant of it.

            Another would say, “These faults of my neighbor are no secrets, for the person to who I refer is notorious for his vices, and has a very bad reputation”. But even if the faults which are talked about are widely known, what is the use of repeating them? Why take pleasure in talking about it?

            Our Lord forbids us to talk about faults of others. Remember the Golden Rule: “Do not do to others what you don’t want others to do to you”.

            In conclusion, we will listen to those who say: “You are quite right. I am aware I ought not to talk about my neighbor’s faults. I will never grow weary of renewing the resolution not to utter one simple uncharitable word about my neighbor. An if sometimes I speak unkindly, I must not excuse myself by saying there is no great harm in it”.

            I must always remember these lines:

                        “The wise man will seek his own faults to amend; The fool to his neighbor’s alone will attend”.