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Dear Father,

I would like to understand the difference between the sin of delation and the act of lawfully reporting a crime. Thank you for your kind answer.

Giorgio

Priest’s answer

Dear Giorgio,

1.There’s a difference between delation and the lawful act of reporting  a crime. Delation refers to a secret accusation, done for profit, for servility or for other reasons which are not for the common good. A particular form of delation is for example to get closed with someone in order to steal a confession and then report them. This is typical of totalitarian and police regimes.

2. As you can see, delation is a vile and hateful act. It’s a form of slander that violates one of the primary rights of a person: honor and a good reputation. For Christians it’s clearly an act against charity. Since it’s against charity, it makes you lose it and, if there’s serious matter, it constitutes a mortal sin.

3. Instead, raising a complaint to the judicial authority for something wrong that you have experienced or witnessed , can be a dutiful act in order to protect the common good. Sometimes there’s the necessity of putting the criminal in custody, that is, arresting and imprisoning them, so as to prevent them from continuing to harm other people so that they repent. It’s an act of love for common good. For a Christian it can also be an act of charity both for the guilty person and for society. The loss of honor of the guilty person  in this case is due to  an unintentional,indirect, intimately good action which is also dutiful and necessary.

4. In this horizon is equally dutiful to report whoever is plotting an attempted murder, a riot, a scam or any evil thing to society.

5. In case there’s a certain confidence with the criminal, before going on with making a complaint ,fraternal correction should be drawn on in order to urge them to repent and repair. If they accept to do it, it would be unfair to report them publicly. But if it’s not possible to intervene in that sense, it will be needed to go on with making a complaint.

6. This should be the extreme solution, when every other attempt brings no  good result. In conclusion, official reports  can’t always be the norm for human coexistence because it always leaves aftermath between the one that has been unfairly reported for little things and whoever reports it . The normal criterion in social coexistence is that of mutual love, which is also expressed in the so-called “fraternal correction”.

I bless you, I wish you all the best and remember you in the prayer.

Padre Angelo