Acting Justly

"Proper regard for the rights of others begins with the just ordering of civil law...But this...isn't enough. Every day we encounter many opportunities to be honest in our relations with our fellow men - for example, when making judgements about others, how easily and how readily we sometimes fall into rash judgement in the most elementary ways! In speech we have to avoid not only calumny and false accusations, but also detraction, gossip that needlessly reveals our neighbor's genuine defects and diminishes his standing among his colleagues or acquaintances and in society at large...

Acting justly toward our neighbor is not simply a question of avoiding doing him or her harm...Being just toward those with whom we have daily contact means, among other duties, respecting their right to their good name, to privacy, to a sufficient financial remuneration...

Calumny, backbiting and gossip can be real and flagrant manifestations of injustice, because among temporal goods, the integrity of one's reputation appears to be the most important, and through its loss man is deprived of doing much good (St. Thomas Aquinas). The Apostle St. James says that the tongue is an unrighteous world among our members, it can serve to praise God, to converse with him, to communicate with one another, or it can do incalculable harm unless there is a determined effort on our part never to speak badly of anyone." --from In Conversation With God, vol. 4, pp 469-471