Image: “The False Witnesses,” by James Tissot, between 1886 and 1894, in Wikimedia Commons … https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brooklyn_Museum_-_The_False_Witnesses_(Les_faux_t%C3%A9moins)_-_James_Tissot.jpg … public domain … COMMENTS: My feeling is that people who bear false witness, and most especially those who engage in ‘character assassination’ for reasons of business profit, jealousy, or revenge, may have been tempted by Satan to be involved in this action. I read once in a Catholic treatise that the author felt gossip and calumny to be mortal sins. I feel he said this because of the great test of faith the victim of false witness must endure. It is even possible that false witness may cause an innocent person … whether a man, a woman or a child … to be prevented from attending church and receiving the sacraments. Thant must surely be a great evil for the instigator of false witness to bear. Christ stood with great dignity before his false accusers, though he knew it would surely mean His death. So must we who may be maligned stand, with faith in God, through all adversity. –Alice B. Clagett