Adulation: Is it a Sin?

The excerpt from the Catechism points to three interconnected sins: flattery, adulation, and complaisance. It focuses on the second, whose meaning is “seduction through false praise.”¹ Its Latin etymology, adulari, goes back to the act of caressing – especially animals. At its core, the flatterer is a caresser of another’s ego.

However, a fundamental question arises: is all praise a sinful act? St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that praise can be licit or illicit, depending on the circumstances.

To praise someone with the aim of consoling them in tribulations, encouraging their efforts, or favouring their progress in good, constitutes an act of charity, according to the virtue of friendship.² Similarly, it is in accordance with reason to honour superiors for their dignity or excellence, through the virtue of dulia, which pays honour to whom it is due.³ The recognition of another’s merit is not only permitted, but, in certain cases, a duty of justice.

Indeed, friendship and dulia derive from the cardinal virtue of justice, defined as that by which “a man renders to each one his due by a constant and perpetual will” or “rendering to each one his right.”⁴

From this perspective, it is possible to understand the malice of the flatterer, who, although he seems to act in accordance with justice when paying honours, in reality acts against it by seeking personal advantages in a fraudulent way. He encourages falsehood, attributing non-existent qualities to others, exaggerating existing ones, or, worse, showing approval of reprehensible conduct. He further offends justice in that justice demands truthfulness for harmonious coexistence among men. The other side of the coin is detraction, which adulterates the truth to damage the reputation of others.

In contrast, although it “intends chiefly the pleasure of those among whom one lives,” the virtue of friendship “does not fear to displease when it is a question of obtaining a certain good, or of avoiding a certain evil.”⁵

In the Thomistic view, as taken from the Catechism, flattery is always a mortal sin when it offends charity, approving of or encouraging the grave sin of one’s neighbour. It will be a venial sin if it is motivated by the desire to please, avoid evil, or obtain something necessary.⁶

Under the mask of courtesy, flattery penetrates social dealings in a cunning, almost imperceptible way. Circumspection is urgently needed, for “a man who flatters his neighbour spreads a net for his feet” (Prv 29:5). And the consequences can be very pernicious: “The tongue of the flatterer does more harm than the hand of the murderer.”⁷ The flatterer does not kill the body, he kills the truth and the soul. 

Notes:

¹ ST. AUGUSTINE. Sermon 353, c.1.

² Cf. ST. THOMAS AQUINAS. Summa Theologiæ. II-II, q.115, a.1, ad 1.

³ Cf. ibid., q.103, in toto.

⁴ Ibid., q.58, a.1.

⁵ Ibid., q.115, a.1.

⁶ Cf. ibid., a.2.

⁷ ST. AUGUSTINE. Enarrationes in Psalmos. Psalmum LXIX, n.5.