Why Do You Backbite Someone's Good Name?

A man is said to backbite another not because he detracts from the truth, but because he lessens his good name. This is done sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, directly in four ways. I've said it before, Thomas Aquinas says more in a paragraph than modern theologians say in a book. There is so much there. He sat down and thought that a man backbites in four ways by saying that which is false about him. If I slander someone, I'm telling a lie. Calumne is to defame by telling what I know to be true. That's why in the litany of humility, you know, you pray like these two words are