I.
A master too short on words with his servant, or a man with his neighbor, obviously proves that he feels little friendship or kindness towards him A religious once said, "If we do not cultivate them, two kinds of thoughts will stop bothering us by themselves: thoughts of fornication and thoughts of backbiting. When they call, do not answer them; whatever they say, pay them no heed. If you act otherwise, you may try to resist but you will not escape their clutches."

And one must not only avoid backbiting when it attacks charity and justice directly, but even when it turns on light defects and weaknesses of little importance.

Even the worthiest of men are not always exempt from this sort of backbiting. Perhaps it is a lack of prudence or reflection, but even they take pleasure in relating the defects and faults of others to willing listeners. It would seem that we have taken this verse from La Fontaine as a motto:
I attempt to turn vice to ridicule, Since I cannot attack it with the arms of Hercules.

And why be surprised? The human race has an instinctive propensity for criticizing other people's behavior. We all carry the scarlet with which we paint everyone. Everything that seems blameworthy in our sight turns into vice at once, and it is all the greater in the proportion that we want to appear wiser and more religious. Saint Jerome says, "The passion of this evil has so infested the world that people who have totally renounced other vices still fall into this one. One might say it is the last trap the devil sets for them." This rashness of judgment is often accompanied by envy, the sworn enemy of the happiness of others. The envious person tries to calm his bad temper by disparaging another man's merits in every way imaginable; he suffers less when he sees others damaged by some defect.

Envy is often preceded by a secret pride, which spurs us to wish to be preferred above others, or at least to be their equal. For fear that our neighbor may rise too high and eclipse us, we craftily clip his wings.

We see that conversations which reveal good men's imperfections often result in countless evils. Upon hearing his neighbor's weaknesses related, more than one listener will be tempted to tell his friends, "Look at what he did, and everyone mistakes him for a little saint! If he committed that fault, he will certainly commit a lot more. I thought he was so virtuous, but I see him now; he has his faults too."

Many people's consciences are disturbed by such talk. If the slandered person's reputation is not totally lost it is seriously damaged. Bonds of friendship and kindness are broken; the absent person who is spoken about will certainly be held in contempt.

And how can the accused defend himself when usually he is not even aware of the blows being struck against him, or at least of who their author is? That is how a man can be murdered and not even know it.

The sin is all the more serious when someone backbites people in honored positions, even in light matters, and even if they are guilty. "Even in your thoughts do not make light of the king, nor in the privacy of your bedroom revile him, because the birds of the air may carry your voice, a winged creature may tell what you say. (3)
(3) Eccl 10:20
You see, Holy Scripture tells us not only to avoid backbiting, it even commands us to banish it from our thoughts. You who backbite, do not think it suffices to tell your listeners, "Don't reveal what I say, I beg of you, I confide this secret to your discretion." You are no less guilty, and this behavior proves how simple you are. Pray tell, why do you ask him to keep silence? You are the one who should have kept silence first. If you do not want your words to leak out then keep them to yourself! You have not remained silent and you would shut other people's mouths!
If you are in such a rush to pull the stopper out of the spigot, then what can you expect of others?
Saint Francis of Assisi had an extreme aversion to backbiting and slanderous accusations. His biographer Saint Bonaventure relates that one of his brothers said evil about another and leveled several accusations against him. The Saint told his assistant, "Father, go and examine this affair. If the accused is innocent punish his accuser so severely that it will give others an example, and he will remember it." Saint Francis even wanted to remove the religious habit from a brother who had not been afraid to remove the cloak of another's reputation, so that it would be done to him as he had done to others, and in this way he would be obliged to restore the reputation he had stolen.