Fr. Eugene F. Hemrick was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Joliet in 1963. He completed his seminary education with a B.A. in Philosophy and M.A. in Theology from St. Mary of the Lake Seminary, Mundelein (IL) and after ordination earned a Master in Religious Education in 1968 from Loyola (Chicago, IL) and a Ph.D. in education from Notre Dame (South Bend, IN).
Fr. Hemrick served as Seminary Rector and Assistant Professor at Illinois Benedictine College from 1972 until 1976 and from 1976 until 1996 he served as Director of Research for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. While at the NCCB, Father Hemrick also served as Assistant Professor of Education at The Catholic University of America from 1984 until 1989, holding the Mother Seton Chair in 1984. He later moved to the University’s Development Office as Director of Diocesan Relations.
In 1999, he became Coordinator of Institutional Research for the Washington Theological Union and also the founding Director of the National Institute for the Renewal of the Priesthood (www.jknirp.com.)
Fr. Hemrick has a long association with the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies. As a researcher, he has conducted more than 100 studies on various aspects of church ministry, the priesthood, seminaries, social justice, multiculturalism, immigration, and other topics for the United States Catholic Conference, and he has published about 75 articles in national magazines. He was also a weekly nationally syndicated columnist for Catholic News Service.
“Anatomy of the Lie”
January 16, 2025
“Constant lying is not aimed at making people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong. And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, are, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies. With such a people, you can do whatever you want.”
The connection between lying, truthfulness, and chaos made by German-American historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt exposes the very soul of a lie’s violence: conscience, its moral compass, and human values cease to exist. Truth and justice, the central barriers against deception, despotic power, and evil are neutered. Prudence, the basis of wise judgment, is scuttled.
Immanuel Kant would add, “By a lie, a man... annihilates his dignity as a man.”
Friedrich Nietzsche goes to the heart of lost dignity in pointing out that lying destroys the true self: “The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.” How true! We are no longer in unity with our authentic self that has been defrauded.
In Washington, D.C.’s National Archives, a quote by Russian revolutionist Vladimir Lenin was posted: “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.” This makes one wonder how many good-minded Russians have been dupped by selfish, lying politicians whose primary role is to care for them.
The quote “There are two ways of lying. One, not telling the truth and the other, making up statistics” by Josefina Vazquez Mota, a former member of the Senate of the Republic of Mexico, alerts us to how modern scientific means for understanding the truth can be misappropriated.
The French philosopher Albert Camus speaks to the heartlessness that lying creates: “Lying is not only saying what isn't true. It is also, in fact especially, saying more than is true and, in the case of the human heart, saying more than one feels.”
We must wonder if there would be more peace and kindness if people examined the depths of their hearts and the degree of callousness it might contain. Lies destroy human dignity and once gone hardness of heart follows.