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Indeed, hence the sticky philosophical puzzler. I would think that the clerics themselves would start getting affected by the spell. Fortunately (for them), the effect of the spell when cast on someone of the same level as yourself is only deafness for 1d4 rounds. The Church could probably cover that up.

There was another interesting related situation that came up in an actual campaign I was in, involving the Blasphemy spell (a variant that only kills non-evil targets). My party and I were in our "home base", a mansion belonging to an allied NPC noblewoman, planning out our next excursion. A powerful demon we'd been tangling with attempted to scry-and-fry us, teleporting in and nuking us with Blasphemy. Unfortunately there were a lot of low-level NPC staff working in the noblewoman's household and the spell wiped them out instantly... except for one guy, who happened to be of evil alignment. He survived the encounter because of that.

Even though his alignment was evil, though, he'd never done anything wrong and didn't seem like he had any reason to do anything wrong in the future. So we weren't sure if we should fire him or what. It wasn't illegal to simply be evil, you had to actually do something evil before you could be punished. We just warned him we'd be keeping an eye on him, in the end, and kept him on staff.

What is being good except having self-imposed restrictions to avoid doing something evil? This spell seems perfect. There will rarely be a time where a good aligned character could justify using it in an overpowered way. If it were inverted then you would see evil characters using it all the time. It's a self-imposed balance. You have a very powerful tool, but you must avoid using unless absolutely necessary.

I hate these filthy Neutrals, Kif. With enemies you know where they stand but with Neutrals, who knows? It sickens me.

Here's the SRD entry for the spell. It definitely nukes the neutrals.

The evil equivalent is Blasphemy, which nukes all non-evil creatures. Yes, the neutrals get it from both sides.

Then there's Word of Chaos and Dictum, the Law and Chaos equivalents of those Good/Evil spells. Neutrals, believe it or not, death!

Pick a side, you neutral scum!

I hate these filthy neutrals. With enemies you know where they stand, but with neutrals, who knows? It sickens me.

a hateful bitter man who antagonizes everyone but obeys the law

As one of those hateful bitter people in the eyes of others who still is lawful, I emphatically tell you that we are evil and absolutely would and should be killed by Holy Word and other such spells.

a teenager

Wait, what?

Actually everyone on your list should be killed by that spell, even the teenager though I vehemently disagree with that.

Like you can sit there and quibble about what is actually evil or not but this is magic, and what matters is what the majority of people consider evil, and they all hit the mark. Most adults are ageist bigots who'd wipe out all teenagers on a dime if they could, for example, even though that's pretty evil.

Good and evil are honestly pretty meaningless.

Why explain it in meta, instead of the old trustworthy totally-not-a-witch saying it only affects evil?

Does the Paladin trust their blind faith in the weapon, or do they consider the morality of their actions by themselves? Consequentialism vs Deontologism, essentially. The lie reinforces the blind faith to make the situation work.

I put an ethical dilemma in front of a Paladin. I do not consider this evil.

Good thing the DM can't be stabbed by it! How would they dispute it without metagaming? Wouldn't that be a great plot arc?

Okay but if this became common enough that every paladin had a sword that only killed evil things and they also had the restriction that they had to only eat what they killed then it would be a good thing to raise evil creatures as food sources for the paladins, even though the people doing the raising are doing an evil thing.

TONIGHT… WE DINE IN HELL! TOMORROW, THE UNDERDARK. THAT CONCLUDES OUR ANNOUNCEMENTS FOR THE DAY.