Over the last couple of days I have read and heard too many Republicans sounding like Catholic teenagers.
Teenagers ask: in regards to dating.
"How far can I go before committing a mortal sin?"
Republicans ask in regards to torture:
"How much can we torture before it is morally wrong?"
Both of these questions miss out on the truth of respect for the person and human dignity.
The Catechism states:
Now you often heat the ticking nuclear bomb scenario to justify torture, as if making a hellish enough consequence is sufficient. Exactly what part of never doing evil to obtain good do Christian conservatives not understand? Physical death is not the worse thing that can happen to us, moral death is. Mark Shea was correct when he previously said that support of torture is Cafeteria Catholicism for Republicans.
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Torture does not reflect the dignity of man, and even if judged on a purely secular basis, is ineffective.
But what seems interesting to me is the person chosen to symbolize this question: for he isn’t in favor of torture, but so many of his questioners assume that he is. Interesting. That, too, I believe, is a violation of the dignity of the person: to reduce them to a convenient symbol of the side you disagree with.
It stands to reason that, if the Church was indeed wrong to allow the use of torture in church and secular courts centuries ago, then she may just as well be wrong today when she condemns all torture indiscriminately.
Church documents then had not as yet touched on torture, so the comparison breaks downs. Regardless how do you justify the use of evil to do good?
Allowing something (failing to remove it completely) is not contrary to condemning it definitively.
There was no catechism (or parallel source of definitive teaching) officially advocating or defending the use of torture in previous centuries, so the attempt at parallel deconstruction fails.
Don’t assume that anything “the Church allowed” (i.e. that existed at a time in which the Church had considerable power) was officially sanctioned by the Church. In centuries, secular society will one day preach about how the Church “allowed the use of abortion.”
Remember that within 40 years, the “lone voice” of Pius XII against Naziism became a “silence” in the face of the same. The teaching doesn’t change; the history does.
Jeff:
Amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen.
Great comparison and so true. There is no point in splitting hairs over this issue.
On a clip on the news today, one of the Republicans (surprisingly) questioning the nominated Attorney General addressed this subject, and talked about how we as Americans must not act like the countries who are against us and do the things they do, but we must act like who we want to be. I totally agree, and I loved your statement about moral death being worse than physical death.
True, good ends never justify evil means, but is it this simple? Maybe I am wrong, but if the death penalty, making war, killing in self-defense can be morally justified, then cannot some means to extract a confession or information which could save lives, be justified?
Also, what constitutes torture as stated in the CCC? Are the methods used in interrogations of terrorists (and I am not talking about what happened at Abu Ghraib) considered torture? I tend to agree with you Jeff and with Mark Shea as well, but I want to know what the Church really thinks torture is and is not.
David: See, e.g., my most recent post on the subject, at http://www.exceptionalmarriages.com/weblog/BlogDetail.asp?ID=20455
Just what iviolable moral principle is violated when a would-be murderer is tortured to get the information needed to save his intended victims?
The quote you give from the catechism doesn’t offer any absolute moral principle in justification. It simply makes broad and general claims about respecting human dignity.
In fact, the quote talks about using torture for a variety of reasons, none of which have anything to do with trying to get info that can save innocent lives from terrorists.
I do wish people wouldn’t be so hasty in deciding that a question as to what does, or does not constitute sufficiently grave matter of sin, is a mere cynical attempt to get away with as much as one possibly can. The teenagers may be asking, with perfect justice, if kissing is all right, or if they have to stick to shaking hands in parting. Likewise the soldier may very reasonably want to know what degree of discomfort it’s permissible to employ to get a prisoner to reveal urgently needed information. Is it wrong to keep him handcuffed? Can he be shouted at? How about bread-and-water, or solitary confinement? The Church makes fairly narrow distinctions between the gravity of various acts, and it’s quite proper to wish to know them. And there are very legitimate ends of interrogation that have nothing to do with extracting confessions, punishing the guilty, frightening opponents, or satisfying hatred. Obtaining information that will thwart a planned attack and save many lives is one of them.