This from the *Summa Theologica *of Thomas Aquinas commenting on the question whether heretics should be tolerated:
"I answer that, With regard to heretics two points must be observed: one, on their own side; the other, on the side of the Church. On their own side there is the sin, whereby they deserve not only to be separated from the Church by excommunication, but also to be severed from the world by death. For it is a much graver matter to corrupt the faith which quickens the soul, than to forge money, which supports temporal life. Wherefore if forgers of money and other evil-doers are forthwith condemned to death by the secular authority, much more reason is there for heretics, as soon as they are convicted of heresy, to be not only excommunicated but even put to death.
On the part of the Church, however, there is mercy which looks to the conversion of the wanderer, wherefore she condemns not at once, but “after the first and second admonition,” as the Apostle directs: after that, if he is yet stubborn, the Church no longer hoping for his conversion, looks to the salvation of others, by excommunicating him and separating him from the Church, and furthermore delivers him to the secular tribunal to be exterminated thereby from the world by death. For Jerome commenting on Galatians 5:9, “A little leaven,” says: “Cut off the decayed flesh, expel the mangy sheep from the fold, lest the whole house, the whole paste, the whole body, the whole flock, burn, perish, rot, die. Arius was but one spark in Alexandria, but as that spark was not at once put out, the whole earth was laid waste by its flame.”
True, Thomas was not the formal voice of the Catholic Church. But there was no formal Catechism of the Catholic Church that we have today.
I would place waterboarding not under the topic of torture but rather under the topic of a justifiable weapon used for self defense in a just war scenario. The war we are engaged in with Radical Islam, whether declared or undeclared by Congress, seems to me a just war, and all the more so an immediate necessity in the instance of attempting to stop an imminent bombing of the innocents.
Waterboarding is, moreover, covered by the natural law principle of choosing the lesser of two evils, which I believe Pope Francis recently invoked but I can’t remember the source or the issue he referenced.
