Has a politician ever been denied communion because they were pro-torture

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MillTownCath

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I was on the USCCB’s Facebook page today, and posted a poll asking about the Church’s teaching on torture.

The answer, they revealed, was Torture is an intrinsic evil because it is a violation of the dignity of the human person, who is made in the image and likeness of God. Even those who may have done evil never shed their intrinsic dignity. #CatholicsCareCatholicsVote

Which made me wonder - numerous pro-choice Catholic politicians have been denied communion for their disagreement with Church teaching. Has the same thing ever happened with Catholic politicians who support torture, which violates Catholic teaching?
 
I’m VERY, VERY anti-torture!

I’m stunned, shocked, utterly dismayed at the number of my fellow citizens who start rationalizing this evil.

And if you read serious works on this subject, you find psychologists assert that it really doesn’t work, and tends to boomerang later problems back on the torturer.
 
MillTownCath said:
I was on the USCCB’s Facebook page today, and posted a poll asking about the Church’s teaching on torture.

The answer, they revealed, was Torture is an intrinsic evil because it is a violation of the dignity of the human person, who is made in the image and likeness of God. Even those who may have done evil never shed their intrinsic dignity. #CatholicsCareCatholicsVote

Which made me wonder - numerous pro-choice Catholic politicians have been denied communion for their disagreement with Church teaching.
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Have they? You hear a lot about how it ought to happen, but I don’t think it’s actually happened very often.
Has the same thing ever happened with Catholic politicians who support torture, which violates Catholic teaching?
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No. I suppose the rationale would be that the definition of “torture” is in dispute. But I find that to be thin.

I worry about a trend for Catholic bishops to enforce only those aspects of Catholic teaching that agree with conservative Republicanism.

But then, for decades conservative Catholics have been complaining about an alleged trend to create “moral equivalence” between clear-cut teachings and “prudential” ones.

The poor bishops can’t please anyone.

There’s an Orthodox saying that the way to hell is paved with the bones of priests and lit by lanterns made from the skulls of bishops. And it may be true. Bishops is mostly rapscallions, like other people who have power of one sort or another. But they also have a very tough job, and we should pray for them (“we” being baptized Christians–obviously I apply this to my own, Anglican bishops as well as to those whose credentials are less subject to dispute).

As a general rule, it’s hard for me to see how a bishop could ever be too countercultural or too provocative–their faults always seem to lie in the other direction.

So I wish they’d just excommunicate a bunch of politicians on both sides, and maybe Catholics would actually start having a “leavening” effect on American public life!

Edwin
 
MillTownCath said:
  • numerous pro-choice Catholic politicians have been denied communion for their disagreement with Church teaching. Has the same thing ever happened with Catholic politicians who support torture, which violates Catholic teaching?
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Name a politician who supports torture.
 
Jim_Dandy said:
Name a politician who supports torture.
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Haha, I think I get it. I’ll name one of the many politicians who support water boarding, and you’ll start arguing that water boarding isn’t torture.

“The method of water boarding is so dangerous that a medical team must be on hand. An International Committee of the Red Cross has commented that physician involvement in coercive interrogations constitutes “a flagrant violation of medical ethics.” From a moral point of view, waterboarding is torture. It degrades the prisoner and the torturer. When physicians become a part of this process, they undermine the fundamental tenet of medical ethics, “First, do no harm.” It is unacceptable for physicians to claim ignorance of medical ethics around any abuse of prisoners, let alone abuse that rises to the level of torture.” - catholic.org/diocese/diocese_story.php?id=27616
 
“On March 11, 2008, President Bush gave a 42 - minute speech to the National Religious Broadcasters at their annual convention. He said, “We believe that every human being bears the image of our maker. No one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave.” Waterboarding and other means of torture create a master/slave relationship. Waterboarding does not honor the belief and fact that every person is made in God’s image.”
 
MillTownCath said:
I was on the USCCB’s Facebook page today, and posted a poll asking about the Church’s teaching on torture.

The answer, they revealed, was Torture is an intrinsic evil because it is a violation of the dignity of the human person, who is made in the image and likeness of God. Even those who may have done evil never shed their intrinsic dignity. #CatholicsCareCatholicsVote

Which made me wonder - numerous pro-choice Catholic politicians have been denied communion for their disagreement with Church teaching. Has the same thing ever happened with Catholic politicians who support torture, which violates Catholic teaching?
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Probably not, because people aren’t as outspoken about torture, saying, “Hey guys, I support torture! Vote for me!” Many openly say they are pro-choice. Of course anyone who does support torture shouldn’t receive Communion.
 
Any torture going on currently is, of course, due to the policies of the Democratic Party. It seems that only lip service was given to this issue during the election. No surprise there.
 
Nimzovik said:
Any torture going on currently is, of course, due to the policies of the Democratic Party. It seems that only lip service was given to this issue during the election. No surprise there.
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Do you say the same thing when Republicans are in power and abortion remains legal?
 
Plenty of people have been denied communion for being torturers, or for ordering torture. Heck, after the whole “heinous killing of a crowd of unarmed people” thing, St. Ambrose wouldn’t even let the Emperor inside church at all, and he and his congregation locked themselves inside and sang hymns all night, convinced that the Emperor was probably going to kill them too.
 
Nimzovik said:
Any torture going on currently is, of course, due to the policies of the Democratic Party. It seems that only lip service was given to this issue during the election. No surprise there.
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While it is almost always the Democratic Party’s fault for intrinsic evils, the Republican Party is (surprisingly) actually at fault this time.
 
People have different opinions on whether water boarding is interrogation or torture.
 
We tortured people to get info in WWII. We did it during the Cold War. Torture isn’t something new to America. I’m surprised it’s only now people have been vocal about it.
 
_Abyssinia said:
People have different opinions on whether water boarding is interrogation or torture.
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American troops are water boarded during training so I don’t think it is torture. Especially when it only happened to 5 of the worst terrorists that ever lived.

If abortion is not torture for the unborn (as well as the eventual murder) than I couldn’t tell you what torture is.
 
Good question but I would be even more interested in knowing if a politician has been denied communion for being pro “choice”. Andrew Cuomo fits the bill to start.
 
jay29 said:
American troops are water boarded during training so I don’t think it is torture. Especially when it only happened to 5 of the worst terrorists that ever lived.

Are terrorists not human beings too? If torture is morally wrong then it is wrong for everyone in every circumstance- just like we believe abortion is wrong- it is NOT the innocence of the victim( in the case of abortion) nor the guilt of the victim ( in the case of a terrorist) that should be allowed to determine whether we can go ahead and deliberately cause a human being torturous suffering, for whatever ends might seem best to our government at the time! Where then could we draw the line and say -yes/no to torture him/her -or is just a bit of ‘light’ torture okay?
If troops are really water boarded during training I would say that this exposes the brutality of humanity and should not be a reason for saying it is morally acceptable. If you have a son or daughter would you be happy to agree to his/her torture ‘training’ in this way?
Our Heavenly Father mercifully and graciously allowed Jesus His Son to suffer for us and for our salvation but which human parent is like unto Him? Not me- I want to keep my children safe from harm. What kind of a civilised country is USA, if this is how soldiers are trained? It certainly confirms a few prejudices, although I pray it is not true.
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Seira said:
We tortured people to get info in WWII. We did it during the Cold War. Torture isn’t something new to America. I’m surprised it’s only now people have been vocal about it.
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I agree 200%. The only war in which the US didn’t murder or torture prisoners was the Spanish-American war; and that was because it didn’t last long enough for our side to get around to it!
All the sanctimonious wailing about our POWs did not equal the fact that our war in the Pacific was racist in execution, and for the most part did not take prisoners. Granted, a lot of Americans were killed by Japanese who we thought were trying to surrender, but weren’t. Once fooled, twice shy…so no more prisoners. Likewise, almost no prisoners taken from the Nazi SS troops, for the same reason.
Torture was even used by both sides during the American Civil War, the worst fratricidal catastrophe in our history.
Right or wrong, it is only now, in this era of instant mass communications and the internet, that we have people coming foreward yelling about it. And the only reason the subject has come up is because of virulent pacifists, who until they discovered this “new cause”, were considered to be unpatriotic nuts since 911.
 
I think the real questions would be if polticians who voted for wars that the Holy See viewed as unjust or who voted for budget policies that the Church felt were detrimental to the poor were denied communion. Or that politicians who did those things were subjected to even a fraction of the public scolding that polticians who vote against other church teachings have received.

I understand that there is a hierarchy of evil, but the world outside doesn’t. You have to be inside to know what that means and sadly some people will never get near the door because we look to them like we pick and choose the things we’re going to complain about. There’s nothing wrong with consistency, we should try it sometime
 
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