Is torture sometimes permissible?

[Zheabelle]

I agree that cruel torture, e.g. the rack, is unthinkable, and torture of the soul, e.g. rape, is as well, but what about something like waterboarding? The Church forbids capital punishment, except when it’s necessary to keep society safe. Isn’t this the same, except you aren’t killing him or her? If someone was going to kill a thousand innocent people, would it be wrong to torture him to get him to give up the information?

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

Torture is never permissible. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

Kidnapping and hostage taking bring on a reign of terror; by means of threats they subject their victims to intolerable pressures. They are morally wrong. Terrorism threatens, wounds, and kills indiscriminately; it is gravely against justice and charity. Torture which uses physical or moral violence to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or satisfy hatred is contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity. Except when performed for strictly therapeutic medical reasons, directly intended amputations, mutilations, and sterilizations performed on innocent persons are against the moral law (CCC 2297, emphasis added).

The Second Vatican Council, in its document Gaudium et Spes, stated:

Furthermore, whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia or wilful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are supreme dishonor to the Creator (GS 27, emphasis added).

Basic Catholic moral theology states that one may not do evil that good may come of it. That means that the evil of torture may not be used even for the good of saving human lives.

There is a legitimate question though of what constitutes torture. Do certain “enhanced interrogation techniques” allow for the gathering of vital information without the commission of torture? Or is the phrase “enhanced interrogation techniques” simply a euphemism whitewashing a grave evil? Only the Church can authoritatively answer the question, and we may hope that the Church will consider the question more deeply in the near future. In the meantime, prudence and charity suggest that, when in doubt, it is better to follow strictly the established international conventions on the humane treatment of prisoners.