Say no to torture, USCCB committee chair urges [CC]

[Ridgerunner]

How are our prisons and law enforcement officers inflicting severe pain to coerce, punish or derive sadistic pleasure? That sounds almost like slander.

Depends on your definition, but it’s also fact driven.

Using your definition, which is fairly reasonable, subjective judgments could still think it so.

Police, for example, are trained to prevail in making an arrest, almost no matter what it takes to do it. If it takes throwing a person to ground with a punishing hold, they’re supposed to do it. Almost every arrestee is handcuffed and put in the cruiser with his cuffed hands behind him. That always causes pain. Whether it’s “severe” or not depends on the person’s pain threshold and his idea what “severe” pain is. Regardless, it’s always “coercion”, and sometimes it’s “punishment”, as is the case with a “punishing hold”. It overcomes resistance by punishing resistance.

But I’ll agree that’s taking it a bit far as an objection.

But under other definitions, almost anything coercive would fit under it.

 

[pnewton]

Gaudium et spes did not declare it intrinsically evil.

The papal bull Ad extirpanda explicitly allowed torture.

If it explicitly allowed torture, it would have used the word “torture”. It implicitly allowed torture while explicitly limiting it. Also, it was a bull, a proclamation, not an encyclical or catechism. It never claimed to be doctrinal. Read it. It is not doctrinal in any sense. St. John Paul apologized for this sort of evil on behalf of the Church, so obviously he knows of it when he taught what he did.

Some popes did some really bad things, usually using papal bulls as operational instruments. This does not make one bit of the evil done doctrine.

 

[J_Peterson]

The central problem is, and probably for some time will remain, that there’s no truly agreed “bright line test” as to what torture is and what it isn’t.

The same can be said of pornography but I don’t see many Catholics debating the Bishops position on porn and whether or not some porn should be allowed.

 

[tomarin]

The same can be said of pornography but I don’t see many Catholics debating the Bishops position on porn and whether or not some porn should be allowed.

The same could also be said for poetry but that doesn’t mean I’m going to inflict any of mine on Ridgerunner (his doubts about torture notwithstanding).

 

[Ridgerunner]

The same can be said of pornography but I don’t see many Catholics debating the Bishops position on porn and whether or not some porn should be allowed.

Catholics aren’t debating about what porn is or isn’t because it’s not a current political issue.

 

[Ridgerunner]

The same could also be said for poetry but that doesn’t mean I’m going to inflict any of mine on Ridgerunner (his doubts about torture notwithstanding).

This is not exactly responsive, but this reminds me of when Manuel Noriega was subjected to repetitious playing of that song “You’re no good” to induce him to come out of the Vatican embassy and face arrest.

There were those who did object to that as being “torture”. It wouldn’t fit under your definition, but it would under some.

 

[SWolf]

If it explicitly allowed torture, it would have used the word “torture”. It implicitly allowed torture while explicitly limiting it.

I did. One would have to make massive leaps of logic to come to the conclusion that the coercion they were talking about did not involve mental or physical torture.

Also, it was a bull, a proclamation, not an encyclical or catechism.

It never claimed to be doctrinal. Read it. It is not doctrinal in any sense. St. John Paul apologized for this sort of evil on behalf of the Church, so obviously he knows of it when he taught what he did.Some popes did some really bad things, usually using papal bulls as operational instruments. This does not make one bit of the evil done doctrine.

Papal bulls are more than operational instruments.

As stated earlier, specifying torture as intrinsically evil without dramatically limiting it’s meaning necessitates absurd consequences.

 

[tomarin]

This is not exactly responsive, but this reminds me of when Manuel Noriega was subjected to repetitious playing of that song “You’re no good” to induce him to come out of the Vatican embassy and face arrest.

There were those who did object to that as being “torture”. It wouldn’t fit under your definition, but it would under some.

I also recall a similar incident when Wen Ho Lee was detained for possibly being a spy for China, and the lights in his cell were kept on for 24 hours a day, in order to ‘soften him up’ for interrogation. I wouldn’t personally consider that torture but I would consider it within the gray area.

It’s hard to define certain things but our legal system must have a definition for torture otherwise wouldn’t torture be rampant and it clearly isn’t.

 

[Darryl1958]

I agree that torture is wrong. However, I read that torture was used in the Inquisition, and heretics were burned at the stake with the apparent approval of the Church? How can the two seemingly contradictory teachings be reconciled?

They are not to be reconciled. The torture of the Medieval Church was wrong, and the instruction at the time did not recognize this.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I also recall a similar incident when Wen Ho Lee was detained for possibly being a spy for China, and the lights in his cell were kept on for 24 hours a day, in order to ‘soften him up’ for interrogation. I wouldn’t personally consider that torture but I would consider it within the gray area.

It’s hard to define certain things but our legal system must have a definition for torture otherwise wouldn’t torture be rampant and it clearly isn’t.

I’m no legal scholar, but my impression is that you’re right; there is no legal definition of torture. But that doesn’t keep it from being acted upon. If, say, a judge subjectively decides a confession was coerced, he can keep it out of evidence. But that’s a pretty fuzzy concept.

 

[BChartowski]

They are not to be reconciled. The torture of the Medieval Church was wrong, and the instruction at the time did not recognize this.

We also have the issue of most people lacking understanding of what happened during the Spanish Inquisition. To quote the article right here on Catholic Answers:

"The inquisition in Spain was controlled by Spanish authorities, not the authority of the papacy. "

Here’s the link to the article if you’re interested: catholic.com/magazine/articles/secrets-of-the-spanish-inquisition-revealed

 

[Darryl1958]

We also have the issue of most people lacking understanding of what happened during the Spanish Inquisition. To quote the article right here on Catholic Answers:

"The inquisition in Spain was controlled by Spanish authorities, not the authority of the papacy. "

Here’s the link to the article if you’re interested: catholic.com/magazine/articles/secrets-of-the-spanish-inquisition-revealed

article:

As in any area where an inquisition operated or in the secular legal system throughout Western Europe, civil authorities conducted torture to elicit information. While we look back at this with obvious repulsion, the simple fact is that torture was commonplace in all judicial systems throughout Western Europe.

The article agrees that torture at this time was common place and commonly accepted in Medeival(Catholic) Europe. While Catholicism and the papacy overall has had a civilizing influence on Europe, clearly it would have been known what was going to happen when the Inquisition et al was ordered.
That was just where the Church was at back then. Now it is not, and that is a good thing It is an effect of Christ working his ideas through our culture and through our lives.
This is not to be taken to mean that we are to stand in judgement on the Medieval Church. The problems of bringing order into society and balancing those efforts against freedom and the integrity of the individual are things we still need to struggle with.
Exactly where torture ends and acceptable interrogation and information gathering and just punishments begin are still a matter of prudential judgement too.

But clearly, the methods employed by Catholics five hundred years ago are rejected by the understandings arrived at in today’s Church and today’s society. We do not need to square the circle by offering any apologia for yesterday’s understanding of what was acceptable in terms of torture.

 

[Tomdstone]

"The inquisition in Spain was controlled by Spanish authorities, not the authority of the papacy. "

But the papacy gave orders to the Spanish authorities:
" The head of state or ruler must force all the heretics whom he has in custody,
provided he does so without killing them or breaking their arms or legs, to confess their errors…"
Ad extirpanda

 

[Paganus]

I agree that torture is wrong. However, I read that torture was used in the Inquisition, and heretics were burned at the stake with the apparent approval of the Church? How can the two seemingly contradictory teachings be reconciled?

Per the Catechism of the Catholic Church #2298:

“In times past, cruel practices were commonly used by legitimate governments to maintain law and order, often without protest from the Pastors of the Church, who themselves adopted in their own tribunals the prescriptions of Roman law concerning torture. Regrettable as these facts are, the Church always taught the duty of clemency and mercy. She forbade clerics to shed blood. In recent times it has become evident that these cruel practices were neither necessary for public order, nor in conformity with the legitimate rights of the human person. On the contrary, these practices led to ones even more degrading. It is necessary to work for their abolition. We must pray for the victims and their tormentors.”

 

[gamewell45]

Recalling the teaching of St. John Paul II on torture, the chairman of the US bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace expressed concern about recent political …

More…

I would agree completely with the Committee Chair of the USCCB. Torture is wrong and should not be done under any circumstances.

 

[jtauke]

Seems to me there are two genies and two bottles.

Genie No. 1: If this country countenances “torture” pursuant to the definition you offered, which is the infliction of severe pain in order to coerce, punish or to derive sadistic pleasure" in one context, then might that not be the first slide down a slippery slope in which it’s countenanced domestically and for political reasons? That seems a bit improbable, but when the executive department takes more and more power on itself and uses agencies of government politically (like the IRS) should we really doubt it?

Genie No. 2: Every person has his own idea of what “torture” is. An overinclusive “definition” cited in a previous post would absolutely preclude not only solitary confinement, but the conditions in nearly every prison or jail, and even the usual events of arrest and interrogation. It could even preclude acts of war designed not to kill but to destroy the enemy’s will to fight. If we accept overinclusion, will we eventually be obliged to, in effect, empty the prisons and make arrest “voluntary or not at all”?

The central problem is, and probably for some time will remain, that there’s no truly agreed “bright line test” as to what torture is and what it isn’t.

I’m surprised I had to read to the second page to find the Ridgerunner classic…“Well, what is torture…really?”

 

[jtauke]

I did. One would have to make massive leaps of logic to come to the conclusion that the coercion they were talking about did not involve mental or physical torture.

Also, it was a bull, a proclamation, not an encyclical or catechism.

You claim the JPII statements on torture aren’t infallible, but fail to mention that the same lack of infallibility applies to this papal bull you keep going on about.

 

[Tomdstone]

You claim the JPII statements on torture aren’t infallible, but fail to mention that the same lack of infallibility applies to this papal bull you keep going on about.

I don’t see where infallibility is an issue. At the time ad extirpanda was declared, it was assumed to give the green light to torture people in the inquisition. Is the papal bull on artificial birth control infallible? It doesn’t matter one way or the other, because in either case Catholics have to obey it under pain of mortal sin.

 

[jtauke]

I don’t see where infallibility is an issue. At the time ad extirpanda was declared, it was assumed to give the green light to torture people in the inquisition. Is the papal bull on artificial birth control infallible? It doesn’t matter one way or the other, because in either case Catholics have to obey it under pain of mortal sin.

Torture is intrinsically evil. End of story.

If you’re like Ridge and you can’t tell what torture is…I’ll pray for you.

 

[Tomdstone]

Torture is intrinsically evil. End of story…

Then why was it allowed during the Inquisition?