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

[jtauke]

I don’t have to. Ex cathedra pertains to all places in all times. Prudential matters are not stated ex cathedra. Seems, given torture is so common in antiquity that the Church was mostly quiet on the matter, no?

You’ve obviously never been questioned or threatened with jail time.

military training: terrible example, as people going through this training volunteered for it.

So if it’s not ex cathedra, a pope that said torture is OK could be wrong.

And they were wrong.

As to the definition of torture. Go read the catechism. The definition is right there.

 

[Tomdstone]

So if it’s not ex cathedra, a pope that said torture is OK could be wrong.

And they were wrong.

Was it morally wrong to use torture during the Inquisition?

 

[jtauke]

Was it morally wrong to use torture during the Inquisition?

Without any doubt, yes.

 

[SWolf]

SWolf;13964491:

I don’t have to. Ex cathedra pertains to all places in all times. Prudential matters are not stated ex cathedra. Seems, given torture is so common in antiquity that the Church was mostly quiet on the matter, no?

You’ve obviously never been questioned or threatened with jail time.

So if it’s not ex cathedra, a pope that said torture is OK could be wrong.

And they were wrong.

As to the definition of torture. Go read the catechism. The definition is right there.

The Church once sanctioned torture. Saying now it is intrinsically evil would mean at one time the church was wrong. It isn’t that hard of a concept.

Quit dodging and quote the Catechism if that is the definition you are using.

 

[jtauke]

jtauke;13964528:

The Church once sanctioned torture. Saying now it is intrinsically evil would mean at one time the church was wrong. It isn’t that hard of a concept.

Quit dodging and quote the Catechism if that is the definition you are using.

If the Church did. It was wrong. Simple.

I’ll let you Google torture and catechism. I’m not going to bother trying to look it to you on mobile.

 

[CaptFun]

Torture is wrong. Don’t do it. Is not the most controversial teaching I’ve ever heard. I have to wonder who this counsel is being directed to in the Bishop’s mind.

Keep holy the Sabbath is an actual commandment … and to be kept … but in time of war … after an unscrupulous enemy killed the observant Jews who would not defend themselves because it WAS the Sabbath … the Maccabean leaders took account of the results and came to a decision

31

1 Maccabees 2:31 It was reported to the officers and soldiers of the king who were in the City of David, in Jerusalem, that certain men who had flouted the king’s order had gone out to the hiding places in the desert.

32

Many hurried out after them, and having caught up with them, camped opposite and prepared to attack them on the sabbath.

33

“Enough of this!” the pursuers said to them. “Come out and obey the king’s command, and your lives will be spared.”

34

But they replied, “We will not come out, nor will we obey the king’s command to profane the sabbath.”

35

Then the enemy attacked them at once;

36

but they did not retaliate; they neither threw stones, nor blocked up their own hiding places.

37

They said, “Let us all die without reproach; heaven and earth are our witnesses that you destroy us unjustly.”

38

So the officers and soldiers attacked them on the sabbath, and they died with their wives, their children and their cattle, to the number of a thousand persons.

39

When Mattathias and his friends heard of it, they mourned deeply for them.

40

“If we all do as our kinsmen have done,” they said to one another, “and do not fight against the Gentiles for our lives and our traditions, they will soon destroy us from the earth.”

41

On that day they came to this decision: “Let us fight against anyone who attacks us on the sabbath, so that we may not all die as our kinsmen died in the hiding places.”

42

5 Then they were joined by a group of Hasideans, valiant Israelites, all of them devout followers of the law.

43

And all those who were fleeing from the disaster joined them and supported them.

44

They gathered an army and struck down sinners in their anger and lawbreakers in their wrath, and the survivors fled to the Gentiles for safety.

45

Mattathias and his friends went about and tore down the pagan altars;

46

they also enforced circumcision for any uncircumcised boys whom they found in the territory of Israel.

47

They put to flight the arrogant, and the work prospered in their hands.

48

They saved the law from the hands of the Gentiles and of the kings and did not let the sinner triumph.

49

When the time came for Mattathias to die, he said to his sons: "Arrogance and scorn have now grown strong; it is a time of disaster and violent anger.

50

Therefore, my sons, be zealous for the law and give your lives for the covenant of our fathers.

51

"Remember the deeds that our fathers did in their times, and you shall win great glory and an everlasting name.

52

Was not Abraham found faithful in trial, and it was reputed to him as uprightness?

53

Joseph, when in distress, kept the commandment, and he became master of Egypt.

54

Phinehas our father, for his burning zeal, received the covenant of an everlasting priesthood.

55

Joshua, for executing his commission, became a judge in Israel.

56

Caleb, for bearing witness before the assembly, received an inheritance in the land.

57

David, for his piety, received as a heritage a throne of everlasting royalty.

58

Elijah, for his burning zeal for the law, was taken up to heaven.

59

Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael, for their faith, were saved from the fire.

60

Daniel, for his innocence, was delivered from the jaws of lions.

61

And so, consider this from generation to generation, that none who hope in him shall fail in strength.

62

Do not fear the words of a sinful man, for his glory ends in corruption and worms.

63

Today he is exalted, and tomorrow he is not to be found, because he has returned to his dust, and his schemes have perished.

64

Children! be courageous and strong in keeping the law, for by it you shall be glorified.

65

"Here is your brother Simeon who I know is a wise man; listen to him always, and he will be a father to you.

66

And Judas Maccabeus, a warrior from his youth, shall be the leader of your army and direct the war against the nations.

67

You shall also gather about you all who observe the law, and you shall avenge the wrongs of your people.

68

Pay back the Gentiles what they deserve, and observe the precepts of the law."

69

Then he blessed them, and he was united with his fathers.

Using “torture” at a level that merely frightens an enemy into giving life saving information that saves potential victims of terror from the planned deed the enemy knows about … and leaves no lasting damage to him physically … is a level of “torture” hardly worth botheringt about. Our troops likely undergo such in their training.

 

[jtauke]

Torture is wrong. Don’t do it. Is not the most controversial teaching I’ve ever heard. I have to wonder who this counsel is being directed to in the Bishop’s mind.

Keep holy the Sabbath is an actual commandment … and to be kept … but in time of war … after an unscrupulous enemy killed the observant Jews who would not defend themselves because it WAS the Sabbath … the Maccabean leaders took account of the results and came to a decision

Using “torture” at a level that merely frightens an enemy into giving life saving information that saves potential victims of terror from the planned deed the enemy knows about … and leaves no lasting damage to him physically … is a level of “torture” hardly worth botheringt about. Our troops likely undergo such in their training.

What kind of torture merely frightens someone??

 

[CaptFun]

What kind of torture merely frightens someone??

Waterboarding.

One could be perverse in administering it. Or vindictive. Or know it needn’t be done. So it COULD be wrong.

But the counter-dilemma would be scrupling to do even as LITTLE as waterboarding a terrorist and failing to protect and serve innocent people who might be spared if the terror event can be stopped via the information one could get.

Waterboarding involves fear and a feeling of helplessness and panic. But if it got lifesaving results without even dealing the terrorist lasting physical damage … it can IMO be justified. It is probably being done even during this Obama administration and under former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton … (I am guessing here … and I don’t think those two officials needed to know of it … but believe it probably IS an option for those in the field. And renders a less drastic result than (say) being KILLED in a drone strike … which gets reported often on the nightly news these days).

newsmax.com/Newsmax-Tv/james-woolsey-waterboarding-train-navy/2016/03/23/id/720570/

Former CIA Director James Woolsey told Newsmax TV on Wednesday (3/23/2016) that

“you can make a reasonably good argument that waterboarding is not torture”

because the method is used to train Navy SEALs and U.S. Special Forces.

http://s.hswstatic.com/gif/water-boarding-1.jpg

Vietnam, 1968: A U.S. soldier questions an enemy suspect with the help of a water-boarding technique.
PHOTO COURTESY UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL

science.howstuffworks.com/water-boarding1.htm

Pros and Cons of Waterboarding from the above link –

CIA members who’ve undergone water boarding as part of their training have lasted an average of 14 seconds before begging to be released. The Navy SEALs once used the technique in their counter-interrogation training, but they stopped because the trainees could not survive it without breaking, which was bad for morale.

When the CIA used the water-boarding technique on al-Qaida operative and supposed “9/11 mastermind” Khalid Sheik Mohammed, he reportedly lasted more than two minutes before confessing to everything of which he was accused. Anonymous CIA sources report that Mohammed’s interrogators were impressed.

Many CIA officials see water boarding as a poor interrogation method because it scares the prisoner so much you can’t trust anything he tells you.

 

[jtauke]

Waterboarding.

One could be perverse in administering it. Or vindictive. Or know it needn’t be done. So it COULD be wrong.

But the counter-dilemma would be scrupling to do even as LITTLE as waterboarding a terrorist and failing to protect and serve innocent people who might be spared if the terror event can be stopped via the information one could get.

Waterboarding involves fear and a feeling of helplessness and panic. But if it got lifesaving results without even dealing the terrorist lasting physical damage … it can IMO be justified. It is probably being done even during this Obama administration and under former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton … (I am guessing here … and I don’t think those two officials needed to know of it … but believe it probably IS an option for those in the field. And renders a less drastic result than (say) being KILLED in a drone strike … which gets reported often on the nightly news these days).

newsmax.com/Newsmax-Tv/james-woolsey-waterboarding-train-navy/2016/03/23/id/720570/

http://s.hswstatic.com/gif/water-boarding-1.jpg

Vietnam, 1968: A U.S. soldier questions an enemy suspect with the help of a water-boarding technique.
PHOTO COURTESY UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL

science.howstuffworks.com/water-boarding1.htm

What a joke. An absolute joke.

Waterboarding only frightens people? Waterboarding is physical torture that, if applied incorrectly, could easily kill the victim.

I’ll pray for you.

 

[Darryl1958]

Waterboarding.

One could be perverse in administering it. Or vindictive. Or know it needn’t be done. So it COULD be wrong.

But the counter-dilemma would be scrupling to do even as LITTLE as waterboarding a terrorist and failing to protect and serve innocent people who might be spared if the terror event can be stopped via the information one could get.

Waterboarding involves fear and a feeling of helplessness and panic. But if it got lifesaving results without even dealing the terrorist lasting physical damage … it can IMO be justified. It is probably being done even during this Obama administration and under former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton … (I am guessing here … and I don’t think those two officials needed to know of it … but believe it probably IS an option for those in the field. And renders a less drastic result than (say) being KILLED in a drone strike … which gets reported often on the nightly news these days).

newsmax.com/Newsmax-Tv/james-woolsey-waterboarding-train-navy/2016/03/23/id/720570/

http://s.hswstatic.com/gif/water-boarding-1.jpg

Vietnam, 1968: A U.S. soldier questions an enemy suspect with the help of a water-boarding technique.
PHOTO COURTESY UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL

science.howstuffworks.com/water-boarding1.htm

I like your thought process. In the end, those who do not take into account the potential for terrorists sitting on information that would light children up like embers fleeing from a burning building are morally irrelevant to any discussion. The Talmudic axiom of those who are kind to the cruel end up being cruel to the kind describes such morally irrelevant pontificaters. They pretend that the horrendous consequences of doing nothing are inconsequential to their own self-righteous moral purity on the issue.

But I would agree with the CIA assessment that waterboarding is not a reliable source of useful and timely information. That is not the only basis for rejecting a particular kind of interrogation of course, but that is a bottom line that needed in order to determine whether a particular line of questioning is even worthwhile.

 

[josie_L]

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

I’ve never heard of the papacy giving orders to the Spanish authorities to torture heretics, in fact, several popes wrote bulls limiting the Inquisition and/or preventing its excesses, i.e., torture:

The monarchs decided to introduce the Inquisition to Castile to discover and punish crypto-Jews, and requested the pope’s assent. Ferdinand II of Aragon pressured Pope Sixtus IV to agree to an Inquisition controlled by the monarchy by threatening to withdraw military support at a time when the Turks were a threat to Rome. The pope issued a bull to stop the Inquisition but was pressured into withdrawing it. On 1 November 1478, Pope Sixtus IV published the Papal bull, Exigit Sinceras Devotionis Affectus, through which he gave the monarchs exclusive authority to name the inquisitors in their kingdoms. The first two inquisitors, Miguel de Morillo and Juan de San Martín, were not named, however, until two years later, on 27 September 1480 in Medina del Campo.

The first auto-da-fé was held in Seville on 6 February 1481: six people were burned alive. From there, the Inquisition grew rapidly in the Kingdom of Castile. By 1492, tribunals existed in eight Castilian cities: Ávila, Córdoba, Jaén, Medina del Campo, Segovia, Sigüenza, Toledo, and Valladolid. Sixtus IV promulgated a new bull categorically prohibiting the Inquisition’s extension to Aragón, affirming that,

many true and faithful Christians, because of the testimony of enemies, rivals, slaves and other low people—and still less appropriate—without tests of any kind, have been locked up in secular prisons, tortured and condemned like relapsed heretics, deprived of their goods and properties, and given over to the secular arm to be executed, at great danger to their souls, giving a pernicious example and causing scandal to many.[20]

“In 1482 the pope was still trying to maintain control over the Inquisition and to gain acceptance for his own attitude towards the New Christians, which was generally more moderate than that of the Inquisition and the local rulers.”[21]

In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII attempted to allow appeals to Rome against the Inquisition, but Ferdinand in December 1484 and again in 1509 decreed death and confiscation for anyone trying to make use of such procedures without royal permission.[25] With this, the Inquisition became the only institution that held authority across all the realms of the Spanish monarchy and, in all of them, a useful mechanism at the service of the crown. However, the cities of Aragón continued resisting, and even saw revolt, as in Teruel from 1484 to 1485. However, the murder of Inquisidor Pedro Arbués in Zaragoza on September 15, 1485, caused public opinion to turn against the conversos and in favour of the Inquisition. In Aragón, the Inquisitorial courts were focused specifically on members of the powerful converso minority, ending their influence in the Aragonese administration.

The Inquisition (as it relates to Spain) was an institution at the service of the State not the Church.

 

[Tomdstone]

Waterboarding is physical torture that, if applied incorrectly, could easily kill the victim.

True.

 

[jtauke]

I like your thought process. In the end, those who do not take into account the potential for terrorists sitting on information that would light children up like embers fleeing from a burning building are morally irrelevant to any discussion. The Talmudic axiom of those who are kind to the cruel end up being cruel to the kind describes such morally irrelevant pontificaters. They pretend that the horrendous consequences of doing nothing are inconsequential to their own self-righteous moral purity on the issue.

But I would agree with the CIA assessment that waterboarding is not a reliable source of useful and timely information. That is not the only basis for rejecting a particular kind of interrogation of course, but that is a bottom line that needed in order to determine whether a particular line of questioning is even worthwhile.

So the ends justify the means?

You make Machiavelli proud.

 

[saintjohnxxiii]

And by doing do he put himself at odds with just about every Pope since antiquity. That’s not how the Church works.

I’ll trust Pope Saint John Paul II THE GREAT over yourself. He clearly knows more about Catholic teaching than yourself.

Also Pope Benedict condemned torture as well. Are you going to call him a heretic as well?

w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2007/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20070906_pastorale-carceraria.html

 

[SWolf]

I’ll trust Pope Saint John Paul II THE GREAT over yourself. He clearly knows more about Catholic teaching than yourself.

Also Pope Benedict condemned torture as well. Are you going to call him a heretic as well?

w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2007/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20070906_pastorale-carceraria.html

Show me where I called anyone on this thread a heretic.
Show me on this thread where I showed any Pope disrespect.

If you can’t you owe me an apology.

Here’s a question for you. Was Pope Innocent IV a heretic?

 

[josie_L]

Show me where I called anyone on this thread a heretic.
Show me on this thread where I showed any Pope disrespect.

If you can’t you owe me an apology.

Here’s a question for you. Was Pope Innocent IV a heretic?

No, but I think what people fail to forget is that heretics were once viewed as enemies of the state because they could and did, in fact, incite rebellion (against the authorities) in order to promulgate their views, therefore, torture was used in order to avoid the possibility of destroying the unity/peace/faith throughout the West or Christendom. That being said, some Church authorities back then must have felt differently than do Church authorities of today on the issues of torture, because the reasons for backing state torture (and that had its limitations) no longer exists (there is no Christendom to protect as we are now a heterogeneous society wherein the state no longer promulgates one faith over another).

 

[Avdima]

I don’t like the idea of torture, but as a last resort to get information out of terrorists, I realize it may be necessary.

Torture does not work.

Alex Knapp, a staff writer at Forbes, wrote the following in 2009, “Time and time again, people with actual experience with interrogating terror suspects and actual experience and knowledge about the effectiveness of torture techniques have come out to explain that they are ineffective and that their use threatens national security more than it helps”.

FM 34-52 Intelligence Interrogation, the United States Army field manual, explains that torture “is a poor technique that yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say what he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.” Not only is torture ineffective at gathering reliable information, but it also increases the difficulty of gathering information from a source in the future.

Most of the time when it comes to using “torture” you only get information that you want to hear from the suspect/subject, and not any truth. My favorite quote on the matter.

“You give me a water board, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I’ll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders."

(Larry King Live, May 11, 2009)”

― Jesse Ventura

 

[SWolf]

No, but I think what people fail to forget is that heretics were once viewed as enemies of the state because they could and did, in fact, incite rebellion (against the authorities) in order to promulgate their views, therefore, torture was used in order to avoid the possibility of destroying the unity/peace/faith throughout the West or Christendom. That being said, some Church authorities back then must have felt differently than do Church authorities of today on the issues of torture, because the reasons for backing state torture (and that had its limitations) no longer exists (there is no Christendom to protect as we are now a heterogeneous society wherein the state no longer promulgates one faith over another).

Yup.

You can be personally against any and all torture and still be in good standing with the Church.
You can support prudent, non-malicious torture techniques and still be in good standing with the Church.

The entire argument is whether or not torture is intrinsically evil. It is not.

 

[Darryl1958]

So the ends justify the means?

You make Machiavelli proud.

You make yourself irrelevant.
You are rabidly against something that you refuse to even define.

It is pointless carrying a conversation with the peanut gallery, who exist to harangue and throw their peanuts, without adding anything of any real substance to carry the discussion further.

 

[Tomdstone]

The catechism definition of torture is broad enough that it could include warfare.

So the infallible catechism of the Catholic church is wrong?