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Dtmccameron
Guest
Oh come now! For the sake of one you’ld leave the Church? As though everything every Priest has ever said and done has been totally indicative of the Church’s position!
Agreed.
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soma
Guest
The Inquisition clergy did not perform the torture, they similar to Vice President Cheney out-sourced the dirty deed. I admire the refusal to torture.
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bobzills
Guest
It looks like the Catholic Church has changed its teaching on whether or not torture is an intrinsic evil. Today, according to what you have written here, the Church declares that torture is an intrinsic evil. However, jthe Papal Bull Ad exstirpanda authorised the use of torture to elicit confessions. . It was issued on May 15, 1252, by Pope Innocent IV, and was confirmed by Pope Alexander IV on November 30, 1259, and by Pope Clement IV on November 3, 1265.
po18guy
Well-known member
Look at the different contexts. That explains the apparent difference.
In defense of innocent life, we are justified to take guilty life, if there is no reasonable alternative. Note that this is a denial of the humanity of the guilty - but based solely on the actions of the guilty. Those who have a responsibility for the lives of others are not commanded to turn a blind eye to imminent danger, but to act out of a “grave duty”.
Has “torture” now become the equaivalent of murder? Is it somehow worse? Given the current political environment, it apparently is.
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Just_Lurking
Guest
According to Catholic apologists on this site, it is important to distinguish between an actual, promulgated modern-day Church teaching and a past papal action, where something was done in medieval times without any particular teaching on the subject being promulgated.
A similar situation to what you describe happened with the Church’s teaching on sacramental marriage. CCC 1640 says that a sacramental, consummated marriage cannot be dissolved as a matter of doctrine.
However, Pope Celestine III (1187-1191) dissolved a particular sacramental, consummated marriage with his decretal Laudabilem. However, because this was an action as opposed to a teaching, everything is apparently okay. I assume this same exception applies to the actions of the thirteenth century popes authorizing torture.
In the case of torture, CCC 2298 addresses the medieval actions:
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.
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bobzills
Guest
So a promulgated Papal Bull, confirmed by several Popes, is not a promulgated teaching of the Catholic Church?
Would that also apply to Humanae Vitae?
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Just_Lurking
Guest
You’ll have to ask the Catholic apologists. It looks to me as though the Catholic Church did indeed reverse its position on several issues over time.
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rvgirl
Guest
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Alindawyl
Guest
Here’s a better hypothetical presented by someone I know in the military:
*We have captured three members of an al-Qaeda sleeper cell in Detroit. Papers in a room one of them rented include maps of the US and detailed street maps of Denver, Chicago, Washington, Atlanta, Seattle, Dallas, and San Francisco. Tossing their warehouse turns up rental receipts for five Ryder panel vans, several GPS receivers, traces of Semtex, and one corner of the warehouse has a radiation level 200 times that of the background. All three terrorists show mild signs of radiation exposure. We know there were twelve members in the cell, and nine are now missing.
You are the President of the United States. Would you authorize the use of “aggressive interrogation” techniques already in place to obtain the information you need to stop five US cities – bearing in mind that there are seven potential targets – from getting whacked with a “dirty bomb”?*
The more I think about it, the more I believe the Church really needs to give a clarification on this kind of situation. We know beyond a reasonable doubt they’re guilty. Torture is obviously wrong if trying to force a suspected terrorist to confess to a crime, to punish a suspected terrorist, to frighten other terrorists into leaving us alone, or if done out of pure sadism. But torture with self-defense as the only justification…
Under strict conditions such as this hypothetical, it would be much more a matter of self-defense than torture.
*We have captured three members of an al-Qaeda sleeper cell in Detroit. Papers in a room one of them rented include maps of the US and detailed street maps of Denver, Chicago, Washington, Atlanta, Seattle, Dallas, and San Francisco. Tossing their warehouse turns up rental receipts for five Ryder panel vans, several GPS receivers, traces of Semtex, and one corner of the warehouse has a radiation level 200 times that of the background. All three terrorists show mild signs of radiation exposure. We know there were twelve members in the cell, and nine are now missing.
You are the President of the United States. Would you authorize the use of “aggressive interrogation” techniques already in place to obtain the information you need to stop five US cities – bearing in mind that there are seven potential targets – from getting whacked with a “dirty bomb”?*
The more I think about it, the more I believe the Church really needs to give a clarification on this kind of situation. We know beyond a reasonable doubt they’re guilty. Torture is obviously wrong if trying to force a suspected terrorist to confess to a crime, to punish a suspected terrorist, to frighten other terrorists into leaving us alone, or if done out of pure sadism. But torture with self-defense as the only justification…
Under strict conditions such as this hypothetical, it would be much more a matter of self-defense than torture.
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rvgirl
Guest
I will repeat what I posted earlier, Jesus was tortured. The Romans, I am sure, justified his torture in a myriad of different ways. You can justify anything in war but that does not make it morally right.
Torture is torture and Americans do not torture. We prosecuted the Nazis for torture. The Nazis imprisoned during the trials were grateful to have American Military guards because they did not torture. The Russians did.
As Catholics, I am amazed people are still finding some reason to justify this horrific act that was done to our Saviour, Jesus Christ.
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bobzills
Guest
I read in the newspaper that the Obama administration has released secret documents showing that Americans did authorise torture and did torture Muslims. Further the Americans have a policy of rendition according to which they take Muslims to foreign countries, such as Jordan and Poland and torture them there.
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Just_Lurking
Guest
Maybe this new openness will help Maher Arar (see here):
Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen and computer programmer, cut short a family vacation in Tunisia in September 2002 when his employer said they needed him for a project.
Never in his worst nightmares could Arar have guessed that two weeks later, he would find himself held captive in a virtual grave in Syria, leaving the tiny filthy space only to be repeatedly tortured and interrogated to extract information about things of which he knew nothing. Nor could he have known that later, the US would seek to avoid compensating him for his suffering or issuing a declaratory judgment clearing his name, all on the grounds that doing so would compromise “state secrets.”
“This has ruined my life,” Arar said in a recent telephone interview with The NewStandard. “For them to avoid talking about what they did to me because of state secrets is ridiculous. They need to be held accountable.”
Arar’s tale is one of numerous stories of gross mistreatment, errors and overzealousness in the war on terrorism. When he changed planes at JFK International Airport in New York on September 26, 2002 on the way back to Canada from visiting Tunisia, Arar’s name showed up on a watch list compiled by US authorities. Agents proceeded to interrogate him, detain him and send him first to Jordan for interrogations and beatings, and then to Syria. There more agents – this time Syrian specialists – brutally tortured and questioned him for a year before he was finally released without charges, his interrogators having found no links to terrorism.
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GraceDK
Guest
Torture is never a moral choice. Whether you are dealing with a guilty or an unguilty person, there is no choice but to choose good. There is no such thing as justified torture. Its a huge tragedy and scandal for America that it has allowed such crimes to happen and justified themselves the way they did…
As for your fiction scenario. 9 minutes is enough to evacuate all busses in a city, especially in an Israeli city. Also… let me ask you. Do you think that someone that has been tortured will ever be anything but your absolute enemy?
In the future, people who have been tortured by the American military in the middle east will kill other western soldiers. When you give evil the alternative of another evil then you get no other solution than evil.
What are the Americans fighting for if not freedom?
Torture is the most degrading contrast to human rights. When you allow it in any size or form you are negotiation with satan and open the door to hell.
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GraceDK
Guest
I would like to see what comes out of this… I hope you take it to the apologets with your documentation and theory that you have derived from it.
Of course… it sounds like an interesting an crucial problematic.
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bobzills
Guest
This is why I am not buying into the statements made by people here that Americans don’t torture. And this would not be the first time that Americans have tortured people. For example, with reference to the Nurenberg trials held after WWII, the American Senator Joseph McCarthy said: "I have heard evidence and read documenrary proofs to the effect that the accused persons were beaten up, maltreated and physically tortured by methods which could only be conceived in sick brains. They were subjected to mock trials and pretended executions, they were told their families would be deprived of their ration cards. All these things were carried out with the approval of the Public Prosecutor in order to secure the psychological atmosphere necessary for the extortion of the required confessions. If the United States lets such acts committed by a few people go unpunished, then the whole world can rightly criticise us severely and forever doubt the correctness of our motives and our moral integrity. "
And according to the American Judge Edward L. van Roden, one of the three members of the Simpson Army Commission which was subsequently appointed to investigate the methods of justice at the Dachau trials, in the Washington Daily Navs, January 9, 1949, and in the Sunday Pictorial, January 23, 1949, he described the beatings and severe torture of Germans by the American interrogators. It is too horrible to quote what he said here.
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GraceDK
Guest
Pope John Paul 2.s words to the Red Cross—“nothing could ever justify torture”.
I think that anyone who tries to justify torture has understood little about the Spirit that was in Jesus.
It reminds me of some people’s argument that prostitution should be legal because if its made illegal then the sexually frustrated men will go and rape someone.
The one who tortures breaks the Commandment of Love and undermines whatever cause or nation in whose name he acts.
I think that anyone who tries to justify torture has understood little about the Spirit that was in Jesus.
It reminds me of some people’s argument that prostitution should be legal because if its made illegal then the sexually frustrated men will go and rape someone.
The one who tortures breaks the Commandment of Love and undermines whatever cause or nation in whose name he acts.
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baylee
Guest
Exactly. I do not know for sure, but I’m willing to bet there was a time in Church history where killing was never justified and war was never justified…now killing in self defense is justified and we have the doctrine of just war. With the advent of terrorism, the Church needs to clarify its teaching in certain rare circumstances yet again…this time in how it relates to torture in self defense.
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Garland
Guest
The kind of torture alluded to in both stories is not what the party of death and its leader object to. I think waterboarding is a torture that all 49 million little babies, killed by these butchers, would have chosen over abortion. In the stories, both things were justified. Garland
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bacon_man
Guest
Here’s a question, so tourture is wrong, we know that, but what would the moral thing to do be? Let everyone else die? Or is there an alterntive?
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tjm190
Guest
The Catechism quote makes no statements on torture used to extract information relevant to saving the lives of others.
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