The Torture Question

[vz71]

Anyone in custody who is not trying to fight back is no longer an aggressor, regardless of what they are being held for. They are a prisoner. Any theoretical terror plans by such a person, when they’re not in a position to carry out a terror attack, do not justify doing violence to that person.

The withholding of information is as much a weapon in many instances as an automatic weapon.

In the example given, the child is not an aggresor (at least by the definition you have given).
However, not yielding the information costs lives and is as much an action of taking lives as if he had the trigger himself.
Given that, I would consider him an aggresor until the information he has is no longer effective in taking lives.

 

[RobbyS]

I disagree. Catholicism is quite clear on this.

The choice is between torturing, which is evil, and not torturing, which is not evil. So there is no choice between two evils.

You are still confusing the means and the end. It doesn’t matter how much good comes out of doing an evil act. The evil act is still immoral on its own, and the resulting good does not change that.

The CCC has a section on the Morality of Human Acts, starting at 1750. In particular, 1756 says:

1756 It is therefore an error to judge the morality of human acts by considering only the intention that inspires them or the circumstances (environment, social pressure, duress or emergency, etc.) which supply their context. There are acts which, in and of themselves, independently of circumstances and intentions, are always gravely illicit by reason of their object; such as blasphemy and perjury, murder and adultery. One may not do evil so that good may result from it.

I don’t think so. The real example of ectopic pregnancy provides a degree of medical certainty that exceeds the supposed certainty in this case. Yet it is not permissible for Catholics to remove an ectopic blastocyst to save the life of the mother.

This is not an ambiguous issue in Catholic moral teaching. Torture is always immoral.

That is like saying killing is always wrong. There are some acts that are inherently wrong, but “torture”. is not.

 

[Just_Lurking]

Agreed.
Then the exceptions listed within the paragraph are valid in this case, and there is nothing contrary to the CCC in the hypothetical we are given.

This statement from the CCC is true without exception: “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.”

 

[Just_Lurking]

That is like saying killing is always wrong. There are some acts that are inherently wrong, but “torture”. is not.

The Catholic Church teaches differently. See post #33.

 

[Just_Lurking]

The withholding of information is as much a weapon in many instances as an automatic weapon.

In the example given, the child is not an aggresor (at least by the definition you have given).
However, not yielding the information costs lives and is as much an action of taking lives as if he had the trigger himself.
Given that, I would consider him an aggresor until the information he has is no longer effective in taking lives.

Now you are really sledding down that slippery slope. Once you consider information to be aggression, you open up all sorts of justifications for violence.

Suppose that the kid was Catholic, and that he confesses to a Catholic priest and then dies, so that the priest is the only one with the information. Are you aware that the Catholic Church teaches that the priest must hold the confessed information inviolate, even at the cost of the lives involved? Do you agree with this teaching, or do you think the priest should excommunicate himself to save the lives of the people on the bus?

 

[vz71]

Now you are really sledding down that slippery slope. Once you consider information to be aggression, you open up all sorts of justifications for violence.

Not at all.
I simply have an understanding of the value of information.
In the age of information that we live in, information has a tangible value, and the wielding of information can be an act of aggression.

Suppose that the kid was Catholic, and that he confesses to a Catholic priest and then dies, so that the priest is the only one with the information. Are you aware that the Catholic Church teaches that the priest must hold the confessed information inviolate, even at the cost of the lives involved? Do you agree with this teaching, or do you think the priest should excommunicate himself to save the lives of the people on the bus?

You are building a straw man.

 

[vz71]

This statement from the CCC is true without exception: “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.”

No it is not.
The given quote is only part of the whole.
Here is the paragraph in its entirety:

2297 *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.

 

[Just_Lurking]

You are building a straw man.

No more than the OP is. A hypothetical is a hypothetical. And my hypothetical is no more made of straw than the standard “poisoning the communion wine” scenario used to illustrate the inviolate nature of the confessional. The only new thing is your view of information as aggression.

 

[Just_Lurking]

No it is not.
The given quote is only part of the whole.
Here is the paragraph in its entirety:

My quote was the quote of an entire sentence, which expresses a complete thought. The fact that the last sentence of the paragraph has an exception does not mean that the prior sentences of the paragraph have that exception as well. Grammatically speaking, the adjective “innocent” in the last sentence modifies the noun “persons” in the same sentence; it does not modify any noun of the preceding sentences.

 

[baylee]

Is a bank robber an aggressor after they are captured? A serial killer? A rapist?

Anyone in custody who is not trying to fight back is no longer an aggressor, regardless of what they are being held for. They are a prisoner. Any theoretical terror plans by such a person, when they’re not in a position to carry out a terror attack, do not justify doing violence to that person.

How many terrorists in custody currently have C4 on them? A satchel charge? A car bomb? An RPG? A remote detonator? A chemical warhead with delivery system? I’ll hazard a guess and say none.

If a prisoner wishes to act as an aggressor while still in custody, such as attacking the guards or even other prisoners, then that person should be subdued with an appropriate amount of force to keep them constrained. If he refuses to submit and contines to resist to the point where only deadly force will work, then so be it. But a prisoner who is not resisting may not be subjected to violence.

We shouldn’t let such a person go free, because of the threat they represent if given their freedom. But neither should we inflict violence upon them while they are not actively fighting.

The problem with your examples is that these are typically stand-alone perpetrators. Once they are in prison, they do not threaten us. However, a terrorist high up on the chain of command is part of a network with plans still in place to attack our country. When he taunts his captors and tells them he has information but he’s not willing to give it up, he is most certainly an aggressor. I did not know that to be an aggressor the person only had to do it in a physical way. Tell that to the many women who have been abused mentally.

In the real world we have to rely on second-hand information, which may or may not be true.

And what if he is the one who tells us he knows but just won’t give it up?

An act of sef-defense is one done in response to an attack. What threat is presented to the person administering the waterboarding by a victim who is strapped immobile on their back on an inclined board, with a soaking wet rag covering their face and water being dripped onto it regularly? At best a possible future threat, which may or may not be true. If you consider waterboarding a prisoner an act of self-defense, then by that logic all prisoners, as potential aggressors, should be treated as aggressors. All non-prisoners should be as well, since we cannot know just by looking at someone whether or not they are a terrorist.

Is that the kind of world you want? Guilty until proven innocent?

Again, comparing a terrorist to a routine prisoner (and especially a non-prisoner) is not apples and oranges. Comparing self defense when dealing with a terrorist and self defense when dealing in conventional war is not apples and oranges. Besides, conventional war (which is justified in certain circumstances by the Church) does not always include individual soldiers waiting for the other side to shoot first…and it’s still considered killing in self defense.

 

[Robert_Sock]

People, can’t you see that we are living in the wrong world? This thread is filled with satanic garbage. Jesus, deliver us!!!

 

[vz71]

No more than the OP is.

The OP has introduced a hypothetical to see if the CCC has objections.
If you have objections based on it being a straw man, it seems odd that you would wait so long in the discussion to bring this up.

A hypothetical is a hypothetical. And my hypothetical is no more made of straw than the standard “poisoning the communion wine” scenario used to illustrate the inviolate nature of the confessional.

Except you are introducing changes that change the parameters to better suit your position. That is the very definition of staw man.

The only new thing is your view of information as aggression.

Two things…

1. you are mis-stating my position on information. I am viewing the deliberate withholding of information to be an act of aggression. Not information itself.
2. My view of withholding information as an act of aggresion is very old. I believe there is a specific commandment concerning the bearing of false testimony. And I believe there is a fairly long history concerning the ‘lie of ommission.’

Nothing new there at all.

 

[vz71]

My quote was the quote of an entire sentence, which expresses a complete thought. The fact that the last sentence of the paragraph has an exception does not mean that the prior sentences of the paragraph have that exception as well. Grammatically speaking, the adjective “innocent” in the last sentence modifies the noun “persons” in the same sentence; it does not modify any noun of the preceding sentences.

This also places the reader in a precarious position.
If (as you say) one sentence does not necessarily relate at all to the paragraph it is contained in, then the reader is left with no context with which to read the CCC.

I prefer to follow the guidelines that basic grammer put in place.
Words mean things, paragraphs provide the context for sentences contained in them, chapters provide context to the paragraphs…etc.

I find this much more logical and easy to follow then an ‘each sentence is a whole thought and does not relate to the other sentences around it’ approach.

 

[vz71]

People, can’t you see that we are living in the wrong world? This thread is filled with satanic garbage. Jesus, deliver us!!!

Where?

 

[ChadS]

2297 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.

I can’t believe we’re arguing over whether torture is permissable against a “guilty” person because the last sentence in the paragraph uses the word innocent. The idea that torturing a “guilty” person is an idea that is repugnant to the Church and goes against everything written in the previous paragraph. It seems to me that the last sentence in 2297is meant emphasize that medical procedures such as amputations can be used to save a life and in many instances are medically necessary, not the idea, as has been argued, that amputation and mutilations are allowable during questioning on “guilty” parties and therefor don’t qualify as “torture.”

It seems quite clear to me that torture is wrong. The Church recognizes it and teaches against it. The Church also realizes that evil cannot beget good and no matter how much one desires to do good one cannot use evil actions to obtain that good.

ChadS

 

[Robert_Sock]

Where?

Where ever there is darkness and lack of LOVE, there you will find Satan. Excluding my contributions to this thread, does the word LOVE exist anywhere?

Lord, deliver us from the wretchedness of this world and lead us to the light of Your LOVE!

 

[ChadS]

Where ever there is darkness and lack of LOVE, there you will find Satan. Excluding my contributions to this thread, does the word LOVE exist anywhere?

Lord, deliver us from the wretchedness of this world and lead us to the light of Your LOVE!

Even if the word “love” hasn’t been explicitly mentioned in this thread there have been plenty of people posting that oppose torture and oppose it for the right reasons.

 

[wcknight]

Torture is a dispicable thing no matter if it is done to an innocent person or to a guilty person. One may feel less guilty when you think someone “deserves” it. BUT it is abhorrent behavior in either case.

We know that Jesus would never torture anyone under any circumstances, and neither would any of his saints give in to their baser instincts in such a way.

The original hypothetical case was made in such a way as to make it seem like only reasonable choice was to torture someone to get life saving information. In real life it is just about impossible to tell if anyone has reliable life saving information in advance.

The Church used torture during the Inquisition and it was WRONG to do so. The US used torture during the Iraq war and it was equally wrong to to do that.

 

[Peter_Dawson]

I used a child, in my hypothetical, to make the question exceedingly difficult. I also used a child because the Palestinians have wrapped children in dynamite to blow up Jews.

In his authorized biography, Marine sniper Carlos Hathcock made sure that the book opened with the difficult target which caused him the most emotional pain. Readers should be aware that though I am American, I am a lawyer for many Vietnamese people, whom I love dearly, and that on weekends we babysit a Vietnamese girl whom I love as my daughter.

Hathcock was guarding a hilltop along the Ho Chi Minh trail. He spotted a boy employed by the North Vietnamese Army to move Russian-supplied Kalishnakov machineguns and ammunition down the trail to North Vietnamese and Viet Cong in the South. The boy walked a bike with an enormous stack of bundled rifles on it down the trail.

Hathcock thought something like, “Well, there goes a delivery involving a few dozen dead American and South Vietnamese fathers.” To try to save the boy’s life, Hathcock decided to knock down the boy’s bike with a bullet, and scare the boy away. Bang. The bullet slammed into the bike frame, knocking-down the bike and scattering the bundle of guns.

Instead of running, the boy picked up a Kalishnakov, shoved in a magazine of live rounds, and began shooting into the trees where Hathcock was located.

Suddenly Hathcock realized that this was a boy trained to fight and kill. If he ran, he would call in brigade-level suppoort. The weapons would be recovered. Americans and South Vietnamese would die.

So, Hathcock shot the boy.

Unfortunate but moral?

 

[Robert_Sock]

Even if the word “love” hasn’t been explicitly mentioned in this thread there have been plenty of people posting that oppose torture and oppose it for the right reasons.

I guess I have an aversion to the topic itself. Instead of discussing a dark topic like torture (Satan’s department) one should instead “light a lamp” emphasizing Catholic virtue.