Unthinkable - Is torture justfied?

[John_Paul_Jones]

It isn’t clear whether this person who has knowledge of the nuclears bombs, knows where there are because he is part of the terrorist organization that planted them or an innocent third party who somehow obtain that information. But if he is part of the organization that planted them, then he is a terrorist and the million people are innocent and don’t deserve that fate, and everything possible should be done to protect their lives. Not only a millions of people will die instantaneously but because of the fallout, millions would be fatally sick for years to come.

I think the fact some would pick the life of a terrorist over the lives of a few million people is proof enough to me that this is a backward world where the guilty are treated like they are innocent and the innocent are treated like they are guilty.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

It isn’t clear whether this person who has knowledge of the nuclears bombs, knows where there are because he is part of the terrorist organization that planted them or an innocent third party who somehow obtain that information. But if he is part of the organization that planted them, then he is a terrorist and the million people are innocent and don’t deserve that fate, and everything possible should be done to protect their lives. Not only a millions of people will die instantaneously but because of the fallout, millions would be fatally sick for years to come.

I think the fact some would pick the life of a terrorist over the lives of a few million people is proof enough to me that this is a backward world where the guilty are treated like they are innocent and the innocent are treated like they are guilty.

Catholic Theology is not backwards. You do not understand the nature of love or the purpose for which we exist.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

yes, a dude (last time I checked anyway)

OK, since so many usually hide behind the “these hypothetical ‘ticking time bomb’ things never happen anyway” argument, let’s look at a real incident from a few years ago. The Beslan school massacre. In 2004 Chechen terrorists sieged a school in Beslan Russia and killed over 300 people, including 186 children, to make their twisted evil point. Now the question is; if the Russian intelligence services had intercepted some phone conversations and knew that the Chechen terrorists were planning a school massacre ***somewhere ***in Russia in the next few days and if they caught one of the planners, would they be justified in doing whatever they had to do to get that Chechen to give some information on where it’s suppose to happen? Nevermind the red herrings about “oh, they’ll say anything if you’re twisting their arms”, should the Russian Intelligence guys at least TRY to save those kids they know are going to be machine gunned in a few days?

They should do anything that is morally permissible. Torture is not morally permissible, regardless of whether or not it will save millions.

 

[ronnie_bonigli]

They should do anything that is morally permissible. Torture is not morally permissible, regardless of whether or not it will save millions.

Is it morally permissible to let a couple hundred children be murdered because you didn’t want to rough up a terrorist?

 

[Ghosty]

I think the fact some would pick the life of a terrorist over the lives of a few million people is proof enough to me that this is a backward world where the guilty are treated like they are innocent and the innocent are treated like they are guilty.

I think this is a perfect example of where the mistake is being made. The terrorist is NOT being chosen over the innocents, but rather eternal salvation for the torturer is being chosen over the physical death of the innocents. Assuming these victims are truly innocent in the spiritual sense, they have nothing to lose by dying, but the prospective torturer has EVERYTHING to lose by torturing. The terrorist (assuming that this person is indeed involved in the plot) loses nothing in being tortured, and the prohibition against it isn’t meant to protect them.

This last point holds for all prohibitions against sins. Victims are always a secondary consideration at best; God is not injured by our blasphemy, and my neighbor isn’t injured because I covet his house or his wife. We have to take the soul of the torturer into consideration, because everything else being equal it is that person who’s eternal fate is being determined by the act, and eternal damnation outweighs any physical death, and any number of them.

When I hear people say that a terrorist should be tortured, I wonder why any worldly information is more important than the eternal destination of a soul. Remember, when torture is advocated, the victim receives the lesser negative effect, and the torturer the greater.

Peace and God bless!

 

[Ghosty]

Is it morally permissible to let a couple hundred children be murdered because you didn’t want to rough up a terrorist?

Is it morally permissible to send one soul to Hell just because you wanted to prolong the physical life of 100 people?

Peace and God bless!

 

[ronnie_bonigli]

I think this is a perfect example of where the mistake is being made. The terrorist is NOT being chosen over the innocents, but rather eternal salvation for the torturer is being chosen over the physical death of the innocents. Assuming these victims are truly innocent in the spiritual sense, they have nothing to lose by dying, but the prospective torturer has EVERYTHING to lose by torturing. The terrorist (assuming that this person is indeed involved in the plot) loses nothing in being tortured, and the prohibition against it isn’t meant to protect them.

This is actually a pretty selfish attitude. Why wouldn’t your logic apply to saving people from the Holocaust? If we have to kill German soldiers to save those inside the concentration camps then your argument becomes “but rather eternal salvation for the American soldier is being chosen over the physical death of the innocents. Assuming these victims are truly innocent in the spiritual sense, they have nothing to lose by dying, but the prospective American soldier has EVERYTHING to lose by killing the German soldiers at the camp”.

I do not think God has a high reqard for those that do not care about the safety of the innocent. “Forgive me Father for what I have done and what I have failed to do”

 

[Ghosty]

This is actually a pretty selfish attitude. Why wouldn’t your logic apply to saving people from the Holocaust? If we have to kill German soldiers to save those inside the concentration camps then your argument becomes “but rather eternal salvation for the American soldier is being chosen over the physical death of the innocents. Assuming these victims are truly innocent in the spiritual sense, they have nothing to lose by dying, but the prospective American soldier has EVERYTHING to lose by killing the German soldiers at the camp”.

I do not think God has a high reqard for those that do not care about the safety of the innocent. “Forgive me Father for what I have done and what I have failed to do”

The American soldier in your example isn’t committing grave sin by killing German soldiers in combat, so it doesn’t mean anything. If the example was torturing Nazis, then I would say it was wrong (and so would the U.S. Military, especially during WWII, incidentally; Japanese were tried and convicted, after the war, for waterboarding. Waterboarding as a form of interrogation is prohibited by the U.S. Military to this day).

Peace and God bless!

 

[Shin]

While some forms of torture are morally evil, as a general rule torture is not intrinsically morally evil, and so only other factors can cause that.

God ordains it as punishment and through authorities punishment often enough so it cannot be sinful in and of itself.

That said, then it is a matter of other weights and judgments whether it is called for.

And so the CCC is only making a prudential judgement.

 

[ronnie_bonigli]

The American soldier in your example isn’t committing grave sin by killing German soldiers in combat, so it doesn’t mean anything. If the example was torturing Nazis, then I would say it was wrong (and so would the U.S. Military, especially during WWII, incidentally; Japanese were tried and convicted, after the war, for waterboarding. Waterboarding as a form of interrogation is prohibited by the U.S. Military to this day).

Peace and God bless!

I didn’t know that we now define “grave sin” by what is or isn’t permitted by the U.S. Military. Talk about a red-herring. I still say that postion as stated; “The terrorist is NOT being chosen over the innocents, but rather eternal salvation for the torturer is being chosen over the physical death of the innocents. Assuming these victims are truly innocent in the spiritual sense, they have nothing to lose by dying, but the prospective torturer has EVERYTHING to lose by torturing” sounds incredibly selfish.

btw, earlier you copy and pasted from Catechism; “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” Did you not notice that they are talking about using it to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or ***satisfy hatred ***? Everyone would agree that that would be wrong. But those 4 things are not related to the goal of saving innocent lives. It’s one thing to torture someone to get him to confess that he murdered someone, it is quite another thing to do it to gain information to stop the murder of hundreds of children, such as in my Beslan school massacre example.

 

[richardacombs]

Then you deny that there is a distinction between a venial and a mortal sin?

I agree with you that there is a great danger in trying to justify certain acts. When is a war just?

My own history is that I went to war the first time, thinking that it was just. I went to war a second time without thinking through the moral justification. This was denial on my part. I should have filed for conscientious objector status, and when that was declined accepted my fate, even if that meant a criminal conviction and time in Leavenworth.

Having said that, I also believe in moral relativism. Perhaps I am not as Kantian as you. I don’t think a lie for personal gain is the same as a lie to save another person’s life, for example.

I think that a vice president who holds hundreds of millions in stock in a company, and then who then influences government policy to turn that into, perhaps, a billion of more at the cost of the bloodshed and lives of others, has committed a greater moral evil than the kid who is hungry and shoplifts something to eat.

Oh, I do believe in mortal and venial sin, but it’s still sin, and one sin paves the highway to the next sin. Was Jean Valjean justified in stealing the loaf of bread? He may have thought so, but the simple sin led to many, because each sin further enslaves the person. The danger in torture, even of the foulest terrorist and for the best motives, is not only the crime committed against the other person, but against oneself.

 

[RWMorris]

RWMorris: Self-defense is quite simply not the same as torturing someone for information. More specifically, the paragraph you cite says “legitimate self-defense”, not “any kind of self-defense”. Since torture is already ruled out as a grave moral evil, it obviously can’t fall under “legitimate self-defense”.

Bottom line is that it’s not a question of defending or not defending oneself and others, but rather what is legitimate. I could defend myself from harm by holding a gun to the terrorist’s mother, for example, but that would not be legitimate.

As for “what is torture”, I think simply taking the definition given by the Catechism is a good point, namely physical or moral violence. Obviously this would include “enhanced interrogations” such as water-boarding, “slamming”, and forced-positions. Mental pressure or intense verbal interogations don’t fall under this broad definition, however. The Catechism doesn’t rule on every detail (how long is too long of an interrogation, for example), but the definition isn’t completely blurry.

For what it’s worth, I’ve already read most of the links you provided. The fact remains that “physical or moral violence” is pretty clear language, at least for the purposes of what we’re discussing here.

You would be correct if, as stated specifically stated in Para 2297 of the CCC says, “*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.” But that is not what is happening in the scenario described. We are not interested in confessions, punishment, hatred, or whether he is frightened. We are only interested in the information he has.

And that information is what makes this a case of self-defense. That information exempts him from the prohibition against torture as evidenced in the next sentence of 2297, “Except when performed for strictly therapeutic medical reasons, directly intended amputations, mutilations, and *sterilizations *performed on innocent persons are against the moral law.” We are not dealing with an innocent person. We are dealing with an imminent threat, an armed intrusion against our property and people, which brings CCC para 2263 into play, "The legitimate defense of persons and societies is not an exception to the prohibition against the murder of the innocent that constitutes intentional killing. “The act of self-defense can have a double effect: the preservation of one’s own life; and the killing of the aggressor. . . . The one is intended, the other is not.” We are not torturing the terrorist for the reasons given in its prohibition, we are torturing the guilty to save the lives of the innocent. The torture of the terrorist is not the intention of our actions, and will stop as soon as the guilty “abandons” his intent of death and destruction. The preservation of the lives of innocents is our intended action.

Such an act of terrorism is also an act of war which means that Catholic Just War Doctrine comes into play. CCC 2309 list the “strict conditions for legitimate defense.” The act of torturing a guilty terrorists meets all of these strict conditions. The final sentence of 2309 is very specific, “The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.” Please understand what this means. Our national leaders make the determination of moral legitimacy of our actions during war. You are free to disagree (in America, anyway), but you, I, our Bishops, and even the Pope have no right to declare a war unjust. And they haven’t since the 4th Crusade.

And finally you claim to have read all the links I posted. That leaves me to believe that the well reasoned arguments that cast extremely strong doubt on your conclusions had no effect on them. I can only wish my confidence in my reasoning abilities could be so strong.

 

[verum_peto_1]

Assuming these victims are truly innocent in the spiritual sense, they have nothing to lose by dying, but the prospective torturer has EVERYTHING to lose by torturing. The terrorist (assuming that this person is indeed involved in the plot) loses nothing in being tortured, and the prohibition against it isn’t meant to protect them.

Peace and God bless!

By your theory of the victim, then there is no reason ever to defend life. What of the person who is in a state of mortal sin (let’s say they missed mass last Sunday)? Should they not have the opportunity to live long enough for reconciliation?

 

[verum_peto_1]

Has the Church not advanced the theory of a “just war”? Under that doctrine then, which acts of war are sins, and which ones are not? Where do you draw the line, say, between using a phosphorous mortar round or torture? Is a just war somehow only moral if it is a “humane” war somehow, in the tactics used?

 

[RWMorris]

Has the Church not advanced the theory of a “just war”? Under that doctrine then, which acts of war are sins, and which ones are not? Where do you draw the line, say, between using a phosphorous mortar round or torture? Is a just war somehow only moral if it is a “humane” war somehow, in the tactics used?

The final sentence of CCC #2309 is very specific, “The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.” Our national leaders make that evaluation. A lot of Catholics don’t like, or even respect, that part of Just War Doctrine.

A soldier in war does not get to choose how he fights the enemy, unless his orders are so blatantly immoral that he has no choice but disobey them. But that soldier must realize his view of the “big picture” may be distorted, and had better be prepared to face the consequences for disobeying such orders. Those consequences could even be immediate summary execution under dire circumstances.

 

[Just_Lurking]

The Compendium of Social Doctrine (see here) also contains a discussion of torture:

404 … In carrying out investigations, the regulation against the use of torture, even in the case of serious crimes, must be strictly observed: “Christ’s disciple refuses every recourse to such methods, which nothing could justify and in which the dignity of man is as much debased in his torturer as in the torturer’s victim”.[830] International juridical instruments concerning human rights correctly indicate a prohibition against torture as a principle which cannot be contravened under any circumstances.

 

[verum_peto_1]

The final sentence of CCC #2309 is very specific, “The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.” Our national leaders make that evaluation. A lot of Catholics don’t like, or even respect, that part of Just War Doctrine.

A soldier in war does not get to choose how he fights the enemy, unless his orders are so blatantly immoral that he has no choice but disobey them. But that soldier must realize his view of the “big picture” may be distorted, and had better be prepared to face the consequences for disobeying such orders. Those consequences could even be immediate summary execution under dire circumstances.

I am a former Marine, and I have been in combat a number of times. So, I know what the UCMJ has to say on the topic, and what ROE are.

My point, or really my question, was where is the moral line between torture and warfare, under Church doctrine. We know that in earlier times, the Church viewed torture as permissible and sometimes desirable, but tends not to have that view today.

The reason for my question was that statements were being made regarding the soul of the torturer, and sinning against the supposed terrorist in the hypothetical situations presented.

In the case of the Bush administration, “the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good” stated that acts which would normally be considered torture magically became “not torture” and were therefore desirable. Yet, the current administration has changed that policy. So, does this mean that a torturer did not sin under the previous Commander in Chief, but does sin committing the same acts now?

Further, even though ROE are specific as to whom to engage, they are often not specific as to how to engage. I intentionally brought up the use of phosphorous because it is controversial. It is agreed by most to be prohibited under the Geneva Conventions, but is used for “non weapon” uses in combat. Specifically to illuminate an area. However, the result is fairly horrific for anyone which the burning phosphorous comes into contact with. How is this any different than torture?

Finally, I assume that the theory of a “just war” is predicated on some sort of moral relativism. Specifically, that the end justifies the means, because the achieving of the defeat of the enemy through death and destruction will result in less death and destruction in final end. Does this not challenge the notion that any torture is bad, sui generis, if it could in fact be shown to save lives?

As for me, in retrospect I wish that I had applied for conscientious objector status, and if declined then stood for court martial rather than my last deployment. But that is another story…

 

[ronnie_bonigli]

The Compendium of Social Doctrine (see here) also contains a discussion of torture:

404 … In carrying out investigations, the regulation against the use of torture, even in the case of serious crimes, must be strictly observed: “Christ’s disciple refuses every recourse to such methods, which nothing could justify and in which the dignity of man is as much debased in his torturer as in the torturer’s victim”.[830] International juridical instruments concerning human rights correctly indicate a prohibition against torture as a principle which cannot be contravened under any circumstances.

That entire section you’re quoting from deals with “Inflicting punishment” in a society’s criminal justice system. Even the part you C&P was discussing “In carrying out investigations, the regulation against the use of torture, even in the case of serious crimes, must be strictly observed”, i.e. in carrying out ***criminal ***investigations you we should never torture to get a confession from the accused. It’s already been brought up a couple of times by different people today, NO ONE thinks we should torture to get confessions, and no one thinks we should have tortured O.J. Simpson to get him to confess he killed his wife. But that’s not the issue, the issue is whether it’s permissible to torture some terrorist to get the information to save hundreds or thousands of innocent lives. When you guys keep bringing up these out of context quotes against torture, it’s like finding a section of the Catechism dealing with priests and celibacy and then using those quotes commanding celibacy in arguing that EVERYONE is suppose to be celibate.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

That entire section you’re quoting from deals with “Inflicting punishment” in a society’s criminal justice system. Even the part you C&P was discussing “In carrying out investigations, the regulation against the use of torture, even in the case of serious crimes, must be strictly observed”, i.e. in carrying out ***criminal ***investigations you we should never torture to get a confession from the accused. It’s already been brought up a couple of times by different people today, NO ONE thinks we should torture to get confessions, and no one thinks we should have tortured O.J. Simpson to get him to confess he killed his wife. But that’s not the issue, the issue is whether it’s permissible to torture some terrorist to gave the information to save hundreds or thousands of innocent lives.

Should the police torture a serial killer who knows the location of an underground air tight container with 10 people suffocating in it? You are trying your very hardest to make it as if the context some how removes the problem. An emotional desire to save millions does not add up to the moral right to torture people.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

When you guys keep bringing up these out of context quotes against torture, it’s like finding a section of the Catechism dealing with priests and celibacy and then using those quotes commanding celibacy in arguing that EVERYONE is suppose to be celibate.

The church is very clear about the issue of celibacy. There is no ambiguity about it.