Is the question "What is torture?" A Sideshow to the Real Issue.

Fellow Louisiana blogger Full Circle has a post Torture is intrinsically evil that I think is need of a charitable reply.

I suppose I am in disagreement with some assumptions there.

FC states:

Jeff Miller over at the Curt Jester summarized well in a comment on the CMR blog

The heavy lifting on this subject has been done by Mark Shea, Zippy, and Tom at Disputations. The short take is torture is an intrinsic evil and we can never do evil to do good. It is certainly the case the the magisterium and the papal magisterium in particular is teaching this as evidenced by the Catechsim and Vertitatis Splendor.Too often torture apologists start by imitating Pontius Pilot and saying "What is torture" and then go to a specific situation such as the ticking bomb scenario. Using this scenario to make torture sound reasonable does not address the morality of torture. (source)

I firmly side with the stance that the question "What is torture?" is a sideshow to the real issue.

Well I must say I disagree that this is a side show. Catholics believe that life from conception has a human dignity that must be protected. However there have been over the past several decades serious ethical questions that get into what that means. In other words the debate and deliberation that went into the recently released Vatican document on some of these concerns INSTRUCTION DIGNITAS PERSONAE
ON CERTAIN BIOETHICAL QUESTIONS is not just a side show that distracts from the main issue.

It gives real practical guidance and instruction to Catholics worldwide.

Just look at the years of debate that have gone into the numerous issues that surround dying. Such as feeding tubes, what is extraordinary treatments, the use of medicines that are used to control pain but might in some cases cause death , DNR orders, etc etc.

These issues were debated by people of good faith on all sides and were listened too by the Church. See RESPONSES TO CERTAIN QUESTIONS OF THE UNITED STATES CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS CONCERNING ARTIFICIAL NUTRITION AND HYDRATION and also SACRED CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH
DECLARATION ON EUTHANASIA in which the Vatican document stated "In order that the question of euthanasia can be properly dealt with, it is first necessary to define the words used."

Why is the issue of torture and enhanced interrogation different?

I think we need a very robust review of terms here and the opening of a lot of questions

There are many reasons for this.

(1) If torture is going to be not only immoral but illegal that means that people can put on trial and imprisoned for engaging in it. While this might not concern many bloggers and writers because they will not be put in this situation it does affect countless military personnel, intelligence experts, government workers, public servants, and now as we have seen even lawyers that write memos. Putting forth a definition of terms so people can avoid such conduct or defend themselves against such charges is a part of Justice too.

(2)Legal considerations aside the Catholic and Christian in the field must be given so guidance as to the moral implication of his choices.

(3)Catholics must be careful here of speaking in almost a infallible voice for the Church. Too many times Catholics on all sides go THE CATHOLIC CHURCH TEACHES X. Well on some issues such as birth control, abortion, euthanasia, the Eucharist well yes there is a degree of certainty. However as we have seen over the past few years there has been too many people Declaring X as Catholic Teaching (The Church TEACHES an immediate withdrawal From Iraq) and not admit that there are serious and legitimate areas of prudential judgment. That does not help the spread of the gospel.

For instance as to points 2 and 3. There is much ridiculing people who talk about the ticking bomb scenario. Such as there is a nuclear bomb in New York and we got to get the location from the terrorist.

In the real world there are sort of real world ticking bomb scenarios that occur in the War on Terror that don't include mushroom clouds.

Let us say in Iraq our intelligence units have just caught a terrorist that placed a bomb in a marketplace somewhere in the vicinity. What can the intelligence officer do to find get this information?Can he put him in painful arm lock? Slap him? Put a gun to his head and scare the dickens out of him to get the info.

This is not a far fetched scenario. I for one am not so comfortable as others of declaring to that person that all or any of the above are against CHRISTIAN and Catholic Doctrine and thus immoral. I am not wary because I really want him to succeed. I am uncomfortable because I have seen all the above mentioned as torture but I am not so sure we can so easily declare it is.

(4) We can not live in a Catholic ghetto. Catholic as they engage the wider public square cannot just point to Vatican II Document and Papal statements in which I would contend even in those the terminology is of some dispute and even in a sort of theological infancy in some ways. That is there still issues to explore. One must engage the natural law arguments, scripture, tradition , etc.

When this is brought up sadly the people that bring these arguments up are dismissed, have their motives questioned, and even in Catholic circles their faith questioned.

None of this is helpful

For a great discussion of these issues that MUST be answered see this post and the unusual good comment section that raises these issues at What’s Wrong with the World in the post “It’s just so obvious!”: The case of torture. These people are serious Catholics whose questions cannot just be displayed as partianship(more on this later). I really recommend this thread to see at most part a serious civil discussion

In the above post quote from Full Circle above quotes there is a person that says The heavy lifting on this subject has been done by Mark Shea, Zippy, and Tom at Disputations. I would like to point that is just one side of the people that have done heavy the lifting. Zippy is mentioned and I indeed like his contribution to the Catholic blog sphere. However after a rather robust discussion in the “It’s just so obvious!”: The case of torture thread ZIPPY has had enough. He responds in a post at the same blog with The Speech Privilege. Here is is in full(please note the comment section erupted there)


Morally, speech is a privilege. That is, speech is not morally neutral, and since there is no moral right to commit evil there is no moral right to free speech. Materially evil speech has no privileges. (Note that this is a moral point, not a political point).

A person who refuses to unequivocally concede that cutting a living four-month fetus to pieces in a woman's womb is an immoral act of murder has no standing to speak on the subject of abortion. He may engage in all sorts of casuistry about ectopic pregnancies and difficult scenarios for pregnant women; he may be genuinely conflicted in his own subjective interior intellection; he may, indeed, be in need of apologetical help in order to see the error of his ways. But his speech on the subject is the banging of a gong, emptiness poured into the void.
Same with the subject of torture, for someone unwilling to concede that waterboarding KSM was unequivocally immoral torture. [Note: I've retracted "and a war crime", which I had originally written - Z]

The above is not helpful and I would ask people to review the “It’s just so obvious!”: The case of torture comment thread to see if such a response was warranted. Sadly however such responses are typical as well as questioning the motives and integrity of those that one side calls the "Torture Brigade"

Returning to Full Circle who I don't put in the same category as above by the way he states

I find it very difficult to understand the reasoning that calling torture a rose makes it any less torture. "Let us do evil that good may result". Feel free to tread there. But do so at the risk St. Paul mentioned.

Over at the Corner there has been a heated discussion on torture. I find it odd that over at the Corner the various contributors on this issue have managed to get retractions from Andrew Sullivan when he misrepresents them as being pro-torture and very much misrepresenting their views but in the Catholic blog sphere the same courtesy does not seem to exist. As to the St Paul quote I agree with it. And so does this Corner contributor and a person that is dealing with this issue in a very serious way. See Christianity, Torture, and the Media by Keith Pavlischek who is with a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and director of EPPC’s Program to Protect America’s Freedom.

The post which I linked a couple of days ago is good reading and deals with the issues this post is about. He too is called pro-torture . However like Full Circle he states
More broadly, in discussing the moral permissibility of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” I told the reporter that any Christian argument for such techniques had to be non-consequentialist. In other words, a Christian’s moral judgment of the acts cannot depend on the hoped-for outcome; it must be based on the morality of the actions themselves — because Christians don’t “do evil so that good may come.”

That link is to the same scripture that Full Circle quotes. While we must follow that verse we must also be careful of throwing the word consequentialist around that seems to have nothing to do with the main arguments that are being raised in the above threads. There is an dogged desire to have people like myself and other labeled as consequentialist but for the most part we are very opposed to such a view.

Full Circle states as to people that are arguing against Shea and Zippy on certain matters via a post that was in Public Discourse is:

The problem is, I suspect, is that the partisanship is really what stands in the way.

I respectfully disagree. In fact the revelations of the amount of liberal democrats that were briefed on these matters should throw some water on that. Now I might disagree with Pelosi and Rockefeller on many items. But I am pretty sure they don't agree with torture. But back then they raised no objections? Why? Because maybe they did not think it was torture. However the tune has changed. Who is being partisan here?

I have seen many of the more conservative Republican leaning blogs take stances against enhanced interrogations. I have also seen that the main people that are raising questions to Shea and others do not have a history of Cheer leading Bush's state execution stance and in fact were very critical of McCain's stem cell stance. In fact they are often the Republican biggest critics on many issues.

I think partisanship has little to do with it. Rather it is Catholics of Good faith that are raising issues that must be raised as to the whole of Church tradition and are feeling a certain discomfort that so many are declaring Catholic Internet anathemas on every one that disagrees with them. That is people think that if someone declares 24 hours of sleep deprivation is now evil and immoral per Catholic Teaching they should be on some pretty solid ground.

A few words on the Documents that Catholics must engage on all side that FC cites.

Please refer to the update on my post here where those terms and what they mean are interacted with. Again I think that disucssion I quote shows it is indeed not all clear.

Again I am not sure people that are trying to call "torture a rose" here. However there is one additional point I wish to raise as to the Gaudium et Spes document he cites.

"Whatever is hostile to life itself, such as any kind of homicide, genocide, abortion, euthanasia and voluntary suicide; whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, physical and mental torture and attempts to coerce the spirit; whatever is offensive to human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution and trafficking in women and children; degrading conditions of work which treat labourers as mere instruments of profit, and not as free responsible persons: all these and the like are a disgrace, and so long as they infect human civilization they contaminate those who inflict them more than those who suffer injustice, and they are a negation of the honour due to the Creator"

I highlight deportation there for a reason. Now during the immigration reform debates I saw on several Catholic cites this cited as the Church was against deportation and thus one could not deport the illegals. Again it shows one must read these documents in the tradition of the Church. Is the Church against all deportation? Of course not. If all deportations were so unethical then why would the Bishops endorse a plan that would have resulted in the deportation of illegal aliens that did not meet the qualification. I would suggest that as to terms "coerce the spirit" we need to look at that in a much more critical way too.

Anyway those are my thoughts.

For a related matter of Criticisms of a Evangelical Document that seemed hell bend on not defining terms see this very good criticism at Christianity Today Human Rights and Justice in an Age of Terror An evangelical critique of An Evangelical Declaration Against Torture.

I will end with the words Christian apologist and Philosopher Francis Beckwith

"queries about definitions and distinctions are not Jesuitical inventions of the inauthentic sadist employed to excuse evil, but rather, serious attempts to advance the common good."