Torture and Immigration Debate( Catholics Debating Torture Non Stop)

Another look at Catholic blog land on this subject that has been hot this week.

First before the links a few thoughts on how this debate is being conducted. I think there is massive room for improvement. Thankfully it seems we have moved beyond the idea that "war Crime" trials is a good idea. So that is a improvement.

LABELS are of course important in debates. Sometimes labels are true, half true, or very false. In this sense though the labeling of people that support or have questions about various aspects of enhanced interrogations as supporting and wanting TORTURE I think is non productive.

It reminds me of the immigration debate. People that support immigration reform as we have seen proposed in the recent years are constantly said to support "open borders" by opponents of such views. That of course that is unfair and misleading. For the most part only the hard core Libertarians support a "open borders concept" However it is an effective label that the opponents of immigration reform use. Most Americans go WHAT? NO BORDERS? ALLOW ANYONE IN? THATS CRAZY.

While effective I don't think it helps the overall debate.

To a lesser degree we are seeing the same thing here. It is not a perfect analogy but I think it is similar .

That is here people are accused of intentionally wanting to support torture. Their Catholicism is called into question. They are then impugn with the worst motives. Again perhaps effective as a debating and political tactic but one which I think is counterproductive.

On the exact issue if technique x is torture is one is one in many cases that is up for debate. Many people are upset the Catholic Bishops are not making statements left and right on this. Perhaps their relative silence should indicate they realize these issues are complex and before speaking for Christ's Church that a certain amount of sleep deprivation is evil they are going to think about the issue and consult.

So that is my rant.

Anyway I think American Catholic has a good assortment of links that are good reads from across the political spectrum of Catholic thought at Apropos of Last Weeks Torture Post ….

Vox Nova has one other piece up at The Defense of Torture as a Pro-life Position