Catechism on Torture

via HMS Blog: http://www.exceptionalmarriages.com/weblog/BlogDetail.asp?ID=20455

"Let's look at Catholic teaching one more time. The Catechism's treatment of the Fifth Commandment includes a section on "Respect for the Dignity of Persons," which includes a subsection on "Respect for bodily integrity." There, we find:
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.
First of all, then, no torture.
And second, while I suppose there's some slight possibility that the category of "torture" is narrower than the category of that "which uses physical or moral violence to extract confessions," etc. - in other words, while there's some slight possibility that some uses of such violence don't count as "torture" - I think that reading would be very strained and highly unlikely. I think it's overwhelmingly likely that the Catechism is saying that if it "uses physical or moral violence ...," then it's "torture," and hence it's out of the question.
One might compare the previous sentence: "Terrorism threatens, wounds, and kills indiscriminately; it is gravely against justice and charity." Surely the Catechism doesn't mean to teach that there are some things that threaten, wound, and kill indiscriminately but that are not terrorism and hence are permissible?
Whether or not the "physical or moral violence" is severe, then - whether or not the physical or other pain that they inflict is severe - it's torture, and it's immoral, period.
This becomes still clearer in light of the other major Magisterial source on the subject: Vatican II's Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes, part I, "The Church and Man's Calling," chap. II, "The Community of Mankind," no. 27 (quoted in John Paul II's encyclical on fundamental moral theology Veritatis Splendor, chap. II, "'Do not be conformed to this world,' [Rom. 12:2] - The Church and the discernment of certain tendencies in present-day moral theology," sect. IV, "The moral act," subsection on "'Intrinsic evil': it is not licit to do evil that good may come of it [cf. Rom. 3:8]," no. 80). The relevant passage:
Furthermore, ... whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as ... torments [or "torture"] inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; ... all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are supreme dishonor to the Creator.
Here, the meaning of torture is not explained as it is in the Catechism. However, note the additional reference to "attempts to coerce the will." Such attempts are in general "infamies indeed," and out of the question, whether or not they take the form of "torture." Even, then, if the Catechism does not rule out all coercive "physical or moral violence," all infliction of pain, as "torture," all such methods of coercion are nonetheless immoral.
Is this teaching a challenge to our culture in more ways than one - as one of my readers observed? Absolutely. For one thing, for the purposes of our criminal justice system, we have now generally rejected physically or morally "violent" punishments in favor of deprivations of freedom as a response to the misuse of freedom. We take freedom away by imprisoning, or limit it by extension by depriving people of its fruits by inflicting fines, or, in what ought to be "very rare, if not practically non-existent" cases, we remove the fundamental condition for its exercise by inflicting the death penalty. We do not, by contrast, use whippings (physical violence) or humiliation in the town square (moral violence - though, sadly, a few judges in recent years have decided to be "creative" and reinvent such punishments). But on the other hand, our culture has not wholly rejected physically violent punishment - corporal punishment - in other settings, like the family. And it just won't do to say that spanking is okay, therefore the Catechism can't mean what it says. It ought to challenge our ideologies, including about child-rearing, rather than vice versa. (In fact, Greg is right that, while spanking might be better than letting kids go feral, it's not the best way to go.)
For another thing, "interrogations" in the context of our domestic criminal justice system are probably at least sometimes "coercive," and this, too, ought to stop. It's not "coercive" when people are convinced to feel guilty about their wrongdoing itself - including about their failure to reveal information that they, in justice, ought to reveal. Maybe it's not coercive to make what are genuinely privileges a reward for cooperation. But when, e.g., punishments that would not otherwise be due to a criminal are added because he won't cooperate - or when he's deprived of fairly basic human needs like sleep or the use of a toilet - then, I think, we have a problem, whether the practice takes place in a police station in Downtown USA or in the camp at Gitmo. But, again, the point is to let ourselves be challenged by true Catholicism, not vice versa.
. . .There are some issues on which there ought to be no compromise, even in a time of threats to our nation. Torture is one of them."