Boy, do I get sick of having to say the same stuff over and over

A reader wries:

Hello Mr. Shea,

Hi!

I have seen you perform as Innocent Smith on EWTN, and I belong to my local Chesterton society (Denver). I’ve just started coming to your blog and perusing your quite extensive and informative writings, so I regret that my first comment here must be one of mild opposition.

Your regret is nothing compared to mine, now that I’ve read what you have to say.

While I fully agree with the statements made about the political divide within the Church, abortion and punitive interrogation practices do not share a parity of wrongness. I have a few brief words to say about this torture debate which I hope will help settle the issue.

A) I do not claim a “parity of wrongness”. I think such attempts to parse “which grave evil is more evil” debates are fruitless and stupid. I simply point out that Holy Mother Church tells us in Veritatis Splendor and in the Catechism that both torture (what you call “punitive interrogation techniques”) and abortion are gravely and intrinsically evil. That’s why we are instructed:

“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’. International juridical instruments concerning human rights correctly indicate a prohibition against torture as a principle which cannot be contravened under any circumstances.” — Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, n 404

The internal quotation is from the 15 June 1982 address to the International Committee of the Red Cross by Pope John Paul II (available in French and Italian at vatican.va).

First of all, it is all only rumor and gossip at this point. Nobody accept the prisoners and the interrogators know what really happened inside those prisons, and there is no wisdom in everybody going off half cocked.

No. It is not. It is abundantly documented fact, including (but by no means limited to) pictures of corpses , reliable accounts of how they got to be corpses (and of Administration protections for the CIA interrogator who tortured the victim to death), as well as documentaries chronicling horrors inflicted on prisoners.

Secondly, I was very pleased to see that Fr. Sirico of The Acton Institute granted an interview on EWTN’s The World Over Live last Friday night in which he refused to condemn waterboarding as torture. Fr. Sirico recognizes that any statement of his which denounced Bush & Co. as being in violation of the moral law would be seen as him lending his pastoral support to a certain pacifist interpretation of Catholic social doctrine, which would not only hinder our country in dealing with its foreign policy challenges, but would throw fuel on the flames of a partisan divide such that the side least likely to advance a genuine moral agenda would reap the net advantage.

If that is what Fr. Sirico said, and if EWTN lets it go unchallenged, then shame on them. This is an elaboration of Peg Noonan’s counsel to simply ignore grave evil. A refusal to condemn waterboarding as torture is not a quibble about definitions: it is participation in an obvious and grave evil. We have *executed* soldiers from other countries who waterboarded people. It’s a preposterous falsehood to say that it’s impossible to know if waterboarding somebody 183 times is torture. Tom Kreitzberg summarizes the ridiculous incoherence of Fr. Sirico’s reported argument this way:

I don’t understand. Is the idea that Fr. Sirico thinks Bush & Co. violated the moral law, but he won’t say so because that would make pacifists happy? Or that he doesn’t think they violated the moral law, but he won’t say so because of… some other reason? Or that he hasn’t formed an opinion, because if he did then it might make pacifists happy?

And whatever it is, this is very pleasing and applause-worthy?

I hope somebody at EWTN wakes up.

This conflict is dividing the Church, sadly, into many subversive or misguidedly pacifist Catholics on one side, many pseudo-tough Mel Gibson-like “conservative” Catholic charlatans on the other, with hotheads on each side arrogantly approriating for themselves the title of “magisterium of the day.” Since my concern is for the integrity of the Church, the leavening of the world, and the protection of the country (in that order), I can only applaud Fr. Sirico’s suave handling of the question, in which he effectively told the blogosphere to “mind its own business.”

This, being translated, appears to mean “Don’t listen to the Magisterium, listen to Fr. Sirico.” Here’s the thing: Fr. Sirico’s disastrous attempt to paper over grave and intrinsic evil (and your attempt to anoint that opinion as the Last Word of Holy Mother Church) is *exactly* describable as “‘conservative’ Catholic charlatans …. arrogantly approriating for themselves the title of ‘magisterium of the day.'” The real Catholic Magisterium clearly teaches that torture is intrinsically and gravely immoral. Common international law (including US law), has treated waterboarding (among other tortures authorized by the Bush Administration) as torture. We even hanged people for it.

To simultaneously insist upon the broadest definition of torture and the strictest application of moral proscriptions against it, during a time of war, accomplishes little more than the emboldening of enemies abroad, fifth columnists at home, and other less sordid political opposition in the opinion pages of the world.

Actually, I have not insisted on the broadest definition of torture. I have typically confined my discussions to examples of torture which nobody in his five wits can deny are torture, such as waterboarding, cold cells, and strappado–all of them authorized by Bush. As to the rest of your argument, it basically means “People who authorize war crimes are above the law if I happen to approve of the war” or, more briefly, “Ignore the Church’s teaching in ius in bello.”

No state could function under that kind of scrutiny, which raises in my mind the suspicion that those who demand the impossible from the state are motivated not by the pure desire to see it conform to the image of Christ, but by some benighted instinct that the the entire eartly order of things is somehow ipso facto illegitimate. This cannot be squared with any proper understanding of Catholic social doctrine, but it remains a constant temptation within the religious life of man, for those who misunderstand the statement “my kingdom is not of this world.”

And we finish with the sotto voce suggestion that “If you don’t support war crimes, you may be an enemy of America” and the blasphemous invocation of Jesus as being all in favor of covering up grave evil.

Since you are a Chestertonian, try contemplating some of these sayings:

We do not really want a religion that is right where we are right. What we want is a religion that is right where we are wrong.

****

The Catholic Church is the only thing which saves a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.

****

Whatever else is right, it is utterly wrong to employ the argument that we Europeans must do to savages and Asiatics whatever savages and Asiatics do to us. I have even seen some controversialists use the metaphor “We must fight them with their own weapons.” Very well; let those controversialists take their metaphor, and take it literally. Let us fight the Soudanese with their own weapons. Their own weapons are large, very clumsy knives, with an occasional old-fashioned gun. Their own weapons are also torture and slavery. If we fight them with torture and slavery, we shall be fighting badly, precisely as if we fought them with clumsy knives and old guns. That is the whole strength of our Christian civilisation, that it does fight with its own weapons and not with other people’s….

The elements that make Europe upon the whole the most humanitarian civilisation are precisely the elements that make it upon the whole the strongest. For the power which makes a man able to entertain a good impulse is the same as that which enables him to make a good gun; it is imagination. It is imagination that makes a man outwit his enemy, and it is imagination that makes him spare his enemy. It is precisely because this picturing of the other man’s point of view is in the main a thing in which Christians and Europeans specialise that Christians and Europeans, with all their faults, have carried to such perfection both the arts of peace and war.

They alone have invented machine-guns, and they alone have invented ambulances; they have invented ambulances (strange as it may sound) for the same reason for which they have invented machine-guns. Both involve a vivid calculation of remote events. It is precisely because the East, with all its wisdom, is cruel that the East, with all its wisdom, is weak. And it is precisely because savages are pitiless that they are still–merely savages. If they could imagine their enemy’s sufferings they could also imagine his tactics. If Zulus did not cut off the Englishman’s head they might really borrow it. For if you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.

Mark that: “vivid calculation of remote events”

One of the “vivid calculations of remote events” that should occupy the mind of every Catholic (and especially every Chestertonian) is what happens after you grant Caesar the power to torture people whom he regards as “extremists”.

Yet another thing to contemplate is how your logic of “punitive interrogation” works. The Magisterium (the real one, I mean, not Fr. Sirico) specifically and clearly says tht torture to “punish the guilty” or “satisfy hatred” is intrinsically immoral. You can read it for yourself in Veritatis Splendor 80.

Oh! Says the torture defender, “Did I say ‘punitive’? I meant “enhanced”. We aren’t doing this to punish, but purely to obtain information”.

“Great!” says the post-Christian efficiency expert, “Then let’s round up the extremist’s wife and children and waterboard them in front of the suspect. He’ll sing like a canary in no time when his little girl starts screaming.”

At this point, the Catholic expert on morality–who has assured us that waterboarding is very likely not torture, that the extreme demands of war mean we should look the other way if it is, and that doing it “purely to obtain information” is certainly okay–will suddenly declare, “But the children are innocent!”

To which the post-Christian efficiency expert will reply, “So what? This isn’t about punishing anybody, as you yourself say. It’s about getting necessary information in the most efficient way possible. Men who will die as martyrs will tell you everything they know if you torture their children. Why do you think John Yoo said that the President could, if he thought it best, authorize crushing a nine year old boy’s testicles? (And we’re not even talking about crushing testicles. Just a little harmless “dunking” as Vice President Cheney called it. It’s safe, legal, and rare.) You are saying that the *real* reason we should waterboard somebody is because they are guilty of something. I’m frankly shocked and hurt by your suggestion! Haven’t you been listening to yourself? You just told me that torture to “punish the guilty” was intrinsically immoral. So why are you suggesting I am immoral? We at the Ministry of Safety are above such barbarous vengefulness! We aren’t interested in punishment here. We’re just interested in getting the information we want as fast as possible. And thanks to your invaluable assistance in deploying Catholic moreal theology, we can–by subjecting the children of extremists and other threats to the social order to enhanced interrogation! Hey! You have to admit it works!

Here’s your 30 pieces of silver.

Oh! And by the way, the newest directives from Caesar have placed you and your family on our Extremist Watch List since you are on record as having criticized abortion, gay marriage, and several government leaders during a time of war. Fifth columnists like you are to report to our interrogation facility immediately.”