Good News!

Fr. Brian Harrison writes, understandably wounded that I referred to him as “every Catholic torture defender’s absolute favorite theologian“. He reminds me that he wrote this some time ago, a point which I have not forgotten.

Just to be clear, I was not talking about his position with regard to torture. I’m talking about the way in which his work has been exploited, for years now, by people who are bent on making excuses for torture—specifically the torture policies deployed by the Bush Administration (including by such national figures as Marc Theissen). And not a few of them have, in fact, regarded Fr Harrison as Athanasius contra mundi and appealed to him *constantly* to justify every excuse they make for torture, every “well, there are two sides to whether torturing for information is immoral. Fr. Harrison says…”, every “Catholics can agree to disagree about whether torture is really immoral. After all, Fr. Harrison says…” every “if the situation is dire enough, then it would be immoral *not* to torture. Bishops should keep their noses out of practical politics and let real men do the dirty work of fighting wars. After all, Fr. Harrison says…” I’ve had a thousand of these conversations and, tragically, Fr. Harrison’s work and name has been invoked more times than I can count as the absolute and sole authority on the permissibility of torture, trumping all references to the Magisterium. The logic is, “Despite the obvious teaching of Benedict XVI, Veritatis Splendor, the Council and the Catechism, if it’s even remotely possible that torture is permissible, that makes it a prudential judgment. And ‘prudential judgment’ means ‘Ignore the bishops and their cloud cuckoo peacenik unrealism and do whatever is necessary to win in war. After all, Fr. Harrison says the moral legitimacy of torture remains open.’” Sorry, but them’s the facts about a great deal of moral reasoning out here in the pews and that’s what I was referring to, not to Fr. Harrison per se.

Happily and to his great credit, Fr. Harrison has chosen to definitively close that loophole for these folks by adding the brief Addendum reproduced below, which states that “the last sentence of the article I wrote is now to be understood as having been withdrawn. (That sentence is where I had said that ‘the moral legitimacy of torture under the aforesaid desperate circumstances . . . remains open at present to legitimate discussion by Catholic theologians’.)”

ADDENDUM (to Living Tradition, #119)

After the above article was published, Pope Benedict XVI, in a speech of 6 September 2007 on Catholic prisons ministry, personally endorsed a statement against torture found in the 2005 Vatican Compendium of the Church’s Social Teaching. Citing article 404 of this document, the Holy Father said, “In this regard, I reiterate that the prohibition against torture ‘cannot be contravened under any circumstances'”.

In the above article I have already cited and discussed, in my section A13 and endnote 27, this article 404 of the Compendium, which is a publication of the Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace. I have pointed out that this and other statements authored by the Commission itself – as distinct from the statements of Popes and Councils which it cites abundantly throughout the Compendium – does not possess magisterial authority; for the various Vatican commissions, unlike the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, are not in themselves arms of the Church’s magisterium (teaching authority). However, now that Pope Benedict himself has personally reiterated this particular statement of the Compendium, I wish to state that I accept the Holy Father’s judgement on this matter, and so no longer hold that Catholics can ever legitimately defend the use of torture – not even in extreme circumstances to gain potentially life-saving information from known terrorists. Accordingly, the last sentence of the above article, regarding “the present status quaestionis” on torture, should now be taken as withdrawn.

Thank you, Fr. Harrison, for this. May God bless your work in the Vineyard. Please forgive any false impressions I have given and any lack of charity on my part. I ask your prayers.