A reader <\/a>wries:<\/p>\n Hello Mr. Shea,<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Hi!<\/p>\n I have seen you perform as Innocent Smith on EWTN, and I belong to my local Chesterton society (Denver). I\u2019ve 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Your regret is nothing compared to mine, now that I\u2019ve read what you have to say.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n A) I do not claim a \u201cparity of wrongness\u201d. I think such attempts to parse \u201cwhich grave evil is more evil\u201d 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 \u201cpunitive interrogation techniques\u201d) and abortion are gravely and intrinsically evil. That\u2019s why we are instructed:<\/p>\n \u201cIn carrying out investigations, the regulation against the use of torture, even in the case of serious crimes, must be strictly observed: \u2018Christ\u2019s 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\u2019s victim\u2019. International juridical instruments concerning human rights correctly indicate a prohibition against torture as a principle which cannot be contravened under any circumstances.\u201d \u2014 Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church<\/a>, n 404<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 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).<\/p>\n 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n No. It is not. It is abundantly documented fact, including (but by no means limited to) pictures of corpses <\/a>, reliable accounts of how they got to be corpses (and of Administration protections for the CIA interrogator who tortured the victim to death<\/a>), as well as documentaries <\/a>chronicling horrors inflicted on prisoners.<\/p>\n Secondly, I was very pleased to see that Fr. Sirico of The Acton Institute granted an interview on EWTN\u2019s 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 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\u2019s 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\u2019s a preposterous falsehood to say that it\u2019s impossible to know if waterboarding somebody 183 times is torture. Tom Kreitzberg summarizes the ridiculous incoherence of Fr. Sirico\u2019s reported argument this way:<\/p>\n I don\u2019t understand. Is the idea that Fr. Sirico thinks Bush & Co. violated the moral law, but he won\u2019t say so because that would make pacifists happy? Or that he doesn\u2019t think they violated the moral law, but he won\u2019t say so because of\u2026 some other reason? Or that he hasn\u2019t formed an opinion, because if he did then it might make pacifists happy?<\/p>\n And whatever it is, this is very pleasing and applause-worthy?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I hope somebody at EWTN wakes up.<\/p>\n This conflict is dividing the Church, sadly, into many subversive or misguidedly pacifist Catholics on one side, many pseudo-tough Mel Gibson-like \u201cconservative\u201d Catholic charlatans on the other, with hotheads on each side arrogantly approriating for themselves the title of \u201cmagisterium of the day.\u201d 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\u2019s suave handling of the question, in which he effectively told the blogosphere to \u201cmind its own business.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This, being translated, appears to mean \u201cDon\u2019t listen to the Magisterium, listen to Fr. Sirico.\u201d Here\u2019s the thing: Fr. Sirico\u2019s 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 \u201c\u2018conservative\u2019 Catholic charlatans \u2026. arrogantly approriating for themselves the title of \u2018magisterium of the day.'\u201d 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. <\/p>\n 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 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\u2013all of them authorized by Bush. As to the rest of your argument, it basically means \u201cPeople who authorize war crimes are above the law if I happen to approve of the war\u201d or, more briefly, \u201cIgnore the Church\u2019s teaching in ius in bello.\u201d<\/p>\n 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 \u201cmy kingdom is not of this world.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And we finish with the sotto voce suggestion that \u201cIf you don\u2019t support war crimes, you may be an enemy of America\u201d and the blasphemous invocation of Jesus as being all in favor of covering up grave evil.<\/p>\n Since you are a Chestertonian, try contemplating some of these sayings:<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n ****<\/p>\n The Catholic Church is the only thing which saves a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.<\/p>\n ****<\/p>\n 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 \u201cWe must fight them with their own weapons.\u201d 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\u2019s\u2026.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2013merely savages. If they could imagine their enemy\u2019s sufferings they could also imagine his tactics. If Zulus did not cut off the Englishman\u2019s 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Mark that: \u201cvivid calculation of remote events\u201d<\/p>\n One of the \u201cvivid calculations of remote events\u201d 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 \u201cextremists\u201d.<\/p>\n Yet another thing to contemplate is how your logic of \u201cpunitive interrogation\u201d works. The Magisterium (the real one, I mean, not Fr. Sirico) specifically and clearly says tht torture to \u201cpunish the guilty\u201d or \u201csatisfy hatred\u201d is intrinsically immoral. You can read it for yourself in Veritatis Splendor 80.<\/p>\n Oh! Says the torture defender, \u201cDid I say \u2018punitive\u2019? I meant \u201cenhanced\u201d. We aren\u2019t doing this to punish, but purely to obtain information\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cGreat!\u201d says the post-Christian efficiency expert, \u201cThen let\u2019s round up the extremist\u2019s wife and children and waterboard them in front of the suspect. He\u2019ll sing like a canary in no time when his little girl starts screaming.\u201d<\/p>\n At this point, the Catholic expert on morality\u2013who 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 \u201cpurely to obtain information\u201d is certainly okay\u2013will suddenly declare, \u201cBut the children are innocent!\u201d<\/p>\n To which the post-Christian efficiency expert will reply, \u201cSo what? This isn\u2019t about punishing anybody, as you yourself say. It\u2019s 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\u2019s testicles? (And we\u2019re not even talking about crushing testicles. Just a little harmless \u201cdunking\u201d as Vice President Cheney called it. It\u2019s safe, legal, and rare.) You are saying that the *real* reason we should waterboard somebody is because they are guilty of something. I\u2019m frankly shocked and hurt by your suggestion! Haven\u2019t you been listening to yourself? You just told me that torture to \u201cpunish the guilty\u201d was intrinsically immoral. So why are you suggesting I am immoral? We at the Ministry of Safety are above such barbarous vengefulness! We aren\u2019t interested in punishment here. We\u2019re 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\u2013by subjecting the children of extremists and other threats to the social order to enhanced interrogation! Hey! You have to admit it works! <\/p>\n Here\u2019s your 30 pieces of silver. <\/p>\n Oh! And by the way, the newest directives from Caesar have placed you and your family on our Extremist Watch List <\/a>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.\u201d<\/p>\n