Today, presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani told Wolf Blitzer that water-boarding, a technique considered by many human rights groups to be torture (not to mention Senator John McCain who knows a thing or two about torture), might be called for in a “once in a lifetime situation, once in a decade situation.” He held that in a “general manner,” however, waterboarding would be “inappropriate.” Of course, this raises the question as to how such torture methods would be practiced, how frequently they would be employed, and how the “appropriate” use of them would be discerned and regulated. In other words, in keeping the option available in the interrogation of prisoners and terrorists, no matter how particular and infrequent its use may be, the United States would be sanctioning the use of torture.
Under which conditions could appeal to waterboarding be appropriately made according to Giuliani? Here are his exact words:
You have a terrorist…there’s a bomb that’s gonna go off in a day, or might go off in a day, and he knows about information that could stop the killing of thousands and thousands of people.
Again, however, if there’s a once in a lifetime situation and you have a person who may know about a massive attack that’s gonna go on.
These words, spoken by Giuliani today, sounded awfully familiar to me. That’s because Gerald, the keeper of one of the single most popular Catholic blogs, The Cafeteria is Closed, wrote the following just last week:
In any case, I’m sure waterboarding is no fun and that it is actually horrifying. My point is that IF there were a situation of a choice between waterboarding a terrorist OR having, say, Houston be atomized, I’ nonetheless approve of it, since the lives of millions are the greater good than the comfort of a terrorist. I’d PREFER getting the information by appealing to his humanity.
I just think it’s more humane to save a million by making one evil man panic for a few minutes, if that choice presented itself.
I am talking about a desperate situation, not torture as an everyday means. Obviously, the greater good would be the survival of millions. At least in my book. I can only tell you what my conscience tells me. I certainly would hope my president would agree.
I’m not saying it’s good to waterboard, simply less bad if the alternative were millions dying.
I almost wonder if Giuliani treated himself to a morsel from the Cafeteria just before his interview!
Notwithstanding that waterboarding, which physically and mentally simulates drowning and imminent death, is much more than a few minutes of “panic” and lack of “comfort,” there seems to be little doubt from those who have experienced, witnessed and/or studied the methods of waterboarding that it is both mental and physical torture. The Catholic Church has condemned all mental and physical torture as intrinsically evil in each and every instance of its use.
The Second Vatican Council condemned any form of mental and physical torture as a fundamental violation of human integrity and a “supreme dishonor”to God:
Furthermore, whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia or wilful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; 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. (Gaudium et spes, 27)
Pope John Paul II spoke even more forcefully on torture, describing any of its forms as “intrinsically evil” regardless of ulterior motives for their uses, such as obtaining information from possible terrorists:
Reason attests that there are objects of the human act which are by their nature “incapable of being ordered” to God, because they radically contradict the good of the person made in his image. These are the acts which, in the Church’s moral tradition, have been termed “intrinsically evil” (intrinsece malum): they are such always and per se, in other words, on account of their very object, and quite apart from the ulterior intentions of the one acting and the circumstances. Consequently, without in the least denying the influence on morality exercised by circumstances and especially by intentions, the Church teaches that “there exist acts which per se and in themselves, independently of circumstances, are always seriously wrong by reason of their object”. The Second Vatican Council itself, in discussing the respect due to the human person, gives a number of examples of such acts: “Whatever is hostile to life itself, such as any kind of homicide, genocide, abortion, euthanasia and voluntary suicide; whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, physical and mental torture and attempts to coerce the spirit; whatever is offensive to human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution and trafficking in women and children; degrading conditions of work which treat labourers as mere instruments of profit, and not as free responsible persons: all these and the like are a disgrace, and so long as they infect human civilization they contaminate those who inflict them more than those who suffer injustice, and they are a negation of the honour due to the Creator.” (Veritatis Splendor, 80).
So what can we make of Giuliani’s and Gerald’s clearly unorthodox and immoral suggestions? First, they both have succumbed to ethical consequentialism and situation ethics, which are diametrically opposed to the entire moral tradition of the Catholic Church. Second, their folly cannot be explained away as an appeal to the principle of double effect, for the intended outcome (potentially saving “thousands” of people) is procured only by means of a direct intention to commit the intrinsically evil act (torture). In this scenario, the evil act (torture) is not an unintended consequence. Third, an intrinsically evil act is to be committed in actuality in order to obtain merely potential information on a potential disaster. Fourth, it seems that, unsurprisingly, Catholic faith and morals are suspended and abstracted from the concrete and the particular. There are some conceivable situations, perhaps occurring only “once in a lifetime” or “once a decade” (perhaps even once a year) where universal ethical principles become conditioned ethical pariahs.
Gerald and Giuliani…strange bedfellows, indeed. But then again, claiming to be Catholic is not necessarily followed by thinking Catholic. The assault on the Catholic faith arrives from many different fronts.
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