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Saturday, January 21, 2006

Is it a Mortal Sin to Torture Captured Terrorists?

Maybe there's some other provision I missed, but this is the closest thing I could find on the subject from the Catechism:

Paragraph 2297: 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.

I don't know about you, and I'm certainly no theologian, but it just isn't clear to me from this language that the Church regards torture as being intrinsically evil. Indeed, it could even be argued that the Church perceives the commission of torture as being the equivalent of intentionally hurting someone's feelings. It' not nice, but it's hardly a mortal sin. Muddling the picture even more is the fact that this Catechism provision is written within the context of kidnapping, hostage taking, and terrorism, which are all expressly said to be either immoral and gravely unjust. So even if one were to assume that torture is gravely immoral, it appears to only be so in limited circumstances.

Any thoughts?

Update: From Paragraph 80 of Veritatis Splendor:

The Second Vatican Council itself, in discussing the respect due to the human person, gives a number of examples of such [intrinsically evil] 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".

Now, it should be noted that the Second Vatican Council never actually called torture intrinsically evil. I also wonder whether John Paul II correctly used the above quote from Guadiam et Spes given that deportation is among the items listed. Surely, there are circumstances when deporting someone is justified.

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