On voting, 2014 edition

In a post for CatholicVote,org,.Bishop James Conley of the Diocese of Lincoln writes:

It seems to me that not voting, unless there are very grave reasons to abstain, is a sin—and when we fail to vote for reasons no better than apathy or forgetfulness, we ought to confess that.

It seems to me that a bishop should not publicly write, "It seems to me that [X] is a sin." A bishop is a teacher of the Christian faith. If, according to the Christian faith, [X] is a sin, the bishop should write, "[X] is a sin." Giving his personal opinion, while writing as a bishop, about whether [X] is a sin, conflates personal opinion with the Faith received from the Apostles.

Since I am not a bishop, I'll add that it seems to me that not voting in today's general election in the United States isn't a sin unless you do not vote for some vicious reason. The good that I can effect through my act of voting today is so slight and indirect that a similarly slight and indirect reason would justify not voting.

All that said, I do plan on voting today. It's the least important act on behalf of the common good, but it is an act on behalf of the common good (if I don't mess up).

Labels: faithful citizenship

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To seek that which is gone astray

Jeff Miller explains the true meaning of statistics about the voting patterns of Catholics who don't go to Mass every Sunday:

Successful programs like “Catholics Come Home” certainly remind us that we should not be dismissive of this group of Catholics as being seen just as something annoying that messes up polling statistics. We can laugh about “Christmas & Easter” Catholics and the other labels we have seen, but evangelizing them is certainly harder than the quick joke.

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Non-negotiations

For eight years, I've thought "non-negotiable issues" was a bad term in the context of voting because they are, in practice, negotiable. (Not to mention the question begging involved in enumerating the issues; just last week I saw someone treating the list developed by Catholic Answers in 2004 as though it were somehow authoritative and canonical.)

John McGuinness's comment on a post below --

 It becomes increasingly clear [that] the "non-negotiable issues" theme was misguided, if understandable under the circumstances.

-- now prompts the thought that the whole concept of "negotiation" is ill-applied to voting.

What, exactly, is being negotiated? How I cast my vote, and nothing more. No candidate is offering to change his position in order to get my vote -- and if he did, I'd have little reason to trust him to change if he were elected.

And who, exactly, is the other party involved in negotiating for my vote? Well, the candidates themselves aren't negotiating; their stated opinions are taken as read in these negotiations. For a similar reason, I can't be negotiating with advocates for the candidates, who are even less capable of changing their candidates' positions.

I might say I'm negotiating with myself, except that "negotiating with myself" isn't a very Catholic way of describing the act of prudential reasoning (including listening to one's conscience).

Or I might say I'm negotiating with the electoral process by which the ballot I take into the voting booth is constructed. Zippy would probably not object to my saying that, since on reflection it's an appalling thought irreconcilable with the 4th Grade Civics take on voting that many or most Americans seem to accept.

Who, other than myself or the electoral process, might I be negotiating with?

Now, it is true that Pope Benedict XVI often refers to "non-negotiable" principles, but as far as I can tell he does so in contexts that do, in fact, involve negotiations in which both parties are in principle able to change their positions. E.g.:

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable.

Thinking back to Bl. John Paul II's famous teaching that "an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by" "a more restrictive law, aimed at limiting the number of authorized abortions, in place of a more permissive law already passed or ready to be voted on" [Evangelium Vitae 73], I note that the official's absolute personal opposition to procured abortion being well known functions as an indication that the principle of protecting life in all its stages is being affirmed and asserted, not negotiated. What is being negotiated is the degree to which the society is willing to live up to that principle.

The same idea can be applied to secret balloting in general elections, but I find more often it's mis-applied along the lines of, "First, cross off all candidates who are wrong about the issues I've told you on my own authority are relevant in this election. Next, erase the strike-through on the candidate who is least wrong." Such a process can be described in many ways, but it can't be properly described as a negotiation.

That negotiation as such is not happening with respect to the act of voting reinforces my point that the act of voting is not in itself an important part of the exercise of the virtue of faithful citizenship.

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Unchaining the object

In response to this statement by Colin Donovan in the National Catholic Register:

What would be the object in voting for an imperfect candidate? It would be to limit the evil that a more extreme candidate would do.

Zippy comments:

He apparently thinks the object of the act is a remote intention, like the colloquial "the object of the game is to take your opponent's king."

A lot of 'credentialed' and 'respected' Catholics think that, in my experience.

What I think may be happening in such cases -- including, as it happens, many treatments of the morality of self-defense -- is this: An act is being seen as willed, not for its immediate effect as such, but to cause a whole chain of effects. The last effect in that chain is being called the object of the act, and the intention is taken to be the reason why the actor desires the final effect.

I cast my ballot -- I act -- on the first Tuesday of November, launching a chain of effects that spools out across the months and years without further action on my part. My ballot is put in a ballot box, and later my vote is counted, and that helps a not-worst candidate win, and later on he's sworn in, and then while he's in office he effects less harm than would have been effected if the worst candidate had won.

(The chain of effects is somewhat shorter, and much swifter, in an "act of self-defense." I hit my attacker in the head with the baseball bat, and he is too dazed to continue attacking me, and I survive.)

I think there might be an impression that this chain of effects can be collapsed, with the final effect called the object, because there's only one act.

That this sort of collapsing of chain of effects is not consistent with traditional Catholic moral theology (notwithstanding the regrettable example of St. Thomas on the question of self-defense), if not self-evident, can be proven by contradiction: In traditional Catholic moral theology, the object of an act determines whether the act is intrinsically good or evil. A good effect, however, may be arrived at through a chain of evil effects. If the final effect in the chain is willed, then (in traditional Catholic moral theology) all the links in the chain are willed. It is never morally lawful to will evil. If the final effect in a chain is the object of an act, then the act could be both intrinsically good (as it would be if the final effect is good) and intrinsically evil (as it would be if any of the willed effects is evil). But that's impossible, so the final effect in a chain is not the object of an act.

If someone wanted to argue that, in the assertion that the object in voting for an imperfect candidate would be to limit the evil that a more extreme candidate would do, all of the links in the chain of willed effects happen to be good, that might constitute a partial argument that the intention of the actor is good, but not that the final effect is the object of the act.

All this isn't to say you can't go too far in the other direction, by calling a process or an event of the merely physical order the object of an act ("I didn't shoot him, I just wiggled by index finger"). As Bl. John Paul II puts it in Veritatis Splendor, the object of an act "is the proximate end of a deliberate decision which determines the act of willing on the part of the acting person." That's not always trivial to determine, but it's clearly different from "the final effect in a chain of effects set into motion by the act."

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Objections to the explanation

The closer I read the "Is There a Lesser of Two Evils?" article, the less satisfactory I find it.

On the first pass, I noticed that the conclusion was needlessly muddled. Then I noticed the huge chunk of open issues that was begged in asserting:

What would be the object in voting for an imperfect candidate? It would be to limit the evil that a more extreme candidate would do.

Then I noticed what a mess was made of explaining intention as a source of morality in human acts:

If the object of the act is to limit the evil that would occur if the worse candidate, or legislation, succeeded, then the intention must be predominately directed to that object. It should not be primarily to lesser purposes, such as keeping a party in power, aiding this group or that or to some personal advantage derived from policy choices.

An end "must be predominately directed to" a means? How exactly would that work?

The article's treatment of circumstances is pretty well scrambled too:

Finally, the circumstances can also determine whether we can choose the lesser evil.

Father Davis affirmed this in noting that such a vote is justified, made morally possible, by the need to exclude a worse candidate....

But wasn't excluding a worse candidate just said to be the object of the act?

Finally, the whole "scandal caused by the appearance of voting for evil" angle is puzzling to me, considering the fact that Americans vote by secret ballot. Just how remote from the actual act of voting does the author think the act's object is?

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And when I say non-negotiable, I mean there is a certain amount of negotiation

Colin Donovan, who hold the incongruous title of Vice President for Theology at EWTN, writes in an essay for the National Catholic Register (which they have incongruously posted in the "Daily News" section):

It is therefore quite clear from the moral theology tradition and specific magisterial teaching that a Catholic may vote for a candidate who does not wholly embrace Catholic teaching on the non-negotiable issues.

Let me correct that for him:

It is therefore quite clear from the moral theology tradition and specific magisterial teaching that a Catholic voter may vote for a candidate who does not wholly embrace Catholic teaching on the non-negotiable issues.

There. That not only omits needless words, it more accurately expresses the moral theology tradition and specific magisterial teaching.

And, by the way, it also justifies (under certain circumstances) a vote for Mitt Romney, who is running television ads in the Washington, DC, market to reassure voters that he does not embrace Catholic teaching on the non-negotiable issues.

(Link via Video meliora...)

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You keep using that term "intrinsic evil"

Kristin of The Catholic Realist has produced her own, relatively brief, Catholic voter's guide:

1. Use all the resources at your disposal (not just what the pundits, bloggers, or your friends are saying) to truly form your conscience.  Examine Church teaching, pray for guidance, and talk with a spiritual director.
2. Prayerfully and with the guidance of the Holy Spirit and through your informed conscience, discern who you think is going to do the least moral harm.
3. Vote, or, if your fully formed conscience deems it necessary, Don’t Vote.

(And, unlike some producers of voter's guides, she shows her work.)

I could quibble (I can always quibble), but on the whole I'd say this guide is good enough for civics work. Here I just want to pull on one throw-away line from the post. After quoting Bishop Lori --

"Are any of the candidates of either party, or independents, standing for something that is intrinsically evil, evil no matter what the circumstances? If that's the case, a Catholic, regardless of his party affiliation, shouldn't be voting for such a person."

-- and Bishop Paprocki --

"A vote for a candidate who promotes actions or behaviors that are intrinsically evil and gravely sinful makes you morally complicit and places the eternal salvation of your own soul in serious jeopardy."

-- then listing some of the many actions or behaviors the Church teaches are intrinsically evil, Kristin concludes with the observation:

Not to mention that as lying makes the list of intrinsic evils, I’m fairly certain that I cannot vote for anyone who has ever run for political office.

This is a joke, of course, but it prompts me to ask, "Why shouldn't lying disqualify a candidate from office?"

Not a single act of lying, necessarily, but the habit of lying. If someone repeatedly manifests behavior that is contrary to the virtue of truth-telling, that is inconsistent with an interior appetite for the natural good of signifying with words and gestures that which he holds to be true in his mind -- in short, if someone is a liar, then how can he be fit for public office?

The answer, I suppose, is, "He's not, but the other scoundrel's an even worse liar."^*

I don't find that a satisfactory answer, and each time I hear some outrage against the truth, followed by a blithe "and I approve this message," I am the more determined to support no liar with my vote.

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* Well, the actual answer is more likely to be along the lines of, "Look, Mr. Holier-Than-Thou, Jesus isn't running. There is no perfect candidate, so stop making the perfect the enemy of the good. The bishops say we can vote for less than perfect candidates. If we couldn't vote for a liar, wouldn't the bishops have said so?

"Besides, the other scoundrel's an even worse liar."

Labels: faithful citizenship, The virtue of truth

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If you want my suggestion

In a comment on my "Always Distinguish" post, Paul D. writes:

What I would like to know is at the end of the day, who do you suggest we vote for Tom?

What I have been suggesting for years is that the day doesn't end when we vote.

I've also been suggesting that we understand what we're doing when we vote for lesser evil, and that, if we do understand, we won't be happy with, much less proud of, doing it.

In another comment on a follow-up post, Paul writes:

I am interested in how Catholics can effect change in the world by being faithful and making prudent use of that faith to transform the political sphere.

This is a noble interest. I don't have much to contribute to the detailed working out of that change, but I can remind people of some of the principles by which it should be worked out. Among these principles is this:

It is always and everywhere imprudent to call evil good.

If you say you never and nowhere call evil good, I answer, "Good!"

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Always distinguish

Anyone who says that Mitt Romney is pro-life is speaking a material falsehood.

Romney is not pro-life. He is anti-abortion-in-most-cases. To be anti-abortion-in-most-cases is to hold a morally evil position. To be pro-life is to hold a morally good position.

If you can't tell the difference between good and evil, then you shouldn't tell Catholics how to vote in the general election.

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What are the odds?

Consider an election in which N votes are cast, each for one of two candidates, A and B. The election can be modeled as a set of N independent draws from a binomial distribution in which the probability of a vote for Candidate A is p (between 0 and 1 inclusive) and the probability of a vote for Candidate B is (1-p).

If N is even, the probability of a tie is given by the formula:


If I've computed everything correctly, the P(tie) curves as a function of number of votes N, for different probabilities of a vote for Candidate A p, look like this:
The blue curve, for p=0.5, is equivalent to the case where every vote is cast by flipping a fair coin. In that case, the probability of a tie falls off exponentially with the number of votes. If 10,000 votes are cast, the probability of a tie is 0.8%. That would generally be considered an improbable outcome -- though of course the probability of it happening at least once rises as the number of such elections increases. In any set of 52 elections with 10,000 voters flipping fair coins, the odds of a tie are about 1 in 3.

Given how many elections are held each year in the U.S. alone, that might make it seem like there should be a lot of ties, at least in local elections with relatively small numbers of voters. But note that the blue curve represents the highest probability of a tie assuming a binomial voting distribution. As the other curves show, if one candidate has even a slight edge, the probability of a tie falls off dramatically. In elections of 100,000 votes, voters voting 51%-49% will produce a tie about half a billion times less often than voters voting 50%-50%.

(And if you're wondering how voters voting 51%-49% could ever produce a tie -- or, for that matter, how an even number of voters voting 50%-50% could ever not produce a tie -- recall those percentages are probabilities associated with an a priori distribution, not the posterior statistics of the election.)

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The Disputations Election Challenge

Enter the Disputations Election Challenge for a chance to win some cash!

Here's how it works:

1. Register at disputations.blogspot.com.
2. Vote in the 2012 general election.
3. For each election decided by your vote, I will send you $10.

To register, just leave a comment below with your name, zip code, and the state and Congressional districts in which you live. If any of the candidates on your ballot wins by a single vote, you get $10!

Enter today!

Official Rules: Entry open to U.S. citizens only. Entrants are responsible for letting me know of any winning certified result. Entrants must register by August 31, 2012. Offer not valid where it's invalid.

UPDATE: Added the date on which registration closes. From comments received, it wasn't clear that Steps 1-3 above are to occur in chronological order. When I first posted this, I hadn't decided whether to leave registration open until the day before the election, or just for a couple of weeks. I've now decided.

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But compared to his brother, this man was a saint!

As Robert King points out in a comment, a parallel question to that asked in my previous post could be asked of Catholic Democrats:

How about if, instead of arm-twisting Catholics to vote for lousy Democratic candidates, you arm-twist Democrats to nominate good candidates?



Honestly, though, I don't know how many Catholic Democrats there are who arm-twist other Catholics to vote Democratic and are themselves still capable of arm-twisting other Democrats.

Labels: faithful citizenship, The lesser evil is still evil

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In law, it's called "extortion"

In politics, it's called "annexation."

In pro-life Catholic circles, it's called "voter guides."



Here's a thought: How about if, instead of arm-twisting Catholics to vote for lousy Republican candidates, you arm-twist Republicans to nominate good candidates?

Labels: faithful citizenship, The lesser evil is still evil

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A useful illustration

In a perfectly reasonable comment on the post below, Philip writes:

The lesser evil is still evil. I agree. Though as Catholics we are sometimes faced with individuals who advocate evil who are running for office. Can we vote for them?

In writing this, he makes his own small contribution to perpetuating the cycle of candidates who advocate evil.

Can we vote for individuals who advocate evil who are running for office?

No.

We can't vote for them. We can't vote for them because there are no elections being held today.

Why is anyone talking about voting? Now is not the time to talk about voting. Now is the time to talk about promoting candidates who don't advocate evil.

If instead of talking today about what we should do today, we talk today about what we should do in a year and a half, we are acting in a way that turns false dilemmas into real ones.

Why do we do this?

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Next year's dilemma is this year's false dilemma

A few responses to a few responses to my post below that asked what the hell is wrong with Republican Catholics (some of these responses were eaten during this week's Blogger.com flu):

1. That a candidate may not agree that waterboarding is torture is irrelevant to the question of whether he supports torture. If anything, that he supports torture without realizing it is grounds for rejecting a candidate as too muddle-headed for the job.

2. And yes, the Church has not officially taught that waterboarding is torture. But I'm not stating that waterboarding is torture because it's Catholic doctrine. I'm stating it because it's true.

3. My issue here is not with politicians. My issue here is with Roman Catholics who enthusiastically endorse politicians who advocate grave evil. If Catholics didn't vote for these politicians, they wouldn't be politicians anymore, they'd be cable news pundits. As Anita Moore says in a comment below:

We're not going to get candidates who don't advocate grave evil until we repent, convert and otherwise straighten up.

4. The proportionality argument -- that the other party's grave evils are much more grave and evil than our party's -- is a complete nonstarter.

Let me retype that, since the proportionality argument ("70% Less Evil Than The Other Leading Brand!") is a popular one:

Whether torture is a less important issue than abortion is completely irrelevant today.

Today is May 14, 2011. The general election for U.S. President is a year and a half away. The ballots have not yet been printed. There is no choice to be made today between a candidate who supports torture and a candidate who supports abortion.

Again: There is no choice to be made today between a candidate who supports torture and a candidate who supports abortion.

The choice to be made today is whether I am satisfied with choosing between a candidate who supports torture and a candidate who supports abortion.

Labels: faithful citizenship, On torture, The lesser evil is still evil

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What the hell is the matter with Republican Catholics?

In particular, what the hell is the matter with you, Deacon Keith A. Fournier?



A vote for Rick Santorum would be material cooperation in grave evil.

A vote for Tim Pawlenty would be material cooperation in grave evil.

A vote for Herman Cain would be material cooperation in grave evil.

Just say no.

(Image source.)

Labels: faithful citizenship, The lesser evil is still evil

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Don't vote for the lesser evil

Don't vote for evil, period.

And don't wait until they've printed the ballot to let them know you won't be voting for evil, period.

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Following up

In a comment on the post below, John McG wrote:

I think that Mr. Ponnuru would respond that opposition to abortion and opposition to ACA are intertwined, and that they are one and the same.

When I asked if that was a plausible view during the first two-thirds of 2009 (the period Ponnuru was considering, and a period when the specifics of the health care bill were undetermined), Zippy responded:

I know that some folks think that any broad expansion of government power in the medical arena in our present context is pro-abortion, pro-contraception, and pro-euthanasia. This would be the case because of what government is and what health care presently is understood to be.

I'm not sold on the soundness of this view, but I suppose if Ponnuru held it and thought others should too, then he may have been thinking of ad campaigns that promoted it, and I wouldn't object to such campaigns on the basis of dishonesty.

It also occurs to me that Ponnuru may have been thinking of ad campaigns that insisted on the need for any health care bill to be robustly pro-life, which may have persuaded pro-life Democrats to insist that they would only vote for a robustly pro-life bill, which would have prevented them from voting for the ACA as it was finally presented to them. That, too, would have been an honest pro-life effort, although it doesn't seem to account for the possibility that recommitted pro-life Democrats would have produced a robustly pro-life health care bill that the Republicans would have hated. (Which brings us back to the question of doubting the possibility of a robustly pro-life health care bill.)

Let me add a response to this statement from Zippy:

I do agree that pretending to oppose abortion as a means to the end of opposing massive expansion of federal power over health care, when one in fact does not oppose abortion, is wrong; because it is a species of lie.

Yes, but I'm going further, to say that it is a species of lie to pretend that opposition to abortion entails opposing massive expansion of federal power over health care, when one in fact does not think that it does, even if one is opposed to abortion.

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Faithful citizenship

Proposition: The act of voting is the stone in the stone soup of political responsibility for Catholic citizens of democratic countries.

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An adult interpretation

For years, people have been interpreting that one statement in CCC 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.

-- as implying that torture for reasons other than those listed -- in particular, for interrogation of someone assumed to have information that can save lives -- might not be contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity.

As it stands, it's a mighty sketchy interpretation. It asserts that there's nothing objectively or circumstantially contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity to torture a prisoner. All you need is a good enough reason. (And what do you know? The reason people today might want to torture prisoners just happens to be a good reason! These interpreters will, though, stipulate that other reasons -- to save face after you were double-dog dared to torture the prisoner, say, or to get someone who loves the victim to talk -- are immoral.)

I haven't seen anyone even try to explain why it's contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity to torture a murderer, but not contrary to those things to torture a would-be murderer. The problem here is that torture isn't evil because it's icky, in which case it wouldn't be evil when not torturing would be ickier. Torture is evil, according to the Catechism, because it's contrary to respect for the person of the victim, and the respect due the person of the victim doesn't change based on what you want to get out of torturing him.^*

So, as I say, we have an interpretation that really doesn't hold up on its own terms. The fact that the very next paragraph of the Catechism contradicts this interpretation should settle the matter:

In times past, cruel practices were commonly used by legitimate governments to maintain law and order... In recent times it has become evident that these cruel practices were neither necessary for public order, nor in conformity with the legitimate rights of the human person... It is necessary to work for their abolition.

But someone who is capable of interpreting CCC 2297 as allowing torture for good reason is capable of interpreting CCC 2298 the same way. (Or of interpreting it away altogether; it's printed in a smaller font, you know.)

Okay, but maybe the Catechism really is ambiguous on this point. What else do we have?

We have the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which, according to Pope Benedict XVI, "is a faithful and sure synthesis of the Catechism of the Catholic Church." Per the CCCC:

477. What practices are contrary to respect for the bodily integrity of the human person?

They are: kidnapping and hostage taking, terrorism, torture, violence, and direct sterilization. Amputations and mutilations of a person are morally permissible only for strictly therapeutic medical reasons.

Okay, but maybe when it says "torture," it means "and sometimes torture."

We have Pope John Paul II, speaking to the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1982:

And as regards torture, the Christian is confronted from the beginning with the account of the passion of Christ. The memory of Jesus exposed, struck, treated with derision in his anguished sufferings, should always make him refuse to see a similar treatment applied to one of his brothers in humanity. 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.

Okay, but maybe that was just the Pope expressing his personal opinion that torture is categorically wrong, with some dodgy translation from the French.

The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church -- "which, according to the request received from the Holy Father, has been drawn up in order to give a concise but complete overview of the Church's social teaching" -- quotes Pope John Paul II's 1982 speech:

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.

Okay, but maybe they're only talking about investigations of crimes that have already happened, not of crimes that are ongoing or yet to occur.

"Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship" states:

Other direct assaults on innocent human life and violations of human dignity, such as genocide, torture, racism, and the targeting of noncombatants in acts of terror or war, can never be justified.

Okay, but maybe this is just some USCCB cubicle dweller's idea.

"Torture is a Moral Issue: A Catholic Study Guide" states that:

"In the Church's eyes [t]orture violates a human person's God-given dignity."

Okay, but maybe this is just some USCCB cubicle dweller's idea.

Statements by American bishops on behalf of the USCCB include the following categorical rejections of torture:

We believe that a respect for the dignity of every person, ally or enemy, must serve as the foundation of the pursuit of security, justice and peace. There can be no compromise on the moral imperative to protect the basic human rights of any individual incarcerated for any reason... We share the concerns of lawmakers and citizens for the safety of U.S. soldiers and civilians abroad in these times of great uncertainty and danger. In the face of this perilous climate, our nation must not embrace a morality based on an attitude that "desperate times call for desperate measures" or "the end justifies the means." The inherent justice of our cause and the perceived necessities involved in confronting terrorism must not lead to a weakening or disregard of U.S. and international law. -- Bishop Ricard, Chairman, USCCB Committee on International Policy, October 4, 2005

A respect for the dignity of every person, ally or enemy, must serve as the foundation of security, justice and peace. There can be no compromise on the moral imperative to protect the basic human rights of any individual incarcerated for any reason... In a time of terrorism and fear, our individual and collective obligations to respect dignity and human rights, even of our worst enemies, gains added importance. -- Bishop Wenski, Chairman, USCCB Committee on International Policy, December 17, 2007

We are opposed to any proposed or adopted legislation or other actions that would appear to once again decriminalize torture and abusive conduct. We believe any legislation adopted by the Congress must be unambiguous in rejecting torture and cruel treatment as dangerous, unreliable and illegal. -- Bishop Wenski, Chairman, USCCB Committee on International Policy, January 30, 2008

Torture undermines and debases the human dignity of both victims and perpetrators. It is never a necessary cruelty. -- Cardinal George, President, USCCB, March 5, 2008

Okay, but maybe ... um....

And last, we have the United States Catechism for Adults, which is the "local catechism" written by the bishops of the United States using the CCC as "a sure and authentic reference text," and which received the recongitio of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. The U.S. Catechism for Adults includes this statement:

Direct killing of the innocent, torture, and rape are examples of acts that are always wrong.

So: No.

Torture is always wrong.

The Catholic Church teaches that torture is always wrong.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that torture is always wrong.

Interpretations to the contrary are wrong.

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* It's always a "him," right? Torture is a very manly thing, for advocates, with manly men torturing wormy men, so that girly men may sleep safely at night.

Labels: faithful citizenship, On torture

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