There are at least two separate issues involved with the question of torture. Firstly, is it ever licit, from a Christian point of view, to deliberately inflict serious physical pain on another human being? Secondly, is it legitimate for us to do so for the purposes of interrogation? Because it’s possible to inflict pain for many reasons- for one’s own pleasure, for intimidation, for the correction of a criminal, the expiation of sin, procuring confessions, extracting information, etc. Inflicting pain could potentially be legitimate for some of these purposes and not for others. This will be a long post, but here is what I think: the answer to this question is Yes, and No. I believe that pain can sometimes be legitimately inflicted as a punishment: but as a means of interrogation, it is wrong.
Let’s start by rejecting two premises that often seem to sneak into this debate. There is, first, the idea that pleasure is good, pain is evil, and that to inflict pain on another person is always wrong; and there is the equal and opposite error that war is hell, and that whatever you need to do to win it is justified. The second is of course, easily rejected: that is the logic of
Pain is not, in the Christian conception, an inherent evil, nor is death. Both of these are considered penal, a result of living in a fallen world. People often think that the New Testament forbids capital and corporal punishment, but this isn’t so. Christ implicitly accepted the legitimacy of corporal and capital punishment when He didn’t correct the thief on the cross, who acknowledged, after being scourged and crucified, that we receive the due reward of our deeds (Luke 23:41). St. Paul accepted capital punishment when he pled to Festus, For if I be an offender, or have committed any thing worthy of death, I refuse not to die (Acts 25:11). Now as
The guideline that we should use, as Christians, is what Christ told us was the second greatest commandment, after the duty to love God: And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself (Matthew 22:39). And how do we know what is a loving action? And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise (Luke 6:31). So the question we need to ask, before we consider inflicting physical pain on a human being, is this: would we ever be in a position where we would like physical pain to be inflicted on ourselves?
Well, perhaps. Most of us would prefer not to be caned or whipped for no reason. But I can certainly imagine circumstances when I would deserve to suffer, and where I would be better off for having pain inflicted on me. Specifically, if I had done something very wrong, that I knew was wrong, and for which I needed to atone and repent for. Of course I would probably plead not to have to suffer, and not to endure pain, when it came to the sticking point. Hell, most of us cringe away from taking our blood drawn at the doctor’s. For the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak (Matthew 26:41). This doesn’t mean, however, that in the coolness of foresight we would not say that we would deserve to suffer for doing something wrong, or that in the coolness of hindsight we would not acknowledge that we were better off for having suffered for it. Our fundamental human nature, not the corrupt and fallen thing that our nature is today, is to love good and hate evil, and anything that helps to cleanse our souls, to expiate sin and to wash away the stain of guilt from our conscience, is ultimately a good thing. It is said, Thou shalt strike him with the rod, and deliver his soul from hell (Proverbs 23:13), which St. Augustine invoked in defending the use of force by the state.
Is it true that suffering can expiate sin, and that we can be cleansed and made whole by enduring pain and suffering for what we have done wrong? I certainly believe so; as
So physical pain is not intrinsically wrong when used moderately, as a punishment, for the sake of the correction of the criminal. The Left wing government of
Now the other, and more difficult question: If inflicting physical pain is not always a bad thing, and if it can be justified as a form of punishment against criminals, then can it be justified too as a means for getting information? Vital information, which could save thousands of lives? Information that we desperately need, which could be gotten in no other way? Information that we can depend on, information about a ticking bomb or an assassination plot?
I say that it cannot. This may be surprising. After I’ve just defended corporal punishment, which is considered horrid and barbaric by most of the enlightened chattering classes in the West today, it might seem as though I should defend torture of suspects too. After all, punishing a criminal (according to the thoughts of many ‘enlightened’ people) serves no actual good function, whereas torturing for information could save millions of lives. But my answer is, still, “No.” And here’s why. There are many reasons why torturing suspects to get information is not equivalent to corporal punishment, and why beating a suspect for information is wrong, even if beating a criminal as a legally prescribed part of his punishment is not.
1) Physical pain, to be justified, must be inflicted with the goal (at least one of the goals) being the correction of the criminal and the expiation of his crime: it must be for his own good as well as for ours. Interrogative torture is not. Its goal is the procuring of information. The prisoner is being treated as a means to our end, rather than as a person that we are seeking, out of paternal love, to morally correct. And using a prisoner as simply a conduit of information, instead of a person about whose soul we are concerned, is wrong.
2) Physical pain, to be justified, needs to be proportionate to the crime committed, for it derives its justification from the fact that the victim is guilty. But interrogative torture is not: rather, its duration depends on how willing the suspect is to stand pain, and how unwilling he is to tell us what we want to know. These things are not closely related to actual moral guilt. The punishment must fit the crime: but interrogative torture doesn’t fit the crime, therefore it is not an acceptable use of physical force.
3) Physical pain, to be justified, must be moderate in extent. But torture, if it is moderate, will quickly fail, for terrorists will be trained to withstand it. If 10 punches in the nose is the limit, then terrorists will train each other to hold out to the eleventh. Torture will only work if it is open ended and potentially unlimited- if the victim knows his pain will stop only when he concedes what he knows. Because torture runs the risk of becoming open ended, it has tremendous potential to be extended beyond any reasonable limit.
4) Physical pain, to be justified, should not threaten life. But some of our techniques- waterboarding, simulated crucifixion- can and have threatened life. Therefore our torture program has transgressed the limits of acceptable severity.
5) Physical pain cannot be inflicted on innocent people who have not done anything wrong. We would only concede to being punished or caused pain if we had done something wrong, and felt we needed to atone for it; but no one would consent to be tortured while still innocent. We do not know, in a legal sense, whether any of these people are guilty, since they have been convicted of no crime. Legally, they are prisoners of war, not convicted criminals. Sure, a lot of them are probably guilty. But we don’t know that. They might have had varying degrees of culpability- some of them may be mentally ill, some of them may have had their families threatened by the jihadists, some may have boasted falsely of the degree of their involvement. Until we know that they are guilty, we cannot impose a punishment on them, and that includes any kind of physical punishment.
Ariel Dorfman tells a chilling story of a man he knew in
That is what we risk when we use torture as a means of interrogation. Pain should have a place in our criminal justice system: it can lead to moral correction, and it is not incompatible with loving our neighbor to cause him pain if it is necessary to do so. Again, it is said If you accept, accept through love; if you correct, correct through love….(Seventh Homily on the Epistles of St. John). But it is not compatible with loving our neighbor to use him as a means to an end, even if that end be valuable. And it is not compatible with loving our neighbor to cause him pain if we are not sure- legally and morally- that he has done something wrong. The just and innocent man ye shall not put to death (Exodus 23:7), even for a good cause, and nor should we cause him serious pain if there is a decent possibility he’s innocent. The right of Christians to assume political power and to try to embody states that pursue natural law and Christian values, is foretold by St. John of Patmos: And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations: And he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers. (Revelation 2:26-27). But with rights come responsibilities, and with the right to use physical force, that the state receives from God, comes the duty to use force subject to the limitations of natural and divine law: only when necessary, only when proportionate to the crime, only when pursuing the good of the criminal as well as that of society, and only against the guilty. For St. John tells us, too, speaking of how we are to combat political evil (under the figure of Babylon, i.e. Rome), Reward her even as she rewarded you (Revelation 18:6) thus use force against the guilty alone. Thus it is categorically forbidden to use any kind of punishment- death, pain, or both- on those who we know are innocent, or whom we are not sufficiently sure are guilty. The risk of killing the innocent leads many to oppose the death penalty. While I disagree with them I would certainly be opposed to killing suspects without a trial, and such is the case with pain too; until someone has been convicted of a crime, they must be spared from pain and death.
Love thy neighbor as thyself. We are commanded to love even the prisoner, for Christ identifies himself with the prisoner: I was in prison, and ye came unto me (Matthew 25:36). He makes no exception for the guilty: note that he does not say I was held innocently in prison or I was held without cause, but simply I was in prison. Christ loves the guilty and is especially solicitous about them, for What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it (Luke 15:4). Thus we are bound to love the prisoner too. We can punish him harshly- by imprisonment, by hard labor, by pain, even by death- but we cannot do this merely for our sake, but also for his. Inasmuch as Christ identifies with the prisoner, the purpose of all punishment must be, at least in part, to destroy and discipline that aspect of the man that is opposed to the Good, in order that that part which is of the Good can flourish. Pain must have this intention, among others, and it can never be imposed solely for our own sake; we can never use the prisoner as a simple means to get information.
Love thy neighbor as thyself. We would not want to be caused pain when we may not have done anything to deserve it, or when the pain was inflicted according to someone else's information needs, as opposed to our own need for correction. Thus we should not impose it ourselves. The law of Christ was not meant to be impossible, and it does not rule out using harsh and violent methods, even pain and death. Christ was no pacifist, and no soft-on-crime hippie. He came to rule us with a rod of iron, to bring a sword, to baptize us by fire, and as fire illuminates and cleanses it also destroys. But a responsible person is very careful about when and where he uses fire. The desire to requite suffering by suffering, to inflict pain on ourselves or others in order to expiate our sin, is a natural outgrowth of the desire for justice and retribution, and not wrong in itself. But like other desires, it can become wrong when exercised outside of certain limits. To indulge the desire for vengeance outside of the strict limits of judicial punishment, is against the purpose of that desire, and is deeply wrong. We have strict rules about against whom, to what extent, and for what purposes it is legitimate to inflict pain, and waterboarding transgresses them.
And thus I arrive at this compromise. Physical pain- caterpillars, slapping, even caning and whipping- can be justified for the purpose of punishment, but not for the purpose of interrogation. My original questions were 1) can pain ever be legitimately inflicted as a punishment, and 2) can it be inflicted for the purpose of interrogation. The Catholic Catechism of today, and the laws of the
No comments:
Post a Comment