One of the most troubling cultural developments of recent times
is the rise of what has been dubbed "torture porn", films that dwell
lingeringly on the physical details of tortured innocents. I have not
seen any of these- the Saw and Hostel films, or The Captive, the
most recent addition to the genre, but I have read written accounts of
them and they are hideous. Much of what passes for entertainment these
days is appalling, an appeal to the basest impulses and darkest corners
of the fallen psyche.
The films have done well at the box office, often outgrossing–in both senses of the word–their competitors.
I
suppose that we ought to be grateful, at least, that the torturers in
these films are the bad guys, not the heroes, as in the hit television
series 24–which I also have not seen–where the good guy, Jack Bauer, regularly tortures terrorists. All for a good cause, of course.
What
should trouble us further is the fact that all of this is taking place
against a background of U.S. government-sanctioned torture.
Whatever
sidestepping and evasiveness marked the Bush administration’s response
to accusations of torture in the past, it has become undeniable that
America has joined the ranks of the torturers.
Waterboarding,
exposure to extreme temperatures, denial of food and water, sleep
deprivation, attack dogs, aural assault: it reads like a catalog of
tactics from some second rate dictatorship. And that is not to mention
even harsher methods which may or may not be part of official policy.
Alarmingly,
there is not a massive outcry against the use of torture among
Americans. The architects of such tactics remain safely in office.
Indeed, at one of the early debates between Republican presidential
candidates most of them strove to outdo one another in supporting the
tough guy approach.
All of this is predicated
on the acceptance of consequentialist logic, the notion that the
morality of an act is to be judged by the good it accomplishes or the
evil it avoids, rather than by objective moral principle that
transcends circumstance.
To the well formed
Christian this is both an exercise in the imagination–for who can know
the future?–and a recipe for cooking up a gourmet-level disaster.
By
appealing to fallen reason and emotion one can justify anything. One
can make a case for using torture to extract information that will save
innocent lives; the most recent one I saw personalized this by
specifying that the person you save is the one you love the most in the
world.
Does this not tug at the heart? Of
course, and God knows what any of us would do in the highly unlikely
event that we were in such a situation. But one does not determine
moral principle by sketching the most compelling temptation imaginable.
But of course one can construct such a scenario to justify anything. Including abortion.
Don’t
believe it? Try this: your 14 year old daughter has been diagnosed with
an incurable illness. She has been given a year, two at the most, to
live. On the way home from the library she is abducted, raped, and
impregnated. Doctors say the child she is carrying has contracted her
disease and if the child makes it to birth will live only a few weeks.
To fallen reason and emotion the solution is obvious.
But fallen reason and emotion are wrong.
Both
the direct assault on human dignity (torture) and the deliberate
killing of an innocent human being (abortion) are a direct attack on
the Image of God.
I once believed that one
could create a just social order based upon reason alone. That is, I
embraced the fundamental error of the so-called Enlightenment. Contrary
to what some conservatives say it is this–let’s call it faith in
reason–and not the love of liberty or the rejection of oligarchy and
oppression which is the fundamental error of the French Revolution and
the Age of Reason.
I do not mean by this that
unassisted reason cannot come to certain truths, only that it is highly
prone to error, and that certain other truths are unattainable by
reason alone. Unaided reason quickly becomes tortured logic.
I
first became aware of the insufficiency of reason alone in the moral
sphere when thinking about euthanasia. One simply cannot construct an
argument against shortening the suffering of the terminally ill that
will convince reason, apart from transcendent truth, for there is no
meaning to suffering that can be understood apart from Revelation.
Reason cannot grasp that suffering can have meaning and purpose, that
it can be a participation in the redemption of the world.
Only faith can know that, as only faith can ultimately know that no good end justifies torture or abortion or any other evil.
Perhaps
the time of rapprochement of Church and World heralded by Vatican II
has passed, and a new hour of prophetic witness has arrived.
As St Paul said "For the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God."
–Daniel Nichols
Dan
One way to know moral law however is to read God’s word which says in
Proverbs 20:30 Catholic NAB version
“Evil is cleansed away by bloody lashes, and a scourging to the inmost being.”
I can easily see a pedophile who won’t disclose the whereabouts of a dying child whom he has just raped…being treated severely in accord with God’s above word until he discloses the location of the child.
Also check Fr. Brian Harrison’s essay on torture at http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt119.html and one of the issues of this past week’s Times had an article on the Bush administration agreeing to lesser measures and not using waterboarding.
Even if we grant for the sake of argument that torture could be justified in an extreme case such as the one you postulate, it’s quite a different thing to make it s.o.p. as the administration has done.
I haven’t looked closely at the new policy but there seems to be some debate as to whether it really changes anything.
Maclin
The article was from July 21 and titled: “Rules Lay Out C.I.A.’s Tactics In Questioning” and contends that there is change…there is no real change for the people who hate all torture since they want none. But they are unsupported by the Bible which has other passages similar to the one I noted. Indeed the Catholic New Testament NAB version…in Romans 13:3-4 reads as follows:
“3
For rulers are not a cause of fear to good conduct, but to evil. Do you wish to have no fear of authority? Then do what is good and you will receive approval from it,
4
for it is a servant of God for your good. But if you do evil, be afraid, for it does not bear the sword without purpose; it is the servant of God to inflict wrath on the evildoer.”
Aquinas cited that both in support of just war and in support of the death penalty but I’d cite it for our pedaphile example also….and our recent Popes don’t cite it at all even when they are writing or talking of the death penalty. When you avoid part of God’s word in favor of other slices of God’s word, that is not the tradition of the best writers like Aquinas and Augustine and Jerome…though they themselves erred against their own theory at times.
I’m sorry but it borders on the bizarre to take those Biblical passages as a warrant for using torture to extract information, especially from suspects.
Maclin
But it would not border on the bizarre to use such passages and torture on a criminal, not merely a suspect, who told you directly that he knew where such a child was dying as happened in the US and whereupon he taunted the police. One sees this type of defiance often on MSNBC’s series on US prisons wherein there are some prisoners who throw feces through their bars at security people. Christ noted to the devil that man does not live by bread alone…”but by every word that cometh from the mouth of God.” Wink….we’ve fallen away from that “every word” part haven’t we.
I am teaching an iconography class this week and am right now at the library on a computer with a 15 minute time limit, which is fast approaching, so I will only say that one can build a case for genocide, torture, wife beating or just about any thing that will send you on a road straight to hell based on selected Scripture quotes!
Dan
That was quick and I’m sure not your best side. You’ll not be able to supply the wife beating passages with crystal clear clarity as I can in the Koran but the dooms you can supply though it seems you do not know the nuances. Genocide cannot be justified by the dooms of the Canaanites by God because God actually gives his reasons for that doom which were proper only to that situation and which the Jews make no attempt later on to use as a justification for any similar action. They unlike you knew Wisdom chapter 12 which they wrote as God’s writers and which specifies those dooms for reasons given by God in the following:
Wisdom 12:3
“For truly, the ancient inhabitants of your holy land,
4
whom you hated for deeds most odious– Works of witchcraft and impious sacrifices;
5
1 a cannibal feast of human flesh and of blood, from the midst of. . .– These merciless murderers of children,
6
and parents who took with their own hands defenseless lives, You willed to destroy by the hands of our fathers,
7
that the land that is dearest of all to you might receive a worthy colony of God’s children.
8
But even these, as they were men, you spared, and sent wasps as forerunners of your army that they might exterminate them by degrees.
9
Not that you were without power to have the wicked vanquished in battle by the just, or wiped out at once by terrible beasts or by one decisive word;
10
But condemning them bit by bit, you gave them space for repentance. You were not unaware that their race was wicked and their malice ingrained, And that their dispositions would never change;
11
for they were a race accursed from the beginning. Neither out of fear for anyone did you grant amnesty for their sins.
12
For who can say to you, “What have you done?” or who can oppose your decree? Or when peoples perish, who can challenge you, their maker; or who can come into your presence as vindicator of unjust men?”
……..20
For these were enemies of your servants, doomed to death; yet, while you punished them with such solicitude and pleading, granting time and opportunity to abandon wickedness…”
So it appears that the Jews were well aware that the dooms were preceded by God first punishing such people lightly but miraculously and then such dooms were enjoined by God to be carried out by the Jews as His arm only after such a period during which they still rejected Him and continued to sacrifice their children.
Let no Catholic report the dooms inaccurately so as to attribute them to men and thus deduct from God’s word …that would be false reporting if they were to not give the reasons of Wisdom 12 which are only in the Catholic Bible since Protestants don’t have Wisdom in their canon.
the torture of abortion mills goes back twenty years, as does the epidemic of slasher/sadistic film series like Friday the 13th etc.
And I’ve been a doctor long enough to know that violence against women and children did not start with Bush, but with Beelzebub.
Horror movies are nothing new; what has been deemed “torture porn” is in fact a new cultural low and it has been much commented on. I don’t think I am imagining the phenomenon or overreacting.
I don’t recall saying that violence against women and children started with Bush. What Bush has accomplished is establishing torture as US policy, which is a first.