A conversation with Newt Gingrich:
“DIA: Do you believe any of the Bush administration’s approved interrogation techniques amounted to torture? Asked another way, why is waterboarding torture when it’s done by the Khmer Rouge, but “enhanced interrogation” when it’s done by America?
Mr Gingrich:No. As a British court noted, waterboarding is not torture. Waterboarding has been routinely used to train American pilots in the military to understand what interrogation techniques they might encounter. The reference to the Khmer Rouge is the kind of moral equivalence President Reagan warned against in his “Evil Empire” speech in 1983. The Khmer Rouge killed millions of people, annihilated the Cambodian intellectuals, and was among the worst inhumane movements in the last century. The United States has used specific enhanced interrogation techniques in specific circumstances against very high-level terrorists for the purpose of saving innocent civilian lives, not for taking them.”
He seems to be saying the the object of the act does not matter, only the intention of the acting moral agent. And since the US are the good guys, they don’t intend any ill on people, which makes this kind of torture licit. It sounds suspicously like the depraved logic of Andrew McCarthy of the National Review. As the coiner of the phrase “consequentialism”, Elizabeth Anscombe, put it: “on this theory of what intention is, a marvellous way offered itself of making any action lawful. You only had to ‘direct your intention’ in a suitable way. In practice this means making a little speech to yourself: “What I mean to be doing is…” Sorry, Newt, but if you are want to be Catholic, you need to get your moral theology from official sources, not Ronald Reagan — and it’s you who are engaging in moral relativism, it’s you who are denying that something the Church deems intrinsically evil is not indeed intrinsically evil.
But the problem is not consequentialism!
What Gingrich describes is classical deontologism, where it is the intent of the actor that matters, and nothing else.
Republicans have paved a road with there good intentions over the past eight years, and it is leading to the predictable place.
I concur; for me, as it should be to all Catholics a very simple concept, that tortre is wrong, though many Republicans in this case, but also Democrats regarding abortion fall into this pattern of thought, if I think I am doing good, then the outcome is acceptable, which IS unacceptable.
It has been stated before by MM on ths site in many different and very articulate ways, “torutre is an intrinsic evil.” (Intrinsece Malum)
On August 6th, 1993, Pope John Paul II in his encyclical Veritats Splendor, stated, (4:71-80) “Human acts are moral acts because they express and determine the goodness or evil of the individual who performs them. They do not produce a change merely in the state of affairs outside of man but, to the extent that they are deliberate choices, they give moral definition to the very person who performs them, determining his profound spiritual traits.
Saint Thomas observes that “it often happens that man acts with a good intention, but without spiritual gain, because he lacks a good will. Let us say that someone robs in order to feed the poor: in this case, even though the intention is good, the uprightness of the will is lacking. Consequently, no evil done with a good intention can be excused. ‘There are those who say: And why not do evil that good may come? Their condemnation is just’ (Rom 3:8)”.
Lastly, what is intrinsically evil: 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”.
There are problems with what Gingrich says, and with rebuttals against what he says.
Gingrich denies that waterboarding is torture. And if he’s correct, then of course there’s nothing un-Catholic about his defense of the practice.
Indeed, so long as he actually believes waterboarding is not torture, his defense of the practice is innocent…in-and-of-itself. (However, if he has any doubt about it, his failure to say “better safe than sorry” is a sin against the virtue of prudence. Moreover, his *belief* that waterboarding is not torture may itself be culpable, if he obtained that belief by lying to himself or avoiding serious examination of the issue.)
Anyhow, he says it isn’t torture. This may be true. It may be false. But he doesn’t provide any argument either way; he just asserts it.
Granted, he goes on to talk about the nasty intentions of the Khmer Rouge and the prevalence of waterboarding in U.S. military training. It’s neither here nor there since one’s intentions in performing an act aren’t relevant to what the act is. So, it doesn’t constitute an argument about whether it’s torture, or not. (Phosphorious correctly identifies this as deontologism.)
So, Gingrich doesn’t defend his assertion.
Could he?
I admit it would be difficult. He’d have to have a standard for what constitutes torture, which is a problematic issue involving matters of degree, duration, and the qualitative difference between physical and psychological pain, between different kinds of physical pain, different kinds of psychological pain, et cetera.
(One can try to assign values and weights to such subjective factors, and then score a procedure by saying “More Than X nastiness points means it’s torture; Less Than X means it’s not.” But everyone will disagree on the weighting, the values, and the threshold value of X.
One can also try to define torture *without* quantifying its components, but that never works: No such definition can be crafted to include “Chinese water torture” without also including spanking one’s children, or the “good cop bad cop” routine, or various other activities which shouldn’t be included. Degree and duration *matter*, especially in such things as “stress positions” and “sleep deprivation.”)
Let us admit, though, that if Gingrich were to offer a **good** argument to show that waterboarding isn’t torture, then his defense of the U.S.’s use of it would be thereby justified.
He just hasn’t made any such argument. (Nor has anyone else.)
In rebuttal to Gingrich, another bad argument is made; that it’s “torture when it’s done by the Khmer Rouge.” This is incorrect, because waterboarding as performed by the Khmer Rouge is actually a different procedure. Both forms of interrogation should be called “waterboarding” because in each case water is poured and a board is involved, but there’s some justification to suggest a qualifying adjective to differentiate between them otherwise: As practiced by the Khmer Rouge it routinely resulted in death, lasting injury, and physical pain; as practiced by the Guantanamo interrogators instinctual fear is produced without risk of death (unless it is done incorrectly), injury, or physical pain.
Is this enough to allow one to be torture, while the other is not? I’m sorry to say: We can’t know, unless we know the definition of torture (see my earlier point).
In the end, should Gingrich be denied communion? Nah. Should he receive a verbal spanking from his ordinary? Probably not. Should he be asked to discuss it with his ordinary? Possibly; there are ways he could arrive at his conclusions which are innocent, and not-so-innocent; ways which are well-informed, and not-so-well informed.
And one must admit: He hasn’t been a Catholic that long; has he absorbed all that he ought, of what the Church teaches on these matters? Probably not.
A private talk with a bishop, and some time to mature in his faith, are probably the best prescription.
P.S. Even if waterboarding is not torture, we obviously shouldn’t use it. It’s a known technique, now, and presumably terrorists are training to resist it. In which case durations and repetitions must be increased to compensate — probably increased to a point where everyone would agree it was torture, even if they hadn’t agreed before.
And, the odds of getting useful information drop, also, when terrorists know what they’re facing. Weighed against the P.R. problems, it’s pretty easy math to conclude waterboarding is no longer justifiable, if it ever was.
I did not realize that there was an “Catholic” viewpoint on waterboarding that was a part of RCIA
Can someone point to me to this requirement?
Cheney expressed a similar moral philosophy in his speech last month:
“Critics of our policies are given to lecturing on the theme of being consistent with American values. But no moral value held dear by the American people obliges public servants ever to sacrifice innocent lives to spare a captured terrorist from unpleasant things. And when an entire population is targeted by a terror network, nothing is more consistent with American values than to stop them.”
If it keeps us safe, then it is moral!
I expect no less from Cheney, but shouldn’t a Catholic convert be taught these things?
The headline of this article is deceptive and author’s intent “seems” (to use the author’s own weasel word) to be to spread calumny about another.
I suggest the author check her “moral sources” to refresh her memory about which mortal sin calumny falls under.
Newt Gingrich is wrong; waterboarding is torture.
Kyle is also wrong; Gingrich’s comment does not express a moral philosophy similar to, “If it keeps us safe, then it is moral!”
Morning’s Minion is also wrong; Gingrich does not say only the intention of the acting moral agent matters, he says the intent of waterboarding determines its licitness in particular cases. And, since the fact that waterboarding is torture isn’t a doctrine of the Church, the fact that Gingrich is wrong about this is in no way a reflection on the instruction in the faith he received prior to being received into the Church. Gingrich’s error, in the quoted comment at least, is not one of moral philosophy, but of practical reason.
Excelsior is — well, puzzling me with that “private talk with a bishop” bit. Don’t famous people have parish priests, too? Or is there some Church-state protocol that says bigwigs only talk to bigwigs?
Tom: “Gingrich does not say only the intention of the acting moral agent matters, he says the intent of waterboarding determines its licitness in particular cases.”
But that is exactly what cannot happen with an intrinsically evil act. It didn’t take long for Gingrich to head for the cafeteria, did it?
And are you saying that if the Church does not spell out each and every type of torture that is intrinsically evil, then a Catholic gets wiggle room to exempt his preferred technique?
Micha: I suggest you review you terminology. Calumny involves telling lies – what I said is the truth, in Gingrich’s own words. And it can’t be detraction either, as we are not talking about revealing hidden faults — this is on the public record.
But that is exactly what cannot happen with an intrinsically evil act.
Gingrich does not say otherwise.
It didn’t take long for Gingrich to head for the cafeteria, did it?
This comment reveals your quality.
Tom,
I’m not going to take your bait and get into a insult-trading competition. Can you please deal with the issues instead of skirting around them?
You yourself said that Gingrich “says the intent of waterboarding determines its licitness in particular cases”. That is tantamount to saying it it not intrinsically evil for if it were, neither intent or circumstances matter. Veritatis Splendour is very clear on this (as is any basic textbook in moral theology).
Your other point is that the Church does not explicitly declare that waterbaording is torture, so that grants the required wiggle room. Where does the Church provide a list of techniques that fall under the definition of intrinsically evil torture? Why does that provide wiggle room? You may or may not be aware that waterboarding has always been considered torture in international and US law, and US courts have convicted people for it.
No, what Gingrich is saying is that it’s OK if the US does it, even if that same act is wrong if done by the Khmeer Rouge, the WW2-era Japanese, or the Gestapo. He thinks the US are the good guys and the good guys have different rules — it’s the standard American defense of what happened and Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I’m sick and tired of the double standard of American Catholics on the right, who claim a monopoly on orthosdoxy. Well, sorry, one who publicly defends torture opposes Church teaching just as one who publicly defends abortion.
Can you please deal with the issues instead of skirting around them?
With your own words, you introduce your morose delectation as one of the issues.
Where does the Church provide a list of techniques that fall under the definition of intrinsically evil torture?
Isn’t that the question jh asked you above?
If we all agree that the Church does not teach as a matter of doctrine that waterboarding is torture, then I think we must also all agree that the Church does not teach as a matter of doctrine that waterboarding is intrinsically evil. From which it follows that Gingrich’s failure to know that waterboarding is intrinsically evil is not a matter of cafeteria Catholicism or poor faith formation as such.
But the Church also does not say specifically that tearing of fingernails is torture. We know it is. Not having this specificity is no excuse to creating wiggle room. It’s exactly the same with waterbaording.
What “wiggle room” do you think people are trying to create?
The wiggle room to declare that, because the Church has not said explictly that technique A is torture, then one is not bound to accept that technique A is intrinsically evil.
If the Faith doesn’t bind one to believe that technique A is intrinsically evil, then one isn’t bound by faith to believe that that technique A is intrinsically evil.
One may well be bound by reason to know that technique A is a species of act that one is bound by faith to believe is intrinsically evil. That’s not “wiggle room,” though; that’s a consequence of faith and reason being different things.
Further, if someone — right or wrong, culpable or innocent — judges that technique A is not intriniscally evil, then his endorsement of it when the U.S. employs it and his condemnation of it when the Khmer Rouge employs it does not materially constitute consequentialism or deontologicalism. It is a valid — if sometimes, as in Gingrich’s case, unsound — moral argument.
As Tom is no doubt aware, there is culpable and inculpable ignorance. Unless Tom believes Newt is irredeemably stupid, then technique A is understood to be condemned by doctrine A. It is understood such by every expert and international tribunal that has entertained the question.
M.Z.:
I stand by a claim I once made that anyone who knows what the act of waterboarding entails and says it’s not torture is either a liar or a fool. The irredeemably stupid would not know what the act of waterboarding entails, and we all know that foolishness and intelligence are by no means mutually exclusive.
Morning Minion talks of the “Church teaching” in this area but there are levels of Church teaching and they are not all of the same importance.
The ten plaques that God sent against the Egyptians were torture exactly; the question is: can men do the same. I hold for rare torture in extreme situations like a brazen criminal telling police he knows where a kidnapped child is dying from wounds but he will not tell them the location. There really is no time for psychological approaches in “bleeding out” cases since time is ticking away rapidly. And no Catholic authority I’ve ever read considered the book of Proverbs defunct in the manner in which the ritual and judicial laws of the Pentateuch are defunct not as to meaning but as to being carried out. That being so the following two Proverbs seem to allow for my above case as to rescuing the child through some pain administered to the brazen criminal: Proverbs 20:30 “Evil is cleansed away by bloody lashes, and a scourging to the inmost being.” Proverbs 26:3 “The whip for the horse, the bridle for the ass, and the rod for the back of fools. “
John Paul I’m sure would have allowed for torture in such cases but was not thinking very clearly when he wrote “Splendor of the Truth” which I’ll show below. The prohibition of torture is for the most part (not totally) new in the Church and comes mainly from Vatican II and “Splendor of the Truth” by John Paul II. Pope Paul VI noted in an audience of January 1966 that Vatican II said nothing infallible unless it was referring to old de fide positions of long standing. But Paul VI said that Vatican II said nothing that was infallible as to the new issues therein. And here Ludwig Ott in the Introduction to Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma notes that encyclicals and CDF statements are reformable…correctable… as a rule:
“With regard to the doctrinal teaching of the Church it must be well noted that not all the assertions of the Teaching Authority of the Church on questions of Faith and morals are infallible and consequently irrevocable. Only those are infallible which emanate from General Councils representing the whole episcopate, and the Papal Decisions Ex Cathedra (cf. D 1839). The ordinary and usual form of the Papal teaching activity is not infallible. Further, the decisions of the Roman Congregations (Holy Office, Bible Commission) are not infallible. Nevertheless normally they are to be accepted with an inner assent which is based on the high supernatural authority of the Holy See (assensus internus supernaturalis, assensus religiosus).”
“Normally” they are to be accepted but this is not a perfectly normal situation in that section 80 of “Splendor of the Truth” by John Paul II also notes that slavery is “intrinsically evil” which would be a surprise to God since in Leviticus within a survivalist culture unlike ours…. He…God… gives permission to the Jews to have slaves as chattel…even in the NAB translation of Leviticus 25:44-46:
“Slaves, male and female, you may indeed possess, provided you buy them from among the neighboring nations.45 You may also buy them from among the aliens who reside with you and from their children who are born and reared in your land. Such slaves you may own as chattels,46 and leave to your sons as their hereditary property..”
So John Paul was incorrect is saying that slavery was “intrinsically evil” since God never gives under either dispensation old or new…permission to do the intrinsically evil like e.g. witchcraft or bestiality.
Likewise John Paul II’s similar blanket denunciation of torture in section 80 also seems based on not memorizing this time other certain passages of Scripture relating to that bodily action as I showed in the beginning as relates to Proverbs.
Aquinas thought differently on these topics because he actually went to the trouble of memorizing all critical passages in scripture and John Paul certainly did not and in fact in some cases, showed little regard for Scripture when it interfered with his position e.g. in EV he never mentions Romans 13:3-4 as to the death penalty and in Dignity of Women he refers to the 5 husband headship passages that he leaves out but he does not quote them because as in the EV case with the death penalty…actual quoting would have weakened his case.
LG 25′s “Religious submission of mind and will” does not obtain automatically where there is a pattern in a Pope that repeatedly contains problems of ommission whether deliberate or non deliberate.
And LG 25 falls under Paul VI’s non infallible description of most of Vatican II. It is true but incomplete and the completion of it is seen in Ott above and in all moral theology tomes that allow for dissent in the non infallible.