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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Gingrich does not say otherwise.

It didn’t take long for Gingrich to head for the cafeteria, did it?

This comment reveals your quality.

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?