Thiessen’s Faulty Application of Double Effect on EWTN
There are a number of things wrong in Raymond Arroyo’s interview with Marc Thiessen: the host’s happily unchallenging questioning style about a dreadfully serious moral issue, the way he uses viewer emails to set up a straw-man for his guest to brush aside, Thiessen’s strange claim that arguments against “enhanced interrogation” come from a position of radical pacifism, his failure to acknowledge the possibility of psychological torture, and his dismissal of critics’ moral comparisons of U.S. water-boarding with the water-torture done by the Khmer Rouge because “we did not submerge people in a box full of water.” I’d like to focus on Thiessen’s faulty application of the principle of double effect. Thiessen remarks:
When you kill an enemy soldier, your intent is not to kill the enemy soldier, it is to defend society. There is a double effect: the soldier is killed and society is defended. One is intended the other is not. The same is true with interrogation. When the interrogator uses a technique on KSM, he doesn’t intend to cause him harm; he intends to get information to defend society, and he doesn’t cross a moral line into torture, and so the principle is the same.
The principle of double effect does not apply in either of Thiessen’s examples. You might kill an enemy soldier intending to kill him or not intending to kill him. You might seek to immobilize him while foreseeing the consequence that he might die, or you might simply seek to kill him making every effort to cause his death. In both cases you may also intend to defend society, but having the intention to defend society doesn’t mean you don’t intend what you do in society’s defense. In the case of interrogation, the interrogator may intend to get information to defend society, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t also intend to cause the one he interrogates harm. Indeed, he intends the one so that the other might follow. He intends to inflict physical or mental pain so that his prisoner will cooperate and give him information to defend society. Getting the prisoner to talk is an intended effect of the very much intended effect of pain. Double effect doesn’t work in these cases because we’re not dealing with two effects, one intended and good and the other unintended and bad. We’re dealing with two effects, both of which are intended. Arroyo fails to correct this error and so leaves his viewers with an erroneous presentation of an important principle in Catholic moral thought.
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I would like to be able to say that Arroyo’s is just due to carelessness, or, I don’t know, that maybe he was tired that day and let it slide.
But I can’t say that and believe it. What I really think is that Arroyo is desperate to provide enough lack of clarity about the wickedness of torture to justify his
shillingsupport for the Republican Party.Amen.
It’s a good thing liberals don’t watch EWTN. Some of the more clever ones would soon be applying this kind of ‘double effect’ logic to the pill.
Not that it excuses his mistake, but Raymond Arroyo is not a Catholic moral philosopher. He’s a rare breed – a faithful Roman Catholic journalist. If Arroyo and Thiessen are wrong, they should be corrected, and both of them are faithful Catholics enough to be obedient. The character assassination engaged in the above comments is disgraceful. When people speak of imputing ill motives, the previous two comments are great examples of what they are talking about.
Thanks for the enlightening piece. I think this error is far more insidious than we may realize. Brettsalkeld is right to quip that it could be applied to the pill, but it could essentially be applied to justify any evil (the abortion doctor doesn’t intend to kill the baby, but to “help” the woman, et al.). That its formulation derives from an apparent Catholic source is frightening….
Don’t you know that the Church changed its moral teaching, sometime between 1776 and 2001, in order to accommodate the following principle?
1. When an American does x in support of Freedom, x is always permissible, even though it remains impermissible when opponents of American Freedom do it.
Raymond Arroyo may not be a moral philosopher, and I cannot speak to his motives or character, but if he is going to bring onto his program a presidential speechwriter to talk about the morality of interrogation policy and the prudence of changes in those policies from one administration to another, then he has a responsibility to his viewers to understand and accurately present the basic moral principles at play in the debate.
Arroyo and EWTN have been brought to task more than once on these pages over torture. Arroyo has consistently and undeniably been opposed to church teaching in this area.
One has to have an understanding of intent before one comments on double effect. Kyle happens to have it. Needless to say, war complicates things. Killing soldiers is generally considered a defensive act in its object. Torturing a person in your custody who by definition is not a threat to you cannot be claimed as defense in its object as has been claimed with our country’s torture of KSM. Those competent in moral theology have almost universally claimed this to be the case and in the specific case of KSM, I’m not aware of a single competent moral theologian claiming that the torture of KSM was anything but grave evil.
I had heard about this, thank you for giving the details.
I am a practising Catholic but neither a theologian nor a moral philosopher – just a very ordinary man. However, if a gang took my wife and it was clear to me that she would be threatened with rape, torture and a slow painful death I would not be gentle to a captured member of the gang who refused to tell me where my wife was held. To sit there and be “nice’ would be shameful.
This is a hypothetical obviously but not impossible in real life. Or take a situation where terrorists have a nuclear bomb and it is going to kill hundreds of thousands if detonated. You have in your custody a captured member of the terrorist gang but not surprisingly – being a fanatic – he won’t tell you where the bomb is located. Indeed. he is quite compalcent as he belives that being a nice Christian you don’t believe in any form of coercion. What will you do? Play the nice guy and allow the bomb to go off of do actually something to save lives!!!
A question about definitions – at what point do you draw the line between interrogation and torture?
You have a broad spectrum between asking “pretty please with sugar on it” and breaking out the plastic shredder. Also, at what point do the interrogator’s motives come into play? When the prisoner starts to speak, does the activity continue in order to punish them?
Is it a bright point where “enhanced questioning” becomes torture, or is it more of a gray zone on the path to torture?
How exactly is the Obama policy different than the Bush policy? Does anyone really believe that Obama is strong enough to not use “enhanced techniques” on a valuable captive if he received enough pressure? And which action, not promise, do you base this conclusion on? Seems to me that the old Who phrase, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss” applies quite well. I will start to think that things might change when either Gitmo is shut down, or the past actions are investigated. Until then I hear lots of talk, and after a year, not the slightest action showing that the policy has changed.
R.L.,
Oh, I would certainly do something: I would attempt to save lives by acting in ways that don’t risk my eternal life. I would seek to act morally, which doesn’t necessarily mean that I would seek to act nicely.
Navy Vet,
First, I would stop talking about “enhanced interrogation,” as the adjective “enhanced” doesn’t tell us anything very meaningful. I would prefer to distinguish between interrogation techniques that 1) motivate the will and 2) undermine the will. The former may be permissible, but the latter are always illicit, as I argued here. Torture would fall within the latter category, though it is not the only way to undermine the will.
To find the line you’re looking for, ask whether a particular technique or series of techniques works with the will or against the will of the one interrogated. Are you allowing the prisoner to act as a person, as a rational, morally-free being? Or are you rendering him less than a person, an animal incapable of making free, rational decisions and therefore incapable of goodness and virtue?
Thanks for the reminder, M.Z.
Kyle
Could you answer RL in detail? The problem is that this “church teaching” is quite new, comes at a time when a Pope disbelieved that the OT death penalties were from God (see Evangelium Vitae section 40) and as it reads in the catechism, Christ offended human dignity and the catechism by using fright against people when He made a whip of cords and drove them from the temple.
“Simon”
I would recommend you read 2nd and 3rd century literature and commentary on the Gospels and the Old Testament. It might help move you beyond the current cultural outlook you use to make questions like you just did. Moreover, the “ticking time bomb” question has been brought up many times on here; look in other threads on torture and you will see some responses.
Simon Says,
I’m not opposed to all uses of fear to persuade or motivate someone. Preachers use the fear of Hell to motive doing the right thing. Parents use fear of punishment to form the will of their children. Society uses the fear of punishment to motive legal behavior. I’m not necessarily opposed to interrogators using fear to motive cooperation. One can use fear without offending human dignity. As I mentioned to Navy Vet and have argued for in previous posts, what I oppose and what absolutely offends human dignity in the realm of interrogation are techniques that do not motive or persuade the one interrogated, but rather seek to rob him of his capacity to use his will, to make a moral choice, to actually be motivated or persuaded.
Kyle
I actually partly like your answer as a still general answer but it is not that of the catechism… but the catechism is either wrong or infinitely interpretable by Catholic casuistry which means no one but academics are paying it existential attention… when it says in #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.”
Christ certainly offended against #2297 with His whipping of the money changers but He did not offend against your above answer.
“Henry”
Thanks for resisting the urge to out me.
“Simon”
Well, the traditional interpretation of the moneychangers is not so simple as modern day readings have had of it. Many have suggested the whip was not for the moneychangers, but the animals, to get them on the move and out of the temple area. Others have used the whip as an allegory (like Thomas’ commentary), where the chord is actually our sins, and Christ doesn’t do anything, but our sins whip us.
comes at a time when a Pope disbelieved that the OT death penalties were from God (see Evangelium Vitae section 40)
Simon,
It seems to me that Christianity is largely about negating things in the Old Testament. Jesus even did so himself regarding the rules in Deuteronomy about divorce. We no longer sacrifice animals. We no longer have ritual cleanliness. We no longer are forbidden to wear garments made of two fabrics woven together. The list goes on and on.
Christ offended human dignity and the catechism by using fright against people when He made a whip of cords and drove them from the temple.
Remember that Christ is God incarnate, for one thing. Did God commit genocide when he wiped out the entire population of the world except for the passengers on the Ark?
And for another, Jesus did not enter the temple. He was in the “temple area,” specifically, the Court of the Gentiles. The Court of the Gentiles was roughly the area of ten football fields. Exactly how much of a disturbance a man armed only with a whip could have caused is open to debate. What exactly happened and what it meant is unclear (at least to me). The money changers were an absolutely essential element of temple worship. Was Jesus attacking Judaism? I have never figured this one out.
Well, the traditional interpretation of the moneychangers is not so simple as modern day readings have had of it.
Henry,
As I said above, it is unclear to me what to make of this Gospel incident. Consider this passage from Luke:
How did people who traveled to Jerusalem go about offering animals for sacrifice? The exchanged their currency by using the services of the moneychangers and bought the animals in the temple area. The system was absolutely essential to temple worship, and Mary and Joseph had to have done this themselves.
David
What I understand from my reading, which was awhile ago, the problem with the system was the exchange rate and the exclusivity of the people who did the money changing; it put a huge burden upon the people — they did not give a fair exchange. And I think by this time, one had to go through them and the merchants in the temple grounds to get what one was going to donate to the temple (not outside donations). And so they made huge profits on the religious needs of the people. Sound familiar?
Henry
I’m sure Thomas did not void the literal level simultaneously….Jerome made that a no no.
You have to see Christ’s violence with the money changers in context of the entire Bible (which I read cover to cover) and which has God use intimate violence against men (not cows)…for one sin only: sacrilege. This tradition of God using violence against men for sacrilege continues in Christ’s whipping of the money changers.
In 2 Sam 6, God kills Uzzah intimately for his understandable attempt to steady the ark which was on the verge of tipping but which no one was supposed to touch (Nm 4:15).
In Joshua 6:19, all gold and silver within Jericho was “sacred to the Lord ” but Achan stole some anyway and was soon stoned to death by God’s order; in Judges 19, the concubine of not an ordinary man but of a Levite priest is raped and killed and 25,000 Benjaminites pay with their lives by the power of God; in I Kings 20:35, a guild prophet tells a companion to strike him and the companion does not and is killed by a lion since the word was from God through a prophet; in 2 Kings 2, forty two children are killed by two she bears for taunting Elisha who again is a prophet as in the preceding case; in I Sam 2, Eli’s sons are killed by God since Eli and his sons took the choice portions of the sacrifices that were meant for God; in I Sam 6, seventy descendants of Jeconiah are slain by God for not participating in greeting the “ark”; also David’s son by Bathsheba is killed by God because David committed adultery with her but David had also killed Uriah her husband who was sacred in a sense because he had honored the “ark” (in a reversal of the above sacrilege by the 70 descendants of Jeconiah). Uriah, one might read between the lines, became sacred to God by not returning home to his wife, saying in 2 Sam 11:11, “ The ark, and Israel and Judah are lodged in tents…can I go home…I will do no such thing.”
In II Sam 24, God is angered at the Jews and allows, (by not frustrating the devil), David to take a census sinfully which leads to the Jews being punished by plague which plague is stopped by building an altar on a threshing floor which could mean that the original Jewish offense was sacral since the replacing of an earthly floor by an altar is the reversal of what happens in sacrilege wherein the sacral gives way to the earthly. Finally in the New Testament in Acts 5, this tradition is continued when God through Peter kills Ananias and his wife Sapphira, not for holding back money from the Church, but for “lying to the Holy Spirit”. Then in Acts 12:23 Herod Agrippa is struck down immediately by an angel of the Lord when he accepts by silence the praise of a crowd which calls him “god”.
So Christ is violent to men one time….and again it is for sacrilege…the sacrilege of taking up the gentiles’s section at the temple with their trade. But He as man did offend ccc 2297….;)…which of course is not infallible matter.
“Simon”
Well. remember, the OT also allowed for the destruction of women caught in adultery (no, demanded it); yet Jesus did differently. My only point is not to assume one reading of this, and to look through the history of commentary on this passage. If one did, one would see what many people take as normative is not so normative after all. There are many ambiguities to the text as David points out, and Christians have been debating about it ever since.
Henry
Christians did not debate whether the literal whipping with cords took place even when they stressed allegory. The literal level of a major occurence could not be voided unless there was great reason. The literal level of a minor occurence could be voided as even Augustine had to do once in his Harmony of the Gospels…a detail Leo XIII missed later when he exaggerated inerrancy by citing Augustine.
Doubting the very occurence that Christ whipped the men at all… only happens post liberal Protestant biblical scholarship (18th century and after) which was then ingested by Catholics much later like Fr. Raymond Brown et al, the once editor of the New Jerome Biblical Commentary who did not believe that Mary said the Magnificat…did not believe that there was any census at the time of Christ’s birth…did not believe there was a slaughter of the innocents which the liturgy has honored for 1500 years. He is the top man in modern Catholic biblical studies and served on the PBC under both Paul VI and John Paul II. That for some of us is a regression rather than a developement in some respects but…but he also did good things for biblical studies..i.e. making rational the chronology problems in John.
In the context of your growing up in this milieu, it is no wonder that literal occurences are not for you what they were for the majority history of Christianity. Our time is so bizarre that Brown marveled at the excesses of the Jesus Seminar while some were marveling at the excesses of Brown as what happened and what did not happen literally in the bible.
“Simon”
Actually, they debated the passage and what actually happened. That is the thing. They didn’t consider it so straightforward as “well, he attacked the people with whips.” They were quite concerned about any possible occasion for violence, and some noted it never said he hit anyone with chords. As for a great reason, well, going against Christian understanding of ethics was seen as a reason in this text to see what lies beneath. Again, the point is simple: there were and are a multitude of readings, and they are not all of the one kind which you bring up. While what you bring is a possible interpretation, on its own, within the context of the Church’s reasoning (such as the catechism) it seems one has reasons to avoid some interpretations over others, beyond mere preference.
David
You wrote: ” It seems to me that Christianity is largely about negating things in the Old Testament.”
Not everything. Christ voided the death penalties for personal sins as to the woman caught in adultery. But Christ originally as the Word gave the command to stone the adulteress and adulterer back in the Pentateuch. As Augustine explained, prior to grace mankind needed threats to be good…large threats…hence the many death penalties of the OT for personal sins. Once Christ brought sanctifying grace and once Christ brought the diminishing of the devil’s power (few cases of demon possession now but many at Christ’s time)…once Christ did this, the threats need not be physical anymore though the spiritual threats actually increase in clarity.
As Aquinas points out, what is voided in the Old Testament is those death penalties for personal sins (not crimes)/ and voided are all ritual penalties and rituals and feats that were prophetic of Christ.
Aquinas noted that the meaning of those old rituals perdures in Christ so that not one jot or tittle of the law was voided as Christ maintained about them.
The old death penalties for personal sin are now a guide to which sins are mortal to the soul though no longer to the body according to Aquinas so that they too have not passed away as Christ had said.
The death penalty for murder lay outside this and was given to gentiles also in Genesis 9:5-6 and for Aquinas, continued in Romans 13:3-4.
God use intimate violence against men (not cows)…for one sin only: sacrilege.
Simon,
In Genesis 38, God kills Er for reasons unspecified, and then he kills Er’s brother, Onan, for not impregnating Er’s widow. God also kills the entire human race except for Noah and the passengers of the Ark. God also kills all the Egyptian firstborn sons — totally innocent people — as a show of power to persuade Pharaoh to let the Hebrew slaves go.
I don’t think your theory about God killing only for sacrilege holds up.
My understanding of that passage is that the merchants had commercialized the Temple. The Temple was for worship and sacrifice (including animal sacrifice). Setting up a One Stop Animal Shop on the Temple grounds was an act of desecration.
—
Whatever else Thiessen has said on the subject, and whatever his motivations were, he’s flat-out wrong in that quote.
David
You missed my condition: I said “intimate violence” by God which the flood and the first born of the Egyptians is not about.
God killing Er and Onan is about sacrilege not sex (Augustine) nor the levirate obligation (Jerome).
Augustine reached the passage with over a decade of fornication in his past and thus he thought the passage was about him. The new translation shows that Onan spilled his seed not once as old translations led one to believe but multiple times which means that God did not strike Onan down for the beginning examples of coitus interruptus but God struck him down for the overall plan of Onan which was to have no children whatsoever. But that would mean that Christ would not come of the house of Judah.
It was about Christ. Christ had to come from one of four men: Er..Onan…Shelah…or Judah. He comes via Judah and Tamar and two sexual sins of theirs which produced a son Perez or Pharez who led to Christ in the geanlogy….for which sexual sins neither is punished within the same story.
To risk the non appearance of the Messiah who was to come through this little family was indeed sacrilege. God would have killed Onan if Onan had used an ancient form of natural family planning to avoid all childbirth because Christ was to come from this tribe of Judah and Tamar could not move to the next man as long as Onan was alive.
Check the geanology of Christ…Judah…Perez or Pharez…both led to Christ who in revelation 5:5 is called: ” The lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has triumphed, enabling him to open the scroll with its seven seals.”
Onan risked Christ not coming through the house of Judah….sacrilege. He was killed intimately by God.
Henry
I’d have to see actual cites as to who did not believe in the actual event. I can imagine it during the anti military pre-Constantine centuries since those saints and writers like Tertullian were averse to the military despite…despite… Christ saying that He had found in the Roman centurion more faith than He had found in all Israel. So I find an extremism in those centuries on violence questions that reminds me of present Baptists being against wine which Christ was also not against and which Christ produced prodigiously at Cana.
Simon
It’s been awhile since I’ve read the commentaries; some, certainly, were from the pre-Constantine time. But I think they continued also in that direction in the East. Maximus is quite “a-historical” in his approach, and often criticizes the literal approach. Not sure with this passage for Maximus, but I know the East in general, tended to follow Origen more than the West in this matter.
Nonetheless, Christ’s finding faith in the Centurion does not suggest he accepted everything involved in the Centurion’s life.
I believe that the need for money changers in the outer precincts of the temple was that travelers arriving in Jerusalem from Greek or Romans cities would have been carrying coin bearing the graven images of emperors, pagan gods, etc. Such coin could not go into the temple coffers and needed to be exchanged or coin that could.
As for the animals, since the animals used for sacrifice in the temple had to be without blemish, it would seem necessary that they had been certified as “kosher” by the priesthood prior to their sale. This could hardly be done conveniently off the premises. It is even probable that the temple was the wholesaler of the animals available at retail in the stalls Jesus purged. This does, indeed, seem to be an act directed against temple worship as it was then being orchestrated by the priestly temple cult.
I think that the explanation that Jesus used the whip only on the beasts in the market, not on the men is correct. He overturned the tables of the money-changers. I don’t know that any of the gospel accounts state that he used his whip (which in any case, as described, would have been more of a prop than a weapon) on people.
Rodak
Here is the NAB of (the higher Christology author…John) John’s gospel:
2:15
“He made a whip out of cords and drove them all out of the temple area, with the sheep and oxen, and spilled the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables…”
The official Bible, the New Vulgate is the same in Latin:
“et cum fecisset flagellum de funiculis, omnes eiecit de templo, oves quoque et boves, et nummulariorum effudit aes et mensas subvertit;
In “oves quoque et boves” quoque means “also”…meaning he drove out the men with the whip but besides driving out the men with the whip, He “also” drove out the beasts.
Literally, it says that “he made a whip of cords and ejected all from the the temple, the sheep and also the cattle…”
Nowhere does it specify that he actually whipped even the cattle and sheep. It doesn’t say, for instance, “he made a whip out of cords and used it to drive them all out of the temple, lashing the vendors and the beasts alike” or words to that effect. The money-changers, I’m quite sure, were down on their knees, trying to scoop up their coin. The vendors of animals would have been running around trying to herd the ones belonging to them back together. It would have been sudden chaos. “A whip of chords,” as I said above, would, in any case, have been more like a fly whisk than a bull whip; hardly a weapon that could be used to “drive” a man–although sheep and cows would probably have fled just from the shouting and flailing about, and that would have set their owners in motion.
More to the point, I think, than whether Jesus struck the vendors (which would have been totally out of character), is why he would have chosen to drive what were certainly perfectly legitimate businesses, run under the auspices of the priesthood, out of the temple, calling them “thieves.” They had always been there. Why, suddenly, did he turn on them? What does this say about the opinion of Jesus concerning the whole operation of the temple?
We must be reminded that Jesus had actually ordered individuals that he had healed to go to the temple and make an offering in thanks. That would have entailed the use of those individuals to the very vendors that Jesus has now expelled. How do we explain that circumstance?
Rodak
“Eiecit” can be translated “ejected” or “drove” as the NAB translator says since Latin-English dictionaries often give 7 plus alternate words. Since they are actually making a salary at the translating job, I’m going to go with their “drove” rather than your “ejected”. Since “drove” has connotations associated with whips and “ejected” does not..that is why maybe the NAB repeats “drove” in Mark.
On why Christ was punishing a sacrilege here at the temple is found in His words and which I gave way above as to motive. They…the money changers… were in the wrong place in the temple and were in the place that was supposed to be not for them and their trade… but for Gentiles who wished to pray with the Jews…and in addition Christ as God knew whether they did their trade honestly or not.
Note both the honesty issue and the replacing the Gentiles in the Gentile prayer space issue…. in Christ’s words in Mark 11:17…right after driving the traders out:
“Then he taught them saying, “Is it not written: ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples’? But you have made it a den of thieves.”
See the “all peoples”…it is referring to their illegitimate taking of gentile space in the courtyards. Den of thieves refers to Christ as God knowing their inner hearts (as we would not) as He often displayed also with the pharisees.
_________________________________________________
Bottom line as to this original thread on torture:
Christ offends the catechism’s description of torture in ccc #2297 because the catechism lacks precision herein. Barring that it becomes each person’s buffet as to what it does and doesn’t mean.
So we’re clear…
The argument from Simon is, essentially:
1) Jesus frightened the money changers from the temple area.
Therefore,
2) waterboarding prisoners is ok.
Zah?
Alex
I don’t think that is what Simon is saying… let’s not exaggerate what others have said.
Simon seems to think that these vendors were working in the temple as some kind of unsanctioned squatters. The temple had its own police. If the vendors had been conducting “thievery” in a non-metaphorical sense, it seems certain that the priests would have had them ejected, or worse, long before Jesus did it.
It would seem that by “thieves,” Jesus meant simply those conducting business, given their location.
We are reminded that when they came to arrest him, he said that he had taught daily in the temple, and that they could have arrested him at any time; and he asked why they now came as an armed mob to arrest him like a criminal. One might wonder why a money changer, suddenly having his table turned over, would not be able to ask Jesus a similar question.
I won’t quibble over the nuances between “ejected” and “drove.” I’ll stipulate that “drove” is better. But, that said, “drove” is not “whipped.” He could have “driven” them out by flapping his hands and going “Shoo! Shoo!”
Alex,
Some rare uses of torture are needed in my view in the rarest of cases. Per case permissions could be made to fall only on the President and Governors period… to keep them rare. The CIA and FBI could be barred from deciding on any cases; they could only proffer them to the president.
We learned last night on the news that the government thinks Al Qaeda will strike with an attempted large strike within 6 months. If one lives in most states and in most cities, that is sad but not real as a physical threat. If one lives in New York or Washington DC near a critical or iconic building in D.C…..this is real for us. Maybe for Chicago also it is real…. being big enough.
As a life long Catholic who thinks the Magisterium including each Pope was an historic failure in protecting our own children from predatory priests here and all over the world, I am not about to give them carte blanche on deciding security issues for any of my family within my lifetime when I indeed know the scriptures that actually repulse them such that John Paul saw some of them as not being from God as the Bible alleges but from the unrefined nature of ancient Jews in the OT (Evangelium Vitae section 40).
There are Proverbs in Proverbs that also are at diametrical odds with ccc #2297.
Pro 26:3 A whip for the horse, a bridle for the ass, and a rod for the fool’s back.
Pro 20:30 Evil is cleansed away by bloody lashes, and a scourging to the inmost being.
If an actor is caught who surely seems to know of the details of the next large attack on NY where I am, I would not want any of the magisterium deciding whether he should endure any pain to give the details. They failed with our children until the media forced them to meet in the southwest; they are not qualified in security matters or security related morals.
A Pope brought back torture in 1252 AD (see ccc #2298) after a different Pope condemned it in 866 AD and in 1816, another Pope condemned it in all Catholic lands. Here in NY this is our lives and our real estate which we hope to leave to children we love as a support in their life. I for one am in no mood for the musical chairs of Popes on this issue especially given section 40 of Evangelium Vitae as revelatory of what they think of the Old Testament.
Also in the local cases of criminals who will not reveal where a victim is dying and who taunt the police accordingly, special units from the governor should be sought by local authorities to extract that information. Years ago I read of a child predator who so taunted the police and the child’s parents that the child was dying but he would not say where. To spare him pain and allow the child to die is the height of erroneous conscience…which the Church says it had in the other direction in ccc #2298.
Having watched the interview, the points I took away were these:
1. While the “enhanced interrogation program” was classified, those supporting it were restricted from describing precisely what was being done. Now that the Obama admin has declassified it, they are more free to talk about it. This seems like a good thing.
2. The techniques of waterboarding used – indeed some of the personnel brought in to oversee it – were from the training done at SERE school, where it is done to our US personnel to present them with the inevitability of their having a breaking point and how to deal with it.
3. Abu Zubaydah was the first al qaeda leader waterboarded. After he broke and cooperated, he apparently thanked them for waterboarding him and told them they must do this for the rest of the brothers. The reason? They are apparently obliged to resist infidels, but once they hit their breaking point, they were apparently free to talk, since it was now allah’s will.
I have no idea if this is true, but it explains why we use the same techniques we use to safely conduct this in the training environment.
Simon,
What is the point of making a distinction between men that God killed “intimately” and those he killed en masse?
Zach: Raymond Arroyo is not a Catholic moral philosopher. He’s a rare breed – a faithful Roman Catholic journalist.
There’s nothing “faithful” about a man who wilfully ignores and obfuscates a clear Church teaching and uses consequentialist reasoning to defend, to claim as “good”, an intrinsically evil act. To use the language of canon law, at least as interpreted by the Burkeans, the man is obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin. The implication of that is quite clear.
Double-effect reasoning has never been applied to soldiers or police – both Saint Augustine and Aquinas treated lethal defense differently based on whether one was a civilian or not. Civilians are held to the double-effect doctrine, soldiers are not.
Now, double-effect has been used to cover ‘collateral damage’ of bombing, but not riflemen who shoot the enemy in the chest. Twice.
–
About the moneychangers: the Greek is clear that the ‘all’ that Jesus drove out was ‘both’ the sheep and the oxen – not the people.
Nate
There are no original Greek originals of the New Testament and the gospels.
“Introduction to the New Testament” by Father Raymond Brown, editor of the New Jerome Biblical
Commentary…page 48: “No autograph or original manuscript of a New Testament book has been preserved.”
There are about 3000 copies…parts and wholes… dating from the 2nd century to the 17th with myriad small differences. But in light of that and in light of Jerome’s sources and his cross referencing memory probably, the Church has the New Vulgate as the official Bible of the Church worldwide.
David
The temple incident was intimate ergo I chose intimate examples of God and sacrilege. Actually in the Noah case if you go to Genesis 9:5-6, you will see how murder is there seen as sacrilege due to man being made in the image of God which must be expiated by execution.
Thou shalt not kill and by logical extension thou shalt not cause anyone pain without due cause (we used to smack our naughty children until the enlightened ones told us that that amounted to child abuse)
But…
The Church permits Just Wars, admittedly under strict conditions, conditions which could broadly be described under the heading of self-defence (defence of your own country wrongly and viciously attacked or defence of another country wrongly attacked). Most would agree that World War Two fitted the Just War criteria yet it involved bombings, shootings, stabbings, drownings, and mass incinerations . It caused millions of deaths, and even more millions suffered long term injuries, both mental and physical.
The issue of coercive interrogation can be justified if it involves no permanent injuries, no threat of death and is kept with the strict boundaries associated with the Just War criteria.
We are currently in a war situation with terrorists quite capable of the most heinous of crimes against humanity. The authorities have an obligation to protect their citizenry and coercive interrogation techniques, as far as I am concerned – kept within strict limits – are just. This for me has nothing to do with the so-called “double effect’. It is all about self-defence and/or the just war concept.
Violence committed after the fact is not “self-defense,” it is revenge. Self-defense occurs at the time of the threat; not before, and not after. You throw a punch at my head; I block it with my left and counter-punch with my right: that is self-defence. Defense of the weak–same thing. Not before; not after.
Note: I should have chosen my words more carefully above. Self-defense occurs at the time of the ATTACK, not at the time of the “threat.” Pre-emptive war is not just war.
The official Bible, the New Vulgate is the same in Latin:
Obviously the Vulgate will not be conclusive in this debate if we are looking for a strict textual exegesis. The Vulgate is the official Bible of the Latin Church (not, obviously, for the Eastern Rites), and calling it the “official Bible” is misleading. Moreover, the concept of “official Bible” does not necessarily include “best translation,” and it is translation that Simon is after. In this case, the Greek is what he wants. Thus, his appeal to the Vulgate is irrelevant.
But let’s go with the Vulgate anyway (or any solid English translation of the Greek) for the sake of argument. It is not obvious that the whip was used to physically assault any persons. The text is inconclusive. Could not the whip have been used only on the animals? Could not the whip have been used only as a warning? Again, the text is inconclusive as to what role the whip played in driving out the merchants and the animals. Do we find any other places in the Gospel that might lead us to think that Jesus would have inflicted physical punishment on another human at any time? No. There is too little evidence to justify Simon’s interpretation.
But let’s say for the sake of argument that the whip was, indeed, used on the merchants. Would Jesus’ right to extend the wrath of God to those who are desecrating the Temple of God extend to us for the purposes of “enhanced interrogation?” I don’t see how. So even if Simon’s interpretation is correct, it sheds no light on the question of torture.
So if we cut through Simon’s rhetoric, what we really find is (1) an irrelevant appeal to the Vulgate; (2) an unwarranted interpretation of the cleansing of the Temple that is not supported by any other passage in the Gospels; in fact, Simon’s interpretation seems rather strange and implausible given the evidence we do have of Jesus’ tendencies in his interactions with a whole variety of people; and (3) a category mistake whereby the right of divine wrath is confused with human moral action (it’s like saying that since the Holy Spirit strikes someone dead in Acts, so, too, can I).
MJ Andrew
No, the point is that the catechism is imprecise if it unwittingly condemns Christ who was not using the miraculous against men at the temple as in the Red Sea case but was using the small and the carnal…a whip…against men at the temple. And the imprecision of the catechism also unwittingly condemns several passages within Proverbs whose author according to Dei Verbum in all its parts is God.
No ambiguity in the Vulgate at all…He clearly drives out men along with animals just as the NAB takes it: John 2:15 New Vulgate which is the standard for all liturgy and is thus the official working Bible of the Church…
“Liturgiam Authenticam” 2001 see section 37: “it should be borne in mind that the Nova Vulgata Editio is the point of reference as regards the delineation of the canonical text.”
Let’s do it vertically and it is horizontal way above where I first gave it:
(et cum)
(and with)
(fecisset)
((he had made)
(flagellum de funiculis),
(whip from cords,)
(omnes eiecit de templo,)
all he drove out from the temple,
(oves quoque et boves,)
(sheep also and oxen)
_____________________________________________________
Where’s the ambiguity?
As to Christ expressing the wrath of God, not exactly as to means…whip/ Red Sea….whip/ bears in the Elisha case.
You mention Christ’s other interactions with people as being a sign of non aggression which makes this passage an anomaly but that is true only if one looks for other violence from Him. But we all know there was none.
But if one looks for other passages that show Him willing to exclude people from His company due to their actions, there are many passages in accord with the exclusion He works at the temple. In accord with His driving out the money changers on that account then is His repeated threats against some that He interacted with:
Jn 8:44 ” Why do you not understand what I am saying? Because you cannot bear to hear my word.
44
You belong to your father the devil and you willingly carry out your father’s desires.”
_____________________________________________________
Luke 13:4 “Or those eighteen people who were killed when the tower at Siloam fell on them –do you think they were more guilty than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem?
5
By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!”
What of His words to His Father in prayer concerning Judas: “those whom you gave me I guarded and not one of them perished but the son of perdition.”
I’m sensing Judas was excluded with way more tragedy than the men at the temple who had a few bruises…with all due respect to the two recent Popes who against Augustine and Chrysostom… hold out hope for Judas being maybe elsewhere than hell.
So the Pope who stated that torture was an intrinsic evil in section 80 of Splendor of the Truth also said there that slavery was an intrinsic evil…but God gave “chattel” perpetual slavery over foreigners to the Jews in Leviticus 25:44-47 so it could not be intrinsic evil but evil by context. And yet we are to believe him on torture when he just made an obvious mistake on slavery?
PS MJ Andrews,
As to the gospels in Greek, there are no originals as noted in Fr. Raymond Brown’s reference given above; and Jerome between 1382 and 1384 revised the old Latin texts of the four gospels based on the oldest Greek texts extant as he was commissioned to do exactly that by Pope Damasus.
That should be 382 to 384 not the 14th century.
Simon
Actually there are no “original Vulgate” texts either. Same problem with the Greek (including the fact that it is a compound work; from what I understand, Jerome edited the Old Latin Gospels, didn’t retranslate).
So, the point has been made here that when our God-given right (as the heirs of the Levitican Jews) to own human chattel has been restored, we’ll be free to torture them, as need be. Splendid!
A point to consider — from a purely historical standpoint — is whether Jesus’s making and use of the whip in the Gospel of John is a detail the Synoptics omit, or something that John (or the tradition he is drawing on) invents. It is a mistake to collect all the details from different Gospel accounts of the same incident and try to merge them together into one harmonious account. This does not, of course, allow one who believes the Gospel accounts are divinely inspired to dismiss Jesus’s use of violence in John as fiction. Jesus is clearly depicted as engaging in violence, and even if it is not a historical fact, it must be explained.
David
Traditionally it was understood that Jesus did something at the Temple twice, once early on in his ministry (John) and once near the end (the Synoptics). While I think that is possible, I think it is unlikely, and so it is one event being described, but we must at least accept the possibility that two events happened. Of course, there are questions which follow: if this happened once, why didn’t they do something to prevent Jesus from coming back again? If it was a part of the reason why he was killed, why didn’t it happen earlier? Questions like these make me think it is only one event, but again, I do not dismiss the tradition entirely. Nonetheless, even in the case of John, the “violent Jesus” motif is not exactly how others have taken the text, which again is the point. We are reading much into the text, all of us, no matter which direction we take with it. But that to me is fine if one understand how and why one is doing so.
For all those who prefer the Greek manuscripts in their translations to the actual published in the real world Bibles, we have the top Catholic voice in Biblical matters and hardly a conservative, Fr. Raymond Brown’s conclusion on that matter after he had noted that the Vulgate used superior Greek texts to the Textus Receptus and as he spoke of the modern improvement over the Textus Receptus in the Nestle-Aland series by modern scholars and which is constantly updated:
“The text printed therein is eclectic, drawing on one tradition for one verse and another tradition for another verse…was never read in a Christian community…..the most one can claim for a critically prepared Greek NT is scholarly acceptance.”
(page 52 “Introduction to the New Testament”)
Simon:
Look to the Vulgate and its constant updating; it is just as much a critical mess as the Greek texts. The Greek, because it is the source for the Latin translation, will always be superior. But of course we don’t have the “original Greek.” We also don’t have the “original Latin.” And one just needs to read Augustine to see Jerome’s contributions were not always best. But this idea that the Vulgate is the best, when there is no “the Vulgate” is troublesome. I would say that, for a time, the Church did offer the Vulgate to the West, because the West did not have good access to the Greek, and the Greek had yet to be critically evaluated. But it is clear the Church takes the Greek seriously, especially my Church which bases itself, even in the OT, from the Greek (being Byzantine).
The way I look at these things – if the creator of the universe had any pressing interest to leave us with some sound solid words – he easily could have done so – the fact that the written records of this most important event are so – shall we say murky -retold generations after the fact etc. – clearly sends a message by itself. And certainly 2000 years of consistently rather violent history makes the question of a whip used or not rather a academic one – nice exercise perhaps but in the end pointless. Lets get real religion at any given time in human history has been very much an expression of the sentiments of the time. I think it speaks well for our generation that many are willing to live a peaceful pacifist life – it is unrealistic to expect that all will fall into that philosophy.
Grega
While others protect you.
LOL…let’s hope your local police don’t fall into that philosophy or they will be of no help if you have a break in by criminals in the middle of the night and you call the police on your cell phone from a closet. Or will you be calling another pacifist should that happen?
1968 bumpersticker: The next time you’re in trouble, call a hippie.
When you kill an enemy soldier, your intent is not to kill the enemy soldier, it is to defend society. There is a double effect: the soldier is killed and society is defended. One is intended the other is not.
In Thiessen’s honor, I’ve decided to rob a bank and donate at least 5% of the proceeds to the poor. There is a double effect: the bank is robbed and the poor are given money. One is intended the other is not.
grega,
But you forget that many Catholics have a version of the Gospel that goes like this:
* Jesus is born.
* Jesus drives the moneychangers out of the Temple.
* Jesus is crucified.
* Jesus rises from the dead.
Under those circumstances, you can understand why it would be of vital importance how Jesus used the whip.
Those of a different bent have a Gospel that reads like this:
* Jesus is born.
* Jesus halts the stoning of the prostitute.
* Jesus is crucified.
* Jesus rises from the dead.
Hey, it worked for Robin Hood!
Simon;
Pacifism does not mean you do nothing when someone breaks into your house. It means you find a third way between violence and doing nothing. I would say that at its best, policing is in fact an example of a third way between violence and doing nothing. That is why the vast majority of police officers (actual title: “Peace Officers”) go through their whole career without firing their gun. According to the journal Society, the NYPD claims that 95% of their officers retire having never fired their guns in the line of duty.
Again, pacifism means actively opposing evil without resorting to violence. Christian pacifists see this principle as integral to the gospel, as we are called to live in imitation and obedience to the life and teachings of Christ. Christ certainly opposed evil and actively worked against it, but did so through a renunciation of violence.
Simon;
Pacifism does not mean you do nothing when someone breaks into your house.
As always, Ryan, I appreciate your patient (and repeated!) description of Christian nonviolence for people who are clearly unsympathetic!
I find it so frustrating when people attempt to defend systematic torture and war-making by making the move to hypothetical personal attacks, grandma-rapes, etc. As if an attempt to defend one’s self from a burglar is in any way comparable to american imperialist violence?!
Anyway, keep up the good work!
Questions like these make me think it is only one event, but again, I do not dismiss the tradition entirely.
Henry,
It seems to me when interpreting the Gospels, it may at times be wise to leave possibilities open, but I think that can be taken too far. I am of course not a Biblical scholar, but knowing what we know today about how the Gospels were composed, and the liberties the evangelists took in reordering, deleting, and adding material, I am comfortable saying the cleansing of the temple took place only once (if it happened at all).
I only had a little time to read Raymond Brown’s commentary in his Anchor Bible volumes on the Gospel of John, but he refers to the “sweeping violence” of John’s account. To try and deny that John’s account describes a violent confrontation seems to me on the level of some Protestants’ insistence that Jesus would never have drunk alcoholic beverages or changed water into wine with an actual alcohol content. Jesus is depicted in a rage, making a weapon, overturning tables, and chasing people out of the temple area. When you brandish a whip, it’s violence even if you don’t hit anybody with it.
Brown (if I am remembering correctly) seems to think there may not have been animals in the Court of the Gentiles, which is presumed to be the place the moneychangers were chased from. I am going to read some more of Brown’s account tonight.
I do understand how some could be exasperated by the incredibly detailed analysis of this kind of thing. I remember reading Richard Armour writing a mock analysis of The Scarlet Letter and saying, “Did Hester Prynne have one blouse with an A inscribed on it, many blouses with A’s on them, or one A that she moved from blouse to blouse? These are the kinds of questions that make literary scholarship so fascinating.” But reading just about any passage with Brown’s own translations, notes, and commentary is incredibly fascinating. And of course not just Brown, but other noted scholars doing similar work.
Ryan
You are a good soul I’m sure; but you are not prepared for the worst and who really wants to be. Scenario: you come home from work and find the front door busted in and you hear a female member of your family yelling for help followed by a thud. You run to the kitchen and a strong man is on top of her and has most of her clothes off and she is bleeding from her neck. You need not give me an answer as to what you would do. But nothing in your above post indicates you are anywhere’s near prepared for that.
In my case (and I’ve seen way too much violence first hand from special circumstances)…I have a small shot gun with large magnum shells in the front hall closet way above. I would take his head off with one shell from floor level while staying silent til then. To accost him would be to give him the chance to raise her up to his level as a shield. It providentially would be his exact time to go to the particular judgement based on the circumstances and my past experience of criminals. There is no issue here of saving his soul by warning him. Saul was removed from the kingship of Israel by God through Samuel…. for not killing a certain king. Samuel then hacked that king
“in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal”.
1Sa 15:33 “And Samuel said, As thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women. And Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the LORD in Gilgal.”
“before the Lord in Gilgal” is key.
No time out for repentance if the circumstances in your case do not permit it as in the above scenario where talking will get someone innocent killed if not both innocents killed. You will say that both you and she should die for his soul…but Christ dying only changed some evil people not all. Both thieves railed against Christ according to one gospel account and only one was impressed by His dying for them both. If you want to save criminal souls, do it each week in prison rather than when your family member needs you to have the severity of Samuel. Often pacifism is an attempt to eradicate an anger within you that repulses you. Get in touch with that if that is true. I once confronted what to me was a constantly saccharine priest about his too sweet sermons year after year. To my surprise, he then displayed an anger toward me that amazed me and only later did I see his saccharine sermons as an attempt to dominate this temper within him which repulsed him. But giving sweet only sermons was not working.
Let’s try:
Jesus is born.
Jesus delivers the Sermon on the Mount.
Jesus is crucified.
Jesus is resurrected.
Jesus delivers the Sermon on the Mount.
As I understand it, contemporary Biblical scholars do not believe Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount. It is believed to be a collection of Jesus’s teachings from different sources that Matthew presents as one coherent address.
Simon – in case you wonder I am not a pacifist – I however deeply admire those that are – and it seems to me that a good number of the Vox Nova Bloggers actually walk the talk and live wellbalaced peaceful lives.
Yes I perfectly well understand that a number of folks -particular here in the US – get a kick out of the thought that they have that ‘lovely’ shotgun right by the door – “just in case”.
Oh well in my view my family is much safer without that shotgun – furthermore in my view the likelihood of you getting your act together at night with somebody sneaking around your house is 50/50 at best. And yes if in doubt I do think I much rather have somebody sneak away with my silverware, money and this computer than having to give myself a headache with a loaded gun in the house ( not to mention that I do have two curious boys in the house).
Besides would you want the responsibility for shooting and killing a person over some money and worldly possessions? I have enough to worry about without such headaches. And yes I gladly let professionals take care of such things – I by the way fully support Police and Military and gladly pay part of my taxes for such services. Well with the caveat that I do think that Americans do spend way to much on their military – but what do you expect since the majority of this society think along your lines – they need that ‘shotgun’ and yes they are not particularly smart about that issue. I think you guys could safe a ton of money — oh well your fellow western societies laugh all the way to the bank and gladly let you indulge yourself in military splendor -
JohnMcG – I consistently enjoy your comments – while often not agreeing I find your voice to be sincere and reasonable. Yes you sum this up very succinct – in my view the fact that our scripture can be read in such different fashion depending on ones philosophy and attitude toward ones fellow human beings is telling.
And no I do not think that all the ‘research’ in the world will ever definitively unearth who is right.
It has been a mixed bag – and it will be a mixed bag.
David–
My suggestion was that I find it more helpful to think of Jesus as a teacher than as a defense attorney or as a cop.
In my case (and I’ve seen way too much violence first hand from special circumstances)…I have a small shot gun with large magnum shells in the front hall closet way above. I would take his head off with one shell from floor level while staying silent til then.
Simon,
I know the idea of blowing someone’s head off is very attractive to some, but from what I have read, to be justifiable, a violent act of self-defense must use only as much force as necessary. Why not have a Taser or some other non-lethal weapon on hand? Or if you must have a gun, why does it have to be one that blows people’s heads off. In the very unlikely event that your scenario happens, by having kept a decapitating shotgun on hand, it seems to me you have set circumstances up so you can deliberately kill someone and claim it was justifiable.
Also, if you have someone in your kitchen and you tase him instead of blowing off his head, you don’t have a terrible mess to clean up.
It is also an option to NOT have a head-shattering weapon in one’s closet, thus demonstrating one’s hope that it would never be needed. And beyond that, if the occasion should ever arise in which one would be tempted beyond all power of self-restraint to do some head shattering, one can hope that one would be grateful in the aftermath (whatever that might be) that the weapon was NOT available when temptation came calling. Nobody ever claimed that being good was going to be easy.
Kyle that’s a fair point you made way back when. I’m confused why so many people get confused on this issue.
I think its universally acknowledge that torture is not an ideal. Those who support is only support it as the lesser of two evils; a (potentially) necessary response to an extreme situation in a fallen world.
Like it or not, we do apply the double-effect reasoning implicitly in other circumstances such as war. Rarely is there debate on the morality of a solider killing another soldier on the battlefield. Why would torture be different? The end is the same. The argument could be made that torturing and releasing a solider is objectively superior to killing a soldier – a temporary undermining of the will rather than a complete elimination of it. It seems to me that an argument with someone who held that viewpoint would either require a concession of torture as a necessary evil or a concession that soliders are more evil than torturers. I can’t see any logically consistent middle ground – other than an acknowledgement that most moral issues aren’t as binary as we’d like to think?
Dan–
The difference is that torture is intrinsically evil. There is, and can be, no instance of torture that is not evil. Homicide is not intrinsically evil. Murder is intrinsically evil, but not all instances of homicide are murder. A soldier committing a homicide on the field CAN be guilty of murder, but is not NECESSARILY so. Torture is better compared to abortion in a discussion of why it is evil than to killing in war, perhaps.
Dan,
The problem is that we’ve perverted what a “just war” is, applying it to wars of choice rather than stopping aggression.
In a truly just war, the enemy is engaged in an act of aggression, and killing him is licit if it is the only means of stopping the aggression.
In a torture situation, the captive by nature is not engaged in aggression against me, since he is under my control. Thus, my torturing of him cannot be justified by the principle of double effect.
All
A head shot ends all management of arms and hands and in our scenario.. a taser might or might not; the neck of the female was bleeding which means there is a knife there as he sits on her and which hand can make one more defiant act (ever notice the ego oriented defiant violent acts of prisoners against guards on MSNBC’s prison series)… except he cannot make one more defiant act if you end hand management. It is not about a head shot for its own sake but for the sake of ending hand control instantly. The woman could be bleeding out and your goal is to get an ambulance for her almost instantly which means any moments spent tazering him or preaching to him are moments that are risking her life.
Simon;
Thanks for the psychoanalysis. I and my wife are realistic about the consequences that the decision try to live without violence may have. I have lived in places where my friends and family had a very real fear for my safety and the safety of my wife and children. I could point out that with a shotgun, no matter how close you are able to creep without being noticed, your wife will likely die along with the intruder, but I’m not interested in exchanging hypotheticals. I am just as prepared for the worst as you are, but I have made plans that I believe will be more effective, safer in the meantime (I do have small children and I have ministered to families whose children have killed themselves with their parents guns) and do not resort to death-dealing.
If you don’t mind my own psychoanalysis, I have to say I’m rather disturbed by your obviously carefully thought out plan to kill someone. It seems likely that you have more plans to kill in other situations. I don’t think I have anger issues – one of the qualities my wife points out regularly (in a positive way) is my patience. I have grown up in a tradition that has formed its members in the practice of non-violent resistance for about 500 years now. I don’t know you, but if I can reciprocate, I would worry about a lack of faith. Even if you never need to pull the trigger (and I pray that you never do), to have so carefully planned your course of action in such a situation speaks to me of a lack of faith in the providence of God and a desire for power and control, even if only over your own destiny. But as I said, I don’t know you and may be way off base.
Again, pacifism is not a saccharine “Love everyone and everything will be fine.” It’s not living in La-La Land. Of course we see the evil and violence in the world and believe we need to oppose it wherever we see it. But we also believe that the gospel of Jesus Christ requires us to forgo violent means in order to oppose evil. It also requires us to have faith that God is in control. To me, this is more realistic than the belief that I am in control and that I can make the world come out right.
I could point out that with a shotgun, no matter how close you are able to creep without being noticed, your wife will likely die along with the intruder
I was wondering about that, but I am not all that familiar with shotguns. It does seem to me that a shot to the head or even the torso or backside is enough to stop anyone from doing anything. In any case, if you have this much time to plan for something that will almost certainly never happen, you should be able to come up with a plan that doesn’t involve blowing someone’s head off. Even the police don’t carry shotguns to blow people’s heads off.
Ryan
Do some research prior to guessing at shot patterns at close range (5″ and less are typical…the man is sitting on the prone woman ergo his head is three feet above any part of her) and remember the scenario and where the person is shooting from (floor level)in the story.
God wants you to control those things that you can. That is why you have auto insurance, medical insurance, safety belts, Advil rather than miracles for all those things… all of which do not suggest you distrust God. I do not carry a gun out of the house because the law forbids it in our area with good reason due to congested population in my area and the danger of innocent bystanders. So I surrender control easily where it should be surrendered. God will compare our faith at the judgement. Wait til then.
See you there.
No offence to Simon et al, but I think a serious discussion of the mechanics of shot patterns is so far removed from the original topic that it’s unhelpful to the flow of the discussion. I think we all understand the nature of the disagreement and the crux of your arguments. At the end of the day, this is where the primacy of conscience takes over. It is never possible to account for all the variables in a given situation in order to know what may be the objectively “superior” course of action. That would require omniscience, which we do not have. In the absence of clear direction in this matter, which I’m not convinced is possible in a fallen world, you are obliged to follow your conscience in such matters, whether that calls for action or inaction. They are both imperfect yet licit responses with advantages and drawbacks. And that’s the best we can do.
Rodak -
I’m not sure how you can postulate that homicide is not an intrinsic evil. We have a clear commandment on the matter: “Thou Shalt Not Kill” – far less ambiguous than torture, which is a derivative of this commandment. Man was not meant under any circumstance to terminate the life of another man. In whatever ways that torture would be immoral, homicide is the sum and summation of those terms. It is the moral equivalent of torture with an irrevocable finality. I would suggest that our lack of clarity on this issue is solely because of desensitization, and that if we lived in a society where homicide was uncommon, we would think of homicide as exponentially more evil than torture.
JohnMcG –
I think this is a prime example of how we’ve been conditioned to ignore the implicit double-effect reasoning with regards to war. If war was moral in any sense of the word, we would not have to beat our swords into ploughshares in the Kingdom. A so-called “just war” is licit, but only as a response to a greater evil. There are no just wars without a pre-existing evil that poses a grave threat. I see no difference between that and torture. The same rules which justify a “just war” also justify “just torture”; it is only licit as a required aversion to a greater evil, and is only licit if there is a great degree of certainty that it will succeed in averting the evil.
Just one final comment to JohnMcG’s statement:
“In a torture situation, the captive by nature is not engaged in aggression against me, since he is under my control. Thus, my torturing of him cannot be justified by the principle of double effect.”
I would fundamentally disagree. The whole principle behind torture is precisely because the capitve is NOT under your control. If he were, you would be able to extract the necessary information from him without violence. It is precisely to gain this control that is the premise of torture.
Second, if the captive under your control had information which, if disclosed, would avert a great evil, and he chooses not to disclose it, he is acting as aggressor, only passively.
(Anyone with a passive aggressive wife will back me up on this one) ;)
Simon;
Again, I don’t know you and you don’t know me. I happen to be a hunter, so I know the shot patterns of various types of shot. But I’m still not interested in debating hypotheticals – too many variables.
I agree that God has no problem with us trying to control what we can control. But taking another human life is one of those things God does not want us to try and control. Insurance or seat belts are preventative or restorative – more like an alarm system than a gun.
To kill another person is to take for ourselves the authority that rightfully belongs only to God. I value my loved ones more than I value a stranger. I value my own life more than the life of a stranger. That’s only human. However, and this is a hard concept, God does not value me or my wife or my kids more than a stranger. In God’s eyes, I am no more or less valuable than Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (to bring it back to the topic of this post). In God’s eyes we are both human beings made in God’s image, we are both sinful and evil, and we are both worthy of redemption through Jesus Christ. So while I value my life and the lives of my family more than the life of KSM or a rapist, God does not. And while I may value my country more than the country of Iraq or Afghanistan, God does not. And if God does not, then for me to decide my life is worth more than the life of someone else by taking their life is to take for myself the authority that only belongs to God. Of course I would fight the rapist to save myself or another. Of course I support the capture and incarceration of KSM. That is part of our duty to oppose evil and protect the innocent.
Ryan
God values you the same as a criminal but He does not see a right to life in the criminal irrespective of behaviour.
I’ll assume you are not Catholic since the Popes have 9mm’s and Heckler and Koch MP5 submachine guns protecting them via the Swiss Guard and I’ll assume that there are vast stretches of the Old Testament that tempt you to hurl;
but you are still stuck with the New Testament which reads in Romans 13:4 concerning the state: “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.”
In that latter quote, God deputes to the state the right to kill (notice “scourge” was not used as the synecdoche but “sword”…and it is not a ceremonial sword if you do a word search) and the state having been deputed by God over life and death deputes to citizen people ad hoc to do the same thing with guns in self defense within the home in my case as to my state when one perceives an innocent life is at stake….that is the litmus test. Romans 13:4 deputes the state who deputes me and Steve. And in many scenarios even advanced martial arts will not save an about to be killed victim. The instantaneous power of a gun saves lives where martial arts can fail miserably (that’s why advanced Kung Fu people do badly against shoot fighters who don’t obey parameters). It’s why Bruce Lee really saw the theater that dominates so much of Asian tradition in that area and so he came up with something different toward the end.
“Of course I would fight the rapist to save myself or another. …That is part of our duty to oppose evil and protect the innocent.”
Duty to whom? How do you file your statement in the same drawer with:
Matt 5:39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
Rodak
Glad you quoted the most apposite passage Matt 5:39. Scholars have pointed out that this passage is talking of ligther slights not violent assaults. The “right cheek” they say is the clue. For a person to strike you on the right cheek means that they used their weaker hand which for the great majority of human beings is the left. If he hit you with a sucker punch, it would land on your left cheek from his right hand.
Hence they conclude that some mideastern insult ritual was meant wherein the person uses his weaker hand to strike the right cheek.
Proof is that Christ was struck violently on the cheek when before Pilate and Christ did not turn the other cheek but rebuked the one doing it:
Jn 18: 22
“When he had said this, one of the temple guards standing there struck Jesus and said, “Is this the way you answer the high priest?”
23
Jesus answered him, “If I have spoken wrongly, testify to the wrong; but if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me?”
Paul too did not turn the other cheek when before the High Priest
Acts 23
The high priest Ananias ordered his attendants to strike his mouth.
3
Then Paul said to him, “God will strike you, you whitewashed wall. Do you indeed sit in judgment upon me according to the law and yet in violation of the law order me to be struck?”
Simon;
Again, you don’t know me and I don’t appreciate your presumption of my character and nature. I assure you that there are Roman Catholics on this very blog who have exactly the same perspective on violence that I do, so the fact that the pope is protected by armed bodyguards has nothing to do with whether I am Roman Catholic or not. I have never been tempted to hurl while reading the Old Testament, which I do so daily. It is the Word of God as much as the New Testament.
I’ve not said anything about the state and violence here. I am not advocating that the state be pacifist. Simply that Christians have been called to a new type of life through the gospel of Jesus Christ, and being conformed into the image of Christ involves imitation of his refusal to defeat violence and evil with violence. By living this new life, Christians could contribute more to the common good of society than by serving society as executioners.
Now with Romans 13, moving from the state using violence to punish evildoers to citizens being deputized to use violence in their own homes goes way beyond the meaning of the text, especially given the pacifist position of the early church. If anything, it reserves violence for the exclusive use of the state. Even when the state used that violence against the early Christians, they did not resist but submitted themselves to the judgment of the state. Hence the exaltation of martyrdom as the ideal Christian death.
Rodak-
Duty to the oppressed, I suppose. Duty to our conscience. Duty to imitate the opposition of Christ to sin and evil. I could say that fighting does not necessarily involve violence (there is always a third way between violence and doing nothing), which would reconcile my statement and Matthew 5:39. Human nature being what it is (and my own nature in particular), I know that I likely would not be able to fight without violence. However, the difference is that I call my actions in such cases sinful, not justified.
God values you the same as a criminal but He does not see a right to life in the criminal irrespective of behaviour.
This is not true from a Catholic perspective. Period. It is blasphemy.