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Dear Catholic Exchange:
Your providing a space for Linda Chavez to defend torture disgusts me. She seems to justifiy our mistreatment of prisoners on the ground that it is not as bad as what some Iraqis do or have done.
My history and civics classes never taught me that torture was okay if only it was of a petty variety.
So what?
I do not know what degrees of torture have been used by our personnel against others, but I do know this:
1. The war in Iraq is undeclared and unconstitutional;
2. We, in the most unCatholic manner, have placed women “soldiers” in combat zones;
3. The war is not a war of defense, but one of “regime change.” The Holy Father has as much as said that it is not justifiable under the just war doctrine.
4. We have permitted our personnel — even the women — to behave like animals. Even though, thank God, those behaving that way are a small minority, we have allowed it to happen.
5. We have used radioactive depleted uranium weapons that appeared to have caused massive increases in birth defects, cancer, and illness among our own troops and among civilians of Iraq;
6. Our government has killed untold numbers of civilians and destroyed the homes and livelihoods of many others;
7. The war was launched under false pretenses and is now waged for who knows what reason.
If there is a justifiable reason for this war, it has not been articulated. Even William F. Buckley, initially an enthusiastic supporter of this quagmire, has said that he would have opposed it, if he had known at the beginning what he knows now.
I stand with John Paul II. You stand with Linda Chavez and her justification of petty torture, if you like. We have a nation that kills over a million of its children a year in abortion mills. What right do we have to change anybody else's regime without first taking this great log of abortion out of our own eyes?
Let Ms. Chavez take a look in an abortion clinic. She'll learn about real torture to the really innocent.
Jim McCafferty
Jackson, Mississippi
Dear Jim:
One of the nice things about the Internet, as opposed to, say, 60 Minutes, is that it's much easier for readers to make their views heard. And since we aren't Dan Rather, we have this notion that we are not infallible. 🙂
In fact, we got a number of complaints about the Chavez piece. Indeed, one of the people who pointed out the inconsistency of Chavez's thinking with Catholic teaching was… me.
And when it was pointed out, CE Editor-in-Chief Tom Allen, in a memo to me, wrote “I take full responsibility,” agreed that Chavez's moral reasoning was problematic and immediately pulled the piece from the front page. You will find that it is no longer available on Catholic Exchange — precisely because we are committed to having material which reflects Catholic teaching. This also is very unlike the sort of thing Dan Rather would have done, and one of the many reasons I'm proud to work for Catholic Exchange.
Just so you understand: Catholic Exchange, though it is the No. 1-rated Catholic site on the Web according to Alexa, does not occupy some glittering skyscraper staffed with hundreds of people. It runs on a skeleton crew and a shoestring budget — like most Catholic apostolates. One of the ways it can do that is by having built up a huge pool of “established writers” both Catholic and secular. Because these are established writers it is not (usually) necessary to vet their material too closely.
It has made it possible for CE readers to have access to the rich variety of high quality work from some of the very best minds in Catholic and secular public life. But, on occasion, secular writers advocate things which the Church cannot condone. And sometimes, as yesterday, these things slip through because the writer has normally been reliable in the past. But when they do, and are caught, we try to deal with them with integrity.
Thanks for airing your thoughts. It is quite true, as John Paul II has made clear, that torture is “intrinsically evil.” That is why you will never find Catholic Exchange deliberately trying to make excuses for it. And that is why that particular article is no longer on our site.
Many blessings in Christ!
Mark Shea
Senior Content Editor
Catholic Exchange
