up until you told me Jesus would support waterboarding. I don’t know why you felt the need to include it in this diary in the first place. You end a diary about christens doing good things in this world by talking about less than good things.

I personally don’t see the Prince of Peace being pro-waterboarding. although I doubt he was much for any form of violence preaching turn the other cheek and all that.

I think this diary would be much better if the last 6 paragraphs were left off.. I’d even be willing to recommend it.

Although it is frequently believed that he was.

“The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.”
-Abraham Lincoln

…which means that he didn’t leave us with a blueprint for government structure and actions.

As a result, as with the rest of history since the first Pentecost, we need to rely on the Holy Spirit guiding our human wisdom in building on Scriptural foundations and the experience of the ages in determining principles of governance and their applications. And people of good conscience will differ in their interpretations.

I believe that a stronger case can be made in which waterboarding is at least consistent with the Christian faiith than the case for it being incompatible, but I wouldn’t want to try to guess where Jesus in His earthly body would come down - and more often than not, his answers to debate questions were not to choose one side but to show a different dimension.

Be careful that you do not try to use God for human ends, which is one of the fundamental sins of the human condition.

an opinion of what would “likely” happen if all the conditions were the same for Jesus. They weren’t that way, and they won’t be, but if they were one can still speculate what Jesus might do under those circumstances.

Given the same set of conditions, what would you do?

The prince of peace condones torture? Who knew? I guess he was confused with all of the turn-the-other-cheek rhetoric.

Reason attests that there are objects of the human act which are by their nature “incapable of being ordered” to God, because they radically contradict the good of the person made in his image. These are the acts which, in the Church’s moral tradition, have been termed “intrinsically evil” (intrinsece malum): they are such always and per se, in other words, on account of their very object, and quite apart from the ulterior intentions of the one acting and the circumstances. Consequently, without in the least denying the influence on morality exercised by circumstances and especially by intentions, the 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”.

–Veritatis Splendor, Pope John Paul II

And for those of you following along, torture is defined in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (section 2297) as “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.”

“Torture involves extreme physical pain or even death, such as the cutting off of appendages, gouging of eyes, use of shredders to the body, electrical shock-you name it. Blood is usually involved.

But water boarding, only done on 3 prisoners in the US, is probably the most “enhanced” of the techniques. Because of the conditions of the test, there was no pain, no blood, no death-only fear.”

[Note: Capitals used only for emphasis, not to imply shouting.]

That this definition of torture only includes physical pain, death, loss of appendages, and other tangible/physical results, and not the damage done to brain and mind by fear is a bit myopic and narrow. Just because death does not result [but could, if they go just a tad to far, and you know that's possible with all that adrenaline flowing] does not mean a technique like waterboarding is not torture. And none of us would want such a thing done to us or someone we love–the mere thought is torturous–because it is a horrible thing to do to someone.

By the way, to torture–ahem, interrogate–or anything else, by the use of FEAR is to TERRORIZE them. Somehow I don’t think the best way to fight an evil, or and enemy, is to become like them. It is merely hypocritical. [I believe Jesus was against that.]

And if anyone thinks Jesus would have been for such a practice in order to save lives, why didn’t he start a political revolution–one involving weapons and war tactics–to stop all the things the Romans were doing? They didn’t start the practice of crucifixion with Him–the roads were lined with victims hanging from crosses. [Not to mention the other atrocities they were committing as regular policy.] He was fighting a battle of a different sort, the winning of which would eliminate the darkness/evil at the root of all human cruelty in the first place. So His approach would definitely have been different–he clearly demonstrated that, both by how He lived, and how he died.

And frankly, I think Jesus would have been much more ingenious and insightful to even need to use the technique of waterboarding, or any other torturous method.

Would you consider questioning a person over and over and over torture? Isn’t that coercion? Strange that this is coming from the same group that crated the inquisition.

roetenks, it is likely that I shall end my discussion here.

I suppose all of this would be easier if there were an explicit statement about waterboarding by the pope, which I acknowledge that there does not seem to be.

I joined this discussion out of concern that a fellow Catholic might be making use of God’s name to advocate the torture of persons, which is blasphemy. I believed that the Holy Spirit might be able to work through me to turn you from this belief and back to the path of righteousness.

My intent is not to make you face truths about Christ that may be incompatible with your convictions if that would push you from Christ, but rather as it says in Hebrews, to ensure “that none of you may have an evil and unfaithful heart, so as to forsake the living God. Encourage yourselves daily while it is still `today,’ so that none of you may grow hardened by the deceit of sin.”

I could have very easily ignored your opinion or dismissed it as I told a third party about a faceless person on the internet, but doing so would be even more hateful, since so doing I would be declaring that I do not care if you get your eternal reward.

We share a common background, and I hoped that that would help me to convince you.

It is clear that you are very certain of your position, and that continuing to debate this may simply encourage you to look on me with disfavor rather than to examine your position, which will cause more harm than good.

I will make one final plea here that you take time to reevaluate your position. From some of your responses, I get the sense that you value certainty and consistency. In some of your arguments (which I apologize for turning this into rather than a cooperative discussion), about infallibility and past excesses by the clergy, it sounds like you are trying to be more Catholic than the Pope, who claims only the infallibility in doctrine that he has and has acknowledged the sins committed by clergy in the name of the Church (the Church herself, we must be careful to say, did not commit these sins and is herself indefectible).

I will probably leave off here. At any rate, I will adjourn my half of the debate. From here, I may (but probably will not) continue a more constructive discussion, but it will be a dialogue of encouragement, not of rebuke. Some years later, we may take up the issue again, but for now, I simply leave you and wish you well on your journey.

I ask that you would pray for me, and I will keep you in my prayers. May the Lord Jesus Christ bless you.

[Blah Blah Blah. Blam. His other post makes it clear what his real agenda is. Hint: He starts ranting about President Bush. – NS]