Waterboarding

My comment on the story: Torture: Do the ends justify the means?


Before entering seminary I was active in Republican circles in DC and my old spiritual director used to tell me, remember Ron not to confuse the party with the Church.

I think we live in a very divisive and partisan age. Americans no longer share a common culture, i.e. we worship different gods, and as a result our political imaginations and perceptions do not provide an adequate lowest common denominator to move forward with a fruitful debate. Representitive democracy will not long last when we can’t agree on even fundamental principles.

It use to be that killing a baby or hanging a captive man upside down and pouring water down his nose would be consider wrong; the first time, every time, all the time! Sure we were willing to fight an unjust aggressor and even to punish a criminal, but we would never accept the wholesale killing of innocents or the inhuman cruelty of torture. The proof that we have fundamentally changed as a society, and lost something that used to hold us together is in the 8th ammendment to the constitution. VIII. Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. The ammendment prohibits cruelty to the guilty, never mind cruelty to the possibly guilty or to those who “know too much,” are inconvenient, or unpleasant even if they didn’t do anything themselves. And yet whether in the case of abortion or torture this is what we are doing–we are being cruel because we think someone poses a danger to our life, our happiness, our plans.

Whether its safety and security for our nation or the ability to “choose” not to be bothered with a living Child–the God that these positions represent is not the Christian God.

Someone said that this debate is only helping the democrats, maybe that is true, because they have had 40 years to come to grips with the fact that their god is libertine hedonism whereas we are just now beginning that slippery slope.

But unless Catholics and Christians wake up (and also Jews and Muslims and the rest) and realize that apologizing for the Republicans will only enable them to stray further from the path, then we will soon find American a country with two parties that are fundamentally opposed to God.

You want to help the Republicans, and I do, call up your GOP rep and party boss and tell them as much as you are against abortion you are equally against torture. Tell them that torture is unacceptable and that the GOP needs to distance themselves from any and all that defend it. I wish some of my co-religionists had had the integrity to tell the democratic party this when faced with a choice between social justice and abortion back in the 70s. This debate is sapping the vigor from the Republican party, just as moral issues sapped the Democrats for the past 40, and its not going to get better until Republicans come to grips with who they are. The question is, who will they be if they don’t move away from supporting what everyone knows is torture?