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Published: March 27, 2008

Torture, “from a moral point of view”

Former seminary rector and anti-euthanasia stalwart assails waterboarding

“Is waterboarding a form of torture that deserves moral condemnation?” asked Fr. Gerald Coleman in a commentary that appeared in the March 24 Catholic Voice, the newspaper of the Oakland diocese. Basing his viewpoint on Church teaching and natural law principles, Coleman, a moral theologian and Sulpician priest, answered, yes.

Coleman, who until 2004 was rector of St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, gained a reputation for heterodoxy, primarily for what appeared to be his support for homosexual rights. For instance, in 2001, Coleman voiced his support for civil recognition of “committed… life-long homosexual partnerships.” Yet, in articles written over the past year, Coleman has come out strongly against assisted suicide and has defended Church authority. In a piece published in the 2001 Tidings, the newspaper of the Los Angeles archdiocese, Coleman wrote, “Catholic teaching holds that a Catholic must inform his conscience in accord with truth as revealed in Scripture and authoritative church teaching. Willfully to dissent from a fundamental moral precept is an act of infidelity, objectively immoral, and a scandal to the faithful. A prophetic witness of courageous Catholics is needed now as never before.”

In his Catholic Voice commentary, Coleman gave a “prophetic witness” to the ethics governing torture. Torture, said Coleman, “refers to ‘the deliberate infliction of excruciating physical or mental pain to punish or coerce.’” He then referred to Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes, which “names ‘physical and mental torture’ an ‘offense against human dignity’ and ‘criminal.’ (no. 27)”

Waterboarding, wrote Coleman, is “controlled drowning” conducted under the supervision of a doctor, psychologist, and interrogator. “The team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the psychological signs which show when the drowning effect goes from a painful psychological experience to horrific, suffocating punishment, to the final death spiral,” said Coleman. Since waterboarding could lead to death, its use requires the presence of a medical team.

Though President George W. Bush “has defended coercive interrogations” and “relies on legal advice which tells him that waterboarding is lawful,” it is torture, “from a moral point of view,” said Coleman. “It degrades the prisoner and the torturer,” he continued. “When physicians become a part of this process, they undermine the fundamental tenet of medical ethics, ‘First, do no harm.’ It is unacceptable for physicians to claim ignorance of medical ethics around any abuse of prisoners, let alone abuse that rises to the level of torture.”

Quoting George W. Bush -- “we believe that every human being bears the image of our maker… No one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave” – Coleman said, “waterboarding and other means of torture create a master/slave relationship. Waterboarding does not honor the belief and fact that every person is made in God’s image.”

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