Interesting, according to Vox, the OED gives a definition of torture not just as being a form of coercion but as punishment: "he action or practice of inflicting severe pain on someone as a punishment or in order to force them to do or say something"

James Chastek, Defining torture

There seems to be some sort of silent agreement on both sides that this is an impossible thing to do. I’m missing something here since the action doesn’t seem that hard to define: the use of physical pain to break the will of another, where “breaking the will” (which can mean more than one thing) means “breaking ones self possession”. The definition manifests why such an action would be intrinsically evil, since to be in possession of ones own power to choose or of ones own will is necessary for human dignity. A man is a lord of his action, so much so that to attempt to break this lordship is, in a very real sense, worse than murder. It is the attempt to kill what is most of all human in a human being.

Puzzling, as this is a definition that those adhering to a "liberal" version of Natural Law might accept, but it's a poor one, as far as I can tell -- how does one distinguish torture from the deterrent effect of law or legitimate coercion, for example police officers using pain compliance on those actively resisting arrest? (See my previous posts on this topic.)

Torture (or fear) does not destroy voluntariness (see the treatment of voluntary, involuntary, and non-voluntary) , though in some instances fear can diminish responsibility.

How great the burden of proof?

Re: torturing people for the sake of getting information

What needs to be be established so that the court (or lawful authority) can find someone guilty of contempt in refusing to answer some question he has been commanded to answer? Beyond a "reasonable doubt"? It seems to me that it would be difficult to show beyond a reasonable doubt that someone knows (or plans) x - I can't imagine there being sufficient incriminating evidence that someone knows x without the needed information being present as well.

I think the burden should be rather great. If it cannot be established without a reasonable doubt that someone knows x, then he cannot be punished for refusing to divulge that information, even if those in authority have reasons for suspecting that he has that information.

Additional notes on the definition of torture

Begun on March 19.

Some thoughts on the use of "compel" or "coerce" in the definition of torture.

Compel, coerce, force may be synonyms, but their usage may indicate slight (or not-so-sleight) differences in their meanings?

"Compel" may be somewhat ambiguous, as ambiguous as the definition of "torture" can be. After all, torture can be defined as the use of pain or bodily harm to compel obedience, the yielding of information, etc. -- to make someone do what they do not want to do. If a police officer uses pain to make someone resisting arrest comply with his legitimate commands, is he torturing that person? (Or if a child is spanked because he is not obeying his parents' instructions, is that torture?) Pain is used to bring someone to do something the one applying the pain wants. The same is true of force. On the surface, this does not seem like punishment for disobedience, but the use of pain or force is usually a response (and hence justified in the eyes of the law) to prior non-compliance/disobedience of an instruction or order.


"Coerce" may be less ambiguous than the other two words because in the literature the word coercion is often associated with law and government. Law coerces as well as commands. It doesn't necessarily imply a voluntaristic understanding of law; it is how the effects of law are perceived by its subjects, who may have only an imperfect understanding of the purpose of law.Does coercion involve an understanding that the consequences of not following are punishments? Punishments for disobeying a (legitimate) command? In so far as it is tied to law, I think it does. One is given the opportunity to comply, and if one refuses to do so, he is punished.

(The wiki entry on coercion. SEP. IEP on Free Will.)

How do we distinguish morally licit forms of coercion  (if there are any), getting obedience, cooperation, compliance through the application of pain and so on, from illicit forms? One could make an argument from human dignity that no one should be made a tool of another's will, but taken to an extreme, this argument (proper to liberalism) would lead to the sanctioning of disobedience and the outlawing of all consequences for that act. So is compulsion (as in the example of the police officer) to be identified with (legal) coercion and hence punishment?

In coercing the will of another, one is doing so with respect to an external act, and in particular acts of the body, whether it be to say something or to submit to an arrest.One cannot coerce the will to truly choose some opinion or belief, to assent or deny something, because we cannot confirm that this is actually the case. We can only obtain the physical representation of that belief through a verbal or written profession. Nor can we coerce the will's internal acts (desiring or loving some end). "Mental states" are hidden from us. That sort of mind control is impossible for us, and hence a non-believer cannot be effectively compelled from without to embrace the Christian faith. It also goes against the nature of the act of faith because the "grounds for belief" is not relief of pain or one's physical safety or health, but God's revealing of Himself and the acceptance of this. To say that the act of faith is or must be a free act does not go far enough, in my opinion, in explaining why it cannot be coerced. How is it free, that epistemic encounter with God?

Again, even if torture could be morally justified,  it is ineffective (according to various "experts) at procuring truth (confessions of guilt) or information.

*Compulsion presupposes that the original command was lawful - the one giving the command hand the authority to do so, the one being commanded is under his authority, and so on.

A New Wrinkle

Or just something I had forgotten...

For the discussion on torture over at WWWTW, I went back and reread what the CCC says about torture:

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. Except when performed for strictly therapeutic medical reasons, directly intended amputations, mutilations, and sterilizations performed on innocent persons are against the moral law.[90]

2298 In times past, cruel practices were commonly used by legitimate governments to maintain law and order, often without protest from the Pastors of the Church, who themselves adopted in their own tribunals the prescriptions of Roman law concerning torture. Regrettable as these facts are, the Church always taught the duty of clemency and mercy. She forbade clerics to shed blood. In recent times it has become evident that these cruel practices were neither necessary for public order, nor in conformity with the legitimate rights of the human person. On the contrary, these practices led to ones even more degrading. It is necessary to work for their abolition. We must pray for the victims and their tormentors.

So torture as defined in the CCC includes its use for punishment.

Is Christian personalism just a variant of liberal moral theory? I wrote that this is a novelty and the appeal to human dignity and respect for the person is not reducible to what has been written by Thomists about the virtues of charity and justice. So how much weight should the CCC carry? I do not hold it to be an infallible document, and while it should be respected, I think there is a break with the past with regards to punishment. Now it might be that Sacred Tradition does not explicitly maintain the infliction of pain as punishment is licit. But it would seem that various moral theologians (and bishops?) have taught it.

Again, how is torture as it is broadly defined here different from corporal punishment by parents or lawful authorities?

Fr. Brian Harrison has an article from 2006 for This Rock, but I would think it has been superceded by his addendum.

Edit. I vaguely recall an attempt to harmonize the CCC with "traditional" teaching on the infliction of pain as a punishment, but I can find no record of having written about it on this blog. I may have written it somewhere else, or just done it mentally. One could interpret the CCC as prohibiting the torture of those who have already been sentenced and punished for an offense -- torture (or any sort of maltreatment) would in their case be going beyond what has already been determined to be a proper punishment for their offense. (Maltreatment might be justified on the grounds that they have lost human dignity, etc., but I do not think that this would be in accord with a traditional understanding of justice.)

Still, I think the more obvious sense of the sentence in the CCC is that it prohibits torture as a form of punishment. But this would only be a problem if the CCC were represent the highest teaching authority of the Church and protected by infallibility.

Fr. Brian Harrison changes his mind regarding the state of the question about torture

From Mark Shea:

ADDENDUM (to Living Tradition, #119)

After the above article was published, Pope Benedict XVI, in a speech of 6 September 2007 on Catholic prisons ministry, personally endorsed a statement against torture found in the 2005 Vatican Compendium of the Church's Social Teaching. Citing article 404 of this document, the Holy Father said, "In this regard, I reiterate that the prohibition against torture 'cannot be contravened under any circumstances'".

In the above article I have already cited and discussed, in my section A13 and endnote 27, this article 404 of the Compendium, which is a publication of the Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace. I have pointed out that this and other statements authored by the Commission itself - as distinct from the statements of Popes and Councils which it cites abundantly throughout the Compendium - does not possess magisterial authority; for the various Vatican commissions, unlike the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, are not in themselves arms of the Church's magisterium (teaching authority). However, now that Pope Benedict himself has personally reiterated this particular statement of the Compendium, I wish to state that I accept the Holy Father's judgement on this matter, and so no longer hold that Catholics can ever legitimately defend the use of torture - not even in extreme circumstances to gain potentially life-saving information from known terrorists. Accordingly, the last sentence of the above article, regarding "the present status quaestionis" on torture, should now be taken as withdrawn.

If torture is the unjust attack on the person of another (for the sake of eliciting his cooperation), then the very fact that it is unjust would make it wrong. But if torture is defined as the punishment given for non-compliance, it would be different. I do not think torture, defined thusly, has been addressed. I still think that even if this form of punishment is licit, it may not be effective in obtaining the ultimate goal (getting cooperation, information, etc.).

William Cavanaugh on torture

Is waterboarding torture? Fr. Harrison seems to think that this is debatable. Is there a valid distinction between causing physical pain and mental pain/anguish? What of the actual procedure, in which someone is prevented from breathing normally? Even if it does not cause any permanent harm to the body or actual bodily pain, it does seem to be some sort of injury (i.e. an unjust act), an attack on the normal functioning of the body.

Mark Shea posts a clarification by Fr. Brian Harrison, O.S.:

On this website and elsewhere, my obedience to the Holy Father and overall fidelity to the Church's magisterium was angrily and extensively called in question last week, following some telephoned comments I gave to the New York Times (February 27, 2010, p. A15). I am therefore very appreciative of the Christian and gentlemanly spirit Mark Shea has now shown in deleting those attacks and posting instead an apology and partial retraction. That struck me as especially fitting in this Lenten season in which we are exhorted to strive for humility, forgiveness and reconciliation.

In my brief response to the Times I expressed support for fellow-Catholic Marc Thiessen's analysis and evaluation of the carefully defined and limited waterboarding procedure which, some years ago, was approved by US government authorities and applied by the CIA in the interrogation of three confessed Al Qaeda terrorists. In his new book, Courting Disaster, Thiessen argues at length that this precise type of waterboarding (as distinct from other much harsher procedures like those highlighted in the far-from-impartial Wikipedia entry on this topic) does not legally or ethically constitute torture. I did not tell the Times reporter I supported everything Thiessen says in his book; in fact, I had already previously advised the latter in emails that I thought his references to "pacifism" were mistaken, as was the way he used the double effect principle. I also told him I thought his analysis confuses the object and the intention of a given act, as defined in our Catechism, ##1751-1752. Nevertheless, I regard as manifestly unjust the accusation that Thiessen is guilty of "consequentialism" in a sense that would involve dissent from any teachings of the Church's magisterium.

The central point of my present statement is as follows. A friend has pointed out to me today that in a speech of 6 September 2007 on Catholic prisons ministry, Pope Benedict XVI personally endorsed a statement against torture found in the 2005 Vatican Compendium of the Church's Social Teaching. Citing article 404 of this document, the Holy Father said, "In this regard, I reiterate that the prohibition against torture 'cannot be contravened under any circumstances'".

In my 2005 Living Tradition article on the development of Church teaching regarding torture and corporal punishment (cf. www.rtforum/lt/lt118.html) I had cited and discussed, in my section A13 and footnote 27, this article 404 of the Compendium, which is a publication of the Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace. I pointed out then that this and other statements authored by the Commission itself - as distinct from the statements of Popes and Councils which it cites abundantly throughout the Compendium - does not possess magisterial authority; for the various Vatican commissions, unlike the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, are not in themselves arms of the Church's magisterium (teaching authority).

However, having now become aware that Pope Benedict himself has personally reiterated this particular statement of the Compendium, I wish to state that I accept the Holy Father's judgement on this matter, and so would not defend any proposal, under any circumstances, to use torture for any purpose whatsoever - not even to gain potentially life-saving information from known terrorists.
As a matter of fact, I never have expressed any positive personal approval of torture for that last-mentioned purpose (and much less for any other purpose). However, Mr. Shea has informed me that on this website many Catholics have attributed this to me in recent years, seeking to support their own willingness to justify the use of torture in the current war against terrorism. No, all I ever said is this: "My understanding would be that, given the present status quaestionis, the moral legitimacy of torture under the aforesaid desperate circumstances, while certainly not affirmed by the magisterium, remains open at present to legitimate discssusion by Catholic theologians." (That's the last sentence of the aforesaid Living Tradition essay). As readers can see, I thus abstained from saying which side, if any, I would myself take in any such "legitimate discussion". (Frankly, I myself was uncertain about that.)

Nobody disputes that the CIA-approved waterboarding was a thoroughly nasty and frightening experience. However, I submit that whether or not it reached the point of torture does remain a seriously disputed question among reasonable and well-informed people. I think anyone who carefully studies with an open mind the available documentation and arguments on both sides, in regard to both the CIA and Navy SERE versions of waterboarding, will admit that ths is true, regardless of which side they personally come down on. Thiessen is not out on a limb of his own here: he can point, for instance, to the carefully considered witness of expert and independent (non-partisan) Justice Department lawyers to back up his contention that the CIA interrogators were not torturers (cf. p. 352). I will add no further comments on the waterboarding question now, except that I certainly intend to devote more study to this and related issues. However this will be my only statement on the matter in this forum. Indeed, I do not normally read this (or any other) blog, mainly because I think disputes in the blogosphere tend to generate more heat than light - especially since they so often involve intemperate, unsubstantiated, anonymous - and therefore cowardly - attacks on persons and reputations. Also, heat is often accompanied by smoke; so I hope that this present clarification of my own position at least clears the air somewhat.

Fr. Brian W. Harrison, O.S., M.A., S.T.D.
Oblates of Wisdom Study Center
Saint Louis, Missouri
March 11, 2010

Public Discourse: Marc Thiessen, Double Effect, and the Torturer’s Dilemma by Christopher O. Tollefsen, February 26, 2010

Both Marc Thiessen and his critics have misunderstood an important moral distinction on the question of torture.

Have I changed my mind about torture? Originally I thought it was unjust. But now it seems that there are arguments for inflicting pain to punish disobedience and to force compliance. So I haven't changed my mind about acts that inflict pain or directly attack the health of his body and are not meant as punishment--these are always unjust and therefore intrinsically evil. But acts that are intended as punishment? These seem to be morally good, at least with respect to the object. Other considerations, like the circumstances of the act, may make them imprudent or even evil.

The formal object can be tricky to understand...

Some things for me to work out:
If I hold a lit match up to the fuse of a stick of dynamite in order to light the fuse, lighting the fuse is part of the formality of my action, even though I do not bring this about except by means of the lit match. I cannot say that it is the match which is responsible for the lighting of the fuse.

Similarly, if I torture someone in order to get information, I do it precisely to induce them to act in a certain way, even though they are free to refuse, unlike the fuse of the stick of dynamite, which will always light, provided that nothing interferes with the action of the fire. Getting them to talk seems to be part of the formal object, since it is an intended result or consequence of my action.

One may ask how it is possible to separate consequences in one's intent -- for example, how does the principle of double-effect work? How is it possible that I can use deadly force, even lethal means, to defend myself, without intending the death of the assailant? Can I intend to stop the assailant with something that could possibly kill him, without wanting him to die?

Edward Feser, “It’s just so obvious!”: The case of torture

With respect to the use of torture in judicial proceedings -- the confession that would be extracted is not the same as self-incrimination, since it is not being used for to then indict or prosecute the suspect, but is part of the judicial proceeding itself, as a final step.

In the past, the use of torture was permitted by secular and Church authorities to extract a confession, but only within certain guidelines. Can the accused be compelled to speak the truth about his doing of evil? But how can his statement or confession be verified, unless there is corroborating evidence? A confession is for the sake of thoroughness, after sufficient evidence has been gathered to render judgment -- but if that is the case, why is confession necessary? If not enough evidence has been produced for a conviction, by what right can a judge attempt to extract a confession? In this case, the confession is necessary in order to secure a conviction.

Torture is used if someone is denying his guilt, but there is circumstantial evidence implicating him? What is the justification for this? It is not in the case of using torture on someone who is refusing to reveal the truth about an impending attack. In that case, torture may be understood as a punishment for each act of refusal, which is then followed by an opportunity to obey. (But one must have sufficient evidence that he is lying or concealing this information.)

In the case of confession, he is not disobeying, he is only suspected of lying. So torture is not being used as punishment, but as a way of compelling someone to tell the truth. Is the use of force, infliction of pain or bodily harm, justifiable in order to coerce testimony? But he is already giving testimony. What one wants is some sort of certain that he is telling the truth.

But perhaps the two instances in which torture is used are more similar than I think. After all, in both cases the one being tortured is suspected of lying when he denies, or refusing to tell the truth that he knows.

St. Thomas does not speak about the use of torture, as far as I know. He does say that the accused may not lie to protect himself from being convicted and punished (but he is not bound to satisfy the judge's request if it is no in accordance with the order of justice): Is it a mortal sin to deny the truth which would lead to one's condemnation?

[I just remembered that during hearings and trials those who do not answer the court's questions, can be held in contempt of court, and put in jail. If the information is vital to the common good, could more severe punishments not be given?]

More thoughts on torture

Can the state compel someone to reveal information that it suspects he has? If it can establish that this person has this information, and he refuses to provide it, could he not be punished for disobedience? And could continued non-compliance be answered with continued punishment? If torture is not just a means of compelling someone to reveal information, but a form of punishment, could it not then be justified?

But how would the state establish (beyond reasonable doubt?) that this person had the information? Would it not have to try him first, and then find him to be disobedient? Can someone be ordered to tell something that he knows, if this is for the safety of the public, or the "common good"?

The use of torture to establish that someone has information would not be justified since it is not punishment--this must be established by other means (witnesses and other evidence).

Already police officers can use pain and force to make someone who is resisting (actively or passively) comply with their orders, or at the very least to get them to stop resisting. Is this torture? Even though they do not have the authority to pass legal judgment upon them, it would seem that they can use force and inflict pain. Is this to be considered punishment? Or justified coercion?

There is also this point to be remembered: it is easier to verify that one is moving one's limbs (or not moving them) than it is to verify that someone is telling the truth, if he is the only one who knows whether what he is saying is true or not.

Torture: What it is, and Why it is Wrong by Christopher O. Tollefsen (via The American Papist)

An offense against personal dignity (or charity) rather than an offense against justice?

I begin with the following normative claim: human life and health is an intrinsic, and indeed, a basic, human good. That is to say, life and health constitute a fundamental aspect of human well-being; the possibility of the promotion of either provides not just a possibility but an opportunity, an offer of benefit. And the possibility of damage or destruction of either provides not just a possibility, but an evil to be avoided and, insofar as such damage or destruction is willed, a wrong not to be done. The normative principle that can be drawn from this practical truth is that in willing, one should never intend the damage or destruction of the life or health of another human being.

This principle is compatible with acts that will, in fact, damage or destroy human life: the use of force in self-defense, the decay of the body brought about by intense study, or the possibility of ill health consequent upon incarceration as punishment for one’s crimes. For none of these forms of damage need be intended; they are, if willed appropriately, willed only as side effects of some other reasonable activity. By contrast, the destruction of human life in, for example, mercy killing or capital punishment, is intended—willed in each case as a means to some further end: cessation of suffering or justice.

How does he get around the exceptions? They are effects which are praeter intentionem, or if intended directly, it is subsumed under a higher end, that of justice. (I don't think he is supporting mercy killing, but is using it as an example to show how harm to the body is directly intended through a 'higher' end.) It seems to me that the NNL Theorists would more than likely offer a similar account of why torture is wrong.

Do we say that justice is a separate end, which justifies the inflicting of pain or bodily harm? (It might seem like a form of consequentialism.) Or do we say it is a part of the formality of the act itself?

Disputations: Disproportionate infliction of pain

The question is, are we naming by the 'word' torture the external act (which has for its object the infliction of bodily harm or pain) or the composite of the external act and the internal act (the end of which intention is to induce someone else to cooperate, give information, etc.). It seems the latter, because the internal act gives the formality which defines or puts the external act within a particular moral species.

I argue that torture is unjust here. If it (or the external act) is unjust, how can it possibly be proportionate under any circumstances?

My thinking on this needs to be clarified further.

As I have noted before, Fr. Brian Harrison, O.S. has written on the question of torture in two parts: Part 1 and Part 2.

Fr. Harrison surveys various authorities, including St. Thomas Aquinas:

A7. St. Thomas Aquinas (13th century). The Angelic Doctor never treats of torture in secular judicial inquiries. However, without mentioning the word, he does justify the contemporary Inquisition’s use of torture (recently introduced in 1252 by Pope Innocent IV – cf. B4 below). Like Augustine eight centuries earlier justifying imperial force used against the Donatist schismatics, Thomas appeals in his sed contra to the Gospel itself: the compelle intrare of Lk 14: 23 (parable of the king and wedding guests). In considering whether unbelievers may be "compelled" to the faith, he first acknowledges that those who have never been Christians (i.e., Jews, pagans and Muslims) may not be forced to embrace the faith, but then continues: "On the other hand, there are unbelievers who at some time have accepted the faith, and professed it, such as heretics and all apostates: such should be submitted even to bodily compulsion, that they may fulfil what they have promised, and hold what they, at one time, received".22

Consistently with the fundamental idea of forcing a man to confess an offence, St. Thomas does not recognize for the accused a right corresponding to the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment. In considering whether one may lie to a judge in order to protect oneself, Aquinas teaches that while the accused is not bound to answer every possible question that might incriminate him, he may never lie, and indeed, is bound to answer the judge truthfully, revealing his own guilt, "under the laws of evidence" (secundum ordinem juris), as for instance when there are well-founded rumors, or clear indications, or semi-complete proof [of his guilt]".23

A8. St. Thomas Aquinas (13th century). He also discusses bodily mutilation (ST, IIa IIae 65, 1) and the thrashing of children by parents and slaves by their masters (65, 2). His justification of these practices as punishments for proven offences essentially just throws the ball back into a couple of other courts: (a) as regards authority, into that of Sacred Scripture, with the sed contra appealing in the case of mutilation to the lex talionis (Ex. 21: 24, Lv 24: 19-20), and to the books of Proverbs and Sirach in the case of flogging (cf. references A10-A15 in Part I of this study); and (b) as regards inherent reasoning, into that of capital punishment, using a simple a fortiori argument (i.e., if competent authority may legitimately take life itself as punishment, then all the more may it inflict lesser bodily penalties).

It is notable that St. Thomas himself does not expicitly hold that the use of torture to get a confession (or other information) is licit. At most, he maintains that those who once had the virtue of faith may be compelled through the use of force. But this seems inconsistent with the position that the virtue of faith is given through grace, and cannot be elicited by human effort alone. Is pain likely to move someone to open himself up to the movement of the Holy Spirit and away from his own beliefs? (How is it possible for a human judge to distinguish between a true apostate and heretic from someone who sincerely, or in accordance with his conscience, changes his mind about divine matters?)

Some may hold that torture is wrong because it offends against charity. But their argument, like the argument against capital punishment, fails because it does not distinguish punishment or 'rightful harm' from injury or wrongful harm. It needs to be shown that torture is wrong because it is against justice and is a form of injury. I think this can be done if we remember the definition of justice. Unless it is a form of retribution, the deliberate inflicting of some harm upon another is unjust and wrong.

Can someone be punished for disobedience? Or failing to comply with an order to give information when it has been determined by a competent authority that this information is vital to the common good, and that the subject possesses this knowledge? I think the answer to both questions is yes. But punishment for disobedience is not the same as inflicting pain or bodily harm in order to elicit information. The ratio of the moral act is different in each case, even though the object of the external act--producing pain or bodiliy harm, is the same.

I note that Fr. Harrison would seem to agree with the above assessment (see his conclusion for part 2). But he thinks that the question of whether torture may be used to extract information has not been answered by the Magisterium:

Thirdly, there remains the question – nowadays a very practical and much-discussed one – of torture inflicted not for any of the above purposes, but for extracting life-saving information from, say, a captured terrorist known to be participating in an attack that may take thousands of lives (the now-famous ‘ticking bomb’ scenario). As we have noted above, this possible use of torture is not mentioned in the Catechism. If, as I have argued, the infliction of severe pain is not intrinsically evil, its use in that type of scenario would not seem to be excluded by the arguments and authorities we have considered so far. (John Paul II’s statement about the "intrinsic evil" of a list of ugly things including torture in VS #80 does not seem to me decisive, even at the level of authentic, non-infallible, magisterium, for the reasons I have already given in commenting above on that text.) My understanding would be that, given the present status questionis, the moral legitimacy of torture under the aforesaid desperate circumstances, while certainly not affirmed by the magisterium, remains open at present to legitimate discussion by Catholic theologians.

Here is what I believe to be the problem -- the "infliction of severe pain" is not intrinsically evil if it has the character of punishment, in which case it is just. If it does not have the character of punishment, then it is always unjust. I cannot see how it could be otherwise. Hence, we are not dealing with a 'morally neutral' external act, but one which has already been determined to be unjust and therefore immoral. Using it for the sake of getting information would therefore be an instance of using an evil means in order to procure a perceived good end.

I think because of our relative ease in grasping justice, even if we cannot explain what justice is precisely, we have an natural or instinctive aversion to torture, which is worn away once we begin to accept consequentialism.

Stuff on torture

At Against the Grain:
The Torture Debate: Part 1, 2, 3, 4
(Dave Armstrong participates in the comments.)
Dave Armstrong's own blog

Fr. Harrison, O.S.: LT118, 119
Tom McKenna
Rerum Novarum

Plus: Cardinal Dulles on the death penalty
McGinley lecture
First Things (An exchange between Cardinal Dulles and his critics)
His review of Noonan's A Church That Can and Cannot Change