The last two months saw a number of developments in the widening Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal:

---On Sept. 25, Human Rights Watch released a report from firsthand accounts alleging that members of the elite 82nd Airborne Division routinely beat and tortured suspected insurgent detainees in 2003 and 2004 at a military base near the city of Fallaouja. James Ross, the organization's senior legal advisor, declared that the "few bad apples" theory is dead and that the new revelations should put to rest claims a few renegade reservists were responsible for the growing crime.

---Army Reserve Private Lynndie England, who became instantly infamous when she was photographed holding an Abu Ghraib naked prisoner by a dog leash, was convicted Sept. 26 of six of seven charges at a military court-martial. The 22-year-old West Virginian was found guilty of mistreating detainees and committing an indecent act while sexually abusing and humiliating detainees. England was the ninth Army reservist to be convicted of mistreating prisoners in Iraq.

---On Oct. 5, by a vote of 90-9, the Senate approved an amendment to the 2006 defense budget bill proposed by Republican Senators John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John Warner of Virginia that requires the U.S. military to abide by the Geneva Convention to not engage in the torture of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and Cuba.

---Finally, an Oct. 24 report by the American Civil Liberties Union, based on autopsies of 44 prisoners who died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, found that 21 were homicides. At least eight appeared to have been the result of fatal abuse by their captors. The military autopsies revealed the deaths were caused by smothering, beatings --- including "blunt force injuries" --- and exposure to the elements.

With its own black mark in history --- the Inquisition in the Middle Ages, where thousands of so-called nonbelievers, heretics and witches were tortured and killed --- can the Catholic Church be a credible witness to speak out against inflicting pain, suffering and death on victims?

That's exactly what it has done for a long time, according to a theological ethicist, an Army Reserve chaplain who recently served in Iraq and Kuwait, and a retired philosophy and religious studies professor who also worked with California inmates interviewed by The Tidings.

Horrified and not

While in no way defending the practices of the Inquisition, Sister of St. Joseph of Carondelet Miriam Therese Larkin pointed out that the tradition of the church progresses from age to age.

"In any period of time, the church can have its blind spots, as we all can," said the former philosophy and religious studies professor at Mount St. Mary's College in Los Angeles. "And maybe the condoning of torture is a particular blind spot for our country right now.

"But certainly, with reflection and thought, the church has come to new positions on a number of social questions. So in its later documents, the church is saying much against it."

She points to the 1972 bishops' synod's document "Justice and the World" as well as pastoral letters by John Paul II as absolutely condemning torture. Earlier social documents, like Rerum Novarum, have also stressed the inherent dignity of every human being and how that dignity must be respected.

Moreover, she notes the Book of Genesis says man was created in the image of God, with all that implies for treating others.

In one sense, Sister Larkin was horrified by the revelations about prisoner abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But as a member of a group that took medicine and prostheses to prisoners on both sides of El Salvador's bloody civil war, she really wasn't surprised. On one trip, a high-ranking U.S. official flatly told her: "There's a point at which you have to forget that prisoners are people."

"Now that was in the '80s," she reported. "But if that is an opinion that's still reigning at all in people who act officially for the U.S., then what has been happening at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo is not surprising.

"If you operate out of fear, a need for security, need for prestige --- and those are really serious considerations in your life --- your behavior will become more and more destructive. And if I make you fearful enough, you can legitimize almost any kind of behavior and do something at another time you would not do."

But Sister Larkin can't jump to the conclusion that the military guards who did the torturing were evil. In a "closed" group like the Army, she says, a young recruit who doesn't have much life experience or expertise is apt to trust authority too easily. And if the guards were acting out of fear --- either of prisoners or superiors --- then their decision to torture wasn't freely made.

Who's responsible?

As a theological ethicist, Jonathan Rothchild says he first looks to Scripture in evaluating moral decisions. And the assistant professor of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University in Westchester echoes Sister Larkin in seeking out Genesis for a clear declaration that human beings are made in the image and likeness of God.

"From that we derive not only a sense in which we have a special relationship to the divine, but everybody has inherent dignity and worth," he explained. "But also there's a sense related to that that we are responsible for others, and we can never violate that.

"So there's almost a vision of the world that says the world's fundamentally good. God created a good world. And, as such, when we don't fully actualize people's dignity, then we're going against God's creation."

Moreover, Jesus' message in the New Testament is love and love of neighbor. Rothchild says that's a very basic message, yet it has profound implications for how we relate to others.

Next Rothchild cites the church's tradition of "Just War," which justifies killing and war, but under strict conditions. War has to be a last resort by legitimate authority, and the methods used always must be proportional.

"The question we have to ask with respect to torture is, how can we ever justify something like torture?" he said. "Are there any grounds? And many have argued, of course, that there's nothing in Just War that says you can use torture."

In natural law, the first principle is do good and avoid evil, Rothchild points out. Natural law is about setting parameters, about acting rationally, virtuously and naturally. Human law is the application of natural law to particular communities.

He says the question boils down to: Is there any room for torture in Natural Law? Or, would God want a world where torture is officially sanctioned?

But then when you bring in everyday experience and statutory guidelines, things get a little messy, according to Rothchild. And that's precisely where the Geneva Convention comes into play.

"What interesting is now you have competing claims," he observed. "On the one hand, we have the concern for security. We need information to prevent future terrorist attacks. That's the benefit we think we're getting.

"The harm, of course, is causing pain, humiliation excessively. And many have argued that those harms don't outweigh those benefits."

For torture to be objectively evil, he says, the perpetrators must realize there's an absolute moral norm prohibiting it. But that doesn't mean those ultimately responsible should get off the hook.

"First and foremost, I would agree that it's the responsibility of the person doing the act," he said. "I never believe that one isn't accountable for one's actions. So the prosecution of these guards should be pursued, given that they knew what they were doing."

The question of what was the impetus --- the driving force --- behind the aggrieved actions of the guards and interrogators, however, is more problematic.

"Was it directly encouraged? Was it implicitly encouraged?" Rothchild asked. "What they did was keep trying to push the envelope a little more, a little more. I don't think that mentality means that [Secretary of Defense] Donald Rumsfeld was endorsing torture.

"But even if you don't want to say that the higher-ups weren't directly responsible, they certainly should be held accountable for their failure to respond once it was brought forward," he stressed. "Even if people in the White House are not fully calling the shots, if they're creating conditions for the possibility of the torture, they need to be accountable."

After a sigh and forlorn look, Professor Rothchild said, "How much were the higher-ups responsible? I'm not sure we'll ever know."

Almost like 'social sin'

From January 2004 to January 2005, Father Kevin Nolan served as an Army chaplain in Iraq and Kuwait. He replaced a Catholic priest who opened the bullet-proof window of his up-armored Humvee to get a breath of fresh air and had part of his head blown off by shrapnel.

The pastor of St. Augustine Church in Culver City visited military camps in both northern and southern Iraq as well as Kuwait. In the hostile north, his vehicle was shot at so many times that the two M-16-armed soldiers who always accompanied him no longer wanted to ride with him. From then on, he was flown from base to base in a Blackhawk helicopter.

One of the places in the southern part of Iraq he visited weekly to celebrate Mass and hear confessions was Camp Bucca in the city of Um Qasr, which is under investigation for alleged abuse of detainees.

(At the start of the interview, Father Nolan made clear that he was "not at liberty" to say if he personally saw or heard about any cases of prisoner mistreatment. But the 42-year-old priest was willing to discuss in general what he thought brought soldiers at Abu Ghraib and other military prisons to abuse their charges.)

"I do know there were a lot of good men and women who were serving at Camp Bucca," he said. "Yet, sometimes you get caught up in a culture --- and really a culture of sin in the sense that someone else is doing it, so it justifies you in doing it. It's almost like a social sin.

"And torture, in many ways, is a social sin. I don't think anyone alone would do it. But because you see someone else doing it, it becomes the norm. And then you see the atrocities that are being done to you and your comrades.

"And the thought is, 'If I can just exact this out of them, I'm going to do a lot of good,'" he explained. "Sometimes people would say, 'If I just beat him a little harder, I'm going to get the truth.' So I think the justification is 'I can make one exception.'"

Father Nolan believes from the top down there was tremendous pressure after 9/11 to get from interrogations concrete information that would save fellow soldiers and stop another U.S. terrorist attack. Still, the prisoners he saw were treated humanely, except for being housed in tents and exposed to 130-degree desert heat.

He also reports, however, that soldiers at different bases came to him "all the time" with concerns about crossing the line. He conducted many critical stress debriefing sessions for soldiers involved in violence or a "kill."

While in Iraq and Kuwait, he can't recall ever hearing the word "torture." But with the released Abu Ghraib photos and ongoing investigations, he now believes it was carried out by small cells of soldiers. He still insists torture was never military-wide.

"We sit over here in comfort, and it comes at a huge cost," Father Nolan said. "Part of that cost sometimes is a young man or woman fighting in the middle of the night trying to keep the peace. And in order to keep that peace, sometimes you do things that you wouldn't normally do in the light."