A terrorist cell has infiltrated the United States. Its members have managed to smuggle in enough nuclear material to create an atomic bomb. One of the terrorists has been apprehended by the authorities. This criminal knows both where the bomb has been planted and when it will be detonated.

Agent Jones is a committed and practicing Catholic. He has been told to get the information from the suspect by any and all means, and to do it quickly, very quickly. He uses every moral means at his disposal but with no results. He is being pressured by his superiors to "break" the suspect and get the information.

Agent Jones wants to speak to his pastor. His conscience is conflicted. Would it be morally acceptable to torture this suspect until he gave up the information that was being sought? After all, wouldn't God agree that it might be OK to torture one person in order to save thousands?

If we download our morals from the media, the answer is easy. It is, in fact, played out regularly in the TV show "24," in which Federal Agent Jack Bauer almost never plays by the rules (legal or moral).

As a member of the L.A. Counter Terrorist Unit, Jack must stop any number of terrorist plots, and maybe even save someone he cares about. All too often he accomplishes his tasks by brutally torturing a suspect or two. If he is not a sociopath, then he clearly lives rather happily with an almost nonexistent conscience and by a single moral guideline, "The end always justifies the means." Is the solution for the Catholic really so easy?

There are actually three moral questions that need to be addressed in the above scenario: Is torture ever a moral option for a Christian? Can the "end justify the means"? And, how does the Church define torture?

Is torture ever a moral option for a Christian?
The Church of the 21st century has no doubt that torture is never a moral option. Pope John Paul II, in his powerful 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), reiterated a list of intrinsically evil acts that could never be morally tolerated, from the original list found in the Vatican II document, Gaudium et Spes (The Constitution on the Church in the Modern World):

"I repeat that condemnation in the name of the Church… 'Whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder … whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity … all these things are infamies indeed. They poison human society, and they do more harm to those who practice them than to those who suffer from the injury. Moreover they are a supreme dishonor to the Creator." (EV, n. 3).

Mutilation and torture inflicted on either the body or mind, attempts to coerce the will --- these infamies are clearly defined as evil and forbidden.

In the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, published in 2005 by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, the Church's clear position on the condemnation of torture is again articulated:

"International juridical instruments concerning human rights correctly indicate a prohibition against torture as a principle which cannot be contravened under any circumstance" (n. 404).

Can there be any doubt left for the Catholic that there is actually zero tolerance for torture as a moral option? The Church's concern about torture is about protecting the inherent dignity and human rights of every individual, and at the same time protecting the soul of the torturers. After all, no one can be involved in torturing another without risking the destruction of their own soul.

Neither can any country condone torture without destroying its own moral compass. Are we in danger of becoming the very people we condemned for their inhuman behavior towards others? Pope John Paul II, in the aforementioned Compendium, reminded the world that "human dignity is as much debased in the torturer as in the torturer's victim."

Can the "end justify the means"?
In other words, can we torture an individual in pursuit of information that could save many? This question really deserves a double response from the Catholic moral tradition.

First, we see a clear fallacy of logic in the scenario itself. Torture is often used to search for potential information. Therefore, it frequently is applied to the innocent along with the guilty. Is it moral to torture the innocent in order to try and ferret out the guilty? The Catholic response avoids this question and this difficulty altogether.

If torture is defined, along with abortion and other infamies as intrinsically evil actions, then like abortion, euthanasia and slavery, it is forbidden in every case. In Catholic morality, the end never, in and of itself, justifies the means. Catholic morality is not a morality of relativism or consequentialism, whether attempts to move it in that direction are made by those who on one hand are pro-abortion or those who on the other hand are pro-torture.

How does the Church define torture?
Some ask this question looking perhaps for a moral "loophole." Specifically they hope to limit its definition so strictly that multiple forms of mental, emotional and physical pain would not be included. Is "waterboarding" torture? What about intense physical pain that would not result in permanent bodily damage?

Interestingly, this question, let alone its answer, is not found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, or in any other specific texts. Does that mean that the Church would tolerate "gray" areas? Of course not.

The question is not found because the Church presumes it would not need to be asked by any disciple of Jesus. Torture is self evident. It responds clearly to the golden rule. If you would not want it done to you, you may not do it to another against his will.

But for those looking for a definition, the Church would clearly endorse that of the United Nations, Dec. 9, 1975. Torture is "any act by which severe pain or suffering whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted by or at the instigation of a public official on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or confession, punishing him for an act he has committed, or intimidating him or other persons."

Christian morality never settles for the lowest common denominator. Discipleship is about giving love and giving life, even to our enemies: "I have come that you might have life, and have it abundantly" (John 10). This is the vision of Christian discipleship. There is no room for torture in this moral vision.

'In the name of God, stop the repression'
On March 23, 1980, his voice rising almost to breaking, Archbishop Romero gave his second to last homily before being martyred. He delivered his message directly to the members of the military. "Brothers, you are from the same people; you kill your fellow peasant.... No soldier is obliged to obey an order that is contrary to the will of God...."

There was thunderous applause; the archbishop was inviting the army to mutiny. Then his voice burst: "In the name of God then, in the name of this suffering people, I ask you, I beg you, I command you in the name of God, stop the repression." He was referring, of course, to the intolerable indignities being wrought upon citizens of that country by government soldiers and police under the color of authority and justified as a means to provide state security.

One hears in his moral appeal the same stirring message for today. To everyone who contemplates torture, "Stop the repression."

In June 2006 Pope Benedict XVI reiterated the Catholic position regarding torture. "Public authorities must be ever vigilant in this task, eschewing any means of punishment or correction that either undermine or debase the human dignity of prisoners. In this regard, I reiterate that the prohibition against torture 'cannot be contravened under any circumstances.'"

Benedict actually was repeating a message that his predecessor, Pope John Paul II had delivered on several occasions. "Christ's disciple refuses every recourse to such methods, which nothing could justify."

There is no room for Jack Bauer and his methods in any moral society and certainly not in any country that claims to be Christian.

Vincentian Father Richard Benson is academic dean and professor of moral theology at St. John's Seminary, Camarillo. His column appears monthly in The Tidings.