In war, there is not always a clear-cut bad guy and good guy. People fight for all kinds of reasons. In this story, there is an obvious bad guy: terrorists. They hate. They embrace evil. They will use any method imaginable and some unimaginable to achieve their end. Killing children? Rape? Nothing is beneath them. A terrorist is a bad guy pretty much by definition. That makes us the good guys. If only it were that simple and we were four-year-olds on a playground! Every time

Federal Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, when interviewed by Radio Television Suisse on December 10, reportedly invoked the ticking time bomb scenario to justify the use of torture, and noted that the Constitution does not specifically prohibit the government from torturing. “I don’t know what article of the Constitution that would contravene,” Scalia said when speaking about torture. This is highly troubling, as the Constitution does bar cruel and unusual punishments. T

When most Americans think of war atrocities, they usually think of Nazi concentration camps or “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia, Uganda, and other distant countries. Few Americans realize that our soldiers in Vietnam were guilty of many war crimes ranging from the torture of Vietcong prisoners to the slaughter of unarmed men, women, and children in villages such as Son My. Many factors contributed to these violent incidents, but most to blame was the leadership and training of th

BY MAXIME VILLENEUVE This blog post is intended particularly for a Christian audience, but any and all are welcome to read and share! Image by Milan Boers; some rights reserved. Having just returned from my Brazilian pilgrimage to World Youth Day in Rio, I’ve been spending a lot of time reflecting on my journey and the many sights, smells, and sounds I encountered along the way. I began to meditate upon the Stations of the Cross event at Copacabana Beach presided by Pope Fra

Detainees at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been on hunger strike since early this year. The strike began in February, with perhaps as few as 14 men participating; the number of participants grew over the following months and, as of July, 106 detainees out of the total prison population of 166 have joined the strike.[i] Of the men on hunger strike, 44 are being fed twice a day by Guantanamo authorities using a tube threaded through the nose and into the

BY MAXIME VILLENEUVE I've been posting quotes, pictures and articles on torture weekly on the Life Matters Journal Facebook page. Thanks for liking, commenting on, and sharing the links I’ve posted! It’s a challenge because torture can seem to be so open-ended: exactly what forms of torture should I be highlighting at LMJ in our quest to "build a culture of life" specifically through holding our elected representatives accountable? Torture is a means of punishment or coerc

BY MAXIME VILLENEUVE Photo by publik15; some rights reserved. According to the New York Times, there are well over 25,000 inmates in the United States living under prolonged solitary confinement. This is a practice that has been under increased scrutiny recently because of the lasting and damaging psychological damage it does to a person. Humans are naturally social creatures, and being confined to a cell for 23 hours a day, for days on end is enough to drive many people in

BY MAXIME VILLENEUVE Good afternoon, LMJ readers! My name is Maxime Villeneuve and I've been tasked with covering the practice of torture and how it is an affront to human dignity. As we work together to build a culture of life and a consistent life ethic, it’s important that we understand this issue so that we are prepared to discuss it with others. Torture can be a difficult issue because it is very susceptible to be accepted by others when it is rationalized on grounds t

BY LILIANNA SERBICKI Photo by Nazareth College; some rights reserved. Spring Commencement at Franciscan University is an exciting event. While some graduates may be so exhausted, nervous, or distracted that they do not even process the entire commencement speech, they generally expect the speaker to endorse the school's Catholic values. This is anticipated even if the speaker is not Catholic; while Franciscan employs quite a few non-Catholic individuals, they ask that all

BY JULIA SMUCKER Life issues, in any form, have typically proven divisively controversial in general public discourse, and they have been no less so among Catholics, in particular. A more all-encompassing respect for life, which has been articulated in recent decades as a "consistent life ethic," is therefore both a telling indicator of intra-church polemics (particularly in terms of its reception) and a much-needed third way between them. While advocacy of the consistent e