Someone should quiz pro-torture Evangelicals, Catholics and Mainline Protestants about their biblical authority for this belief. Come to think of it, what was Torquemada’s? The Catholic Encyclopedia has an interesting biographical sketch which is a partial defense. I know that Roman law included the practice, but significantly, it was prohibited for Roman citizens while mandatory for slaves caught up in investigations. I gather that trusted or beloved house slaves could undergo a kind of faux torture (think the comfy chair).

Obviously a great many Churchgoing Republicans are Mormons, Episcopalians, Orthodox etc. I wonder what the breakdown is between denominations regarding torture, and how Catholics rank.

IIRC the trend was observable across denominations, though I think Catholics didn’t do as badly as Evangelicals. Here are the data: http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=156.

Another possibility comes to mind. Having experienced the new and improved Catholic mass twice in the past six months at funerals, I suspect that most Catholics have grown inured to torture.

Of course both Catholics and Protestants were practitioners of torture in the past. Never the less I think it unlikely that Catholics, when approached by Gallup, sprung to the defense of Friar Thomas Torquemada on the grounds of Catholic tradition. And I never heard any of the numerous Protestant television preachers say the least kindly thing about thumbscrews.

If what you say is true, I suspect that both Catholic and Protestant, churchgoers, are by definition establishment types. Establishment types do tend to support establishments, even when they’re badly misguided.

… you seem to be conflating church going Republicans with Catholics.

I certainly didn’t mean to be. My point, which was spelled out more clearly (albeit still briefly) in the post I linked, was just that frequency of church attendance has been found to be correlated with GOP affiliation, and that this fact, together with the observation that people conform their beliefs more easily to partisan affiliations than to religious teachings, can help us to understand the similarly observed correlation between church attendance and support for torture.

Also, referring more to the modern secular argument that since religious beliefs in the public sphere are a-la-carte, that religion itself is a farce.

Benedict XVI in “Deus Caritas Est” talks about how Catholic social doctrine’s aim “is simply to help purify reason and to contribute, here and now, to the acknowledgment and attainment of what is just.” Remaining within the bounds of orthodoxy remains critical considering the “the dazzling effects of power and special interests” that is always present in the political sphere, and always attempting to undermine these notions of justice. So, I think you are entirely correct in your analysis of those who selectively pick moral doctrine. It comes out of political expediency.

First, you seem to be conflating church going Republicans with Catholics. I’m sure that there are many Christians who fail our ideal in the matter of, torture, but I have never seen a breakdown by denomination. A lot of those “Churchgoing Republicans” were following the Reverend Hagee.

Second, in my limited experience Catholics experience mental dissonance with church social policy when the objectives of that policy clash in the lebenswelt. For instance, the experience of urban blue collar Catholics with the church’s teachings on equality and brotherhood while their neighborhoods grew increasingly dangerous, alienated many otherwise observant Catholics. Of course this is always the challenge of Christianity, to turn the other cheek.

I don’t agree that cafeteria Catholocism is a result of people wanting to mold the teachings of The Church to fit their “deeply held beliefs.”

But that’s not what I said, right? My point was pretty much exactly the one you go on to make, that it’s a matter of political convenience and partisan commitments more than anything else.