A Pastoral Rebuke of Illegal and Immoral Orders
Archbishop Broglio's Statement on Recent Military Strikes in the Caribbean
Military chaplains in the United States provide pastoral care and guidance to military service members and their families. On military bases in the United States and abroad, they administer the sacraments and offer faith formation to military families. A less well-known, but nevertheless vital, responsibility of chaplains, however, is that they provide moral guidance to soldiers. Of course, military service members face the same moral challenges as anyone else: family strife, personal vices, and interpersonal conflict, for example. But soldiers, especially those stationed in combat zones, also face the difficult moral dilemma of taking human life, or at least participating in operations that involve the taking of life. Catholic military chaplains, therefore, are expected to be well-versed in the Church’s just-war tradition, to be able to provide moral counsel when soldiers face moral quandaries regarding the conduct of war, and to minister to soldiers experiencing guilt or anxiety about a difficult decision already made (sometimes referred to as “moral injury”). In addition to the ethics training soldiers receive as part of their basic training and periodically throughout their service, military chaplains are one of the main resources US soldiers have available for moral guidance.
The question of whether soldiers should refuse to follow illegal orders has been in the news lately after six Democratic members of the US Senate and House of Representatives issued a video calling on US soldiers to disobey any illegal orders that might come from the Trump administration. Although the Democrats did not specify what orders they had in mind, the video comes in the midst of controversy over the Trump administration’s ongoing military strikes on small boats in the Caribbean and Pacific allegedly engaged in drug trafficking. Since that video was released, it has come to light that after one of these military strikes in September, the US military identified survivors amidst the wreckage of the targeted boat and carried out a second strike, an action experts agree is a war crime. As I’ve argued before, however, the entire enterprise of carrying out military strikes against these boats is both illegal according to the laws of war and unethical according to the principles of the just-war tradition.
Should the officers and soldiers ordered to carry out these strikes refuse to obey? The notion is controversial, both because respect for the chain of command is crucial to military effectiveness and because sometimes it can be difficult to know if a particular order is legally justifiable or not (a problem worsened by the fact that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has sidelined the Judge Advocate General (JAG) officers responsible for offering legal guidance to the military, who now provide legal rationales for decisions already made rather than providing advice that can help shape decisions). That being said, the US Uniform Code of Military Justice, the body of law governing the US military, states that soldiers must disobey unlawful orders, although an order is presumed lawful until proven otherwise.
Earlier this month, Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the Military Services issued a sharply worded statement condemning the recent military strikes in the Caribbean. Broglio’s statement is important for at least three reasons. First, the Archdiocese for the Military Services that Broglio leads is a territory-less jurisdiction (a “military ordinariate” in technical terms) that encompasses the pastoral services of military chaplains and other pastoral workers on military bases in the US and overseas and in Veterans Health Administration facilities. Broglio, therefore, is the pastor for all Catholic military personnel and here is offering his moral guidance to his flock. Second, until last month, Broglio was the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), making his an important voice among the US bishops. And third, in his statement, Broglio did not simply outline the principles of the just-war tradition and call on administration officials and military officers to abide by them; he makes very specific, decisive moral judgments about the US military’s recent actions, suggesting a high level of certainty about these judgments and their significance.
