An Update on Greenland
Three Cardinals and an Archbishop Speak
This morning, three cardinals from the United States issued a statement questioning the “moral foundation” of recent US foreign policy and acknowledging Pope Leo XIV’s teaching as an “enduring ethical compass” for the nation’s foreign affairs. The three cardinals—Archbishop Blase Cupich of Chicago, Archbishop Robert McElroy of Washington, DC, and Archbishop Joseph Tobin, C.Ss.R. of Newark—point to events in Venezuela, Ukraine and Greenland as cases where moral questions have come into play, but the focus of the statement is not on analyzing these specific crises but rather on the overall moral vision guiding US foreign policy.
The cardinals summarize what they call a “genuinely moral foreign policy for our nation” in this way:
We seek to build a truly just and lasting peace, that peace which Jesus proclaimed in the Gospel. We renounce war as an instrument for narrow national interests and proclaim that military action must be seen only as a last resort in extreme situations, not a normal instrument of national policy. We seek a foreign policy that respects and advances the right to human life, religious liberty, and the enhancement of human dignity throughout the world, especially through economic assistance.
Notably, the cardinals focus on promoting this positive vision for US foreign policy rather than criticizing specific aspects of the nation’s current foreign policy or recent statements made by President Donald Trump and other White House officials. In today’s article for Window Light, I contrasted remarks by Trump and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller on a potential conflict over Greenland that represent an amoral picture of politics with the Catholic vision of international affairs developed by Pope John XXIII and most recently expressed by Pope Leo.
In a Sunday interview with the BBC, Timothy Broglio, the Archbishop of the US Military Services and the former president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), stated that, “[W]ithin the realm of their own conscience it would be morally acceptable [for US soldiers] to disobey” orders to participate in military action to take Greenland by force. He added that such military action “doesn’t seem necessary, doesn’t seem acceptable.” As the Archbishop of the Military Services, Broglio is responsible for the pastoral care of US soldiers who are Catholic and their families, so his statement on the matter carries a great deal of weight.
Broglio’s comments go further than a statement he released last month on recent US military strikes in the Caribbean. In that case, as I noted at the time, Broglio criticized US political and military leaders for putting soldiers in the position of choosing between following orders and violating their consciences but did not directly call on soldiers to disobey orders he described as “illegal and immoral.” In his Sunday remarks on Greenland, on the other hand, although not commanding US soldiers who are Catholic to disobey orders to participate in the use of force to annex Greenland, Broglio does suggest that there is sufficient moral clarity about this grave situation that it would be acceptable for soldiers to choose to disobey orders. He recognizes that this would be a difficult decision for any soldier and again laments that political and military leaders have placed soldiers in this position. It is interesting, however, that Broglio’s remarks came in a media interview and not a formal statement like that on Venezuela and the Caribbean.
Cupich, McElroy, and Tobin are the only three active cardinals in the United States (there are several retired US cardinals, however), and therefore their statement represents an important voice of the leadership of the US Catholic Church in union with that of Pope Leo. On the other hand, the three cardinals, all appointed by Pope Francis, are generally described as part of a “progressive” camp within the USCCB. Broglio, however, is usually thought of as more conservative, and so the harmony of visions between the two statements is noteworthy. The cardinals’ statement focuses on a broad moral vision for US foreign policy while Broglio’s remarks represent a pastoral application of that vision to a difficult question of conscience. As Michael J. O’Loughlin notes at the National Catholic Reporter, the statements also represent a “widening gap” between the US bishops and the Trump administration that first emerged over the immigration issue.
