{"id":178588,"date":"2026-01-21T11:06:47","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T16:06:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=178588"},"modified":"2026-01-21T11:06:47","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T16:06:47","slug":"archbishop-for-u-s-military-personnel-morally-acceptable-for-troops-to-defy-orders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=178588","title":{"rendered":"Archbishop for U.S. military personnel: Morally acceptable for troops to defy orders"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Timothy Broglio, Catholic archbishop responsible for U.S. military personnel, argued that it was morally acceptable for service members to disobey orders that go against their conscience. He expressed concern that troops could end up in a situation that they find morally questionable. However, Broglio acknowledged that doing so would put these service members in a bad situation. He also drew a distinction between “moral objection” vice what is legal regarding which orders could be defied.<\/p>\n

From Military Times:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Timothy Broglio — who has served as the archbishop for the military services since 2007 — admitted in a BBC interview on Sunday that he was worried about the troops in his pastoral care “because they could be put in a situation where they’re being ordered to do something which is morally questionable.”<\/p>\n

“It would be very difficult for a soldier or a Marine or a sailor to, by himself, to disobey an order … but strictly speaking, he or she would be, within the realm of their own conscience, it would be morally acceptable to disobey that order,” he said.<\/p>\n

He went on to note, however, that such an isolated act of conscience would be “perhaps putting that individual in an untenable situation — and that’s my concern.”<\/p>\n

Asked about President Donald Trump’s effort to annex Greenland, the autonomous Danish territory, Broglio echoed the condemnation voiced by the upper echelon of the Catholic church over the administration’s foreign policy.<\/p>\n

“It does not seem really reasonable that the United States would attack and occupy a friendly nation,” he said. “I think it tarnishes the image of the United States in our world.”<\/p>\n

Each service member swears an oath of enlistment to “support” and “defend” the constitution, not the commander in chief. Under U.S. military law, troops are required to disobey orders that are “manifestly” or “patently” unlawful, though such cases are legally complex. Brenner Fissell, vice president of the National Institute of Military Justice and professor of law at Villanova, emphasized the system is legal, not theological.<\/p>\n

“The United States law does not track Catholic ethics,” Fissell said in an interview with Military Times. “There is a concept called conscientious objection, which is when you are opposed morally to war, but the United States does not recognize selective conscientious objections which is when you identify specific wars or deployments you don’t want to participate in.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Additional Reading:<\/b><\/p>\n

Noury, T. (2026, January 20). Archbishop says it’s ‘morally acceptable’ for troops to defy orders. Military Times<\/i>. Link<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Timothy Broglio, Catholic archbishop responsible for U.S. military personnel, argued that it was morally acceptable for … Archbishop for U.S. military personnel: Morally acceptable for troops to defy orders<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[469,84,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-178588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-donald-trump","category-military-issues","category-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=178588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178588\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=178588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=178588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=178588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}