Chuck DarwinCatholic personnel in the US military could in good conscience consider disobeying orders to attack Greenland,
according to the bishop responsible for their pastoral care.
The Archbishop of the Military Services #Timothy #Broglio said personnel
“could be put in a situation where they’re being ordered to do something that’s morally questionable”
if the US acted on President Donald Trump’s threats of military action to take control of Greenland.
Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday program
on 18 January,
Archbishop Broglio said it would be “very difficult for a soldier or a marine or a sailor by himself to disobey an order such as that”,
but “within the realm of their own conscience it would be morally acceptable to disobey”.
In December, the archbishop issued a statement condemning a “second strike” by US forces on an alleged drug trafficking vessel in the Caribbean,
insisting that “the moral principle forbidding the intentional killing of noncombatants is inviolable”.
He told Sunday he was concerned as a pastor to military personnel that US policy ignored
“the proper way and the moral way to respond to these situations”.
“Men and women under my charge were being forced to engage in situations that were not necessary,” he said,
referring to the strikes in the Caribbean.
Any action against Greenland, he continued,
“doesn’t seem necessary,
doesn’t seem acceptable”.
“Greenland is a territory of Denmark [and] Denmark is an ally,” he said.
“It does not seem really reasonable that the United States would attack and occupy a friendly nation.”
Claudia Di Giorgio