The Schismatic Archbishop

Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, who has the Catholic Church's authority for the US military, has endorsed the disobeying of orders by soldiers whose conscience is offended. 

We've talked about this periodically through the history of this blog, most recently when some Congresscritters decided to endorse the position. Sometimes it is morally proper to disobey orders, especially if those orders are shockingly immoral, this being the legal standard that came out of the My Lai massacre. Other times inferior officers give orders that are unconstitutional, which should be disobeyed because they are inherently mutinous. 

Too, one of the ways in which Medieval political philosophy was superior to Modern political philosophy lies in the division of the temporal authority from the spiritual. You couldn't get to totalitarianism when the King and the Pope were competing sources of ultimate authority; both always had a claim on loyalty, and yet their interests differed sufficiently that even when they happened to align broadly there was a tension between them. Liberty finds its home in the tension between powers, which is why the American system of dividing powers between the branches of the Federal government and between the Federal government and the states has been so conducive to a life in which liberty remains possible. 

Still, how surprising to see the Church come down on the side of defying authority. Well, in a way; in another way he is endorsing the sovereignty of the King of Denmark. He is, however, suggesting that Americans who have taken an oath of obedience to the President of the United States and the officers he appoints would be morally qualified to forswear that oath. 

“Greenland is a territory of Denmark,” Broglio told the BBC Sunday. “It does not seem really reasonable that the United States would attack and occupy a friendly nation.”

Asked whether he was “worried” about the military personnel in his pastoral care, Broglio replied: “I am obviously worried because they could be put in a situation where they’re being ordered to do something which is morally questionable.”

“It would be very difficult for a soldier or a [M]arine or a sailor to by himself disobey an order,” he said. “But strictly speaking, he or she would be, within the realm of their own conscience, it would be morally acceptable to disobey that order, but that’s perhaps putting that individual in an untenable situation — and that’s my concern.”

It's perfectly tenable; I imagine they would be detained in Fort Leavenworth for some time, those two words sharing as their root the Latin tenere, "to hold." Holding the position would lead to one being held for having held the position. A soldier refusing orders because the sovereign of a different nation has a different opinion about the matter is not going to work out congenially, however.