The questions were inevitable within the first weeks of the second Trump administration: When would he go too far? When would the utter destruction of democratic norms, as well as the attacks on human dignity and established law reach a point where even those most averse to public political engagement feel compelled to speak out?
That moment occurred this week on two fronts in the U.S. Catholic world. In a highly unusual statement released Jan. 19, Cardinals Blase Cupich of Chicago, Robert McElroy of Washington, D.C., and Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, rebuke the administration’s approach to foreign policy. Specifically, the cardinals “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.”
Perhaps even more stunning, Archbishop Timothy Broglio, head of the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services, told a British interviewer that U.S. military personnel could, “within the realm of their own conscience” disobey an immoral order to invade Greenland.
A new era of religious leadership in the U.S Catholic Church has dawned — driven by the immoral and destructive extremes of the Trump administration.
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With thanks to the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) and the NCR Editorial Staff, where this article originally appeared.
