Faith leaders around the country were among the first to respond, aghast and alarmed, to a proposal from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth that an execution by a military firing squad should be livestreamed for public consumption.

No one deplored that idea more than Archbishop Timothy Broglio, the head of the Archdiocese for the Military, USA. But the archbishop was not just repulsed by the idea of the spectacle of violence Mr. Hegseth appeared determined to create; he was also concerned about his parishioners—the men and women who will be called upon to manage and conduct the execution.

The idea of “moral injury” and “moral harm” has been a matter of growing concern to the archbishop, especially in an era of battlefield acts that are increasingly managed at a physical and moral distance by operators in the U.S. military.

“It’s not a given that a moral injury will be the result of participating in a firing squad, but it is a possibility, and I think it’s a possibility that has to be raised,” Archbishop Broglio told America in an interview on Oct. 16.

He is gratified that the White House in the end heeded objections and decided not to livestream the execution of Nidal Hasan, but he stands by his initial assessment that Catholic service members are “obliged” not to participate in Mr. Hasan’s execution.

Mr. Hasan, a former officer and Army Medical Corps psychiatrist, was convicted in 2013 by a military tribunal of killing 13 people and wounding 32 others during a shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Tex., in 2009. His execution by firing squad, the first such execution since the end of World War II, remains scheduled for Dec. 3, the same day Mr. Hasan fired on his fellow service members 17 years ago. It will also be conducted at the same place, Fort Hood.

The execution, Archbishop Broglio said, is “still…an issue of concern to me, both for those who will be involved and then also, of course, [because of] the teaching of the Catholic Church about capital punishment.”

He is aware that seeking a way out of participating in an execution ordered by military superiors could put Catholic service members in a terrific quagmire, asked to choose between following orders or to object to them in a way that could harm their military careers. The U.S. government does not recognize a right to selective conscientious objection.

American citizens and residents can be excused from conscription into the military if they can demonstrate a moral or religious objection to war itself, but they cannot decide which war to object to or, once in the service, choose when their conscience should excuse them from legal orders.

Over the last year, Archbishop Broglio has raised concerns about U.S. military strikes on alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean and suggested that U.S. servicemembers could resist in good conscience participation in a preventive war on Iran.

“When I issued those statements, I was very much aware of the fact that you can’t selectively say, ‘I’m against this.’ However, you can certainly say, ‘I won’t do this because it’s immoral,’” he said. He noted that under the military code of conduct “illegal” orders must be refused.

Archbishop Broglio said that in his comments on the U.S. strikes in the Caribbean against alleged drug traffickers, he was deploring engagements that appeared to him purely extrajudicial killings that could not be justified practically or legally. His comments on Iran, he said, were intended to encourage reflection among commanders in charge of the campaign, not the service members tasked with carrying it out.

He hoped that “those [who] do have the possibility of responding to higher authorities, that they might think about asking: ‘Is this [war against Iran] really necessary? Is this [war] moral?’”

“I’ve talked to enough military personnel who do ask questions about what they might be required to do, particularly in the more recent aggression against Iran,” Archbishop Broglio said. “It’s more a question of: ‘Is this something I should abstain from participating in?’”

It is the kind of question many Catholic service members have not previously had to ask themselves, he said, engaging in wars that remained arguably defensive in nature.

The special character of American military power has been that ultimately these decisions fall on civilian authorities, Archbishop Broglio said. Those authorities, he suggested, should be taking special measures to avoid creating moral and legal predicaments for service members that can lead to moral injury.

The military has learned how to respond to physical wounds experienced in war zones or combat, injuries that are often obvious to the public when service members come home. Moral injury can be harder to spot, the archbishop acknowledged, but can be grave in its own way. “Symptoms” can be subtle, and identifying moral injury requires deeper learning for military pastoral care workers.

How to respond to moral harm, pastorally and practically, has been an area of increasing concern at the Archdiocese for the Military, Archbishop Broglio said. “We’ve dealt with so many military personnel who have come back from this long series of wars [engaged by U.S. service members], and they are suffering from moral injury.” He anticipates pastoral need among service members regarding moral harm will only grow.

The archdiocese has created presentations describing the phenomenon to share with military chaplains so that they can understand what moral harm is, how it presents itself among service members and how it may be treated.

“It’s not just [post-traumatic stress disorder],” Archbishop Broglio said. “It is a sense of having been ordered or forced to do something that you might not have normally chosen to, even if it is something that you have to do.”

“Killing another person is still going to leave its traces, so that’s what we’ve tried to be sensitive to here at the archdiocese.”

The brave new world of video-monitored drone combat may create an arena for a new kind of combat casualty, Archbishop Broglio warned. The “subtraction of any human element” threatens not only potentially deeper inhumanity on the battlefield but also raises new concerns about the psychological and spiritual impact on high-tech controllers. “I realize that it seems antiseptic because you’re distant from everything, but I think it’s very problematic,” Archbishop Broglio said.

“I’ve spoken to pilots of drones who are working 9 to 5 in Texas,” he said. In traditional combat environments, he said, these service members would have the opportunity to “debrief” and process the events of the day and the actions they took on the battlefield. Instead, these pilots “go home to be with their wives and their families” after “work.”

The unnaturalness of that experience, he believes, can be the beginning of a moral wound the church should be prepared to respond to. “I think we’re definitely moving into an entirely different kind of world,” the archbishop said.

Artificial intelligence has supercharged what was already a rapidly advancing battlefield tech of air strikes, rapid target selection and surveillance. It will be a difficult challenge for the church to keep pace, morally and practically, Archbishop Broglio said.

But “we’re trying to apply the moral principles that have always guided us,” he said. “I always remind people that the church measures time in centuries, so it’s difficult.”

One of his takeaways from Pope Leo XIV’s “Magnifica Humanitas” on artificial intelligence is how the dignity of a human person remains at the heart of the church’s social concerns.

“That’s where we really have to start, even in trying to formulate a response,” Archbishop Broglio said. “We have to start with the human person and with his or her dignity.”

More from America

A deeper dive

The Weekly Dispatch takes a deep dive into breaking events and issues of significance around our world and our nation today, providing the background readers need to make better sense of the headlines speeding past each week. Some recent reports: “Archbishop Gudziak: Ukraine’s only option is to fight on after Trump’s appeasement of Putin” and “Trump calls off livestreamed execution after backlash. Have Americans finally had enough of the death penalty?”

For more news and analysis from around the world, visit Dispatches. This week: “Is Lula’s win in Brazil a win for Catholics?” and “Archbishop of Detroit calls out voter suppression ahead of midterms: ‘It’s an affront to God.’”

Kevin Clarke is America’s chief correspondent and the author of Oscar Romero: Love Must Win Out (Liturgical Press).