American bishops miss an opportunity

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Oct 15, 2026

Yesterday in this space I reflected on the confusion caused by a series of changes in the Catechism regarding the Church’s teaching on the death penalty. In this column I focus on the responses of the American bishops to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s announcement that the execution by firing squad of the Fort Hood terrorist Nidal Hasan would be livestreamed.

Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who heads the Archdiocese for the Military Services, repeated “the opposition of the Catholic Church to capital punishment.” In a more powerful gesture, he said: “As I would in the case of a procured abortion, I oblige any Catholics assign to the firing squad to request to be excused from this action contrary to the teaching of the Church.”

This directive understandably captured headline attention; the archbishop was directing Catholic soldiers not to carry out an order from their superiors. Archbishop Broglio obviously would not take that action lightly, but he insisted: “The dignity of the human person is at stake.”

American Catholic prelates have frequently voiced opposition to the death penalty. But here the archbishop was going much further, demanding that Catholic soldiers decline to cooperate. (Have American bishops ever given similarly stark public directives to medical personnel, demanding that they refuse to cooperate in surgical procedures that violate human dignity? Would any American prelate “oblige” nurses to refuse assignment to a ward for “gender-affirming” care?) Especially when American Catholics are demonstrably split on the morality of capital punishment, what prompted the archbishop to take such a stand in this case? What is it about the scheduled execution of the Fort Hood terrorist that so many Church leaders have described as “barbaric?”

If capital punishment itself is “barbaric” in any case, then bishops should put the same stringent demands on Catholics involved in the process of any execution. But the Fort Hood Case presented two new details: the execution would be carried out by a firing squad, and (according to Hegseth’s plan) it would be made public on livestream.

The first of these factors, the firing squad, might be objectionable to some moralists. But it is a traditional means of execution in the military. Death by firing squad is quick and certain. The recent botched executions by more “modern” means caused much more human suffering. And a firing squad does not require medical personnel to become involved in the grim business of causing death.

The public broadcast of the execution, on the other hand, should outrage anyone. Archbishop Broglio asked, “do we really want to imitate the terrorists of this world and make a public spectacle of barbarically killing our adversaries?” Especially because Hasan is now confined to a wheelchair, the display of his death would very likely fire the passion of new Islamic radicals. Thus the move would very likely not serve the deterrent effect of punishment, but inflame more terrorists.

Yet even that point does not reach the central argument against the livestream execution. That crucial point was made by Bishop Daniel Garcia of Austin, Texas (whose diocese includes Fort Hood), when he said that “a public broadcast of this execution would make a spectacle of death.” It is the prospect of that spectacle—of the perverse exultation in a man’s death—that makes Hegseth’s proposal truly barbaric.

The American hierarchy might have made a very effective argument against this execution, in this fashion, if they had focused on an argument that all Catholics—and all men of good will—should readily understand. The confused state of Church teaching on capital punishment, and the tendency of Church leaders to issue broad aspirational statements rather than rigorous arguments—caused the American bishops to miss a teaching opportunity.