Drinking in Madness: What the Church Asks Before the Pentagon Livestreams an Execution

On Thursday, the Pentagon confirmed that the firing squad execution of Nidal Hasan, the Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009, will be streamed live to the public on December 3. No American execution has ever been broadcast. That is worth repeating. No American execution has even been broadcast. Senators of both parties, the Vice President, and the president of the U.S. bishops have objected or voiced concerns. Set that sentence itself aside for a moment. The livestream itself raises its own question, one the Church has been answering since the amphitheaters of Rome. What does a public death do to the dignity of the man who dies, and to the people who watch it?

The News Story

The Pentagon says it will livestream the execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, the former Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people and wounded 32 at Fort Hood, Texas, on November 5, 2009. Hasan is scheduled to die by firing squad at Fort Hood on December 3 at 1 p.m., the hour of the original attack. No execution in the United States has ever been broadcast, and the military has not executed anyone since the 1961 hanging of Army Pvt. John Bennett.¹

President Donald Trump approved the firing squad on the recommendation of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon disclosed on Monday, October 5. Military law requires presidential approval for an execution, and only the president may set the method of that execution. Acting Army Secretary Adam Telle then set the date. In an interview with Real America’s Voice, Hegseth said, “We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public.” Asked whether Hasan had made any final requests, he answered, “Don’t care. We’ll see him on December 3.” On Thursday, a Pentagon official told Reuters, “It will be livestreamed. Details will follow.” Hegseth has said a public execution would help to deter crime.²

Hasan opened fire with a laser-sighted handgun inside a medical processing building where soldiers were receiving immunizations along with their clearance to deploy to Afghanistan. Police shot him during his arrest, and he is paralyzed from the waist down. At his 2013 court-martial, he dismissed his lawyers, admitted he was the gunman, and offered almost no defense. A military jury sentenced him to death. His final legal challenge was rejected in April 2025. Legal experts told the Associated Press he could still file a habeas petition in civilian court, and Eugene Fidell of Yale Law School said that process “frankly might outlast the current administration.”³

The plan has drawn criticism from both parties. Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, called it “beyond disgusting.” Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska urged the Pentagon “to reverse this gruesome decision,” and Sen. John Curtis of Utah compared it to the spectacles of ancient Rome. Democratic Sens. Chris Murphy and Mark Warner also condemned it. Vice President JD Vance, a convert to Catholicism, said on Friday, “I don’t know that that’s actually going to happen,” and added that if it is streamed, “I’m not going to be watching it.” Asked the same day whether he wanted the execution livestreamed, Trump said, “Well, they’re making a determination about that,” and added, “I really don’t care how he goes, as long as he goes.” The White House has referred questions about the stream to the Pentagon.⁴

On October 9, Archbishop Paul S. Coakley of Oklahoma City, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, called the decision “a barbaric promotion of a culture of death” that “must be reconsidered.” He said that while Hasan’s actions cannot be condoned, neither can making his execution a public spectacle. The good bishop quoted Romans 12:17: “do not repay anyone evil for evil.”⁵

Legal scholars are divided. Deborah Denno of Fordham University said a livestream could make executions “much more transparent.” Elisabeth Semel of the UC Berkeley Death Penalty Clinic said she could not recall a public viewing “instigated by the government.” Death-row lawyer Clive Stafford Smith told Al Jazeera he expects court challenges, including over how children would be kept from watching the execution. The announcement came days after Tennessee’s failed lethal injection of Christa Pike, which led that state to halt all executions for the year. The last public execution in the United States took place in the 1930s.⁶

Catholic Social Teaching Analysis

Who the Camera Is For

Pete Hegseth has been very direct in discussing what he intends to have done. “We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public,” he said, and he set the hour at 1 p.m. on a Thursday for a reason: “We’re going to do it at one o’clock, which is when he did it.”⁷ A firing squad needs rifles and a wall. A livestream needs an audience. So it is the camera that answers a question the rifles never ask: who is this livestream for?

Eight days ago I wrote here about Christa Pike, the Tennessee woman who survived her own execution, and about the Church’s teaching that the death penalty is inadmissible. I won’t rebuild that argument today. Pope Leo XIV put it briefly last April, in a video message to Catholics in his home state of Illinois: “the dignity of the person is not lost even after very serious crimes are committed,” and so “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.”⁸ Archbishop Paul Coakley, speaking for the American bishops on Friday, added that a public execution “will only further undermine the moral fabric of our nation and be a blight on the conscience of its people.”⁹

That second sentence is the one I want to follow. The bishop’s president objected not only to the death but also to watching the execution take place. Those are two different wrongs, and the second would remain even for a reader who still thinks the first can be justified. It’s worth asking why that second reason remains wrong.

A Man Made Into a Lesson

The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church has a sentence that reads as if it were written for this week. “The person cannot be a means for carrying out economic, social or political projects imposed by some authority, even in the name of an alleged progress of the civil community as a whole or of other persons.” In no case, it says, “is the human person to be manipulated for ends that are foreign to his own development.”¹⁰

Now look at the reason Hegseth gave for the stream. He told Jack Posobiec that public viewing would deter crime.¹¹ Deterrence by broadcast means Nidal Hasan’s last minutes are being staged for people who have never met him, to change their behavior. His death becomes a teaching aid. The timing makes the point sharper. Choosing the hour of the 2009 attack turns a sentence into a reenactment. I understand the instinct to do just that; I’ve felt it reading about the 146 shell casings investigators found inside that medical building. The Church asks us to notice what that instinct is doing to us. A public execution turns Hasan’s death into a means to carry out a social project which the Church clearly states we can not do.

The Compendium names what punishment is for, and the list is short. It defends public order and guarantees the safety of persons, and “it becomes as well an instrument for the correction of the offender,” aimed at “a justice that reconciles, a justice capable of restoring harmony in social relationships disrupted by the criminal act.”¹² Hasan has been held on death row at Fort Leavenworth since his 2013 sentence, and he’s paralyzed from the waist down.¹³ Public order is safe from him already. A camera adds nothing to his correction and nothing to anyone’s reconciliation. The Compendium even says which means of deterrence the Church prefers: “bloodless methods of deterrence and punishment,” because they “better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.”¹⁴

Where St. Thomas Draws the Line

St. Thomas Aquinas gives us a test that cuts through a lot of noise. He asked whether vengeance is lawful, and he said it can be. A public authority that punishes the guilty “makes use of the power granted him by God.” Everything turns on the aim. If the punisher’s intention “is directed chiefly to some good,” such as the sinner’s amendment, his restraint, or upholding justice, the punishment may be lawful. “But if his intention is directed chiefly to the evil of the person on whom he takes vengeance and rests there, then his vengeance is altogether unlawful: because to take pleasure in another’s evil belongs to hatred, which is contrary to the charity whereby we are bound to love all men.”¹⁵

Hold that up against a few of this week’s sentences. Asked whether Hasan had made any final requests, the Secretary of Defense said, “Don’t care. We’ll see him on December 3.” The President said, “I really don’t care how he goes, as long as he goes.”¹⁶ I can’t see into either man’s heart. Thomas’s question is still the right one to ask of a policy, and it’s a fair one to ask of ourselves. What good does the stream aim at that a closed room with lawful witnesses would not? If the honest answer is “people want to see it,” then the intention rests where Thomas says it must never rest. The intention rests on Hasan, and we should all stay far away from that.

What Watching Does to the Watcher

St. Augustine knew a young man named Alypius who studied law in Rome and hated the gladiator shows. His friends dragged him into the amphitheater anyway, and he shut his eyes, certain he could stay “absent while present.” Then the crowd roared at a man going down, and he looked at the scene. “For, directly he saw that blood, he therewith imbibed a sort of savageness; nor did he turn away, but fixed his eye, drinking in madness unconsciously, and was delighted with the guilty contest, and drunken with the bloody pastime.” He left as “one of the throng he came unto,” and he came back again and brought others.¹⁷

Augustine was describing his friend, a good student with a conscience, and he was describing how a spectacle works on ordinary people. Sen. John Curtis reached for Rome, too, this week, and he warned against “feeding that appetite.”¹⁸ The appetite is real, and a livestream feeds it on a scale the Colosseum never managed. Every phone in the country would be a seat in the stands.

The Catechism calls this scandal: “an attitude or behavior which leads another to do evil.” It adds that scandal “can be provoked by laws or institutions,” and that “anyone who uses the power at his disposal in such a way that it leads others to do wrong becomes guilty of scandal and responsible for the evil that he has directly or indirectly encouraged.”¹⁹ A government stream is about as clear a case of an institution using its power to shape what people desire as I can imagine. The Compendium puts the question every broadcaster should ask, and the Pentagon is now a broadcaster: does what we show “make people more spiritually mature, more aware of the dignity of their humanity, more responsible or more open to others”?²⁰ Do not kid yourself or allow others to kid you. Watching a public execution will change you, and not for the better.

Children belong in this paragraph too. Clive Stafford Smith, a death row lawyer, asked how anyone means to keep minors from watching.²¹ No one has said. Our Lord had a word for those who cause little ones to stumble, and the Catechism quotes it in its passage on scandal (Matthew 18:6). This should be a top concern for all of us. As we have previously seen, no control we have is absolute, so children will see this.

The Crowd at Golgotha

Christians have a public execution at the center of their faith, and the Gospels record the audience. “And the people stood by, watching” (Luke 23:35). The rulers scoffed. The soldiers mocked. Then St. Luke adds a line that should stop us: “And all the multitudes who assembled to see the sight, when they saw what had taken place, returned home beating their breasts” (Luke 23:48). They came to see a sight, and they went home beating their breasts.

Nidal Hasan is guilty. Thirteen people are dead because of him, and 32 more were wounded. The Church condones none of it. St. Paul’s command covers the guilty too: “Repay no one evil for evil,” and “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:17, 21). A nation that broadcasts a killing in response to a killing has let evil set the terms. We will not be a better nation for having allowed this execution to be broadcast.

What I’d Watch

Watch for the “details” the Pentagon promised. Watch whether President Trump, who says the decision is still being made, lets the stream go forward. Watch for a habeas petition in civilian court, which could push the date well past December 3. And watch Congress, where senators of both parties have already objected.

Catholics should do more than watch. Write to your senators and to the Secretary of Defense, briefly and respectfully, and ask that the camera stay off. Then pray. Pray for the 13 who died at Fort Hood and for the 32 wounded, and for families who will hear this story retold all autumn. Pray for the soldiers who may be ordered to raise those rifles. Pray for Nidal Hasan, that he repents before December 3. And pray for the men who will decide: that they choose a justice that reconciles over a justice that entertains.

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This story turns on the dignity of the human person: no one, not even a man condemned for murder, may be made a means to another’s end, and an authority that turns a death into a spectacle wounds the people it invites to watch.

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Notes

1. ↑ “Pentagon says firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter will be livestreamed,” Associated Press via PBS News, accessed October 10, 2026, pbs.org; Phil Stewart, “US to livestream Army execution of Fort Hood shooter, Pentagon official says,” Reuters via WHTC, October 8, 2026, whtc.com; “Firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter will be livestreamed, Pentagon says,” ITV News, October 9, 2026, itv.com; Joseph Rowe, “Nidal Hasan execution in Fort Hood to be livestreamed publicly, Hegseth says,” FOX 7 Austin, October 8, 2026, fox7austin.com.
2. ↑ Stewart, “US to livestream Army execution”; “US to livestream Fort Hood shooter’s execution: Is that legal?,” Al Jazeera, October 9, 2026, aljazeera.com; Rowe, “Nidal Hasan execution”; Associated Press, “Pentagon says firing squad execution”.
3. ↑ Associated Press, “Pentagon says firing squad execution”; ITV News, “Firing squad execution”; Stewart, “US to livestream Army execution”; Emma Bussey and Jasmine Baehr, “Pentagon seeks Trump approval for first US military execution in 60 years following Fort Hood mass shooting,” Fox News, September 24, 2025, foxnews.com.
4. ↑ Will Weissert, Lisa Mascaro and Holly Meyer, “Vance expresses doubts about Pentagon plan to livestream Fort Hood shooter’s execution,” Associated Press via KPRC, October 9, 2026, click2houston.com; Al Jazeera, “US to livestream Fort Hood shooter’s execution”; Associated Press, “Pentagon says firing squad execution”.
5. ↑ Christian Datoc, “Catholic bishops condemn Trump administration’s plan to livestream execution of Fort Hood shooter,” Washington Examiner, October 9, 2026, washingtonexaminer.com; “US bishops’ president condemns ‘barbaric’ Pentagon plan to livestream execution,” OSV News, accessed October 10, 2026, osvnews.com.
6. ↑ ITV News, “Firing squad execution”; Al Jazeera, “US to livestream Fort Hood shooter’s execution”; Stewart, “US to livestream Army execution”.
7. ↑ Stewart, “US to livestream Army execution”; Al Jazeera, “US to livestream Fort Hood shooter’s execution”.
8. ↑ Pope Leo XIV, Video Message to the Participants in the Commemorative Event Marking the 15th Anniversary of the Abolition of the Death Penalty in the State of Illinois (DePaul University, Chicago, April 24, 2026), vatican.va.
9. ↑ Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, statement, in “USCCB President Condemns Plans for Livestream of Fort Hood Shooter’s Execution as ‘a Barbaric Promotion of a Culture of Death,’” United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, October 9, 2026, usccb.org.
10. ↑ Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2004), no. 133, vatican.va.
11. ↑ Al Jazeera, “US to livestream Fort Hood shooter’s execution”; Stewart, “US to livestream Army execution”.
12. ↑ Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium, no. 403.
13. ↑ Bussey and Baehr, “Pentagon seeks Trump approval”; ITV News, “Firing squad execution”.
14. ↑ Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium, no. 405.
15. ↑ Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 108, a. 1, and ad 1, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, in New Advent, newadvent.org.
16. ↑ Stewart, “US to livestream Army execution”; Weissert, Mascaro and Meyer, “Vance expresses doubts”.
17. ↑ Saint Augustine, Confessions, book 6, chap. 8, trans. J. G. Pilkington, in New Advent, newadvent.org.
18. ↑ Weissert, Mascaro and Meyer, “Vance expresses doubts”.
19. ↑ Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), nos. 2284, 2286-2287, vatican.va.
20. ↑ Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium, no. 415.
21. ↑ Al Jazeera, “US to livestream Fort Hood shooter’s execution”.

Books Cited

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• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Latin-English edition, Complete Set (Aquinas Institute / Emmaus Academic, 2012)
• Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition (Doubleday / Image, 2003)