Cardinal Blase Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago, criticized a White House social media post that combined action movie scenes with footage of U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran, saying the portrayal treated a deadly conflict “like it’s a video game.”
In a March 7 statement, Cardinal Cupich pointed to the video posted March 5 on the official White House X account that shows clips from popular action movies spliced with real strike footage from the war on Iran and captioned “JUSTICE THE AMERICAN WAY.”
“A real war with real death and real suffering being treated like it’s a video game — it’s sickening,” Cardinal Cupich wrote, pointing to reports that more than 1,000 Iranian civilians had been killed during days of bombardment.
The cardinal said the post dishonored not only the civilians but also U.S. troops killed in the conflict and warned that modern media and technology are turning war into entertainment for viewers far removed from the battlefield.
“The moral crisis we are facing is not just a matter of the war itself, but also how we view violence,” he said, arguing that war has increasingly become “a spectator sport or strategy game.”
The cardinal called this the “gamifying” of war — a trend he said strips away the humanity of those affected by violence.
The cardinal warned of the suffering of the Iranian people being treated as content for public consumption. When Americans become captivated by the destructive power of the military and the “spectacle” of explosions, he wrote, they risk becoming desensitized to the true human cost of war.
“Let’s not forget,” he said, “a ‘hit’ isn’t putting points on the board; it’s a grieving family.”