The Frame The image is almost too perfect for analysis: the first American pontiff, elected from the sees of Chicago and Rome, posting on X that the death penalty is “inadmissible” on the World Day Against the Death Penalty. Meanwhile, the Pentagon announces it will livestream the firing squad execution of Nidal Malik Hasan at Fort Leavenworth — the first U.S. military execution since 1961, broadcast in real time to a global audience. The coincidence is not ironic. It is diagnostic. We are watching the final separation of moral authority from coercive power, each reduced to performance. The Vatican has no armies. The Pentagon has no catechism. Both now operate in the same medium: the feed. The Signal Commentators will frame this as a clash of values: Catholic social teaching versus American exceptionalism, mercy versus justice, the old world versus the new. They will miss the signal. The signal is that both actors...