Pope revises Catechism’s teaching on death penalty

August 02, 2018

The death penalty is “inadmissible” in the light of the Gospel, and the Church “works with determination for its abolition worldwide,” according to a revised formulation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church’s teaching on the death penalty.

In an address delivered last October on the 25th anniversary of the Catechism’s first edition, Pope Francis called for a “more adequate and coherent treatment” of the death penalty in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

“This issue cannot be reduced to a mere résumé of traditional teaching without taking into account not only the doctrine as it has developed in the teaching of recent Popes, but also the change in the awareness of the Christian people which rejects an attitude of complacency before a punishment deeply injurious of human dignity,” Pope Francis said at the time. “It must be clearly stated that the death penalty is an inhumane measure that, regardless of how it is carried out, abases human dignity.”

In a May 11 audience with Cardinal Luis Ladaria Ferrer, the prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, Pope Francis approved the revised text of the Catechism’s number 2267, though the revision was not made public until August 2. Citing the Pope’s October 2017 address, the new version states:

Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good. Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state. Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption. Consequently, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”, and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.

The Catechism’s n. 2267 has already undergone revision: the 1997 Latin typical edition of the Catechism incorporated the teaching of St. John Paul’s 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae. The 1997 edition of the Catechism states:

The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude, presupposing full ascertainment of the identity and responsibility of the offender, recourse to the death penalty, when this is the only practicable way to defend the lives of human beings effectively against the aggressor. If, instead, bloodless means are sufficient to defend against the aggressor and to protect the safety of persons, public authority should limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person. Today, in fact, given the means at the State’s disposal to effectively repress crime by rendering inoffensive the one who has committed it, without depriving him definitively of the possibility of redeeming himself, cases of absolute necessity for suppression of the offender ‘today ... are very rare, if not practically non-existent.’

In a letter to the world’s bishops explaining the revision, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith quoted statements by St. John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis.

“The new formulation of number 2267 of the Catechism expresses an authentic development of doctrine that is not in contradiction with the prior teachings of the Magisterium,” the Congregation stated in its letter. “These teachings, in fact, can be explained in the light of the primary responsibility of the public authority to protect the common good in a social context in which the penal sanctions were understood differently, and had developed in an environment in which it was more difficult to guarantee that the criminal could not repeat his crime.”

 

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Further information:

• Nuova redazione del n. 2267 del Catechismo della Chiesa Cattolica sulla pena di morte – Rescriptum “ex Audentia SS.mi”, 02.08.2018 (Vatican Press Office)
• Letter to the Bishops regarding the new revision of number 2267 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the death penalty (Vatican Press Office)
• New revision of number 2267 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the death penalty – Rescriptum “ex Audentia SS.mi”, 02.08.2018 (Vatican Press Office)
• Letter to the Bishops regarding the new revision of number 2267 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the death penalty, from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 02.08.2018 (Vatican Press Office)