On the death penalty, an uncertain trumpet

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Oct 14, 2026

Nowhere has confusion about Catholic teaching on capital punishment been more in evidence than in the responses by Church leaders to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s plan to livestream the execution by firing squad of the convicted Fort Hood terrorist Nidal Hasan.

Hegseth’s decision to make capital punishment a spectator event is appalling: an invitation for the public to watch and applaud the violent end of a human life. Even if the death penalty is justified, the move to make the execution a form of entertainment—a close relative of a snuff film—is an exercise in government-sponsored brutality, recalling the blood games of pagan Rome. The word “barbaric,” used frequently in statements by Catholic prelates, is perfectly fitting.

However, prelates’ statements generally failed to make a crucial distinction. The plan to livestream the execution is indeed barbaric, and deserving of condemnation. But the blanket condemnation of all executions is not easily squared with the traditional teachings of the Church. Church leaders would be wise to recognize that an absolute rejection of capital punishment conflicts with the sincere beliefs of many Catholics, living and dead—including past popes, saints, and doctors of the Church.

So in their responses to the plan for a livestream execution, our bishops were saying the right thing, but giving the wrong reasons.

The view from Rome

Immediately following Hegseth’s announcement, the news media were full of reports that Pope Leo called the death penalty “inadmissible” in a social-media post. Of course the Pope was only repeating the language that Pope Francis had used, and introduced into the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The Catechism is rightly regarded as a formal expression of Catholic teaching; a social-media statement on the papal account (probably written by an aide) carries none of the gravitas of a magisterial statement. Yet it was that post, rather than the Catechism, that reporters cited incessantly: an illustration of the danger of papal loquacity.

But even as it appears in the Catechism the statement that execution is “inadmissible” is problematical. First, because the word itself is unclear, and unfamiliar in the context of Catholic teaching. Is something that is “inadmissible” always prohibited? (If so, why not say so?) Next, because the Catechism contains a number of statements that are still disputed. (Ask Cardinal Hollerich or Father James Martin about its treatment of homosexuality.) But third and most important, because the current entry in the Catechism contrasts sharply with earlier entries on the same subject. If the Catechism is a definitive statement of the faith (a proposition which itself can be debated), then a previous edition of the Catechism must also be definitive, and if they clash, the faithful are left in confusion.

The original edition of the Catechism, as issued with the approval of Pope John Paul II, said:

…the traditional teaching of the Church has acknowledged as well-founded the right and duty of legitimate public authority to punish malefactors by means of penalties commensurate with the gravity of the crime, not excluding, in cases of extreme gravity, the death penalty. [#2266; emphasis added]

(The gravity of Nidal Hasan’s crime is not disputed.)

To be sure, Pope John Paul II himself argued against the use of capital punishment, even as the Catechism that he promulgated repeated the traditional Church teaching that the state has the right to enact the death penalty. During his 1999 visit to the US, he referred to his own encyclical Evangelium Vitae as he told a crowd in St. Louis:

A sign of hope is the increasing recognition that the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil. Modern society has the means of protecting itself, without definitively denying criminals the chance to reform.

Changing the Catechism

Pope John Paul II then ordered an editorial change in the Catechism. The entry on capital punishment still conceded the state’s right to execute criminals, but cautioned that “cases of absolute necessity for suppression of the offender today are very rate, if not practically non-existent.” [#2267]

Here the Pope was concentrating on the use of capital punishment to protect society from dangerous criminals. In that respect he was reflecting the thought expressed by St. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologia [IIaIIae,q. 64, a. 3: “It is permissible to kill a criminal if this is necessary for the welfare of the whole community.” St. Thomas also wrote in the Summa Contra Gentiles: “The life of certain pestiferous men is an impediment to the common good which is the concord of human society. Therefore, certain men must be removed by death from the society of men.”

The Church’s clear acceptance of the death penalty continued through the mid-20th century, when Pope Pius XII explained that execution did not violate the principle that the state should safeguard human life, explaining:

Even when it concerns the execution of a man condemned to death, the state does not dispose of the individual’s right to live. It is reserved then to the public power to deprive the condemned man of the benefit of life, in expiation of his fault, when already, by his crime, he has dispossessed himself of the right to life.

Notice that here Pius XII invokes the notion of retributive justice, arguing that a man guilty of heinous crimes has forfeited his right to life in society. That argument would seem to bear some weight, even if the convicted felon no longer posed a serious risk to that society. Indeed it could even be seen as an affirmation of the dignity of human life, if the government proclaims that a capital crime—murder, ordinarily—is such a grave violation of the community’s norms that the perpetrator can no longer live in that community.

A sharp break with the past

The Vatican campaign against capital punishment, as mounted by Pope John Paul II and continued by Pope Benedict XVI, could have been presented as a development of Church teaching. The two Pontiffs did not deny the earlier magisterial statement affirming the state’s authority to execute criminals. Instead they urged political leaders not to exercise that authority, in order to underline the dignity of human life, at a time when that dignity was under severe attack.

But under Pope Francis the Vatican campaign took a sharp turn. He introduced the new term “inadmissible,” allowing for no exceptions, no extenuating circumstances. At his direction the Catechism was changed again, this time explicitly saying that the past teaching was rejected. The relevant passage [#2267] now reads:

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. [emphasis added]

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.

This major change in Church teaching is attributed to three factors, none of them theological, all of them highly debatable:

1. The “increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost…” This could be interpreted as a claim that the Church had only recently discovered this innate dignity, or that society in the 21st century had come to accept the Church’s stand on the dignity of life. Neither proposition is easy to defend.
2. The “new understanding” of “the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state.” The Catechism does not explain this “new understanding,” but in context it seems to refer to a desire (by whom?) to rehabilitate criminals rather than punish them. Again, that desire is certainly not new; nor is it evident that rehabilitation has become more successful.
3. The “more effective systems of detention.” If this means that jailbreaks are less frequently successful, it may be true—although it is doubtful that the Vatican would welcome all the tight restrictions in force in maximum-security prisons. If the phrase means that prisons are better at reforming violent criminals, again that statement is hard to defend. In fact some vicious men remain a danger to others—to prison guards and fellow inmates—even inside penitentiary walls.

Pope Francis later complicated the argument against capital punishment still further when he said a life sentence is in effect a death penalty. So he left governments with no “admissible” means of removing an unrepentant killer from society permanently.

In a letter announcing the new change in the Catechism, Cardinal Luis Ladaria, the prefect of what was then the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, insisted that this was “a coherent development of Catholic doctrine.” His explanation made it clear that the Vatican now saw only one important purpose for the punishment of crime: “the new understanding of penal sanctions applied by the modern State, which should be oriented above all to the rehabilitation and social reintegration of the criminal.”

Cardinal Ladaria’s explanation conflicts with another passage [#2266] in the Catechism, which repeats (in a slightly altered form) the teaching of the original edition: “Punishment has the primary aim of redressing the disorder introduced by the offense.”

So what is the primary reason for punishing criminals, and how should government protect society from violent offenders? Until the Vatican furnishes understandable answers to those very practical questions, the calls for abolition of the death penalty will remain unconvincing.

Next: American bishops miss an opportunity.