Pope Francis shook the Christian world last week at a gathering to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Catechism of the Catholic Church when he denounced the death penalty as "contrary to the Gospel." While various popes and bishops have long encouraged civil governments to minimize the use of capital punishment, Francis's statements constitute a radical departure by claiming that Church doctrine on the issue has been fundamentally wrong for two millennia.
The Catechism itself explains that capital punishment is not inherently evil and within the scope of "legitimate public authority ... to inflict punishment proportionate to the gravity of the offense." While the next paragraph adds that technological advances have rendered cases in which the death penalty is "absolutely necessary ... very rare, if not practically non-existent." But even this unusually prudential addition does not proscribe the death penalty in any case, and its first sentence sums up why: "The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty."-- More...
