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Hasn't the Church Changed Its Teaching on the Death Penalty?

The Short Answer

In 2018 Pope Francis revised paragraph 2267 of the Catechism to say that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person,” and that the Church “works with determination for its abolition worldwide.” For most of her history the Church accepted that legitimate authority could, after a fair trial, put a guilty person to death for the gravest crimes. The Church presents the 2018 text as “an authentic development of doctrine that is not in contradiction with the prior teachings of the Magisterium.” What has changed is the judgement about whether, in today’s circumstances, execution can be justified. What has not changed is the principle beneath it: the dignity of every human person, including the guilty.

The question comes from two directions. Some Catholics argue that Scripture and tradition clearly permit capital punishment, so the Church cannot now call it wrong. Others ask: if the Church can change on this, why can she not change on contraception, or women’s ordination?

What the Church Does and Does Not Claim

The Church does not claim:

The Church does claim that “the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes,” and that, since “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,” the death penalty is now inadmissible (CCC 2267).

How the Teaching Developed

What the tradition held

Scripture contains capital punishment. After the Flood, God says: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for God made man in his own image” (Genesis 9:6). St Paul says that the ruling authority “does not bear the sword in vain” (Romans 13:4). St Thomas Aquinas held that the public authority could put to death those whose crimes gravely endangered the community (Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 64, a. 2). For centuries the Church accepted this.

But Scripture also shows a God who protects even the murderer Cain (Genesis 4:15), who has “no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live” (Ezekiel 33:11), and a Christ who stopped the stoning of a woman with the words, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7).

A narrowing over decades

The change did not happen suddenly. In Evangelium Vitae (1995), St John Paul II taught that the death penalty should not be used except in cases of absolute necessity, when society could not otherwise be protected, and that today such cases “are very rare, if not practically non-existent.” The 1997 edition of the Catechism adopted that wording. Benedict XVI supported efforts to abolish the death penalty. The 2018 revision takes the next step, concluding that, given modern means of protecting society, execution is no longer admissible.

Why the Church calls it development

The letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith explaining the change says that “the political and social situation of the past made the death penalty an acceptable means for the protection of the common good.” Three things, the Catechism says, have changed: a deeper awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost by grave crime; a new understanding of what penal sanctions are for, including the possibility of redemption; and the existence of secure prisons. The principle, the inviolable dignity of the person, has not changed; its application has.

Common Objections

”The Church has simply contradicted herself.”

The Church has never taught that the state must execute, or that capital punishment is good in itself. She taught that it could be legitimate when necessary to protect society. The 2018 text judges that today it is not necessary, and that the dignity of the person, which was always the deeper principle, now rules it out. Some theologians continue to debate how best to explain the continuity, and the Church acknowledges the question.

”If the Church can change this, she can change anything.”

Not so. Some teachings concern prudential judgements applied to changing circumstances; others concern what the Church has received from Christ as part of the faith. The death penalty, which depends on the means a society has to protect itself, belongs to the first kind. Teachings such as the ordination only of men, or the meaning of marriage, rest on what the Church holds Christ Himself established. The Church distinguishes between developing a teaching and abandoning it.

”Some crimes are so terrible that death is the only just punishment.”

The Church does not deny that some crimes deserve the severest punishment, nor does she minimise the suffering of victims and their families. But she holds that justice can be served, and society protected, without taking a life, and that even the worst offender keeps a dignity that no crime can erase, and the possibility of repentance.

In Summary

For most of her history the Church accepted that the state could, in grave cases, impose the death penalty. Over the past half century, beginning with St John Paul II, she has judged that in modern conditions it is not necessary, and in 2018 she declared it inadmissible. She presents this as a development, not a reversal: the same principle, the dignity of every person, applied in new circumstances. That distinction, between developing a judgement and abandoning what Christ handed on, also explains why some other teachings cannot change.

See also Why Is the Church Against Abortion and Euthanasia? and Why Can’t Women Be Priests?

This article follows the method St Robert Bellarmine used in his Controversies*: state the question fairly, clear away misunderstandings, make the case, then answer each objection. See How We Answer Objections.*

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