Author: Matthew Shadle

In yesterday’s post I considered two arguments for how the Catholic Church could introduce an absolute prohibition on the death penalty into its teaching while remaining consistent with earlier teaching that the state is authorized to use the death penalty if necessary for the defense of the public: 1) although states have a hypothetical right to carry out the death penalty in defense of the public, the death penalty as it is currently practiced is intrinsically evil; and 2) the death penalty must be linguistically distinguished from the defense of the public by the state. These reflections were occasioned...

In an October address to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of the Catechism of Catholic Church, Pope Francis raised the possibility that the Catechism be revised to provide a more absolute prohibition against the death penalty. Francis argues that the death penalty is “deeply injurious of human dignity.” He goes so far as to say that it “is per se contrary to the Gospel, because it entails the willful suppression of a human life that never ceases to be sacred in the eyes of its Creator and of which – ultimately – only God is the true...