The Church Did Not 'Change Teaching' on the Death Penalty
Pope Francis 2018 revision of the Catechism followed a trajectory already present in Catholic teaching. Let's see how
6-minute clip, from Ep. 41 Catholic Confidence - Where did misinformation about the so-called change of Church teaching on the death penalty really come from?
In a recent episode of Fire Branded I explained that part of my objective as an online Catholic communicator is to help Catholics to think clearly, cleanly, and to be able to spot a lie that looks very much like Truth. An example I gave was the misinformation about the so-called change of teaching on the death penalty under Pope Francis in 2018. I wanted to offer an explanation of the Truth.
I encounter this all the time, “The Pope/Church changed teaching on the death penalty!” The charge is usually framed dramatically: the Church reversed herself, abandoned tradition, or contradicted her own doctrine. That’s all incorrect.
The sources of the history of this teaching tell a different story. The 2018 revision of the Catechism didn’t not introduce a new moral principle about the death penalty. What it does is reflects a development in the Church’s judgment about whether the conditions that once justified its use still exist.
Catholic teaching had long held that capital punishment could be used only if it was necessary to defend human life and protect society. It was always a very-last resort, and only to protect society. But as modern penal systems developed and that necessity largely disappeared (which we’ll see in a minute), the Church’s moral assessment of the death penalty developed accordingly.
The Catechism teaches that legitimate public authority has the duty to defend the common good and protect human life. Punishment serves several purposes: restoring justice, protecting society, and contributing to the correction of the offender. As the Catechism states, “Legitimate public authority has the right and duty to inflict punishment proportionate to the gravity of the offense” (CCC 2266).
Historically, Catholic teaching did not exclude the death penalty in principle if it were the only possible way to defend society from a dangerous aggressor. Yet that permission was never unconditional. The moral reasoning of the Church always placed limits on the use of the death penalty.
Those limits appear clearly in the classical theological tradition.
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Theological History
Aquinas and Conditional Structure
St. Thomas Aquinas defended capital punishment on the grounds that it protects the community. In the Summa Theologiae he writes that if a person is dangerous to the community,
“it is praiseworthy and advantageous that he be killed in order to safeguard the common good” (Summa Theologiae, II–II, q.64, a.2).
But Aquinas doesn’t present execution as a good in itself. In the same passage he states the moral principle first:
“Although it be evil in itself to kill a man so long as he retains his dignity…” Only then does he introduce the exception. In other words, killing may be permitted if a criminal has become “dangerous and infectious to the community” and the act is necessary “for the safeguarding of the common good.”
The structure of the argument is deliberate. The act itself remains morally grave; it becomes permissible only under specific conditions tied to the defense of society.
This same conditional pattern appears earlier in the thought of St. Augustine. When discussing the commandment “Thou shalt not kill,” he explains that the rule admits certain exceptions under lawful authority.
“The same divine authority that says ‘Thou shalt not kill’ makes certain exceptions… when the power to put men to death has been granted by God to the state”
(City of God).
In other words, the commandment establishes the rule, but civil authority may act differently if the protection of society requires it. And that’s a call for the Magisterium to make—not secular lawmakers.
Even then Augustine urges restraint. Writing to Roman officials, he acknowledged the legitimacy of criminal penalties but pleaded that “the punishment be tempered by mercy” (Letter 153).
Taken together, these sources show the same theological logic at work. Killing is normally forbidden, but the tradition recognized that it’s permissible if—and only if—the protection of the community required it.
Roman Catechism
The Roman Catechism makes the same point when discussing civil authority and the Fifth Commandment. It explains that the just use of the state’s power to punish, serves “the preservation and security of human life.” In other words, the traditional justification for capital punishment was always tied to the defense of the community and the protection of life. So the underlying moral principle has never changed.
By now you can see this pattern consistently throughout the Church’s teaching.
St. John Paul II
What changed was the Church’s assessment of whether modern societies still require the death penalty to achieve the goal of protection of the common good (human life, civil culture). This question was front and center under St. John Paul II.
In his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae, he reaffirmed the authority of the state to punish crime but emphasized the moral importance of non-lethal means whenever they’re sufficient to protect society.
“If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons,” he wrote, “public authority must limit itself to such means” (Evangelium Vitae, 56).
Not “might”, not “should”, not “ought to” but “Must” limit itself to bloodless means.
John Paul II then drew a conclusion about modern conditions: cases in which execution is an absolute necessity are “very rare, if not practically non-existent.”
This is particularly true today, with modern prisons and technology that either didn’t exist, or were not as well developed in 1995. Imagine how primitive they were during Augustine and Aquinas times.
Two years later the Catechism of the Catholic Church was revised to incorporate John Paul II’s reasoning. The 1997 edition of the Catechism stated that “the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor” (CCC 2267).
There’s that “if…” again—the condition I noted above. It’s an “if” that springs up again and again going back to Augustine. Remove “if it’s the only way to protect and defend life” and the death penalty becomes inadmissible.
Paragraph 2267 of the Catechism immediately adds John Paul II’s conclusion that, given modern penal systems, cases requiring execution are “very rare, if not practically non-existent.” So by the late 1990s, the Catechism itself had already narrowed the circumstances under which capital punishment could be justified almost to zero.
Benedict XVI
Benedict XVI articulated the same conditional logic when discussing the death penalty in light of modern penal systems. While acknowledging the traditional principle that civil authority may act to defend society, he emphasized that such measures are justified only under strict conditions. As he explained, the death penalty may be used only when it is necessary to defend society, yet modern circumstances have largely removed that necessity.
“The death penalty should be applied only when it is necessary to defend society… today, as a result of improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent.”
Echoing the trajectory already articulated by John Paul II, Benedict noted that modern penal systems have greatly reduced the need for execution. At the same time, he urged governments to move beyond the practice wherever possible.
“I encourage political leaders to make every effort to eliminate the death penalty.”
The structure is the same one found throughout the tradition: the legitimacy of civil authority is acknowledged, but the use of the death penalty is treated as a measure justified only under exceptional conditions.
It’s worth noting that neither John Paul II nor Benedict XVI were introducing a novel teaching. They echo one another because both are drawing on a line of reasoning that had already been present in the Church’s teaching.
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2018 Revision—Not a Change
Here’s where it all comes together. The 2018 revision of the Catechism has to be read in that context. When Pope Francis approved a new formulation of 2267 stating that the death penalty is “inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person,” he was not introducing an new moral principle. Rather, the revision drew the logical conclusion of a line of reasoning that had been developing for decades, and already reflected the long-established theology (by two Doctors of the Church, one being a Church Father)
When announcing the change, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith explicitly addressed the question of continuity. In a letter to the bishops of the world, Cardinal Luis Ladaria explained that the new formulation “expresses an authentic development of doctrine that is not in contradiction with the prior teachings of the Magisterium.”
Seen in sequence, the trajectory is impossible to deny. Augustine prioritized mercy and is the first authoritative origin (after scripture) of the conditional structure. Aquinas justified capital punishment as only a means of protecting the common good. The Roman Catechism linked civil punishment to the preservation of human life. John Paul II and Benedict XVI argued that modern conditions had rendered execution almost unnecessary. The Catechism incorporated that judgment in 1997.
Francis then articulated the conclusion that follows from those premises: if society can be defended without killing offenders, the death penalty should no longer be used.
At no point did the Church abandon the principle that the state has authority to punish crime. What changed was the Church’s judgment about whether execution is still necessary to protect society. That development reflects the application of longstanding Catholic moral principles to modern conditions. It is not a rupture with tradition but the continuation of the Church’s effort to apply her teaching about justice, punishment, and the dignity of the human person to the realities of the world we live in right now
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Sources
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2266–2267
John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae (1995), §56
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Letter to the Bishops regarding the revision of CCC §2267 (2018)
Holy See Press Office, Rescriptum ex Audientia approving the Catechism revision (2018)
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II–II, q.64, a.2
Catechism of the Council of Trent (Roman Catechism), Fifth Commandment
“That development reflects the application of longstanding Catholic moral principles to modern conditions”.
Therein lies the problem. When John Paul II and Benedict XVI were writing about the death penalty, modern conditions were stable, and their memories of World War II and its chaos were still fresh. Mass death was a thing of the distant past, and the material abundance of the West was enough to protect both the dignity of the criminal and the safety of society as a whole.
Nowadays, however, material conditions are rapidly deteriorating. Tax revenues decline, cuts are made to police, and spending is refocused to war. If you aren’t fortunate enough to belong to a constitutionally-protected class, and/or if you don’t have the financial means to insulate yourself from the decay of institutions that most of us (including myself) had hitherto taken for granted, one could argue that the breakdown of domestic order justifies use of the death penalty as a necessary deterrent for violent crimes.