What the 2018 revision of the Catechism actually says, and why it is presented as a development rather than a reversal.

Pope Francis approved a revision of CCC 2267 in an audience on 11 May 2018, and it was published on 2 August 2018. The Catechism now teaches that the death penalty is inadmissible because it attacks the dignity of the person, and the Church works for its abolition worldwide. The Church presents this as a development of her constant teaching on the dignity of life, not a contradiction of it.

What the Church Teaches

The current text of CCC 2267 makes three moves. It recalls that the death penalty was long considered an acceptable response to certain crimes. It observes that our understanding of the dignity of the person has grown, that modern states can detain dangerous offenders effectively, and that the possibility of redemption is not to be foreclosed. It then teaches that capital punishment is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person, and commits the Church to working for its abolition everywhere.

The word chosen matters. Inadmissible is a strong practical judgement about what may be done now, given what we understand and what we are capable of. Pope Francis approved the revision in audience on 11 May 2018; the rescript inserting it into the official text of the Catechism was published on 2 August 2018.

Where This Comes From

The direction of travel was already clear before 2018.

• The 1992 first edition of the Catechism upheld the traditional teaching that the state retains the right to punish by death “in cases of extreme gravity” – a broader standard than pure self-defence. In 1997, with the Catechism’s definitive Latin text (the editio typica), that was narrowed following Evangelium Vitae to cases where it is “the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.”
• John Paul II, in Evangelium Vitae in 1995, said such cases were very rare, if not practically non-existent, and the Catechism was amended in 1997 to reflect that.
• The 2018 revision completes the line: if the only justification was defence, and defence no longer requires it, the justification has run out.

The underlying principle has not moved. It is the same one behind the Church’s teaching on abortion and euthanasia: a human being does not stop being a bearer of God’s image because of what they have become or what they have done.

Common Misunderstandings

“This proves Catholic teaching can simply change.”

The Church distinguishes between a doctrine of faith and a moral judgement about how a principle applies in given conditions. Capital punishment was never taught as something that must be used. The wider tradition – Aquinas (Summa Theologiae II-II, q.64, a.2), the Roman Catechism, and Innocent III’s 1208 profession of faith required of the Waldensians – held that the state could licitly execute grave offenders on retributive as well as protective grounds, as a matter of justice, not only as self-defence. Recent teaching narrows this: by the time of the 2018 revision, and again in Dignitas Infinita (2024) §34, the Church holds that modern means of detention remove the practical justification, so that in today’s conditions the penalty is inadmissible, whatever the older retributive argument once allowed. Serious theologians continue to debate exactly how CCC 2267 relates to that earlier teaching – whether as a strict development or a prudential judgement that could in principle be revisited under different conditions – and this page presents the current, binding text of the Catechism rather than settling that debate.

“The Church is now saying past popes and saints were wrong.”

It is saying they were reasoning within a world without secure prisons, and that we know things about the person and about wrongful convictions that they did not. The Church has not condemned them.

“This means criminals should not be punished.”

It does not. The Catechism upholds punishment that protects public safety and aims at the correction of the guilty. What is excluded is killing the offender when other means suffice.

What It Means in Practice

• Catholics are asked to support abolition and to work for prison conditions that make reform possible.
• Praying for the victims of violent crime and for their families is not in competition with this. The Church asks for both.
• Prison chaplaincy and letter-writing to prisoners are ordinary Catholic works of mercy, open to anyone.

Pray With This

Prayer for Enemies · Chaplet of Divine Mercy · Prayer for Peace · Psalm 51 (Miserere) · Prayer of St Francis

In the Catechism

• CCC 2267 – capital punishment, revised text approved by Pope Francis on 11 May 2018, published 2 August 2018
• CCC 2263-2265 – legitimate defence
• CCC 2266 – the purpose of punishment

Read the full text: Catechism of the Catholic Church, Part Three, Section Two.