The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude, presupposing full ascertainment of the identity and responsibility of the offender, recourse to the death penalty, when this is the only practicable way to defend the lives of human beings effectively against the aggressor.

If, instead, bloodless means are sufficient to defend against the aggressor and to protect the safety of persons, public authority should limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.

Today, given the means at the State's disposal to effectively repress crime by rendering inoffensive the one who has committed it, without depriving [him] definitively of the possibility of redeeming [himself], cases of absolute necessity for suppression of the offender are very rare, if not practically non-existent.

Catechism of the Catholic Church, revised 1997.

It would seem more in keeping with the faith we profess to come down on the side of mercy. It would seem, if Christ truly acts in us, that our efforts to redress wrongs and to punish offenders, to repair injury and to assuage the harm done to victims must never ignore that the person who is judged and condemned remains a human person, and our neighbor. It would seem more fitting for Christians to isolate those who are unreformable, under humane and dignified conditions, and leave the determination of life and death in the hands of God, who gives life in the first place.

Catholic Bishops of Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina, Sept, 1992.

We maintain that abolition of the death penalty would promote values that are important to us as citizens and as Christians. First, abolition sends a message that we can break the cycle of violence, that we need not take life for life, that we can envisage more humane and more hopeful and effective responses to the growth of violent crime... Second, abolition of capital punishment is also a manifestation of our belief in the unique worth and dignity of each person from the moment of conception, a creature made in the image and likeness of God... Third, abolition of the death penalty is further testimony to our conviction...that God is indeed the God of life... Fourth, we believe that abolition of the death penalty is most consonant with the example of Jesus, who both taught and practiced the forgiveness of injustice and who came 'to give his life as a ransom for many' (Mark 10:45).