Has the Catholic Church’s teaching on the death penalty changed?

QUESTION: Church representatives have recently condemned the death penalty. But both in the past and now it is accepted by the church teachers. Why is the attitude towards the death penalty so controversial?

ANSWER: in order to understand the meaning of the documents of the church teachers, it is necessary to remember that they are always placed in the context of a particular era in which they were published. Otherwise, interpreting them, we risk falling into fundamentalism. This way of reading can really suggest contradictions in the Church’s Magisterium.