The Roman Catholic Church has published its long-awaited...

The Roman Catholic Church has published its long-awaited Compendium of the Social Doctrine. The Compendium represents the culmination of a 5-year project for the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. The 331-page document was presented to the media by the Council's head, Cardinal Renato Martino in the Vatican.
Drafted at the request of Pope John Paul II, the compendium explains church teachings related to politics, war, the economy, the environment, work and legislation impacting family life, and other topics.On the issue of capital punishment, the compendium repeats the traditional church teaching that society has a right to defend itself by punishing and, in some circumstances, taking the life of a person convicted for a serious crime.
However, it also said that modern societies have the means to suppress crime and render criminals harmless without taking their lives. Less bloody methods of repression are preferable to the death penalty, as they are more in line with standards for the common good and more consonant with human dignity, the compendium says.
Moreover, "the growing aversion of public opinion toward the death penalty and the various provisions aimed at abolishing it or suspending its application constitute visible manifestations of a heightened moral awareness," it said.
The text does not unequivocally condemn capital punishment as was expected by various Catholic associations, Episcopal conferences or lay people working for the abolition of the death penalty. The Compendium limits itself to acknowledging the traditional Church stand without moving to restrict it.
Therefore words such as "condemn" or "immoral" are not used in relation to the death penalty. During the presentation of the document, Cardinal Martino explained that the Roman Catholic Church's condemnation of the death penalty "has been demonstrated with facts."
Monsignor Gianpaolo Crepaldi said the newly-published text was simply reproducing what the Church's social doctrine had already established and what was stated in Pope John Paul II's encyclical Evangelium Vitae.
"Evidently these teachings could not be modified here," Crepaldi said. HOC welcomed the Church's stance.
"The Catholic Church's position on the death penalty is reasonable, pragmatic and non-ideological," Secretary General Sergio D'Elia said. "The Church's no to the death penalty is relative because the maximum punishment, as the Social Doctrine says, cannot be excluded when 'it is the only way to effectively protect against the unjust aggressor the life of other human beings.' On this the Church has shown itself to be anti-prohibitionist, as our president, Marco Pannella is. It is a pity that on many other issues - abortion, euthanasia, the day-after pill, homosexuality, stem cells - the Church contradicts itself. Its stance on those issues becomes an absolute 'no'. Is the life of an embryo worth more than that of a person condemned to death?'