I don’t know the Catholic church’s current take on this, but the Bible does require the death penalty for a large number of crimes, and Jesus agreed with that penalty. If there was no state-sponsored death penalty, and nobody else was willing, my religious knowledge fail me on whether an individual or a Catholic priest would be forbidden, allowed, or required to performing the execution by this, and I’m unsure if or how that’s affected by the context of a confessional.
2267 Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, 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.
If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.
Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm—without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself—the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity “are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.”
I don’t think they are, any more than they are allowed to kill anyone else.
I don’t know the Catholic church’s current take on this, but the Bible does require the death penalty for a large number of crimes, and Jesus agreed with that penalty. If there was no state-sponsored death penalty, and nobody else was willing, my religious knowledge fail me on whether an individual or a Catholic priest would be forbidden, allowed, or required to performing the execution by this, and I’m unsure if or how that’s affected by the context of a confessional.
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2c2a5.htm