With all due respect to Catholic friends, the statement below is a challenge to its own moral tradition. They dispute this, of course, with a bunch of defenses that strain credulity. It is important to keep stating the obvious: Different Popes make competing statements on the morality of capital punishment. The view expressed below is not the historic position held in the Catholic tradition. And since it is October, it is also an occasion to remind that Scripture is the ultimate authority in matters such as this, not the vacillating opinions of individual Popes.