<P> Aquinas acknowledged these passages could also be interpreted as meaning there should be no use of the death penalty if there was a chance of injuring the innocent . The prohibition "Thou shall not kill", was superseded by Exodus 22, 18: "Wrongdoers you shall not suffer to live ." The argument that evildoers should be allowed to live in the hope that they might be redeemed was rejected by Aquinas as frivolous . If they would not repent in the face of death, it was unreasonable to assume they would ever repent . "How many people are we to allow to be murdered while waiting for the repentance of the wrongdoer?", he asked, rhetorically . Using the death penalty for revenge, or retribution is a violation of natural moral law . </P> <P> The Council of Trent, an ecumenical council held in Italy between 1545 and 1563 and prompted by the Protestant Reformation, commissioned in the seventh canon ("De Reformatione") of Session XXIV the first Church - wide catechism of the Catholic Church, later known as the Roman Catechism and also as the Catechism of the Council of Trent . A commission of eminent theologians supervised by three cardinals produced a catechism, which was published in Rome under Papal authority, after the Council had concluded, under the Latin title "Catechismus ex decreto Concilii Tridentini ad parochos Pii V jussu editus, Romae, 1566" (in - folio). In its section on the Fifth Commandment, the Roman Catechism teaches that civil authority, having power over life and death as "the legitimate avenger of crime," may commit "lawful slaying" as "an act of paramount obedience to this Commandment which prohibits murder" by giving "security to life by repressing outrage and violence ." </P> <P> Another kind of lawful slaying belongs to the civil authorities, to whom is entrusted power of life and death, by the legal and judicious exercise of which they punish the guilty and protect the innocent . The just use of this power, far from involving the crime of murder, is an act of paramount obedience to this Commandment which prohibits murder . The end of the Commandment - is the preservation and security of human life . Now the punishments inflicted by the civil authority, which is the legitimate avenger of crime, naturally tend to this end, since they give security to life by repressing outrage and violence . Hence these words of David: In the morning I put to death all the wicked of the land, that I might cut off all the workers of iniquity from the city of the Lord . </P> <P> The 1911 edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia suggested that Catholics should hold that "the infliction of capital punishment is not contrary to the teaching of the Catholic Church, and the power of the State to visit upon culprits the penalty of death derives much authority from revelation and from the writings of theologians", but that the matter of "the advisability of exercising that power is, of course, an affair to be determined upon other and various considerations ." </P>

What does the catholic church say about the death penalty