The article looks into the recent magisterium of the Church on the death penalty and deems it an instance of the development of doctrine rather than a circumstantiated reaction. It then dwells on the thinking that constitutes the backbone of the Encyclical Evangelium Vitae and compares and contrasts it with the various pronouncements of the teaching office of the Church, and with the two editions of the Cathechism of the Catholic Church. When one carefully examines the issue, human dignity and (...) its consequent human rights - among which one must mention the inalienable right to life - emerge as the hermeneutical cog of the problem. Together with the personalistic views of Vatican II, such a hermeneutic asks for a rethinking of the ethical norms in penal law which, in a clearer and more definitive way - per se, and not simply per accidens -, must then declare the moral implausibility of death whenever it is meted out as punishment. A death inflicted on someone else can only be justified within the strict and rigorous condition of legitimate self-defence. (shrink)