Church's teaching on Capital Punishment to change?

[Ender]

He is saying CCC 2267 represents a prudential judgment and not a doctrinal teaching, and that Catholics are required to endorse doctrine but not prudential judgments.

Thank you - that is exactly what I’ve been saying. I will just add, however, that the first sentence in 2267 does appear to be incorrect in that the Church has never had the restriction it claims to find in her traditional teaching. One can see what the traditional teaching was even in the 1992 version of the Catechism:2266 “The traditional teaching of the church has acknowledged as well-founded the right and duty of legitimate public authority to punish malefactors by means of penalties commensurate with the gravity of the crime not excluding, in cases of extreme gravity, the death penalty.”
We can all see that there is nothing that implied that capital punishment was restricted to those cases where it was needed for defense. This is an accurate statement of the traditional teaching.

Ender