Dr. John Joy has written such a fine piece on the Catechism controversy that I wanted to dedicate an entire post just to linking to it. He tracks my own thought quite closely:
It is hard to avoid the conclusion, therefore, that this text suffers from serious ambiguity (inasmuch as it seems to be open to multiple interpretations) or even incoherence (inasmuch as it seems to assert contradictory propositions).
Do read the entire article: The Magisterial Weight of the New Text of the Catechism on the Death Penalty.
