Summary: Recently, the debate about the death penalty, its rational justification and social utility, has become more intense not only in the theological field, but also in the philosophic, judicial and political one. In the beginning, the article outlines briefly the development of traditional morality which, starting from an essentially retributive point of view, tends toward accepting the lawfulness of the death penalty. It goes on, than, to point out that Gospel forces catholic theology to go beyond the narrowness of retributive logic, working out a theory about death that respects more the person and its native rights. In this perspective the Death penalty is no longer reasonably justified, for which it becomes necessary to have recourse – as does the Catechism of the Catholic Church – to the theory of self-defence; this however at the cost of grave strains and incoherence.