Capital punishment should not end (UPDATED)

Four prominent Catholic publications from across the theological spectrum -- Americamagazine, the National Catholic Register, the National Catholic Reporter and Our Sunday Visitor -- this week issued a joint statement declaring that “capital punishment must end.”  One might suppose from the statement that all faithful Catholics agree.  But that is not the case.  As then-Cardinal Ratzinger famously affirmed in 2004, a Catholic may be “at odds with the Holy Father” on the subject of capital punishment and “there may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about… applying the death penalty.”  Catholic theologian Steven A. Long has issued a vigorous response to the joint statement at the blog Thomistica.net.  (See also Steve’s recent response to an essay by “new natural law” theorist and capital punishment opponent Christopher Tollefsen on whether God ever intends a human being’s death.) 
Apart from registering my own profound disagreement with the joint statement, I will for the moment refrain from commenting on the issue, because I will before long be commenting on it at length.  My friend Joseph Bessette is a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College.  Joe and I have for some time been working together on a book on Catholicism and capital punishment, and we will complete it soon.  It will be, to our knowledge, the most detailed and systematic philosophical, theological, and social scientific defense of capital punishment yet written from a Catholic perspective, and it will provide a thorough critique of the standard Catholic arguments against capital punishment.More on that before long.  In the meantime, interested readers are directed to my previous writings on capital punishment.  In 2005, at the old Right Reason group blog, I engaged in an exchange with Tollefsen on the subject of capital punishment, natural law, and Catholicism.  My contribution to the exchange can be found here:

Catholicism, conservatism, and capital punishment
In a 2011 post I commented on the failure of some churchmen to present the entirety of Catholic teaching on the subject of capital punishment, and their resulting tendency to convey thereby the false impression that the Church’s attitude on this issue is “liberal”:
Deadly unserious
In 2011 I also engaged in a longer exchange with Tollefsen on the subject of capital punishment, both at Public Discourseand here at the blog.  My side of the debate can be found at the following links:
In Defense of Capital Punishment
On rehabilitation and execution
Punishment, Proportionality, and the Death Penalty: A Reply to Chris Tollefsen
Tollefsen channels Rawls
Finally, in a 2012 post I addressed some common confusions about retributive justice and its relationship to revenge:
Justice or revenge?
Joe Bessette is also currently completing his own, separate book on capital punishment: Murder Most Foul: a Study and Defense of the Death Penalty in the United States.  Some of his previous writings on capital punishment and criminal justice more generally are linked here:
Why the Death Penalty is Fair (with Walter Berns)
Shameless Injustice
In Pursuit of Criminal Justice

UPDATE 3/10: Canon lawyer Edward Peters, Carl Olson at Catholic World Report, and Matt Briggs have now also responded to the joint statement.