Response to Michael on Catholicism and capital punishment

Just a quick note in response to Michael's mention of the Brugger book:  My own view is that the position at which the late Pope John Paul II seemed to have arrived (at least in print) was not quite satisfactory.  (How's that for chutzpah?).  A "Catholic" position on capital punishment, it seems to me, needs to candidly engage the fact that killing by the public authority, as justified retributive punishment, was long thought justified, and not merely in cases where it was / is analogous to self-defense or killing-in-just-wars.  Of course, this disagreement is hardly one that matters, since (i) I oppose capital punishment and (ii) I am not as smart as John Finnis, Christian Brugger, and Michael Perry.