The Vatican issued the defin­i­tive Latin lan­guage ver­sion of its Universal Catechism on September 9, 1997. The pri­ma­ry change in the cat­e­chism focus­es on legit­i­mate defense and the death penal­ty . The new ver­sion reads: ​“The tra­di­tion­al teach­ing of the Church does not exclude … recourse to the death penal­ty when it is the only prac­ti­cal way to effi­cient­ly defend the lives of human beings from the unjust aggres­sor.” It con­tin­ues, ​“Today, in fact, because the means states have to repress crime effi­cient­ly and ren­der [crim­i­nals] inof­fen­sive . . the cas­es where it is absolute­ly nec­es­sary to sup­press the guilty are today very rare, if not prac­ti­cal­ly non-exis­tent.”