I know we've gone over the death penalty issue a bit lately, and in the past have discussed Antonin Scalia's support for capital punishment and how that squares with his Catholicism.But Justice Scalia's remarks last weekend in a talk at Duquesne University Law School left me scratching my head -- not an unusual occurrence.The Supreme Court's longest-serving justice said, among other things:

"If I thought that Catholic doctrine held the death penalty to be immoral, I would resign. I could not be a part of a system that imposes it."

The categorical nature of the comments at Duquesne (in response to a handful of protesters he'd seen outside) seems to challenge the increasingly clear teaching of the Catholic Church that the death penalty is indeed immoral -- a point reiterated by a Vatican official in this Catholic News Service story:

[Tommaso] Di Ruzza [of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace] said the divergence of many Catholics in the United States from the church's current position is a sign that "the universal church must also accompany the particular churches a little bit" and help guide them on this "journey of purification," which is more a process of "maturity rather than a revolution or change in tradition." Without reading Popes John Paul and Benedict's clear condemnations of the death penalty, the catechism will "unfortunately have the risk of being ambiguous or taken out of context," he said.

So, does this mean Scalia should step down? While one could find the tiniest of loopholes in the catechism for the possibility of allowing for executions, consecutive popes and the bishops and theologians have made it clear that it is plainly unjustified and wrong.As Rick Garnett points out at MOJ, Michael Perry recently argued that capital punishment is "cruel and unusual" as well, which would seem to make it problematic from a non-sectarian constitutional standpoint.In May 2002, Scalia wrote that he did not believe the church's teaching on the death penalty had changed (or that it could, apparently). He clearly seems to have been wrong on that point.So the options are dissent or resignation. Thoughts?