 Aquinas wavers between suggesting that the use of lethal public force, e.g. in capital punishment, intends (“is referred to”) justice rather than killing, and plainly accepting that in such cases death is indeed intended. The latter is his dominant position; his arguments to justify a kind of choice which, whatever its beneficial consequences, is so immediately against the good of life have come increasingly to seem insufficient: the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1993), paras. 2263–67 expounds its whole teaching on war, lethal police action, and capital punishment on the basis of the thought that these can be justified only so far as they amount to causing death as a side-effect, and not as killing with intent to kill. The thought is formulated by appeal to Aquinas’ reference to acts with “double effect” in his discussion of private defence in ST II-II q. 64 a. 7.