We read in the Catechism of the Catholic Church
(paragraph 2267) that
"Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.
Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity 'are very rare, if not practically non-existent.'"
We find therefore, that there is a context in which the death penalty is a permissible--and arguably even necessary--evil for society. This context is that if innocent people will be harmed (e.g. raped or murdered) by not executing the criminal, then it becomes the duty of the state to bring about his execution to protect its innocent citizens. With this in mind, the debate over the death penalty is whether or not this or that particular criminal poses such a threat.
Can he be safely kept in (solitary) confinement, or is he the type of mastermind who will escape from any prison and then use his freedom to harm another victim? Is executing this or that criminal actually necessary to protect innocent lives, or is it a matter of convenience, of revenge, or of a misguided mercy which places capital punishment on the same footing as euthanasia? These are questions which we should be asking in each particular case in which the death penalty is considered: and in many such cases, the answer is is at best a sense of justice untempered by mercy; or (to hear some motives), it is mercy unhindered by justice.
The justest end of the death penalty must ultimately be the protection of the innocent, and not rather the killing of the guilty. The attitude
here should be the regret-filled "In order to protect the lives
of the innocent, we are forced to kill this guilty man," and not
the more gleeful-sounding "Since he may remain a threat even
while imprisoned, we get to kill this criminal." Unfortunately, I do not think that the former is always at the foremost of the would-be executioners' minds; it would certainly take a heroic effort on the part of the family and friends among the most violent criminal's victims to not hold as a motive the latter.
I agree with her in principle (and in practice). I would even say that it is fair to acknowledge that periodic abstinence (assisted by NFP or not) is a form of birth control, albeit one which can be used not only to successfully delay pregnancy, but also to more successfully achieve pregnancy. That is to say, if the abstinence is practiced during the fertile time of the woman's cycle, she will not get pregnant; if it is practiced only during the non-fertile times of the month, she will more like become pregnant than a woman who has no particular pattern to her times of abstinence and non-abstinence.
However, Mrs Babbs also hits on an important point when she writes (original format), “Birth control and contraception are not the same thing.” And that is a big part of the problem, which is a problem with the culture (of death) in general, that they do not make this distinction. So long as the culture does not make this distinction [1], we will have a sort of language problem.So long as contraception and birth control are viewed by the larger culture as interchangeable terms, rather than recognizing that the former is a subset of the latter [2], the statement that "NFP is Catholic birth control" is likely to be confusing or misleading, or at times even provides cultural cover to people who embrace (and indeed, proselytize for) the contraceptive mentality.
Consider two groups of people (there are, of course, others). On the one hand, there will be some who continue to view NFP as just one among many options for avoiding pregnancy, and by extension even some Catholics who view it this way with a ritual caveat (it is the only “ritually pure” form of birth control). The conclusion is that there is no moral difference between birth control and contraception, nor really between contraception and NFP, and hence that there isn’t *really* a moral problem with contraception. Thus, the more Orthodox Catholics will not use contraception but may use NFP in the same way that orthodox Jews cannot eat pork but may eat beef. Viewed this way, there really isn't anything morally wrong with (for example) the Obama Administration's mandate, though it still may still infringe on religious freedoms slightly by making Catholic employers help others to violate this ritual taboo [3].
At the other end, there will be some Catholics who take the same "first" view that contraception and birth control are indistinguishable and then (correctly) note that contraception is morally wrong. They would then draw the incorrect conclusion that NFP is also morally wrong, whether or not it is ritually permissible. They might, for example, compare contraception to NFP by way of an analogy comparing murder to justifiable homicide in self-defense, or for that matter between abortion and the removal of the fallopian tubes and subsequent death of the embryonic child in the case of an ectopic pregnancy. By such a view, the act is permissible only for the most extreme of reasons (e.g. because the mother would die if she becomes pregnant, or perhaps in some cases because the family is homeless, etc). According to such a view, every act of sexual intercourse must intend that a child come into existence (provided that the wife is not already pregnant), rather than simply being "open to life."
Notice that both views of sex diminish it. The former treats it as nothing special, or at the very least as something considerably less special than it is, that is, by removing the procreative end of sex from the act. Sexual intercourse is then no longer an act of pro-creation, which ultimately means of co-creation [4], the participation in God's creation. On the other hand, the latter view treats sex as unholy by removing its unitive act. In the extreme (prudish) version of this view, sex becomes a dirty thing which stains the soul. It is in some ways an evil thing out of which God brings something good (a new life), and which has been made ritually pure for us thanks to our married state and then only in order to procreate.
Contrast this with a third option, which says that sex is holy, but which recognizes that we are not holy. Thus, one of the graces of the sacrament of marriage is that we may be purified to approach this mystical altar. Only in marriage are we able to remove the shoes of our feet to walk piously upon this holy ground. This makes sex ritually pure for us not by purifying the sex, but by purifying us. Periodic abstinence (with or without NFP) is then the decision not to approach the altar, or not to step onto the holy ground, during some days of the woman's cycle. Contraception, on the other hand, becomes more akin to striking at the altar, to desecrating it and despoiling the holy ground surrounding it; or worse yet, it becomes akin to symbolically sacrificing our spouses on the altar to Asmodeus (and perhaps also to Lucifer): it's not only ritually impure, but morally bad.
--Footnotes--
[1] Sometimes this is willful, e.g. the distinction is refused because the person failing to make this distinction doesn't want there to be a distinction. Other times it's laziness, and the person in question simply doesn't care about the distinctions and refuses to try and understand the significance. Still other times, the person is genuinely confused concerning the difference, and still others he may see the distinction as too minor to matter.
[2] As an example, consider murder as opposed to killing. The former is always wrong. The latter is unfortunate, but not always wrong, as it can involve anything from murder to accidental manslaughter to justifiable homicide (self-defense).
[3] Viewed this way, the Obama Administration's HHS mandate would still infringe slightly on religious freedoms, but in a much less radical way. Catholics are still "free" to pursue ritual purity in their sex lives, but they must still provide support for those who do not want to live according to that ritual purity. This then becomes a more-or-less economic question and a question about Big Government and politics, but not of religion.
[4] God alone Is Creator. Man can normally make a thing--that is, he can take an existing material and change it, as from a tree to a table. God can create a thing, that is, bring it into existence where previously nothing (no thing) existed. But in the act of procreation, we are allowed to participate in God's creation, since each new life represents a new soul, which is turn is brought into being by God from nothing, becoming the form of the newly-begotten child.