Suppose that it is wrong for A to act in a certain way, e.g. to defraud a business, or to kill an innocent person. Is it wrong for B to enable or assist A to do that? Here there are really two issues: 1) specifying what exactly enabling or assisting mean, and 2) given that specification, determining the nature and extent of B’s culpability. Assume that conspiring with A to do the thing in question makes one equally culpable, what about cooperating with A, does that make one complicit in the wrongdoing? In thinking about such issues (partly for the purpose of hearing confessions, judging culpability and assigning penances) Catholic moral theologians, following St Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787) have drawn a distinction between formal and material cooperation with evil. B formally cooperates with A’s action, if B willingly participates in it, either directly by co-acting, or indirectly by assisting it with the intention that the action succeeds. On the other hand, B merely materially cooperates with A’s action if though B does not co-act or indirectly assist, but enables it to occur by, for example, providing A with equipment used in the fraud or killing, or by transporting A to a place where the actions are performed. Here B may not share in A’s intention but nonetheless B has enabled the action. Many further issues remain, for example whether B knew or suspected what A intended to do, or if, though B did not know or suspect this it was negligent of B not to have considered the likelihood or possibility of this. Although this may seem abstract it is very important in determining whether and to what extent an agent may be morally guilty.
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— HomeVol. 1 Vol. 2 Vol. 3 Vol. 4 Other Works Grisez & Colleagues Purchase Contact A+A- DIFFICULT MORAL QUESTIONS Appendix 2: Formal and Material Cooperation in Others’ Wrongdoing Appendix 1 treats the genesis and structure of human acts, and the conditions for sound moral judgments. What has been said about those matters will be presupposed here. As in appendix 1, the analysis will be from the point of view of the agent—that is, the acting person—not that of an outside observer. The latter perspective can be appropriate for law; but the cooperation treated here must be distinguished from legally defined ways of being involved in another’s action, such as being an accessory to a crime. Formal and material cooperation were treated briefly in both previous volumes (see CMP, 300–303; LCL, 440–44), but the present, fuller treatment will not presuppose those earlier ones. It will include all their main points, add others, and amend some of their details. Catholic moral theologians and documents of the magisterium use the expressions formal cooperation and material cooperation to refer to agents’ involvement in others’ objectively immoral actions. This technical use of cooperation may be confusing, because the word usually refers to working together for a common good. Rather than being morally questionable or wrong, it is good and often obligatory to do that; it both serves the common end in view and initiates or promotes community among the cooperators. But insofar as doing anything facilitates or contributes to another’s wrongdoing, it cannot serve an authentic common good. If one is unjustifiably involved in another’s wrongdoing, one is doing evil, and that cannot serve good or build up genuine community even with a wrongdoer; if one is justifiably involved in another’s wrongdoing, community is prevented or damaged insofar as the other’s bad will and one’s good will are opposed, at least with respect to that matter. So, though I use cooperation in the technical sense both here and in the Analysis paragraphs of questions regarding involvement in others’ wrongdoing, I avoid the term in proposed responses except when the questioner used it. Accurately understanding cooperation and being able to analyze instances of it are important for moral advisers. Many difficult moral questions—not only in books of moral theology but in conscientious Christians’ lives—concern cooperation. Many people, and even many moral advisers, wrongly assume that only formal cooperation is a serious problem. But the contribution made by one’s otherwise good act to another’s wrongdoing is a bad side effect, and accepting a bad side effect can be seriously wrong. Some unreflective and/or unsophisticated people imagine problems regarding cooperation can (and perhaps should) be avoided by altogether avoiding cooperation. That, however, is virtually impossible and sometimes inconsistent with doing one’s duty. Grocers materially cooperate with gluttonous eating, letter carriers with the use of pornography, and so on; and in many cases such people need their jobs to support themselves and their families. And though taxpayers materially cooperate with nuclear deterrence and other evils, paying taxes is morally obligatory (see LCL, 894–97; q. 169, above). Moreover, in God’s absolutely good act of sustaining the creatures he has chosen to create, he accepts as side effects all the wrongdoing and other evil in the universe (see CCC, 310–12); and Jesus teaches us to be like our heavenly Father, who sustains both sinners and upright people (see Mt 5.44–45). So, good people sometimes may and even should cooperate in others’ wrongdoing, and cases involving cooperation require careful analysis and judgment. I shall begin by explaining formal cooperation and material cooperation, dealing with what is proper to formal cooperation, and distinguishing it from cases in which a cooperator’s act, though wrong in itself, is not formal cooperation. Accepting bad side effects always aggravates the wrongness of formal cooperation, and sometimes makes material cooperation wrong. So, I shall carefully examine the possible side effects of involvement in another’s or others’ wrongdoing, identify factors that should be taken into account in judging whether to accept them, and indicate how to make that judgment. Finally, I shall explain how my treatment of cooperation relates to that of other Catholic theologians and point out certain problems in an appendix to a document of the U.S. bishops. What is meant by formal cooperation and material cooperation In the technical language of moral theology, cooperator does not refer to everyone involved in another’s wrongdoing. (1) Cooperation is distinguished from leading others into sin—which is what is meant by scandal in its strict, theological sense (see LCL, 232–39).457 So, cooperator refers, not to someone who instigates another’s wrongdoing, but to someone involved in wrongdoing initiated by another. (2) Formal cooperation usually is distinguished from the full involvement of two or more people in the same wrongful action—for example, a couple’s joining in fornication or a gang’s collaboration in robbing a bank.458 So, cooperator is used to refer to someone involved in another’s wrongdoing by an act more or less distinct from it. (3) Since cooperation is an action, cooperator is not used to refer to those thought of as only passively involved in wrongdoing—for example, citizens who avoid participating actively in an unjust war their country is fighting. (Still, omissions are actions, and one can wrongly cooperate by an omission.) (4) Problems about cooperation usually do not arise if the action is recognized as sinful even apart from the agent’s involvement in another’s wrongdoing. So, cooperator usually refers to someone whose act seems morally acceptable in itself—though, as will be explained, the formal co~operator’s act, when accurately analyzed, turns out to be wrong, and often gravely so, in itself. With these four restrictions in mind, one sees how questions regarding cooperation arise. Aware that what one might do would facilitate or contribute to some action or actions of another or others that one considers seriously wrong, one wonders whether that is a symptom of something seriously wrong with one’s own prospective action.459 Using cooperation in this sense, one can draw a precise distinction between formal and material cooperation in another’s wrongdoing. After considering previous attempts to define the two, St. Alphonsus Liguori put the matter this way: That [cooperation] is formal which concurs in the bad will of the other, and it cannot be without sin; that [cooperation] is material which concurs only in the bad action of the other, apart from the cooperator’s intention.460 This way of distinguishing between formal and material cooperation was followed by virtually all subsequent manualists—that is, the authors of the moral theology textbooks used in all Catholic seminaries until around the time of Vatican II. It should be presupposed in interpreting teachings of the magisterium referring to cooperation. So, Alphonsus’s succinct formula warrants the effort required to understand it as well as possible. What, exactly, is meant by formal here? It refers to the form of the two acts that constitute the cooperation—that is, the elements of those acts that make them be the moral acts they are. Using intending in the broad sense, which includes both willing precisely what is chosen and willing the end in view, human acts are the moral acts they are primarily by virtue of the intending they involve. Thus, contributing to another’s wrongdoing is formal cooperation if, and only if, the act by which one contributes agrees in bad intending with the wrongful act with which one cooperates. Any other way of being involved is not involvement in another’s wrongdoing precisely as wrongdoing. So, material in this context refers to that about a cooperator’s act which involves him or her in a wrongdoer’s act in such a way that the two acts share no bad intending in common. Whatever is badly willed by the wrongdoer is at most only an accepted side effect, foreseen but not intended, of the material cooperator’s act. Alphonsus’s definitions make clear the fundamental moral difference between formal and material cooperation. Formal cooperation always is morally unacceptable, because, by definition, it involves bad intending. But intending is bad only if it is at odds with reason. So, formal cooperation involves intending at odds with reason, and any act by which one formally cooperates in wrongdoing is morally wrong in itself. By contrast, the material cooperator’s act, if not wrong for some other reason, is wrong if, and only if, he or she should not accept the bad side effects of contributing to another’s wrongdoing. Alphonsus’s definitions also make it clear that sometimes the moral act carried out by a certain outward behavior can be either formal or material cooperation, depending on what the cooperator intends. For example, two police officers, George and Jane, are assigned to prevent prolife workers from talking with women approaching an abortion clinic. George, who has invested money in the clinic and hopes it will maximize its profits, carries out the assignment so that the women coming to the clinic will get their abortions and not be dissuaded; Jane, a prolife feminist, carries out the assignment solely because she is afraid of losing her job if she refuses. George formally cooperates in abortion; Jane cooperates only materially. The sharing in bad willing that constitutes formal cooperation The intending involved in a human act often is complex. Choosing to do anything is intending, as a proximate end, the carrying out of the choice. But usually an agent also intends one or more ends distinct from that proximate end, and one end in view can be a means to another. If the intending involved in a wrongdoer’s act is complex and two or more of its elements are bad willing, does someone formally cooperate only by sharing all the elements of bad willing? No. Angela, the boss of a criminal syndicate, wishes to burn down a rival gang’s warehouse as an act of revenge. Tony, an employee of the rival gang, cooperates with her by providing information about the delivery date of some highly flammable goods. He has no interest in revenge but obtains perverse gratification from being present at large fires. So, Tony does not share all the bad willing that vitiates Angela’s act—her end in view is revenge while his is perverse gratification. Still, his cooperation is formal, for he shares with Angela the bad intention of burning the warehouse. Note that the shared element of bad will does not play the same role in the two agent’s actions. Burning the warehouse is Angela’s proximate end, her means to revenge. The proximate end of Tony’s choice is providing the information; his intermediate end is Angela’s arson, and that, in turn, is his means to perverse gratification, which is his ultimate end in view. Formal cooperators also can intend in common only a bad end. Another gang’s head, Sylvester, who shares Angela’s desire for revenge against their common rival, does not care for her plan to burn the warehouse—the place is insured, and people in it are likely to escape the fire. His plan, to gun down the rival gang leader’s aged mother, seems to Angela too risky. But to implement either plan, its proponent needs information the other has. So, Sylvester and Angela agree to disagree, exchange information, and proceed in their chosen ways to pursue the revenge they both desire. Though neither intends the other’s chosen means, the shared bad end for which they supply each other with information makes their mutual help—his with her act of arson and hers with his act of murder—formal cooperation in wrongdoing. People can formally cooperate, especially in some subtle fashion, in an action they abhor. Universal Appliance (UA) wishes to contract with Dependable Interim Employees (DIE), a supplier of temporary workers. Christine manages DIE and wants the contract, but is told that workers of one of the kinds she must have available—“hostesses”—will be expected to provide sexual services, and she wants nothing to do with prostitution. The UA executive she is dealing with suggests a solution: DIE need only arrange with a reliable “escort” service to supply hostesses, and UA will contact the latter directly when a call girl is required. All DIE need do is act as a laundering go-between for the escort service’s bills and UA’s payments; the contract between UA and DIE will not even mention hostesses, and Christine never will be called on to supply one. Feeling that this solution will distance her sufficiently from the prostitution, Christine contracts with UA and makes the necessary arrangement with Cadillac Escorts. In doing this, however, she intends that Cadillac Escorts undertake and carry out its part of the arrangement—that is, meet UA’s requirements for hostesses who will provide sexual services. So, she formally cooperates in prostitution. Of course, Christine does not intend the activities of the call girls in the same way some UA executives and their guests do. She disapproves; she finds them utterly repugnant. She intends them only as a means to obtain UA’s contract and the legitimate business it will provide for DIE. Without any overt involvement in wrongdoing, many people in positions of authority—including administrators of nonprofit organizations, managers of businesses, and public officials—sometimes formally cooperate with wrongdoing they personally deplore and perhaps even make serious efforts to prevent or end. Like Christine, they may do this by reluctantly using the wrongdoing as a way to obtain needed cooperation by others or as a means to protect goods for which they are responsible. People in authority also can be drawn into formal cooperation with morally unacceptable activities for whose execution they are given unwanted responsibility (see LCL, 441). However, unless cooperative actions share at least some bad willing with the wrongdoing to which they contribute, even acts wrong in themselves that significantly contribute to others’ wrongdoing constitute only material cooperation. For example, Cindy, not knowing that her employer, Dan, is homosexual, hopes to initiate an intimate relationship with him. She gets him to go hiking on a lovely afternoon in May, leads him to a swimming hole at an abandoned quarry, where they seem to be alone, and proposes that they skinny-dip. He refuses. She becomes angry and shoves him. He falls into the water, hits his head on a rock ledge, and is knocked out. Though Cindy is a good swimmer and is confident she could pull Dan out, she simply stands by and watches him drown. Though she tells no one what happened, the body is soon found. Traces of a scuffle the couple left at the swimming hole’s edge, together with other circumstantial evidence, lead the authorities to suspect Dan’s former companion, Jack, of homicide. Police question many people, including Cindy. Hoping Dan’s death will be blamed on Jack, she supports the case against him by telling a completely fictitious but credible story about Dan’s activities and confidences. Largely due to her testimony, Jack is indicted and put on trial for second degree murder. Teddy, a boy of thirteen, watches the television coverage of Cindy’s testimony with considerable anguish. He was approaching the swimming hole just as Cindy and Dan arrived there, and had kept out of their sight but seen everything; however, because he was playing hooky and had been strictly forbidden by his parents ever to swim in the abandoned quarry, he has told no one. Police questioned every youngster in the area who was absent from school that day, but Teddy lied, saying he went to a shopping mall. The boy realizes he should tell what he knows but decides not to. Both Teddy’s lying to the police and his decision to keep silent about what he knows are wrong. These bad acts significantly contribute to Cindy’s effort to have her wrongdoing attributed to Jack. But Teddy does not choose or otherwise intend anything Cindy does, while she, not even knowing that he exists, in no way wills his acts. Thus, none of their bad willing coincides, and Teddy only materially cooperates with Cindy’s wrongdoing. The conditions for morally acceptable material cooperation Immediately after distinguishing, as quoted above, between formal and material cooperation, St. Alphonsus goes on to state conditions under which material cooperation is morally acceptable. Since that statement should be read in its context, I quote both sentences: That [cooperation] is formal which concurs in the bad will of the other, and it cannot be without sin; that [cooperation] is material which concurs only in the bad action of the other, apart from the cooperator’s intention. But the latter [material cooperation] is licit when the action is good or indifferent in itself; and when one has a reason for doing it that is both just and proportioned to the gravity of the other’s sin and to the closeness of the assistance which is [thereby] given to the carrying out of that sin.461 The first condition for the moral acceptability of material cooperation is that the cooperator’s act be “good or indifferent in itself”—that it not be evil independently of its constituting cooperation. The second condition is that the cooperator have in view as his or her end a reason that is “just”—that is, have a reason that is morally acceptable in itself. The third condition is that the morally acceptable end in view that is the cooperator’s reason for acting be proportioned to two things: the gravity of the wrongdoing to which his or her action contributes and the proximity of that contribution to the wrongful deed—in other words, how closely the cooperator’s outward behavior involves him or her in the outward behavior that carries out the wrongdoer’s bad choice. The first two conditions are clear and plainly necessary, and subsequent manu-alists followed Alphonsus in requiring them. They also followed him in requiring a proportionate reason for cooperating, but found it difficult to explain what a proportionate reason is and how it can be identified. Alphonsus’s formula provides a starting point inadequate in four ways for investigating these questions. First, the reason that must be proportionate, if material cooperation is to be morally acceptable, is the reason for doing the act, one of whose side effects is some contribution to another’s wrongdoing.462 To what must this reason be proportionate? According to Alphonsus, to two things: the gravity of the wrong-doing and how closely the cooperator’s behavior involves him or her in the wrongdoer’s behavior. However, the real question about the reason’s proportionateness is whether one can reasonably prefer to do the act for that reason rather than forgo it so as not to contribute to the other’s wrongdoing. To answer, the conscientious person wondering whether to choose to do what would constitute material cooperation must compare the reason for making the choice with the reasons for not making it. So, if material cooperation is to be morally acceptable, the reason for choosing to do the act that constitutes it must be proportionate to the reasons for not making that choice. Some of the latter reasons are grounded in the intelligible goods vitiated by the wrongdoing to which the act will contribute, and Alphonsus’s formula rightly suggests that the reasons to forgo the act will be more or less strong partly in proportion to how grave the wrongdoing is and how closely the act will involve one in it. But it is to the reasons for not doing the act rather than to the gravity of the wrongdoing and how closely the act will involve one in it that one’s reason for doing it must be proportionate if material cooperation is to be morally acceptable. Second, only some of the reasons for not doing the act that constitutes material cooperation are grounded in the intelligible goods adversely affected by the wrongdoing to which the act will contribute. Almost never are the contributions material cooperation makes to the wrongdoing and its results the cooperation’s only bad side effects, and sometimes, perhaps often, they are not its most serious ones. Further consequences always flow from knowingly doing what constitutes material cooperation in wrongdoing and accepting those basic bad side effects. In part, these secondary consequences are psychological effects on oneself and effects on one’s future options; in part, they are effects on the wrongdoer and one’s relationship with him or her; and in part, they are effects on third parties and one’s relationships with them. Usually some of these further consequences are bad, and often one foresees and accepts them; if one does not foresee them, one may be morally responsible for failing to do so. Thus, Alphonsus’s formula is inadequate insofar as it overlooks many possible reasons for forgoing acts that would constitute material cooperation—namely, all the reasons grounded in the intelligible goods that may be adversely affected by secondary bad consequences.463 Third, when one is considering doing something that would constitute material cooperation in another’s wrongdoing, how grave the wrongdoing is and how closely one’s act will involve one in it are not the only factors that can affect the strength of reasons to forgo the act. Alphonsus himself briefly alludes to two others: the possibility that forgoing the act would prevent the wrongdoing and how much right one has to do the act.464 But the magnitude of the various bad side effects, how likely they are to occur, and how much confidence the cooperator has in his or her own judgments also can affect the strength of the reasons to forgo an act that would constitute material cooperation. The preceding inadequacies in Alphonsus’s formula requiring a proportionate reason to justify material cooperation aggravate the problem posed by its fourth inadequacy, namely, its lack of guidance about how to judge whether the reason is proportionate. To be proportionate, the reason to do the act must be sufficiently strong that doing it is reasonable despite the more or less strong reasons to forgo it. But, having ascertained that a possible act is not wrong even apart from its constituting cooperation and that one’s reason for choosing to do it would be morally acceptable, how does one compare the strength of that reason with the strength of the reasons, grounded in expected bad side effects, for forgoing it? Nothing more need be said to remedy the first inadequacy. But the second calls for a fuller consideration of possible bad side effects of cooperation, which could ground reasons for forgoing acts that constitute material cooperation. Similarly, the third calls for a fuller consideration of factors that can affect the strength of the reasons to forgo an act that would constitute material cooperation. And the fourth calls for some consideration of the steps a conscientious person can take in trying to judge rightly whether the reason to do the act is proportionate—that is, strong enough to make it reasonable to prefer doing the act to forgoing it. I shall take up these three needed considerations in the order in which I have just stated them. Note, though, that the first two of these considerations also are relevant to cases in which other factors morally exclude cooperation—cases in which it would be formal or in which the act that would constitute it would be wrong even apart from its constituting cooperation or, if morally acceptable, done with a bad end in view. Because those factors already constitute morally decisive reasons, theologians have paid little attention to the bad side effects of cooperating in such cases. But bad side effects ground additional reasons for avoiding cooperation that should be excluded on other grounds, and they often make it much worse than it otherwise would be. Thus, these additional reasons provide additional motives to resist temptations to cooperate wrongfully and to repent doing so, and attention to bad side effects also may be necessary for judging whether restitution is required and how much it should be. Moreover, sometimes reasons against cooperating grounded in bad side effects are perspicuous and persuasive for people who do not grasp the decisive reasons against it grounded in the act itself. Various sorts of possible bad side effects of material cooperation Actions often have bad side effects having nothing to do with cooperation. For example, a man’s stressful job may contribute to his high blood pressure; and if carrying out some of his duties also constitutes material cooperation in wrongdoing, he surely ought to take into account not only the bad side effects of the cooperation but all the bad side effects of continuing to do the job in judging whether the reason for continuing is proportionate. For simplicity’s sake, however, having made this point, I shall not mention it again. The basic bad side effect of material cooperation is that one’s action makes some unintended contribution to another’s wrongdoing. That wrongdoing itself always has bad effects, and these often have further bad effects. The sorts of bad effects that flow directly from wrongdoing vary with different kinds and instances of wrongdoing. If one foresees the bad effects of wrongdoing in which one materially cooperates, one also accepts them insofar as one is aware that one’s action contributes to them. Thus, one may accept irreverence toward God by materially cooperating in an act of sacrilege and one may accept injury to people by materially cooperating in injustices of various sorts. Since wrongly accepting another’s irreverence would itself be irreverent and wrongly accepting another’s injustice would itself be unfair to its victims, such bad effects and others flowing directly from the wrongdoing are not likely to be overlooked by conscientious people considering reasons against doing something that would constitute material cooperation. Less obvious and more likely to be overlooked are possible consequences of one’s own act that are bad or made worse precisely because it constitutes material cooperation in another’s wrongdoing. In considering these secondary bad consequences, one should not focus exclusively on isolated acts. If material cooperation is ongoing or becomes a regular practice, it is likely to have more and graver such consequences than would an isolated act. The secondary bad consequences of materially cooperating can flow from several things: (1) one’s very accepting of the primary bad side effects of coop~erating, (2) one’s carrying out the act that constitutes material cooperation, and (3) the wrongdoer’s and/or others’ awareness and evaluation of the fact that one is materially cooperating. (1) In materially cooperating, one’s very accepting of the action’s primary bad side effects—its contribution to another’s wrongdoing and that wrongdoing’s bad effects—can have bad effects on oneself. One’s feelings can be adversely affected. Pedro, a large grocery chain’s purchasing agent, buys produce from growers who mistreat their migrant workers. Merely doing his job, Pedro makes his purchasing decisions solely on the basis of quality and price; he does not intend, but only accepts, the contribution that buying from these growers makes to their injustice and its many bad effects on the workers and their families. Still, accepting these primary bad side effects of doing his job affects his feelings, so that the injustice seems to him less important and less repugnant than it otherwise would. Moreover, his disposition toward the migrant workers may be affected in a way that will impede good relationships with them. Suppose members of his extended family are among the exploited workers. If his material cooperation is not morally acceptable, it is a betrayal. But even if what Pedro is doing is justified, his willingness to do his job and accept its contribution to the growers’ injustice hardly disposes him toward solidarity with his exploited relatives. (2) The preceding sorts of bad effects can be intensified by carrying out an act that constitutes material cooperation. Moreover, actually materially cooperating, especially by an ongoing activity or regular practice, has additional bad effects. Performance, especially repeated performance, tends to become habitual; interaction with wrongdoers tends to generate psychological bonds and interdependence. Thus, cooperation often leads to opportunities and temptations to engage in further cooperation. Even if the initial cooperation otherwise is morally acceptable material cooperation, the further cooperation may be formal or, though still material, morally unacceptable. In this way, material cooperation often is an occasion of grave sin. Helen accepts a job doing secretarial work at an export-import company, initially simply taking dictation and typing letters. She learns and overhears enough to know that the letters sometimes include lies, but she types them carefully, corrects mistakes in grammar, and so on. Considered in itself, such secretarial work may be morally acceptable material cooperation in lying. But Helen’s desire to keep her job and get ahead may lead her to suggest an occasional amendment to make a letter more effective, and if that means to make a lie more credible, she begins formally cooperating with the lying. Or, having manifested her talents, she may be assigned to draft deceptive letters, so that she must intend to lie. But even if no temptation to cooperate formally arises, Helen may discover that her employer is one of the “legitimate” enterprises of a criminal syndicate, and that the lies in the letters she types are essential to a way of doing business that is marginally lawful and grossly immoral. Knowing more now about the seriousness of the wrongdoing and its bad consequences, she might well no longer have a proportionate reason to be involved; if not, the secretarial work she has been doing from the start is now wrongful material cooperation. But if Helen likes her job, is doing well in it, and has received some pay raises, she may find it hard to quit. (3) The wrongdoer and others who observe someone doing something that constitutes material cooperation in wrongdoing often know or assume that the cooperator knows how his or her action is contributing to the wrongdoing and its bad effects. Given this knowledge or supposition, they often take the cooperator’s willingness to cooperate as significant, evaluate that willingness, and draw practical conclusions. Consequently, what a material cooperator is doing can: (3.1) have bad moral effects on the wrongdoer, (3.2) scandalize third parties, (3.3) lead to disharmony between the cooperator and the victims of the wrongdoing, (3.4) impede the cooperator from offering credible witness against the wrongdoing, and/or (3.5) impede the cooperator from carrying out his or her vocation in other respects. (3.1) Since cooperation in another’s wrongdoing is distinct from scandal—that is, leading another into sin—one might suppose that material cooperation cannot have bad moral effects on the wrongdoer. But cooperation by “good” people reassures sinners and encourages them to be obdurate. Moreover, material cooperation contributes, sometimes decisively, to the wrongdoing’s success, and success in wrongdoing also encourages obduracy and impedes repentance. Of course, some wrongdoers lack sufficient reflection or even sincerely think what they are doing is good; they are not serious sinners. Yet even if they are not guilty of grave sin, their state of mind is bad. It falls short of moral truth and is morally vulnerable. Even for masters who thought slavery justifiable, owning slaves was an occasion of various sins, not least the sin of resisting the truth about slavery, if and when the light dawned, and then knowingly persisting in the injustice. (3.2) Third parties can be scandalized by someone’s material cooperation. This can happen in various ways. Sometimes the fact that “good” people are involved makes wrongdoing seem not so wrong and provides material for rationalization and self-deception by people tempted to undertake the same sort of wrong. Perhaps more often the material cooperation of “good” people leads others to cooperate formally or wrongly, even if only materially. Thus, if medical residents, compelled to choose between giving up their careers and materially cooperating in morally unacceptable procedures, give in to the pressure, their example may lead other health care personnel, who could resist without great sacrifice, to cooperate materially when they should not. This bad effect might suffice to require the residents to forgo what otherwise would be morally acceptable material cooperation. (3.3) Victims of wrongdoing often perceive at least certain sorts of material cooperators as participants in the injustice they suffer. Such a perception can lead to serious tension between victims of wrongdoing and material cooperators in it, and this tension can damage or impede the relevant community—ecclesial communion, neighborliness, friendship, familial communion. Thus, the likelihood or significant risk that involvement in an injustice will cause disharmony with its victims is an evil grounding a reason to forgo what would constitute material cooperation. Even if the cooperation otherwise would be morally acceptable, this reason could be decisive. Pedro, in an earlier example, has relatives among the migrant workers exploited by growers from whom he purchases large quantities of produce. Even if his material cooperation otherwise would be morally acceptable, family harmony might well require him to forgo it by giving up his job. (3.4) Materially cooperating in wrongdoing often is incompatible with bearing witness against it. The secretary who prepares letters containing lies probably will lose her job if she makes it known that her employer lies to correspondents or points out to those who draft the letters that what they are doing is wrong. Even if one is free to bear witness against the wrongdoing in which one materially cooperates, one’s involvement may detract from the credibility of the witness, since that depends on the clear correspondence between words and deeds. If Pedro sets out to campaign against the exploitation of migrant workers, he may find that nobody will take him seriously as long as he continues doing business with the growers who exploit them. (3.5) People should shape their lives in accord with their personal vocations by making and carrying out various commitments (see CMP, 559–62, 663–64, 690–95; LCL, 113–29). Commitments bear on specific intelligible goods and generate responsibilities toward a particular person or group with whom and in whom the goods are to be realized. Material cooperation in the wrongdoing of persons and groups often impedes carrying out responsibilities flowing from vocational commitments. Tim has been drinking too much, mistreating his wife, Wendy, and neglecting their children; she of course wants him to stop drinking, but at the same time she facilitates his growing dependence on alcohol by materially cooperating: fulfilling some of his responsibilities for him, making excuses and covering up for him, and so forth. Under some conditions, Wendy’s material cooperation may be justified, at least as a temporary measure. While she engages in it, however, she will be unable to work effectively with Tim to overcome their marital problems and raise their children. Similarly, the president of a Catholic college who cooperates materially with various other administrators and faculty members in actions that tend to secularize the institution undercuts his or her own ability to work with all members of the college community for their common good as a Catholic college. Ideally, all wrongdoers and material cooperators in their wrongdoing should be working together in some sort of authentic community for common goods. But material cooperation always not only accepts a bad situation but makes it workable—and so, usually, more likely to endure and harder to overcome. Factors that can affect the strength of reasons against cooperating materially Because interpersonal relationships involve moral responsibilities, anyone reflecting on the possible moral acceptability of material cooperation should consider any relationship he or she has with the wrongdoer and others who may be adversely affected. The responsibilities flowing from vocational commitments not only can ground a reason against cooperating materially, as has been explained, but can affect the strength of other reasons against doing so. For instance, if one has a special responsibility to set a good example for those who might be scandalized by an action constituting material cooperation, one has a stronger reason to forgo it. By the same token, if something must be done to fulfill a responsibility flowing from a vocational commitment, there is a stronger reason to accept bad side effects in doing it than if one could forgo the activity without slighting any such responsibility. For example, if a sixty-year-old man cannot support his family unless he keeps a job that involves materially cooperating with subtly fraudulent practices of his employer, he has a stronger reason for keeping the job than he would if he could afford to take early retirement. The preceding example points to another significant factor: whether there is a feasible and morally acceptable alternative way to pursue one’s good purpose. For example, a computer programmer whose work involves material cooperation in fraud has less reason to keep that job if he or she can easily get a satisfactory position with some morally unproblematic enterprise. Another factor to consider is the effect forgoing the action that constitutes material cooperation would have on the wrongdoing. If forgoing the action certainly or probably would prevent the wrongdoing or impede it and greatly mitigate its bad effects, there is a stronger reason to forgo the action than if forgoing the action probably would have little or no effect on the wrongdoing.465 Alphonsus’s formula for proportionate reason takes into account that the more grave would be the wrong with which one would materially cooperate, the stronger must be the case to justify doing so. But all the bad effects of cooperating that ground reasons against doing so also can vary in magnitude—can be more or less—in diverse ways, and not all their differences in magnitude correspond to differences in gravity among various sorts of wrongdoing. For instance, the number of victims of a sin of injustice and the gravity of the sin usually are independent variables. So, the magnitude of the prospective bad effects of material cooperation also must be taken into account. In appraising the magnitude of bad effects, one must reduce those with respect to instrumental goods (such as property) to basic human goods (such as life, health, and bodily integrity) for whose pursuit instrumental goods are means. For instance, the loss of fifty dollars is almost sure to be more detrimental to a poor person than the loss of five thousand to a billionaire. Whenever a bad effect will be
— Avoiding illicit connection with evil: Alphonsus Liguori, Thomas Aquinas, contemporary issues Kevin L. Flannery, S.J. In presenting her teaching on various subjects, the Church often invokes the distinction between formal and material cooperation; in doing so, she also often cites St. Alphonsus Liguori. In the main part of this essay, explained is the distinction as understood by Alphonsus. The distinction is certainly a valid and useful one, although some aspects of Alphonsus's exposition of the distinction are problematic and have given rise to understandings of the distinction incompatible with his own understanding. Moreover, the distinction, however understood, is not applicable in a wholly coherent manner to some of the issues to which it is occasionally applied. The action theory of St. Thomas Aquinas, based as it is on ideas put forward originally by Aristotle, is useful both in clearing up the problems inherent in Alphonsus's exposition and in analyzing moral situations to which the formal/material distinction is not properly applied. The essay goes on, therefore, to explain how Thomas's theory might be employed in these two regards. It then applies ideas found in Thomas to two contemporary issues: the use of vaccines connected in some way with abortions and the objection by the Little Sisters of the Poor to the "contraceptive mandate" issued by the United States Department of Health and Human Services.¹ I. Innocent XI and Alphonsus Liguori² We begin, somewhat in the middle of the history of the moral theory of cooperation with evil (cooperatio ad malum), with Pope Innocent XI, who was Pope from 1676 to 1689, which is to say just after what might be called the classical period of Jesuit casuistry. The major names in that period would be John Azor, S.J. (d. 1603), Paul Laymann, S.J. (d. 1635), and Hermann Busenbaum, S.J. (d. 1668). In 1679, Pope Innocent issued a condemnation of what was generally recognized as a "laxist" position regarding cooperation. The condemned proposition-known as Proposition 51—runs as follows: A servant who, offering his shoulders, knowingly helps his master to climb through a window in order to violate a virgin and often assists him by carrying a ladder, opening a gate, or cooperating in some similar way, does not sin mortally if he does this out of fear of notable injury-lest, for A version of this paper was delivered as the Waite Chair Lecture at Creighton University, April 8, 2021. I am grateful to the president of Creighton University, Daniel Hendrickson, S.J., for inviting me to be the holder of the Anna and Donald Waite Chair for the academic year 2020-21, and also to the Waite family for funding the chair. I also thank for their help in thinking through various issues discussed in this essay Elizabeth Kirk, O. Carter Snead, Maureen Condic, Christopher Tollefsen, Nicanor Austriaco, Michael Pakaluk, Ramon Lucas Lucas, L.C., Thomas Joseph White, O.P., Kevin FitzGerald, S.J., James Clifton, S.J., and Paul McNellis, S.J. go more in depth into matters discussed in this and the subsequent section in Kevin L. Flannery, Cooperation with Evil: Thomistic tools of analysis (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2019); see also Kevin L. Flannery, "Two factors in the analysis of cooperation in evil," National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 13 (2013): 663- 75. 1 instance, he be ill treated by the master, or be subject to angry looks, or be expelled from the house.³ Pope Innocent is speaking here about cooperation. He does not employ the expression 'formal cooperation' which, as we shall see shortly, is an expression referring to cooperation that is necessarily sinful-but his speaking of "mortally sinning" would suggest that he is speaking about the type of act that other scholars would place in that category. It is notable too that the servant in the story does not necessarily want the virgin to be violated; only out of fear does he cooperate in the more deliberate sin of his master. The next major figure in this story—that is, after Innocent XI-is Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787). Alphonsus was the founding father of the Redemptorists, the religious congregation that runs in Rome the academy named after their founder, the Alphonsianum, which specializes in moral theology and has therefore a significant influence upon the Holy See's teaching in ethical matters. In 1839, Alphonsus was canonized; in 1871, he was declared a Doctor of the Church; in 1950, he was named (by Pius XII) patron of confessors and moral theologians. Alphonsus spent a large portion of his adult life preaching missions and hearing confessions in southern Italy, especially in rural areas. He managed at the same time to pen an impressive number of works, especially devotional works, but also a much- augmented version of a manual of moral theology published a century earlier by the Hermann Busenbaum. This repeatedly augmented version of Busenbaum came to be regarded (quite reasonably) as Alphonsus's own work, appearing eventually under the title Theologia moralis.4 When the issue of cooperation with evil is discussed nowadays, the name of Alphonsus Liguori is inevitably mentioned. In his analysis of the issue, Alphonsus employs language he found in the tradition, already mentioned, that developed in the century before Innocent XI's 1679 condemnation of Proposition 51. From this tradition he took the distinction between formal and material cooperation. Formal cooperation is (to repeat) necessarily immoral; material cooperation is not necessarily immoral- although it could be if the cooperation is too "close" (proximate) to the primary evil act. Throughout the history of reflection on this issue, one comes across explanations of the distinction-sometimes attributed to Alphonsus-according to which one formally cooperates if and only if one shares the intention of the primary evil-doer, and one cooperates merely materially if one does not share that intention. This is not, however, Alphonsus's position. In the section of Theologia moralis in which he presents the distinction, he begins by citing a number of other moralists, including a Dominican and a Jesuit whose accounts of the distinction are couched in very Thomistic terms. And then he says the following: But it is better with others to say that that cooperation is formal which contributes to the bad will of the other and cannot be without sin, but that cooperation is material which contributes only to the bad action of the other, beside the intention of the one who cooperates.5 Important here is the fact that, in describing formal cooperation, Alphonsus speaks of contributing to the will [concurrit ad malam voluntatem] of the primary evil-doer and 3"Famulus, qui submissis humeris scienter adiuvat herum suum ascendere per fenestras ad stuprandam virginem, et multoties eidem subservit deferendo scalam, aperiendo ianuam, aut quid simile cooperando, non peccat mortaliter, si id faciat metu notabilis detrimenti, puta ne a domino male tractetur, ne torvis oculis aspiciatur, ne domo expellatur" [Heinrich Denzinger, et al., Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), §2151]. The best modern edition is Alphonsus Maria de Ligorio, Theologia moralis, ed. L. Gaudé (Rome: Typographia Vaticana, 1905-1912 (4 vv.)). 5 Theologia moralis 2, §63, emphasis added. 2 distinguishes this from sharing his intention. By speaking thus, Alphonsus in effect is marking out an area of bad activity, to which the formal cooperator's action is linked, but which is more expansive than the primary evil-doer's intention. Of course, sharing a malefactor's intention is also immoral-it turns what in certain situations would otherwise be material cooperation into formal cooperation-but that is not the only way of cooperating formally. One does this also when one simply "contributes to [concurrit ad]" the bad will of the primary evil-doer. Imagine, for instance, an abortionist whose intention in performing an abortion is to allow a woman to pursue without interruption a musical career, and a medical student who opposes abortion but must help the abortionist in the procedure, handing him instruments, etc., lest he fail his internship. (I use here the pronoun 'his' in its more inclusive sense.) The primary evil-doer's intention here is sharply specific and includes killing an unborn child. The medical student does not share this intention. But the abortionist's will takes in much more than that intention. It takes in everything in the scene that gets its sense-we might also say its form-from that intention: the fact that the woman is made to position herself in a certain way, the fact that the instruments are laid out on a tray in order of their use, the fact that close at hand is a vessel into which the body of the aborted fetus will be placed, etc., etc. These facts involve (obviously) physical things but they are not mere matter. They are matter that is "headed" in a particular direction: the direction determined by the primary evil-doer who intends to perform the abortion. Even though the medical student does not share the abortionist's intention, in helping the abortionist as he does, he enters into the larger scene informed by the will of the abortionist. That this is how Alphonsus understands formal cooperation is apparent a few numbers later in the Theologia moralis. He asks the question, "Whether it is licit for a servant because of grave fear to write or to carry amorous letters to the concubine of his master?" His response: Whatever others say, I believe ... that these things are never licit since they cooperate formally in the sin of the master, fostering his obscene love.7 This servant need not be sharing his master's intention; nonetheless, says Alphonsus, his cooperation is formal. The master's intention of sinning with his concubine creates a larger "scene," informed by his will, into which the servant's action enters. This interpretation is both sound and in accordance with Church teaching: the example that Alphonsus gives of formal cooperation closely parallels what is said in Proposition 51, the proposition condemned by Pope Innocent XI in 1679. As we have seen, Alphonsus says of material cooperation that it "contributes only to the bad action of the other, beside the intention of the one who cooperates." The first idea here, that material cooperation is contributing not to the will but "only to the bad action" of the primary evil-doer, is also sound and especially useful. Alphonsus is saying, in effect, that there is such a thing as an action that cooperates with an evil For this distinction, see Summa theologiae [ST] 1-2.12.1 ad 4. Theologia moralis 2, §67. 8 In another work, which he wrote explicitly for priests hearing confessions, he gives other examples of formal cooperation; it comes about, he says, "when one directly cooperates in a sin (as in him who fornicates), or else when it flows into the bad will of one's neighbor who wills to sin, as would be serving as a lookout ['watching the back'] for an assassin so that he might steal or kill more securely: to write amorous letters for an adulterer or to convey gifts to a concubine; to accept gifts from him who would undermine your integrity. These and similar acts of cooperation are intrinsically evil, for by them a hand is given to one's neighbor in committing a sin-or, at least, the bad will of the latter is fostered and so for no reason, not even that of death, can they be dismissed as not mortal sin [Alphonsus Maria de Ligorio, Homo apostolicus instructus in sua vocatione ad audiendas confessiones, sive praxis et instructio confessariorum (Mechliniae: H. Dessain, 1867-1868 (3 vv.)), tract.4 punct.5 §31)]. 3 action without entering, as a participant, into the scene informed by the primary evil- doer's will. If we think of that scene as a distinct and identifiable area within which certain individuals do things which, in their very intelligibility, are connected with what the primary evil-doer intends (even though they do not intend what he intends), Alphonsus is saying that an act of material cooperation does not enter into that area but cooperates with it as that distinct and identifiable area. To refer once again to the example of the abortion, as we have seen, the abortionist and the medical student who assists him are within the conceptually demarcated area of formal cooperation. But a receptionist sitting at his post just outside the operation room and doing what he does during any procedure-telling others not to enter the room during the procedure, for instance is quite possibly not entering into the will of the primary evil-doer. Let us say that the receptionist works in a hospital that performs many types of procedure and that he has never thought seriously about the moral difference between an abortion and a genuinely medical procedure. By making sure that others do not enter into the operation room, he is "just doing his job." His preventing someone from entering the room is material, not formal, cooperation. His action makes sense-has intelligibility-independently of what is happening in the operation room. As Alphonsus puts it, he is not contributing to the will of the abortionist but only to "the bad action," outside of which he stands: physically but also-and more importantly-intelligibly. But imagine another receptionist in the same hospital who is perfectly aware that the morality of abortion is hotly disputed and is ideologically committed to the pro- abortion side of the debate. He also knows that at a particular moment an abortion is being performed in the operation room and, when someone approaches wanting to enter the room, he does what he always does: turns him away. Unlike the other receptionist, whose action cooperates only with the abortion qua action, his cooperation, because his intention is "joined up" with the intention of the abortionist, enters into the scene being played out in the operation room. In a sense, that scene, which in the case of the other receptionist was limited to the operation room, has become larger and includes now the reception desk and the person there in charge. The intention of the ideologically committed pro-abortion receptionist may occasionally become manifest: as when, for instance, on a particular occasion he might be especially insistent that a particular person not see that an abortion is being performed, while with other persons and regarding other procedures, he is less insistent. But, even if his sharing the intention of the abortionist never becomes manifest in this way and he is always perfectly uniform and regular in doing his job- even still his cooperation is not material but enters formally into the scene with the abortionist, the medical student, the pregnant woman, her baby, the instruments laid out on the tray in order of their use, etc. The cooperation of the other receptionist is still possibly immoral. After defining material cooperation and distinguishing it from formal cooperation, Alphonsus says that material cooperation is licit "when there is present a cause which is just and proportionate to the gravity of the sin of the other and to the proximity of the cooperation which is contributed to the execution of the sin."⁹ We might suppose that the receptionist is the sole source of income for his family and can find no other employment than as a receptionist at that hospital. Such circumstances might qualify as "a cause which is just and proportionate to the gravity of the sin of the other." On the other hand, we might suppose that the receptionist could just as well work for another employer. Given the proximity of his present occupation to the abortions performed in the operation room, his cooperation would be material but also illicit. Theologia moralis 2, §63. 4 II. A problem (or two) in Alphonsus's account There are, however, some problems with the way that Alphonsus describes material cooperation and its relationship with formal cooperation. Just before the phrase we have just looked at, he says of material cooperation that it is licit only if it is "per se good or indifferent". And a couple of numbers later, he considers the question "Whether it is licit for a servant, on account of his servitude, to bear gifts to a prostitute?" He cites a number of authors who say that, if the gifts are "edibles" or "other small presents," this is licit. But then he says that it is more truly said that "this is intrinsically evil since in fact the gifts per se foster obscene love."10 So, Alphonsus appears to be adding to the criteria we have already seen and saying that formal cooperation involves actions that are intrinsically immoral, material cooperation actions that are not intrinsically immoral but are either in themselves good or indifferent although the example he gives of an intrinsically evil act (delivering edibles or small gifts) leaves one wondering just what distinguishes an intrinsically evil act from an indifferent act. He also at one point says that the indifference that he associates with material cooperation is due to the fact that "another's wickedness cannot alter the nature of your action in such a way that, from an indifferent action, it becomes [evadat] intrinsically evil." 11 The problem with this concatenation of ideas is, first of all, that the acts that Alphonsus describes as formal cooperation, such as delivering gifts to someone, are not so very different from those he identifies as involved in material cooperation. At one point, for instance, he says that holding a ladder or opening a strong-box for a thief are "truly indifferent, for, depending on the end toward which they go, they could be either licit or illicit." "12 But someone might argue that the same thing can be said of delivering gifts. Alphonsus might have restored some semblance of consistency to his theory by reversing himself and saying that both formal and material cooperation could involve acts that are in themselves (that is, independently of other factors) indifferent. But he would have had to deal also with the other principle just mentioned: that one person's wickedness cannot alter the nature of another's action, changing it from an indifferent act into an intrinsically evil act. Applying this principle, the reluctant medical student handing instruments to the abortionist would be performing an indifferent act which could not be affected morally by the act of the abortionist. This, by Alphonsus's own reckoning, would put the medical student's cooperation outside of the realm of formal cooperation. The medical student would be cooperating materially but (presumably) proximately. The only way to cooperate formally would be to share the intention of the primary evil-doer. Some of the moralists who come after Alphonsus do just that sometimes invoking the authority of Alphonsus himself. Alphonsus, however, does not go that route, possibly because he saw that it would be hard to reconcile with what Innocent XI teaches in condemning as mortally sinful carrying a ladder or opening a gate-even under great pressure-in order to help a man intent on adultery. Or possibly because he eventually recognized as problematic introducing into the analysis of cooperation with evil the factor of act indifference. 10 Theologia moralis 2, §65: "But Father Concina contends more truly that this is intrinsically evil since in fact the gifts per se foster obscene love." Father Daniel Concina was a Dominican (1687-1756) whose writings on moral theology were roughly contemporaneous with those of Alphonsus. Alphonsus uses similar language also at Theologia moralis 3, §571, where he characterizes "breaking open gates" and "setting fire to a house" as "intrinsically evil." 11Theologia moralis 2, §66. 12 Theologia moralis lb3 §571 p.67ab. 5
— 1 2 3 4 1. Introduction 1.1 The complicity of intellectuals In a recent book, Complicities: The Intellectual and Apartheid, Mark Sanders examines the complicated rôle of South African thinkers during the apartheid era.¹ He begins with the five- volume report of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission which attributed culpability not only to specific agents, but to various groups (including the churches and "the health sector") and to the wider community. It challenged South Africans to recognize "the little perpetrator" in each of them and to accept their responsibility both for what had happened and for ensuring that such evil is never repeated.² But, Sanders says, "until recently, there has been no full- scale philosophical exposition of complicity on which to draw".3 He turns therefore to Émile Zola,4 Karl Jaspers and Jacques Derrida6 for an explanation of how even those who do not formally support a particular evil can live symbiotically with it and have some responsibility for it. Sanders' book might have been enriched by some acquaintance with moral-theological reflection upon sin (original, social-structural and personal) and cooperation in evil. But his work still challenges us to consider the rôle that intellectuals pastors, moral theologians, textbook writers, media commentators, bioethicists, ethics committee members, hospital chaplains, healthcare movers and shakers play in complicity with evils, including those that the Church, at least, very publicly opposes. In a world ablaze with headlines about cloning, over-the-counter abortifacients, resource shortages in hospitals, withdrawal of feeding from the unconscious, and umpteen other problems, the subject of cooperation might appear rather obscure or self-indulgent. Yet those of us who work in moral theology and especially in advising people or organizations with real dilemmas know how often cooperation issues arise. The third volume of Grisez's tour de force, The Way of the Lord Jesus, excellently demonstrates just how common this is.7 But as Henry Davis remarked half a century ago, there is no more difficult question in the whole range of moral theology than that of 5 6 7 Cooperation in evil: understanding the issues Anthony Fisher OP in Helen Watt (ed), Cooperation, Complicity and Conscience: Moral Problems in Healthcare, Science, Law and Public Policy (London: Linacre Centre, 2005), 27-64Mark Sanders, Complicities: The Intellectual and Apartheid. London: Duke University Press 2002. Ibid. p.3. Loc. cit. Who in J'accuse (1898), an open letter to the President of France in defence of Alfred Dreyfus (the Jewish artillery officer wrongly convicted of treason), wrote: "La vérité, je la dirai... Mon devoir est de parler, je ne veux pas être complice” (“Truly, it is my duty to speak up: I will not be an accomplice to this crime.") Sanders, op. cit. pp. 4-5. Jaspers proposes a kind of "metaphysical guilt" or co-responsibility for horrendous evil in The Question of German Guilt (1946). He writes that "there exists a solidarity among men as human beings that makes each co-responsible for every wrong and every injustice in the world, especially for crimes committed in his presence or with his knowledge." Sanders, op. cit. pp. 6-7. Sanders, op. cit. p. 9, notes that "complicity - the foldedness or 'contamination' of oppositional pairs - has been a key concern of deconstruction from the beginning". For Derrida complicity cannot be avoided: one chooses in order to avoid the worst. Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, Vol.3: Difficult Moral Questions (Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press 1997), including his extended essay on cooperation at pp. 871-898. Cooperation in evil: understanding the issues – Fisher for Linacre 2003 - page 2 cooperation in evil.8 Perhaps this explains why so little has been written on it compared with the headline issues. The present book might help to fill the gap. 1.2 Traditional distinctions We must all confront the issue of cooperation in evil because, especially for those who live "in the world", it is inevitable that they will engage in such cooperation from time to time indeed sometimes it is their duty to do so. Even Christ's little band paid taxes some of which were no doubt used for wicked purposes; despite his entreaties, when Jesus cured the sick some of them went on to sin some more; after repeatedly evading his persecutors, Christ eventually allowed himself to be arrested, thereby occasioning his false trial and terrible execution. All sorts of wickedness goes on in our society, and we finance it through our taxes, elect leaders who allow it and fail to do much to change things. More immediately, almost anything we do can be an occasion, opportunity or means for someone else to do something wrong. To avoid all cooperation in evil would require that we abandon almost all arenas of human activity – such as family, workplace, government, health system, Church - and could well constitute a sin of omission.9 Reflection upon cooperation in evil begins, therefore, with some commonplace human experiences: 8 9 10 ● we are all involved in webs of relationships which enable people (including ourselves and others) to achieve both their good ends and bad ends whether by good means or bad means; in this context our actions inevitably affect others which ends and means those other people choose are often beyond our control or influence sometimes we choose to involve ourselves in other people's bad ends or means, by seduction or conspiracy or deliberate cooperation in that evil, making at least part of their bad willing our own; ● at other times we make no such choice, but the otherwise good things that we do foreseeably assist others to achieve their bad purposes; this is an example of an act with a double effect one good and intended; the other bad, not intended but foreseen - and so the principles of cooperation are really expressions of the principle of double effect; accepting the bad "“side-effects" of cooperation has implications for those who perform the act of cooperation, those who are assisted by it in performing their evil act, and other parties who may be affected; it is sometimes reasonable and sometimes unreasonable to engage in an act foreseeing and permitting such side-effects; and so ● people in this situation must decide whether to go ahead with their contemplated action despite its connection with the morally objectionable action of another, or alter their plans, thereby possibly foregoing achieving whatever good they had proposed.10 Cited in James F. Keenan SJ, "Prophylactics, toleration and cooperation: contemporary problems and traditional principles". 29 (2) (June 1989) International Philosophical Quarterly: 209 and "Collaboration and cooperation in Catholic health care”. 77 (April 2000) Australasian Catholic Record: 163. Cf. 1 Cor 5:9-10. Grisez op. cit. p. 871: "some unreflective and/or unsophisticated people imagine problems regarding co-operation can (and perhaps should) be avoided by altogether avoiding co- operation. That, however, is virtually impossible and sometimes inconsistent with doing one's duty." See M. Cathleen Kaveny, “Appropriation of Evil: cooperation's mirror image". 61 (June 2000) Theological Studies: 280-83. She makes a persuasive case for the category of "appropriation of evil" as a mirror image of cooperation in evil. 3.4 Pluralism Another "exception" proposed by, for instance, Lewis, is that if there is a difference of opinion amongst theologians or conscientious health professionals there must be latitude for practitioners and patients to decide for themselves.80 Yet on almost every bioethical teaching of the Church there are theologians or practitioners who disagree. As early as the 1975 Declaration the CDF saw this coming and made the point that widespread theological dissent from the Church's teaching on a matter such as contraception or sterilization has no doctrinal significance in itself. Theologians do not offer "a theological source which the faithful might invoke, forsaking the authentic magisterium for the private opinions of theologians who dissent from it."81 Cooperation in evil: understanding the issues Fisher for Linacre 2003 - page 20 3.5 Reasons to cooperate and not to cooperate There are lots of good reasons to cooperate materially in any particular evil. There is the good aimed at in the cooperator's own chosen purpose. There are the spin-offs in terms of keeping one's job or position in the healthcare world, such as the opportunity to do all the other good things which the job or position allows (e.g. saving, healing and caring for others); the income this brings, thereby supporting a reasonable life-style for oneself and one's dependents or a reasonable margin for the institution to focus on its mission; the friendship with the others with whom one works; and so on. When considering whether to engage in an action which has the foreseeable effect of assisting someone else's wrongful purposes, we must ask ourselves: how important are the benefits expected from this action, how probable, how lasting, how extensive and for whom? What kind of loss or harm would result (and how serious, and for whom...) from foregoing this proposed action? People with dependents, for instance, have more to lose from refusing to take part in certain procedures, than do people with no dependents. People who can readily get another good job will be freer to say no. Someone who cannot readily fulfil some important responsibility, except by agreeing to cooperate materially, will have more reason to do so that someone with a ready, morally acceptable alternative. On the other hand, for reasons which I will explore in the next part of my paper, there are strong reasons not to cooperate in many cases. Given the risks to self and others both of material cooperation in evil and of foregoing acts which materially assist someone else's evil acts, what would count as relevant and sufficient and even decisive reasons to take such risks or permit such evil foreseen side-effects? To cooperate materially in evil a more serious reason is required: ● ● the graver (or more probable or more lasting or more extensive or less preventable) the evil of the principal agent's act in itself; the graver (or more probable or more lasting or less preventable) is the harm which may be caused to the principal agent, e.g. by helping and even apparently encouraging him/her to engage in a wrongful act and possibly further wrongful acts, with all the moral and spiritual consequences of that for the principal agent; the graver (or more probable or more lasting or more extensive or less preventable) is the harm which may be caused to third parties, especially the innocent, e.g. by assisting or apparently encouraging the principal agent to do something which damages third parties or their interests, perhaps giving the impression that, on the cooperator's view, the wrong done is trivial; or by engaging in activity which may foreseeably corrupt third party observers; 80 Lewis op. cit. p. 162. 81 CDF, Quaecumque sterilizatio: §2. See also CDF, Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian (1990). ● 82 83 Cooperation in evil: understanding the issues - Fisher for Linacre 2003 84 page 21 85 the graver (or more probable or more lasting or less preventable) is the harm which may be caused to the cooperator him/herself, e.g. by inclining the cooperator to do similar acts in the future and worse; by gradually corrupting him/her; by compromising the cooperator's ability to give witness to true values; by damaging his/her relationship with God, the Church and fellows; the harder it is to protest the evil and/or to avoid or minimize scandal in both the ordinary sense and, more importantly, in the theological sense of leading people into sin;82 Some writers would add immediacy and proximity to this list of factors. But for reasons I have explored previously, the most important factors in determining the reasonableness of a particular instance of material cooperation will only sometimes correlate with immediacy and proximity, 84 the more easily the same good could be achieved by another course of action without similar or worse side-effects; and All these matters are in fact difficult to assess and usually incommensurable with each other and with the goods hoped to be achieved by the cooperator's act. After appropriate moral reasoning and discernment, two people of good will and right reason might come to a different judgment. In this situation, instead of high-blown polemic and name-calling, respectful dialogue is required and possibly some judgment from a competent authority. the more difficult it would be for the principal agent to proceed without the cooperator's involvement. 83 3.6 Different moral worldviews Furthermore, the principles of cooperation highlight a difference in moral worldview. For some there are moral absolutes, such as that against formal cooperation, which cannot be compromised in any weighing exercise, and even merely material cooperation in another's wrongdoing is a serious matter requiring justification.85 Morality on this account is part of the vocation to human perfection See Griese op. cit. pp. 414-6 on “Dissipating the appearances of evil in scandal situations". Grisez op. cit. Vol. 3 (1997), p. 883: “In considering bad effects... one must take several different measures of magnitude into account. How extensive is the damage?... How lasting is it?... How greatly will the damage disrupt the person's life?... In regard to adverse effects on the cooperator's feelings and dispositions, the extent of injury depends on the likely seriousness of their negative effect on his or her subsequent actions. In regard to moral detriment to the wrongdoer, occasions of sin for the cooperator, and scandal to third parties, the extent of injury to the person adversely affected depends on whether the sin is or would be venial or mortal, less or more grave, more or less likely to be repented. In regard to tensions with victims of wrongdoing, the bad effect can be a more or less serious impediment to a good relationship that should be more or less central to the lives of those involved. In regard to impairment of the cooperator's witness and other obstacles to fulfilling his or her vocation, the bad effects can be a more or less serious detriment to serving goods whose service is more or less central to a person's vocation..." Fisher, "Co-operation in evil." As Grisez (op. cit. Vol. 3 (1997), p. 890) points out, "involvement in others' wrongdoing usually is more likely to impede a cooperator's witness, be an occasion of sin to him or her, have bad moral effects on the wrongdoer, and scandalize others if it is immediate material cooperation than if it is mediate, and, when mediate, if it is proximate than if it is remote. Still, closeness of involvement is morally insignificant unless correlated with some factor that affects the strength of a reason not to cooperate." Grisez, op. cit. Vol. 3 (1997), p. 871: "insofar as doing anything facilitates or contributes to another's wrongdoing, it cannot serve an authentic common good. If one is unjustifiably involved in another's wrongdoing, one is doing evil, and that cannot serve good or build up genuine community even with a Cooperation in evil: understanding the issues - Fisher for Linacre 2003 - page 22 or holiness under grace, and the (rebuttable) presumption is against cooperating even materially, unless there is a sufficiently strong reason to warrant proceeding.86 Such an approach seems to underlie the various magisterial judgments outlined in the first half of this paper. There are, however, a good many "tax-lawyer” moralists who seem to regard the moral law as a series of constraints on human freedom and happiness, rather than the roadmap to both. On this approach the rôle of the moral adviser is to help people find a way around the moral law or at least a way of sailing as close to the wind as possible without falling in the water. Preference fulfilment and social acceptability are paramount; conversion and self-sacrifice have little place here. Using traditional casuist categories,87 more 1970s situationism88 or proportionalism,89 or the new (and otherwise very attractive) talk of virtue and narrative,⁹0 these writers end up reducing almost all cases of cooperation in evil to material not formal cooperation and almost all cases of material cooperation to permissible cooperation. Duress, probable opinion, proportionate reason, the common good, prudence and epikeia – such very traditional-sounding labels are attached to these novel schemes for paying less moral tax. And those who come to conclusions in line with the magisterium are quickly dismissed as "scrupulous", "conservative" and "inhuman". I do not mean to suggest that there are the only two moral worldviews or that everyone (or anyone) fits neatly and clearly into one or the other. Rather I am suggesting that two polarities are particularly evident in the scant literature on cooperation and that this might help to explain why two people can describe and judge the same example of cooperation so differently. While the range of moral approaches at one pole offers a "line of best fit" for the several recent Church documents 86 87 88 89 90 wrongdoer; if one is justifiably involved in another's wrongdoing, community is prevented or damaged insofar as the other's bad will and one's good will are opposed, at least with respect to that matter." Amongst the authors one might associate with such an approach are John Paul II, Benedict Ashley, Joseph Boyle, Romanus Cessario OP, Augustine di Noia OP, Robert George, Germain Grisez, William E. May, Ralph McInerney, Livio Melina, Servais Pinckaers OP and Janet Smith. E.g. Keenan, in the several places cited. Lewis op. cit., for instance, presents the principles of cooperation as tools which should not be applied in a "narrow and blinkered way" but transcended as required in the quest for "better and more creative solutions in particular circumstances”. He suggests that individual conscience must have primacy and that the serious obligation to respect the freedom of others means that one should be willing in some cases to cooperate in what is objectively evil but not so considered by the principal agent. Where this leaves the conscience of the cooperator is far from clear... The second of St Alphonsus' conditions for the moral acceptability of material cooperation is that the cooperator have in view as his end a reason that is "just" and "proportioned" to the gravity of the wrongdoing to which his action contributes and the moral proximity of that contribution to the wrongful deed. Grisez (op. cit. Vol. 3 (1997), p. 878) has explored well some of the deficiencies of this formulation of what makes some material cooperation licit and other material cooperation illicit and has proposed a more precise analysis which I, for one, find persuasive. Grisez explains that the only real issue of "proportion" here is the necessary comparison between reasons for engaging in the act of material cooperation and reasons for not doing so. The graver the evil assisted and the more closely the cooperator is involved, Alphonsus might be read to suggest, the more serious would the cooperator's reasons have to be for going ahead with his own action. Fair enough. But, as Grisez points out, there will be other reasons not to cooperate which are not well captured by Alphonsus' formulation: the "psychological" effects on oneself and effects on one's future options; the effects on the instigator and the cooperator's relationship with him or her; the effects on third parties and the cooperator's relationships with them. "The magnitude of the various bad side effects, how likely they are to occur, and how much confidence the cooperator has in his or her own judgments also can affect the strength of the reasons to forgo an act that would constitute material cooperation." In his passionate defence of The Many Faces of AIDS Keenan praises the "new and profoundly challenging ideas” that are replacing the old categories of cooperation in evil and the like. "Attempts to replace duties with virtues, the classical with the historical, the object with the acting person, the normative with the narrative are emerging." (Keenan, "Prophylactics..." 219)
— On Cooperation with Evil - Thomistic Circles conference at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC March 17, 2018
— Dr Watt is a Research Fellow at Blackfriars and a Senior Research Fellow of the Anscombe Bioethics Centre, where she worked first as Research Fellow (1992-2001) and then as Director (2001-2010). From 1993 to 1996 she was also Senior Research Associate at Peterhouse, Cambridge. She studied first at the University of Western Australia, and subsequently at the University of Edinburgh, from where she obtained her PhD in Philosophy in 1993. Der Watt’s research interests include reproductive ethics, gender, action theory, and issues of cooperation and conscientious objection. This event was organized by the KUL student chapter in Lublin, Poland.
— Archbishop JosÈ H. Gomez of Los Angeles, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, blesses a health care worker before receiving his first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at Providence St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, Calif., Jan. 21, 2021. (CNS photo/Victor Aleman, courtesy Angelus News) Introduction The question whether it is morally licit to produce cell lines from embryonic and fetal cells, to use these cell lines for the research on or the production of vaccines, and to be vaccinated with a vaccine of such pedigree has received new urgency because of the current worldwide COVID-19 health crisis. Prior to this emergency, the issue has been dealt with by three ecclesial pronouncements: a 2005 note by the Pontifical Academy for Life (PAV 2005),1 the 2009 Instruction Dignitas Personae by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF 2009),2 and another note by the Pontifical Academy for Life in 2017 (PAV 2017).3 In December 2020 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has issued another statement on the matter with specific application to the question of the preparation and use of vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 virus (CDF 2020).4 From the outset it must be made clear that the research on and production of vaccines making use of human cell lines does not necessitate the continued utilization of ever new human embryos or fetuses. Once these cell lines have been produced by the manipulation of the original cells, they enjoy a quasi-immortality and can be multiplied almost indefinitely. In the preparation of anti-COVID-19 vaccines, two cell lines have been of particular relevance: the HEK-293 and the PER.C6 cell lines. In the preparation of the majority of the vaccines available, these cell lines have been used as a sort of miniature factory to produce high quantities of adenoviruses which are used as vectors to introduce certain genes of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus into the vaccine, which will then stimulate the immune response in those vaccinated. Alternatively, they serve to reproduce the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which, once injected under the skin will cause the desired immune reaction.5 Fetal cells are not used in the production of the vaccines, nor does the research on or preparation of the vaccines increase the demand for newly aborted fetuses. The fact of the matter is, however, that the HEK-293 cell line did derive from the human embryonic kidney cells (hence “HEK”) of a female fetus aborted around the year 1972, while the cell lines themselves were generated in 1973.6 The precise circumstances of the abortion can no longer be established with certainty. Given that the fetus was healthy, it is it is highly improbable that the abortion was spontaneous. The PER.C6 line was obtained from an 18-week-old fetus, aborted in 1985.7 It is the fact of these abortions that makes the question of the anti-COVID-19 vaccines an issue. All people of good will agree that it is never morally licit to use human beings as mere tools, as happens, for instance, in slavery or organ trafficking. What is increasingly being lost today, however, is the awareness of the fact that human embryos and human fetuses, too, are human beings, who must be treated with the same respect as is due to human beings already born. The use of fetal cells to produce cell lines would in most scenarios seem to constitutes an instrumentalizing use of these fetuses, particularly if they have been victims of an induced abortion. For the following reflections it will nonetheless be important to keep in mind that it is at least thinkable that a fetus providing the original cells died on account of a spontaneous abortion and that his or her case could be understood in terms analogous to an adult organ donator who has died from a natural death (the mother expressing consent on his or her behalf). even if the fetus died on account of an induced abortion, it is at least thinkable that the researcher using the fetal cells to produce a cell line did not formally cooperate with that abortion, benefiting from someone else’s evil action without previously having encouraged it in any way. Helen Watts makes a strong point when she argues that such scenario generally speaking extremely unlikely.8 At least in the case of HEK-293, however, this would seem to be the more likely scenario, as significant time had passed between the original abortion in about 1972 and the production of the cell line in 1973.9In addition, Frank Graham, the original researcher establishing HEK-293, declares to have no knowledge of what had happened to the fetus and of where the cell had come from.10 He did not therefore assist in any way in the 1972 abortion of the female fetus whose embryonic kidney cells he turned into the HEK-293 cell line in 1973. One might be able to conceive of her case as one analogous to an adult organ donator who had died from a violent crime and who donates an organ to someone who had nothing to do with his or her death. These considerations go to say that the connection between producing human cell lines and recurring to induced abortion is accidental. In some, most, or possibly even all actual cases, there might in fact have been this connection, but this connection is not substantial, inasmuch as it is at least thinkable to produce a human cell line without formal cooperation with abortion.Producing cell lines from cells deriving from an aborted fetus is a case where one can will the end (the cell lines) without necessarily willing the means (induced abortion), as long as one has not assisted in the abortion or encouraged it. One of my main arguments in this piece is in fact that not every time we are benefiting from someone else’s evil action, our benefiting signals formal cooperation with that evil. There are many cases in which one can will one’s own (good) end without willing the other’s (evil) means, from the results of which one nonetheless draws benefit for proportionate reasons. This is not to say that there are no moral difficulties with making use of the results of someone else’s evil action – it is just to say that such benefiting from someone else’s evil act is not necessarily formal cooperation in evil. If it is morally problematic to use a fetus deriving from an induced abortion for the production of cell lines, why not solve the problem by simply establishing cell lines deriving from a fetus who died from natural causes or use other alternative sources of cell lines entirely unconnected to abortion? Of course, this is exactly the solution for which to strive and for which to make a public appeal. There are, however, difficulties connected with it, which need to be acknowledged, even if the goal should not be abandoned. It would seem that particularly in the case of HEK-293, its original creation has been a major feat11; it has since become extremely common, to the point of having become somewhat of the “gold standard” in research, and according to some, replacing it would mean having to go back 30 years and having to “reinvent the wheel.”12 For the time being, in any case, the only cell lines available for research seem to be those of compromised or at least doubtful origin. They were established by researchers who benefitted from or perhaps even directly and formally cooperated with the deliberate suppression of an unborn human being, from whose cells these cell lines were created. The question arises how to deal with these cell lines, now that they have become a “thing” in the world. Can scientists in good conscience use them in the process of producing vaccines? Can the public, in good conscience, agree to being vaccinated? What exactly is at stake here? I will take for granted that induced abortion is always morally illicit and must never be done. But this affirmation alone does not yet answer the question whether, and if yes, under which conditions, one may licitly benefit from the results of such evil action perpetrated by others. I will argue that one formulates the matter inadequately if one puts it in terms of material or even formal cooperation with evil and that one gets much closer to the root of the problem if one applies the categories of what moral theologians in the late 20th century have christened “appropriation of evil.”14 Put in general terms, the issue at stake in the vaccine controversy would seem to be this one: Is it ever morally licit to make use of the convenient results of other people’s evil actions, and if yes, under which conditions?Not availing themselves of the conceptual framework of appropriation, all four ecclesial documents mentioned above make use of the category of the cooperation with evil, which was first conceptually elaborated by Alphonsus Liguori in the 18th century15 and is thus more time-honored than the category of appropriation, but is still relatively recent from the perspective of the Church’s bi-millennial history. Benefiting is not the same as cooperating. Answering a question about benefiting with conceptual categories proper to cooperation may make one’s argument appear incoherent and unconvincing, even if one’s conclusions should turn out to be sounder than one’s arguments in their favor. In any case, formulating a question in the wrong way and using inadequate categories to confront an issue is bound to have some undesirable consequences.In what follows, I will first point out the difficulties connected to these four documents in their content (they don’t agree), and in their reception (some high ecclesiastics feel duty-bound to reject their teaching and some Catholic intellectuals, while accepting what the documents say, would appear to misinterpret their argumentative principles). I will then argue that these problems result from the use of a conceptual category (cooperation with evil) which is inadequate to deal with a question that is really about benefiting (“appropriation”). Applying the category of appropriation, one may still arrive at very much the same conclusions as Dignitas Personae, while at the same time presenting an argument that is more convincing, more coherent, and clearer. The Disagreement between PAV 2005, CDF 2009, CDF 2020 on the One Hand and PAV 2017 on the Other If one approaches PAV 2005, CDF 2009, PAV 2017, and CDF 2020 with the question of whether, under certain circumstances, one may vaccinate one’s children or be oneself vaccinated with vaccines of illicit origin, all four answer in the affirmative and all four frame their argument by making use of the category of cooperation. There are, however, fundamental divergences about the reasons adduced and the conditions indicated between PAV 2005, CDF 2009, and CDF 2020 on the one hand, and PAV 2017 on the other. We will turn to these differences right away. However, a quick word should first be said about the degrees of authority proper to these different documents. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith shares in the papal magisterium: both its 2009 Dignitas Personae and its 2020 note on anti-COVID-19 vaccines were examined by the respective reigning pontiff who himself ordered their publication. Of the two, Dignitas Personae is more authoritative, inasmuch as it is an instruction and as such “trumps” a note. The Pontifical Academy for Life, in contrast, is an advisory body. Its pronouncements are not part of the magisterium, nor is its task strictly speaking that of teaching. Nonetheless, the fact is that the ordinary Catholic is usually unaware of this difference, and the media typically do not discriminate: the PAV is presented as “the Vatican” no more and no less than the CDF. It is therefore important not to leave to one side the PAV documents but to examine them as well. Let us begin with a discussion of the three documents that are in essential concord not only about the argumentative framework (cooperation) and the general answer (affirmative), but also on the reasons and conditions. Dignitas Personae speaks of a duty to refuse the use of biological material of illicit origin, but it also states that this duty is not exceptionless: “Grave reasons may be morally proportionate to justify the use of such ‘biological material’. Thus, for example, danger to the health of children could permit parents to use a vaccine which was developed using cell lines of illicit origin” (n. 35). Apart from the proportionate gravity of the reasons apt to justify such use, the Congregation adds another condition, which at first sight may seem curious, but which, upon closer inspection will prove to be fundamental: for the CDF, while one makes use of said vaccine, one must keep in mind “that everyone has the duty to make known their disagreement and to ask that their healthcare system make other types of vaccines available” (n. 35). Someone might object that it is incoherent first to speak of a duty and then to list the conditions under which one may be exempt, or to tell people that they can licitly benefit from the use of an item and then urge them publicly to object to the way this item has been produced. But there is really nothing inconsistent about these conditions. Though there are some duties that are exceptionless – the duty never to commit acts that are intrinsically evil, such as directly killing the innocent or committing adultery – the concept of duty as such is compatible with the concept of exceptions. The Congregation does not contradict itself when it states that there is a duty (on principle) not to use biological material of illicit origin while also affirming that at times this duty can licitly be overturned for grave reasons. Many, even most duties have exceptions for proportionate reasons. The CDF implicitly affirms that there is a difference between the use of biological material of illicit origin and the illicit act at its origin: receiving a vaccine is not the same as procuring an abortion. There exist, in fact, “differing degrees of responsibility” (n. 35). One must never, under any thinkable circumstance, procure an abortion, but one may, under certain conditions and for grave reasons, receive a vaccine that has a procured abortion in its pedigree (that is of “illicit origin”). Further, the evident tension between benefiting from someone else’s immoral action while at the same time declaring one’s disapproval of that action does not need to be a contradiction, especially if one has few options in the matter, so that one’s freedom is limited. In its conclusions on the question at hand, Dignitas Personae essentially reaffirms what was said by PAV 2005. The 2020 note by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith bases itself, in turn, on Dignitas Personae, so that all three documents agree on the following points: 1. There is a moral problem with the use of vaccines of illicit origin. However, under certain conditions and for grave reasons, it is morally licit to have oneself or those in one’s care vaccinated, even if the vaccine has an ethically reproachable origin. Implicitly the point is made that benefiting from an intrinsically evil act is not the same as committing an intrinsically evil act. Explicitly it is stated that there are grades of moral responsibility. 2. In making this ethically licit use of such vaccines, there is the danger of giving the impression of endorsing the use of cell lines deriving from aborted fetuses. This danger must be avoided. One must therefore find appropriate ways of making one’s disapproval known and encourage those responsible to produce ethically acceptable vaccines. 3. Dignitas Personae frequently refers to biological material of “illicit origin.” While an origin is not a concrete thing as is a vaccine, it is nonetheless a thing, albeit an abstract one. If in their literal use, terms of moral disapprobation such as “tainted,” “reproachable,” or “illicit” refer to actions, their use to describe things is metaphorical. All three documents share the conviction that the metaphorical use of adjectives of moral disapprobation to describe certain types of vaccines or their origin is semantically intelligible and morally warranted. In contrast, on all three points the 2017 note by the Pontifical Academy for Life significantly departs from the teaching proposed by the other three documents. Here, the PAV argues that “the cell lines currently used are very distant from the original abortions and no longer imply that bond of moral cooperation indispensable for an ethically negative evaluation of their use.” Therefore, in conclusion, “all clinically recommended vaccinations can be used with a clear conscience.”16 There is therefore no need for particular circumstances and particularly grave reasons to justify an exception from a prima facie duty. The question is not one that poses any difficulty to conscience (as opposed to the above point 1). In addition, the duty incumbent on everyone – taken quite individually – to express one’s disagreement and to encourage alternative ways of production is transformed into “a common commitment to ensure that each vaccine has no reference for its preparation to any material of abortive origin.”17 Now a “common commitment” is really the commitment of no one. And it is a commitment that the common Catholic faithful can do little about – how can I ensure that there is no longer such reference if I’m not working in the laboratory? Well, I could make known my disapproval, in conversation, by making phone calls or writing emails. But there is none of this here. Rather, the emphasis is clearly on the “moral responsibility to vaccinate … in order to avoid serious health risks for children and the general population” (together, this is opposed to the above point 2). Finally, for PAV 2017, there are no morally tainted vaccines of illicit origin: “As for the question of the vaccines that used or may have used cells coming from voluntarily aborted fetuses in their preparation, it must be specified that the ‘wrong’ in the moral sense lies in the actions, not in the vaccines or the material itself” (as opposed to the above point 3). In sum, the immoral action of committing abortion has long receded into the past, so that the degree of cooperation is insufficient to warrant moral reprobation. The solution to the problem is to understand that there is no problem. The objection that there are no “illicit” vaccines is rather superficial. It is of course true that, strictly speaking, acts are immoral and not things. Ordinary language, however, allows us to speak of “dirty money,” for instance, and no one objects to this expression as being imprecise or implying a magic notion of reality where evil haunts things. We all understand that “dirty money” refers to funds that have derived from morally and legally illegitimate activities such as drug trafficking, extortion, or prostitution. If the generally accepted rules for the use of metaphors allow us to speak of “dirty” money in such cases, then we should, by the same rules, be allowed to speak of “tainted” or “morally reproachable” vaccines. The weightier point of PAV 2017’s objection is its reference to the temporal distance from the original abortions. What bond of cooperation does one establish with those past immoral actions if one has oneself vaccinated today – or, we may add, even if one does research on those cell lines established 40 years ago? The most plausible answer is indeed the one given by the document: a cooperation not sufficient to warrant a negative moral qualification – or, to be more precise: none. This holds doubtlessly true if one speaks of material cooperation, as do PAV 2005, CDF 2009, and CDF 2020. In the context of the argumentative framework of cooperation with evil, the position proposed by PAV 2017 seems to be more coherent than that of the other three documents. If it were a question of cooperation, the reasons and conclusions proposed by PAV 2017 would be incontrovertible, unless we wanted to turn the question into one of formal cooperation, which is always illicit and which would require all people of good conscience to refuse vaccination (and, then even more so, refuse to engage in research conducted with such cell lines). However, as we will argue, this framework is inadequate to answer the question. The moment one applies the categories of appropriation of evil, the conclusions proposed by the other three ecclesial documents appear much more convincing than those presented by PAV 2017. The Difficulties in the Reception of the Teaching The magisterial teaching encounters difficulties in its reception: there are some Catholic bishops who publicly claim that it is always immoral to be vaccinated with vaccines of illicit origin, thereby claiming that the CDF’s and PAV’s teaching is inacceptable for Catholics.18 There are some Catholic academics who until December 2020 would have eschewed proportionalist thinking, but now, having read CDF 2020, begin measuring what is incommensurable, weighing lives against each other on a scale. In a doubtful application of the principle of double effect (a principle of which the CDF 2020 document is silent), they claim that under conditions of necessity one is morally obliged to choose the action whose results are more beneficent than damaging – in the case in point, the action that saves more lives than the alternative one: getting vaccinated saves more lives than are killed by the practice of fetal research which it might encourage.19 Taken literally, such reasoning can be and has in fact been used to justify any kind of action or practice, from the legalization of abortion to the nuclear bombing of cities. On any calm day, this maxim probably does not represent the authors’ mind, and it certainly does not represent the CDF’s position. My point here is only this: while no writing is immune from being misunderstood, at times it shares some of the responsibility for being misunderstood. To my mind, the greatest misunderstanding is that of treating a question of appropriation – of benefiting from someone else’s evil action – as if it were a question of cooperating with that action. Cooperation In what follows, then, I will argue that it is possible to explain the incongruities among the four ecclesial documents and the difficulties in their reception by their use of the conceptual framework of cooperation, which is not entirely appropriate for the original question. I will try to show how most, if not all, of the difficulties we have thus far encountered can be resolved by applying the category of appropriation instead. The question of cooperation was first treated (though not conceptually elaborated) by a Church document in a note by Pope Innocent XI of 1679, in which he condemns the proposition that “A male servant who knowingly by offering his shoulders assists his master to ascend through windows to ravage a virgin, and many times serves the same by carrying a ladder, by opening a door, or by cooperating in something similar, does not commit a mortal sin if he does this through fear of considerable damage, for example, lest he be treated wickedly by his master, lest he be looked upon with savage eyes, or lest he be expelled from the house.”20 It is not licit for a servant to cooperate in his master’s act of rape by holding or carrying a ladder or lending the use of his shoulders so the master can enter through the maiden’s window. Ever since then, elaborate principles of moral cooperation have been developed, in particular with the work of Saint Alphonsus Liguori, who introduces the distinction between formal and material cooperation.21 In formal cooperation, the cooperator in the evil act shares the evil intent of the principal agent. Such sharing is always immoral. When it comes to material cooperation, by which the cooperator provides some enabling conditions for the principal agent to execute his evil action, moral theologians today usually distinguish between immediate, proximate, or remote cooperation, between necessary and non-necessary cooperation, and between one that is active or passive, as when someone cooperates with evil by not resisting it. All cooperation with evil should generally be avoided. Nonetheless some types of material cooperation can be morally justified for proportionate reasons, while others are always immoral. Thus, immediate, necessary material cooperation is always immoral, as when a nurse passes the scalpel to a doctor who is performing an abortion. Working as a cook in an abortion clinic, in contrast, would qualify as remote material cooperation and could therefore be justified for proportionate reasons, as when someone cannot easily find a different employment and really needs the income to provide for his or her family. All four ecclesial documents which we have discussed claim that receiving vaccines that in their research or production stage have made use of fetal cell lines, which in turn have been prepared by making use of cells belonging to aborted fetuses is an act of remote material cooperation with the evil of abortion. The PAV 2017 document considers this material cooperation remote enough to have essentially disappeared from sight, so that the use of these vaccines no longer presents any difficulty for conscience and does not need to be further justified. Here PAV 2017 correctly points to the fact that the research on or the production of said vaccines does not keep using up ever new fetuses. What is at stake is using fetal cell lines, which once produced, can be reproduced and maintained for decades on end. As I explained in the beginning, essentially all fetal cell lines currently utilized in the research on or the production of vaccines derive from a limited number of concretely identifiable incidents of induced abortion, performed in the 1970s and 1980s. PAV 2005, CDF 2009, and CDF 2020 operate on the same scientific premises and come to the conclusion that a moral problem does exist. The solution is first to look for alternatives to the use of such vaccines. Then, if alternatives do not exist and there is grave necessity, one may licitly use these vaccines, though one should make known one’s opposition to abortion and urge that alternatives be provided. There is however, a grave conceptual difficulty. It is simply not evident how someone’s getting vaccinated today with a vaccine of illicit origin assists or provides the material conditions for the abortions performed in the 1970s and 1980s, or, to put it more generally, how there can be material cooperation with evil acts performed in the past. In order to be able to rape the maiden, the master needs the ladder carried and held by his servant. The servant might not share his master’s intentions, but still provides necessary conditions for him to carry these out. To perform an abortion, an abortion doctor needs the scalpel provided by the nurse and, in a much more remote way, he also needs food, provided by the cook. The abortion doctor who in 1972 aborted the fetus whose kidney cells were then used to produce the HEK-293 cell line does not need me to get vaccinated. My getting vaccinated does not provide any facilitating conditions for his or her action, which becomes neither easier nor harder. The past cannot be changed. No one today can assist in the performance of someone else’s past action any more than he or she can prevent it. One may of course object and say that one cooperates by encouraging a present or future evil practice or by seeming to approve of it. But these are precisely the problems with benefiting from someone else’s evil action. If it is strictly speaking a matter of material cooperation, i.e., of lending assistance to someone else’s evil action, and if we look at the relation between the original abortions that happened some 40 years ago and persons getting vaccinated today, then no material cooperation is detectable and PAV 2017’s argument is completely coherent. There is of course a way in which one can cooperate even with past evil, and that is formal cooperation. Since the past cannot be changed, today it is metaphysically impossible for anyone to give material assistance to the Nazi-crimes of the 1930s and 1940s. Formal cooperation, instead, remains a metaphysical possibility, even if it regards past actions: it is enough to approve of them. Assistance given by providing material enabling conditions tinkers out over time the more the assisting act is removed from the evil act, and it only goes in one direction: from the present into the future. Intentions, on the other hand, seem to be more indifferent to the passing of time and the direction of its flow. By approving a past crime, to the point of affirming that one would have committed it oneself had one had the chance, one has made this crime one’s own, even if it is past. Temporal and spatial distance is essentially insignificant here. One can condone a moral atrocity committed by the ancient Romans no less than a crime committed by contemporary agents. Somebody can condone a present wrongdoing no less than an anticipated future one. If we want to use the categories of cooperation with evil in order to answer the question whether it is ever morally licit to be vaccinated with a vaccine of illicit origin, then the most plausible view would be to frame the matter in terms of formal cooperation. But it is always sinful to cooperate with evil formally. Hence the decisive “no” recently given to the question by some high prelates of the Church. To sum up, the PAV’s 2017 rather unqualified “yes” to the question of whether it is morally licit to get vaccinated with vaccines of illicit origin is based on an understanding of the issue in terms of material cooperation. The Academy finds that, for all intents and purposes, there is no material cooperation, which is why it is morally licit, nay, obligatory, to get vaccinated. Cardinal Janis Pujats’ and his colleagues’ unqualified “no” to the same question is likewise based on an understanding of the issue in terms of cooperation, though this time, in the final analysis, in terms of formal cooperation, which is more plausible if we want to frame the matter in terms of cooperation in the first place. The qualified “yes, but” given by PAV 2005, CDF 2009, and CDF 2020 seems to me the best answer, but it is truly coherent only if the issue is formulated in terms of appropriation of evil and not in terms of cooperation with evil, since for metaphysical reasons, one cannot say that the cooperation is material and for moral reasons, one does not want to say that the cooperation is formal. Appropriation How can one benefit from someone else’s evil act and why could it ever be a moral problem? One benefits for one’s own ends. Someone else’s evil act assists one in pursuing one’s interests and in bringing about one’s intentions. The “evil” agent here is the cooperator, the one benefiting is the principal agent, and the question is not whether the cooperating agent acts in a morally licit way – this question is decided: he or she does not – but rather whether the principal agent is morally justified in availing him- or herself of the results of the evil acts. The question of the appropriation of evil, of benefiting from someone else’s evil, is therefore the exact mirror of the question of cooperation with evil, as M. Cathleen Kaveny has felicitously formulated it in her landmark paper on the matter.22 There would seem to be four distinct ways in which one can benefit from the results of someone else’s evil act, depending on how one’s own intentions in acting are related to the intentions of the maleficent auxiliary agent.23 1. With one’s own action one pursues a goal that is in accordance with the intentions of the one who committed the evil act from whose results one now benefits. The useful result of the other’s evil act cannot be reached by means other than the evil act. By making use of this result for one’s (good) ends, one also wills the (evil) means by which the result has been produced. Here appropriation necessarily implies sharing the other’s evil intention; here appropriation indeed amounts to formal cooperation. Example: Let us suppose a maleficent auxiliary agent produces a movie with murder scenes in which it is not just the characters who are killed, but literally the actors. Let us further suppose that the goal of the primary agent in watching this movie is not to conduct a murder investigation but to get excitement and a new kind of thrill, which is precisely what the producer intended it for. In this case, the primary agent would seem to be formally cooperating with murder. It is analytically true that there is no other way of producing such movie. The result of which one avails oneself is defined by the evil act by which it has been produced. Using such movie for the ends for which it has been intended is also to want the means by which it has been produced. 2. With one’s own action one pursues a goal that is at least partially in accordance with the intentions of the one who committed the evil act from whose results one now benefits. The useful result of the other’s evil act could also be reached by means other than the evil act. Example: A medical doctor encounters difficulties during a surgical operation. She needs to free a pinched nerve in her patient’s knee but is unable to find the nerve. Prior to the operation, her patient had declared that she no longer wanted to live with the excruciating pain caused by the nerve and desired her leg to be amputated in case there was no other remedy for the situation. The doctor is in possession of a book with the most accurate and most detailed anatomical drawings available to date, the so-called Pernkopf illustrations. Standing at the operation table, she calls a colleague and asks him to go to her office, find the book, take pictures of the relevant pages and send them to her on her smartphone. On receiving the anatomical drawings, she is able to locate the nerve, set it free and save her patients’ leg. The moral difficulty consists in the fact that these drawing have been produced in Austria in the late 1930s by doctors who, to arrive at this anatomical detail, used the bodies of those unjustly executed by the Nazis.24 While in her use of the plates, our present-day doctor had no intention to murder people, her use of the drawings was precisely for the purposes intended by the Nazi-doctors. In theory, however, one can produce illustrations of this quality by using other means. Therefore, her using the picture for the same end as intended by the Nazis does not commit her to willing the same means applied by the Nazis to produce the picture. Willing the use of these illustration is not the same as willing the execution of innocent victims. Here the result of which one avails oneself is not defined by the evil act by which it has been produced. There is no necessary formal cooperation with evil here. There is no material cooperation either. And yet, a moral problem would seem to persist. 3. With one’s own action one pursues a goal that is parallel to the intentions of the one from whose evil act one now benefits. Example: A patient with a kidney deficiency receives a donor kidney from a murder victim who had previously declared his willingness to serve as an organ donor in the event of his death. The murder was not commissioned by the organ recipient and not perpetrated for the sake of organ-trafficking. 4. With one’s own action one pursues a goal that is contrary to the intentions of the one from whose evil act one now benefits. Example: A police officer’s professional activity depends on the activity of criminals. If there were no one who breaks the law, there would be no need of the action of law enforcement agents. In what they are doing, police officers benefit from the activities of criminals, inasmuch as criminals give them something to do in the first place, preventing them from becoming unemployed. No moral issue seems to arise in cases 3 and 4. Case 1 is clearly one in which appropriation is formal cooperation and therefore morally illicit, not to say atrocious. A true moral difficulty is raised by case 2. It would appear that we instinctively feel uncomfortable at the thought of benefiting from Nazi-drawings, even if it is for a good purpose. At the same time, we would probably not blame the doctor for what she has done and may even recommend her for it. And yet, if we, as she herself did, feel a certain unease, one must wonder where it comes from. What is involved with benefiting from the results of others’ evil acts and thereby in some ways even bringing to fruition their original intention, though we are not committed to willing their evil means because the useful result could also be produced in other ways? There would seem to be at least the following four issues at stake here: 1. Accepting to benefit from the results of someone else’s evil action, even if it is past, may encourage present or future evil practices.25 By using the Nazi-drawings, our doctor does nothing to assist the Nazi-doctors in the 1930s. But present or future agents might be encouraged to engage in instrumentalizing research on human subjects when learning that good may come from it. Accepting the benefit may suggest to some that there is a demand for the results of such evil actions and encourage them to provide the supply (though, as we have seen, in this case the supply could also be met by morally licit means). 2. Accepting to benefit from the results of someone else’s evil action weakens the credibility of one’s objection to that action. There is no strict logical contradiction between benefiting from an action and at the same time objecting to it, but it would need particular circumstances not to appear or literally be hypocritical. It weakens one’s witness. 3. Accepting to benefit from the results of someone else’s action may give the impression of approving it. There is no strict logical connection between benefiting from an action and approving of that action, but it would need particular circumstances not to appear to be or literally be approving of that evil action. There is a risk of scandal. 4. Accepting to benefit from the results of someone else’s evil action may feed into our complacency and darken our mind.26 It may weaken our intellect when it comes to understanding the evil at stake and weaken our will when it comes to resisting it. There is a risk that the appropriation of evil undermines our moral character and leads us to condone evil. While the appropriation of evil is not the same as formal cooperation with evil, the former may lead to the latter. However, to benefit from evil is not the same as to commit evil. Therefore, despite these undesirable potential consequences, the appropriation of evil, unlike the perpetration of evil, is not always morally wrong but can be justified for proportionate reasons and under certain circumstances. What could these reasons and circumstances look like? How can one counteract the four dangers involved in the appropriation of evil just mentioned? There would seem to be three conditions that could justify and at the same time counteract the moral risks of appropriation: 1. There would have to be a grave necessity and no viable alternative. Our doctor’s use of the Nazi-drawings was not for trivial reasons, like winning an anatomy contest in medical school. She used them to save her patient’s leg. There was no alternative available, not at the given place and time and not absolutely speaking. 2. One would have to look for adequate ways of expressing one’s disapproval of the evil action from whose results one now benefits. And this disapproval is credible only if condition 1 is fulfilled, that is, if there is in fact a grave necessity and no alternative.
— Dr. Ryan Anderson, founder and editor in chief of Public Discourse, explores ethical questions around the COVID-19 vaccine.
— We have been hearing the good news that the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine has shown over 90% efficacy in trials. Unlike some other vaccine candidates including the Oxford AstraZeneca candidate – this vaccine did not use a foetal cell-line in either its design or its production. Reports of the use of foetal cell-lines at some stage for some vaccines have sparked concern for Catholics and other opponents of abortion. But what is a foetal cell-line, exactly? Is it ever admissible for Catholics to receive a vaccine which has employed one? How can we approach these moral questions in the context of a global pandemic? To explore these issues and more, Michael Wee interviewed the Anscombe Bioethics Centre’s Senior Research Fellow, Dr Helen Watt. To find out more, read Dr Watt's briefing paper here: https://bioethics.org.uk/research/covid-19-briefing-papers/covid-19-vaccines-and-use-of-foetal-cell-lines-dr-helen-watt/
— We have been hearing the good news that the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine has shown over 90% efficacy in trials. Unlike some other vaccine candidates including the Oxford AstraZeneca candidate – this vaccine did not use a foetal cell-line in either its design or its production. Reports of the use of foetal cell-lines at some stage for some vaccines have sparked concern for Catholics and other opponents of abortion. But what is a foetal cell-line, exactly? Is it ever admissible for Catholics to receive a vaccine which has employed one? How can we approach these moral questions in the context of a global pandemic? To explore these issues and more, Michael Wee interviewed the Anscombe Bioethics Centre’s Senior Research Fellow, Dr Helen Watt. To find out more, read Dr Watt's briefing paper here: https://bioethics.org.uk/research/covid-19-briefing-papers/covid-19-vaccines-and-use-of-foetal-cell-lines-dr-helen-watt/
Suppose that it is wrong for A to act in a certain way, e.g. to defraud a business, or to kill an innocent person. Is it wrong for B to enable or assist A to do that? Here there are really two issues: 1) specifying what exactly enabling or assisting mean, and 2) given that specification, determining the nature and extent of B’s culpability. Assume that conspiring with A to do the thing in question makes one equally culpable, what about cooperating with A, does that make one complicit in the wrongdoing? In thinking about such issues (partly for the purpose of hearing confessions, judging culpability and assigning penances) Catholic moral theologians, following St Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787) have drawn a distinction between formal and material cooperation with evil. B formally cooperates with A’s action, if B willingly participates in it, either directly by co-acting, or indirectly by assisting it with the intention that the action succeeds. On the other hand, B merely materially cooperates with A’s action if though B does not co-act or indirectly assist, but enables it to occur by, for example, providing A with equipment used in the fraud or killing, or by transporting A to a place where the actions are performed. Here B may not share in A’s intention but nonetheless B has enabled the action. Many further issues remain, for example whether B knew or suspected what A intended to do, or if, though B did not know or suspect this it was negligent of B not to have considered the likelihood or possibility of this. Although this may seem abstract it is very important in determining whether and to what extent an agent may be morally guilty.