Cooperating with Evil

One

The Issue of Cooperation in Moral evil

Sometimes we may find ourselves in situations where we’re being pressured to participate in some moral evil that’s been initiated by someone else. In fact, that can happen a lot, maybe more now than ever. 

There are bakers who get in trouble if they won’t bake a cake for a gay “wedding”. There are managers who have lost their jobs because they won’t refer to a biologically male employee as “she” on the annual performance review. Every June librarians and human resources directors are told to put up displays or arrange events celebrating objectively disordered lifestyles.

So what do you do if you find yourself in a situation like that? When do you have to say, “I’m sorry, but I can’t participate in this”?

Two

Formal cooperation (never okay) 

So the first kind of cooperation in evil that’s never morally okay is called formal cooperation. Formal cooperation refers to where you stand in principle. 

Formal cooperation is when you lend your help to an intrinsically evil action because you want the act accomplished. And automatically, that makes it an evil act, which is why formal cooperation in evil is always wrong.

For instance, a young man driving his girlfriend to the abortion clinic because he wills to have the pregnancy terminated, or a pro-choice politician who supports permissive abortion laws because she is openly in favor of abortion.

The evil in this kind of cooperation is easy to see. It’s evil that wears evil on its sleeve, evil that holds up a big sign that says, “Go evil!” 

So obviously, this kind of explicit formal cooperation is always bad. 

Three

Implicit Formal Cooperation (also never okay)

But sometimes you support evil willingly, even though you claim to be conflicted about it.

Maybe you drive your girlfriend to the abortionist, and you say, “For the record, I didn’t ask you to do this” – but you’re still driving her! Or you're one of those pro-choice politicians or voters who says, “I’m personally opposed to abortion, but I don’t want my personal opinions to affect my policy decisions.”

This is called implicit formal cooperation because even though you’re not explicitly cheering for the evil, your cooperation makes it clear you don’t really believe it’s wrong. 

Like if you really thought it was wrong to have your baby murdered, you wouldn’t actually drive your girlfriend to the place where they do it. Or if you really, personally believed that abortion was really murder, that it’s not less murder than the murder of old people or children or minorities, or you, then you would fight tooth and nail for policies that forbade that kind of atrocity. 

So it’s not enough to say, “This makes me really uncomfortable.” Actions speak louder than words. And if you are cooperating with evil in a certain intimate, immediate way, then you can verbally dissociate yourself all you want, but you know – and everyone else knows – at the end of the day you’re a willing accomplice.

Four

Immediate material cooperation (never okay): 

Formal cooperation is about what you believe, where you stand on principle. Material cooperation is about what you’re actually doing to support the evil. And as we just said, you can tell what somebody really believes based on the kind of cooperation you’re willing to engage in.

Immediate Material Cooperation is where you’re very intimately connected to the evil that’s being done.

Suppose you work at the checkout counter in a pornography store. Or maybe you’re a hospital nurse assigned to assist at an abortion and your task is to hand the doctor the knife when he asks for it. Now, it may be that you don’t like men objectifying women, or you don’t like the idea of the doctor killing the baby. And you think to yourself, “I’m just doing my job.” Nonetheless, you are too close to the act, too involved, and you have become guilty by association. So immediate material cooperation in an evil act is never okay.

There are two main questions you can ask yourself to see whether you’re engaged in immediate material cooperation.

The first question is: Is my cooperation ordered to and indispensible for the evil being done? Am I being asked to do this because it makes the evil more effective, easier to get done, or even possible? 

So are you being asked to do something to help spread, confirm, or celebrate the lie that a man can marry another man, or that a woman can marry another woman? Are you being asked to do something to assist in the sale and distribution of pornography? And the second question is: am I actually the one carrying out the evil itself, even if it was initiated by somebody else? 

So, for instance, are you the doctor writing the prescription for hormone therapy for some poor confused kid because that’s what the official state protocols say to do? Are you the doctor performing the sex-change surgery at a patient’s request? If the answer to either of these questions is yes, you’re probably involved in immediate material cooperation, and you should probably stop.

Five

Who is Extreme?

As you can probably tell, the more committed the culture becomes to intrinsically evil actions, the more common it’s going to be for Christians to have to say, “I’m sorry, I can’t do that. I can’t participate in that. I can’t cooperate in that.” And because there will be so much we have to say no to, we’re going to look (and feel) increasingly extreme. 

But remember this: we aren’t the ones who are changing. We are simply the ones who refuse to attack human nature and human nature doesn’t change.

The culture is changing at a shocking rate. It’s getting weirder and weirder, and it’s coming up with more and more ways to go against human nature. The culture expects us to go along with it. It expects us to cooperate. 

But we won’t cooperate. Not because we’re extreme, but because we are stable with the stability of human nature which remains what it has been since the Garden of Eden. 

Eventually, as society gets more and more out of control, it will start looking around for some source of stability. Then the Church, who protects the truth of human nature as it has been created by God and redeemed by the Christ, will be the sanctuary where people can find peace.

The more we refuse to engage in immoral cooperation, the better people will be able to find the peace of the Church when they’re ready to do so.