Formal and Material Cooperation

Situations can be created that render moral evaluation a little more difficult.  I refer to situations in which we might be tempted to choose to cooperate with another person who is committing a morally evil action.  The question is whether or not our cooperation is morally justified.  For example, is it justified to drive a woman to an abortion clinic?  Is it justified to allow a public non-Catholic hospital that is short on space to use a section of a Catholic hospital, knowing those doctors will be practicing sterilization and possibly abortion?  Is it okay to provide students with condoms?

These are cases of cooperation.  To deal with them adequately, we need to distinguish between formal and material cooperation.

Formal Cooperation:  In formal cooperation in the evil of others, one intends the evil that is done and participates in the evil-doing by advising, counseling, promoting, or condoning it.  For example, if I counsel a young girl to have an abortion, I am formally cooperating in the evil of abortion. 

It is always wrong to cooperate formally in evil, and no Catholic or Catholic institution is justified in formally cooperating in any evil. 

Material Cooperation:  Material cooperation is a type of cooperation in which one does not intend the evil that others are doing but only permits or tolerates this evil for the sake of avoiding even more serious evils.  Such cooperation can be either immediate or mediate.  Immediate material cooperation is the actual doing of the evil one disapproves of and is thus morally equivalent to formal cooperation.  Such material cooperation is never permitted.  But mediate material cooperation in the evil of others is permissible on the basis of the principle of double effect.  Thus a Catholic and a Catholic hospital may at times materially cooperate in the evil of others (only permitting or tolerating and not directly intending the evil done) when only in this way can a great harm be prevented.  Even in such material cooperation care must be taken that scandal is not given.   For example, a school that hands out condoms to teens not for the sake of contraception, but for the sake of reducing the spread of STDs, is engaging in material cooperation.  Whether this can be justified is another matter.  But if the school distributed the condoms with the intention to reduce teen pregnancy, then this is a case of formal cooperation in contraceptive behaviour, and such action is unjustified, because it is contra-life.  

But can condom distribution be justified if the object is to reduce the spread of STDs?  To answer this, we have to consider the conditions for the principle of double effect.  The relevant condition in this case is the fourth condition:  The good effect must be sufficiently desirable to compensate for the allowing of the evil effect.  Clearly the foreseeable evil effect is an increase in sexual activity.  The supposed good effect is the reduction in STDs.  But if we study the success of School Based Clinics in the United States, we see that the intended "good effect" has simply not come to pass.  Distributing condoms has led to an increase in sexual activity to a level that offset any advantage that the contraceptive was able to provide.  The Allan Guttmacher Institute (the research arm of Planned Parenthood) shows that over the years, as federal expenditures towards "Family Planning Clinics" increased, there was a corresponding increase in teen pregnancy and abortion.  Since that time we've also seen an increase in the spread of STDs.  Handing out condoms was like pouring fuel on a fire.  The material cooperation involved in handing out condoms is simply not justified on the basis of double effect.