Contemplating Cooperation
A distinct view held in voting is that if there are no acceptable candidates, one should abstain from voting. The argument is that one shouldn’t participate in a system that promotes evil. That is stacking the argument a little bit. To put it better, the argument is that one shouldn’t encourage grievous evil, and, by proxy, one does so when one votes for a man who supports an evil program. Of course moral theology has contemplated similar things.
There are some who would argue that unless there is no ready alternative, one should not procure heath services from a provider that performs abortions. These moralists – those who engage in moral theology – would argue that one is cooperating in evil, in some cases arguing that one is formally cooperating.* A common example would be for a person to receive a STD test from a Planned Parenthood Clinic. There is obviously nothing evil about receiving an STD test – ignoring for the moment how one acquires many STDs. Since almost any clinic can perform STD testing, moralists believe a person should do business with places that don’t otherwise engage in evil. A couple of caveats: there may be those readers who aren’t aware certain companies participate in evil or the reader may live where there aren’t ready alternatives. The first caveat falls under ignorance and therefore precludes formal cooperation. Ordinary diligence is generally all that is required in seeking to prevent ignorance. In other words, base your choices on what is commonly known.
The second caveat is where things get interesting. Take pharmacies. For all practical purposes and for most people in most places, there are no pharmacies that do not also sell condoms. Should one forgo taking his blood pressure medication over this? Certainly not. In case where there is a pharmacy that doesn’t sell these instruments of evil, one would clearly have an obligation to do business there, particularly because we are speaking of common products and common pricing. Now if that pharmacy was not in your benefit network, your obligation would be lessened. (BTW, for those parishes that do bulletin advertising, take at look at the pharmacies on there that sell condoms and the convenience stores that offer porn, etc.) But most people’s engagement with the pharmacist is relatively limited and there really aren’t ready alternatives.
Grocery stores are where we can have some good controversy. I do most of my grocery shopping (dollar-wise) 40 miles away at a 250,000 sq. ft. or so grocery store. Yes it is an employee owned company, but that is immaterial. The prices there are significantly lower than what they are at my local, Milwaukee-headquartered grocery store. Those prices in turn are cheaper than the convenience store. (If you look around, convenience stores many times have lower prices on milk and eggs though.) The mega-grocer sells inappropriate things. The supermarket also tends to sell inappropriate things. There are convenience store sized grocers that deliberately choose not to sell evil things. There are people who choose to only buy from small grocers. They do so for a variety of reasons. A significant reason is that they have a choice in what they support. If they need a certain product, the small grocer will buy it from a warehouse so the person can have it. Conversely if there is a product they don’t believe the grocer should be selling, the grocer will be more receptive to removing it. By the same token, I would have to organize a state-wide campaign to get a product removed from the mega-grocer.
There are some who would argue that things will never change unless you stop supporting the mega-grocer. Much like the bumper sticker argument of “If you don’t support abortion, don’t have one,” the retort is if I stop supporting the mega-grocer things won’t change at the mega-grocer. In fact the only thing that will change is that I will be worse off because I won’t be able to eat as well and I’ll be poorer. We could call this the monastic dilemma. One could choose to be in society taking the good with the bad and try to reform those things one is able to reform; or one can choose to cloister oneself off to the rest of the world and make a deliberately righteous society. In this coming election, if one chooses not to choose he has made a choice. One will feel the effects of the collective choice 4 years hence. If one has taken the monastic choice and rejected military service, largely isolated oneself from corporate America, has isolated himself from the public benefits of government, the choice to sit out is much easier. Given that the social institutions of the Church from the schools to the hospitals are heavily declining right now, I’m not sure the monastic choice is really choice for the common man.
* There are some who would argue that one is engaging in remote material participation in evil. The merits of the argument are dubious to me. To materially participate one must through his actions actually enable a particular instance. For example, does an office supply company materially participate in the evil of abortion by selling the abortuary paper? I would say no. At that level, the choice to conduct that business would seem to be a formal cooperation with evil though. Formal cooperation involves sharing the intention of the moral actor and is damnable to the same degree as the actor’s action.
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These arguments fail because of the basic fact that we, as humans, are evil. So should we consider killing oursleves or becoming hermits? That doesn’t work because we ourselves are evil.
We are still called to do what is right, fight for justice and care for those who cannot care for themsleves. There is no commandment that prohibits us from shopping at particular stores. But can infants in the womd care for or defend themsleves? No. So yes we need to do what we can, but not shopping at stores is meaningless. It is self-centered and lazy. If we really care there are many ways we can have an influence. I don’t care what store you shop at. That has nothing to do with anything except people’s own imaginative views of themselves.
As for voting for candidates. If there is no good choice, you make the best one you can. Tell me when there has been the perfect candidate? The system falls apart with that mentality. Again, it is only in people’s vain imagination that they are so good that they will not cast their vote for those awful evil candidates.
Can you say get a life?
M.Z.: Proceed with caution. Disagreement is fine, despite largely missing the point.
God created man and saw man was good. God created man in God’s image, and that image remains. Fallen, we might be; evil, we are not. Man is good by nature, fallen in mode.
I agree with Henry that the word “evil” or “depraved” is not an accurate description of fallen man. But I am not sure that I would go as far as Henry and state that man is essentially good.
I am more inclined to agree with Jimmy Aking and Ludwig Ott:
Jimmy Akin: “The accepted Catholic teaching is that, because of the fall of Adam, man cannot do anything out of supernatural love unless God gives him special grace to do so. Thomas Aquinas declared that special grace is necessary for man to do any supernaturally good act, to love God, to fulfill God’s commandments, to gain eternal life, to prepare for salvation, to rise from sin, to avoid sin, and to persevere.”
Ludwig Ott: ” For every salutary act internal supernatural grace of God (gratia elevans) is absolutely necessary” (Ott, 229).
http://www.ewtn.com/library/ANSWERS/TULIP.htm
Although it may very well be that Henry and I are actually closer on this issue than it appears from his brief comment.
Alex
Neither of those things says anything about man’s nature. Even without the fall, there would always be the need for a right relationship and openness to God.
The official Catholic doctrine is not the Protestant TULIP. It is that man’s nature is good, fallen, even crippled, but still — the nature is good. The problem is we, in a fallen mode, no longer manifest our nature and don’t do things according to nature, but a fallen, imperfect manifestation of that nature. Man’s essential nature is in Christ; to say that human nature is evil is to say Christ is evil.
Pyrrhus: Virtues, then, are natural things?
Maximus: Yes, natural things.
Pyrrhus: If they be natural things, why do they not exist in all men equally, since all men have an identical nature.
Maximus: But they do exist equally in all men because of the identical nature!
Pyrrhus: Then why is there such a great disparity [of virtues] in us?
Maximus: Because we do not all practice what is natural to us to an equal degree; indeed, if we [all] practiced equally [those virtues] natural to us as we were created to do, then one would be able to perceive one virtue in all, just as there is one nature [in us all] and that ‘one virtue’ would not admit of a “more” or “less.”
Pyrrhus: If virtue by something natural [to us]. and if what is natural to us existeth not through acesticism but by reason of our creation, then why is it that we acquire the virtues, which are natural, with asceticism and labours?
Maximus: Acesticism, and the toils that go with it, was devised simply in order to ward of deception, which established itself through sensory perception. It is not [as if] the virtues have been newly introduced from outside, for they inhere in us from creation, as hath already been said. Therefore, when deception is completely expelled, the soul immediately exhibits the splendor of its natural virtue. For example: he that is not foolish is intelligent, he that is not cowardly is bold, he that is not intemperate is temperate, and he that is not unrighteous is a righteous man. Reason, in a natural state, is prudence; the faculty of judgment, in a natural state, is justice; anger, is courage; desire, temperance. Consequently, with the removal of things that are contrary to nature only the things proper to nature are manifest. Just as when rust is removed the natural clarity and glint of iron [are manifest].
St Maximus the Confessor, Disputation with Pyrrhur. trans. Joseph P. Farrell (St Tikhon Seminary Press), 32 – 34.
Alex, one of the things you confused is the idea that the need for grace makes nature bad. That’s not true. From the start, we have always been open to grace and in need of it; when we closed ourselves off from it, turning ourselves from God, our nature remains the same nature, but it is corrupted from outside; the restoration of the image of God in us is like the restoration of iron in Maximus’ example; and there, we remain and must always remain open in grace; grace perfects nature, because nature is open to grace.
The intrinsic nature of man was not brought up in my post. I would prefer it be dropped or brought up on its own thread.
MZ-
I will honor your request.
I agree that a discussion of the nature of man as evil or good is off topic, but the point is that whatver it is, we are all in it together. The notion that one can’t vote because no candidate is good enough comes from a distorted view of one’s own moral standing. I could turn it around and say who of us is good enough to vote? Men and women have given their lives for this country and it has been built on sweat and blood of many. Who of us has the right to suggest we are too good to vote?
I think you do the best you can and be thankful that you can vote. I think you shop for the things that add value to your life and you be thankful that you can shop for them.
I think it is a lack of knowledge of God’s grace that moves one to say he will not accept the blessings that country has to offer, and without that grace we can’t see God.
Dan,
I think there is a reasonable argument to not voting for Obama and McCain, as an example. Both do support evil policies, ones our Church has been quite adamament about the necessity to oppose. So as not to divert the topic, one could take their common position on stem cell research. There are some who would argue that not voting for either of these men is required. I’m sympathetic to this view.
Zippy over at his blog ( zippycatholic.blogspot.com ) has been pounding his head in over intention for the past week. One of the interesting parts about Ratzinger’s letter to the bishops was the idea clearly expounded that one could formally cooperate (share the intention) without expressing warm fuzzies. Consistently supporting abortion rights legislation made it manifest that one formally cooperates with abortion.
Given this, I have posed a dichotomy, which others may find invalid. If one finds himself unable to cast a vote, it would seem he has surrendered his interest in larger society. I won’t argue that he may indeed be dutybound to do that. On the other hand if one chooses to remain in the larger society, which the bishops seem to be believe is possible, then you inevitably will at times be advancing one evil while seeking to end another. To take the view that one can participate in the political process without doing so, seems pollyannish in light of our electoral experiences of the last 40 or so years.