My approach to the principle of cooperation with evil is to apply the three fonts of morality (intention, moral object, circumstances) to the cooperative act. This approach is certainly valid, since the Magisterium teaches that every act with three good fonts is necessarily moral, and every act with one or more bad fonts is necessarily a sin. The principle of cooperation with evil is not an exception to the three fonts of morality. Rather, it is an application of the three fonts to a particular type of act, one in which the act in question (the cooperative act) is related to the sinful act of another person. If any analysis of the cooperative act proves that the act has three good fonts, then it is morally permissible. An act with three good fonts is always moral. An act with one or more bad fonts is always immoral.

The three fonts correspond to the three types of cooperation:

1. Intention corresponds to explicit cooperation

When a person acts with the intention of cooperating with whatever is sinful in the act of the other person, then the cooperative act is a sin. However, if there is no formal or material cooperation accompanying such a sinful intention, it is really just a type of perpetration. That is why explicit cooperation does not stand on its own. If the cooperative act is formal or material cooperation, then the intention to cooperate in whatever is sinful (in the other person’s act) is explicit cooperation also.

Explicit cooperation is always a sin because, under the three fonts of morality, any act at all that is done with a bad intention is a sin. Obviously, it is a bad intention to cooperate specifically with whatever is immoral in the act of the other person. One might morally intend to cooperate with whatever is good in the act of the other person, even if that act is a sin. If so, then the cooperation is implicit, not explicit. If only good is intended by the person who acts, then the first font of intention is good and the morality of the cooperative act depends on the other two fonts.

2. Moral object corresponds to formal cooperation

When a knowingly chosen act is inherently ordered toward an evil proximate end, then the act is termed intrinsically evil. Such acts are inherently morally disordered because they are directed, by the very nature of the act, toward a morally-immediate evil end. The commission of an intrinsically evil act is always a sin (sometimes mortal, other times venial).

Suppose that another person is committing an intrinsically evil act. If your cooperative act assists the act of the other person in attaining its evil moral object, then your act is formal cooperation. An act of formal cooperation is always directly related, by the nature of the cooperative act, to the nature of the intrinsically evil act of another person. And since the act of formal cooperation has, as its moral object, the attainment of the evil moral object of the other person, the act of formal cooperation is itself intrinsically evil and always immoral.

When considering the same cooperative act and the same related sinful act, explicit formal cooperation is more sinful than implicit formal cooperation. Adding a bad intention to any sin makes the sin more disordered. The greater the disorder, the greater the sin. But implicit formal cooperation is still immoral. Any type of formal cooperation is intrinsically evil, by definition. And every intrinsically evil act remains immoral, regardless of intention or circumstances. Since explicit and implicit cooperation are based on intention, neither is able to transform an intrinsically evil act of formal cooperation into a moral act.

“Indeed, from the moral standpoint, it is never licit to cooperate formally in evil.” (Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, n. 74).

The Magisterium teaches that formal cooperation is always immoral. So, whether the formal cooperation is implicit or explicit, it is never justifiable, regardless of intention or circumstances.

Intention and Cooperation

However, there is a common point of confusion on formal cooperation. It is said that intention is involved in formal cooperation. But if formal cooperation is immoral due to the moral object of the cooperative act, then how can its morality be determined by intention? The same question arises in determining which acts are intrinsically evil. The Magisterium often uses terms such as deliberate, voluntary, or intentional, when describing an intrinsically evil act.

The answer is that all three fonts of morality proceed from the human will, that is to say, from the intention of the human person. But each font is ordered toward a different type of end. The distinction between the three fonts is not their source, the human will, but the end toward which the will directs itself.

In the first font, the human will chooses an intended end, which is the purpose or reason for choosing the act. The intended end is in the subject, the person who acts. Any evil in the intention makes the act a sin. It is always a sin to act with bad intent.

In the second font, the human will chooses a type of act, whose moral nature is determined by the proximate end (moral object) toward which that act is intrinsically ordered. The moral object is in the act itself. That is why an evil moral object makes the chosen act intrinsically evil and always immoral. When there is only good in the moral object, then the chosen act is intrinsically good. But that act, whether good or evil, is always deliberately chosen (knowingly chosen, voluntarily chosen, intentionally chosen). For the will chooses both the intended end in the first font and the type of act in the second font.

In the third font, the human will chooses to act, with the reasonable anticipation that the act will have certain good and/or bad consequences, the reasonably expected end results of the act. If the reasonably anticipated bad consequences morally outweigh the reasonably anticipated good consequences, then the intentional choice of that act is a sin. It is always a sin to choose to act with the knowledge (or reasonable expectation) that your act will do more harm than good.

So when the Magisterium refers to intrinsically evil acts as intentional or deliberate or voluntary, the meaning is that the inherently disordered act is being intentionally chosen. But this in no way implies that a good intention can transform an intrinsically evil act into a good act.

“If acts are intrinsically evil, a good intention or particular circumstances can diminish their evil, but they cannot remove it. They remain ‘irremediably’ evil acts; per se and in themselves they are not capable of being ordered to God and to the good of the person…. Consequently, circumstances or intentions can never transform an act intrinsically evil by virtue of its object into an act “subjectively” good or defensible as a choice.” (Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, n. 81.)

Similarly, an act of formal cooperation, which is a type of intrinsically evil act, is an intentionally chosen act. Such acts are always knowingly chosen, deliberately chosen, voluntarily chosen. For every intrinsically evil act is chosen by the human will knowingly. And therein lies the sin. In the abstract, it is certainly true that certain types of acts are intrinsically morally disordered, and therefore always sinful to choose. But until and unless such acts are deliberately chosen, they are only immoral in the abstract. If there were no choice of the will, or no knowledge of the type of act being chosen, then the act is not even objectively an intrinsically evil act.

For example, if your deliberate true assertion has the effect, unknown to you, of assisting another person in perpetrating a lie, your act is not formal cooperation. For you did not deliberately choose an act known to you to be related to the act of the other person. In that case, your act would be moral. On the other hand, if your deliberate true assertion is known by you to assist another person in perpetrating a lie, then your act is formal cooperation. You intentionally chose an act that you understood to be directly related to the sin of another person, and that relation assisted the sin in attaining its evil moral object. So in the second case, you sinned.

3. Circumstances corresponds to material cooperation

There are many different factors that weigh in the circumstances for material cooperation. See my books and booklets on moral theology for a more detailed discussion. But what it all boils down to is that an act of material cooperation is moral if all of the following are true:

a. there is only good in the intention; explicit material cooperation is always immoral.

b. there is only good in the moral object; formal cooperation is always immoral. One and the same act can be both formal and material cooperation.

c. the reasonably anticipated good consequences of the material cooperation morally outweigh, or at least equal, the reasonably anticipated bad consequences.

All relevant consequences must be considered, including any bad consequences that result from the cooperative act without any relationship to the sin of the other person. The more remote the cooperation, the less the moral weight of the other person’s sin. But remote material cooperation is not always moral, and proximate material cooperation is not always immoral. In addition, proximate and remote are a matter of degree, not two absolute states.

For more on this topic see my booklet:
Roman Catholic Teaching on Cooperation with Evil [Kindle Edition]
or my book:
The Catechism of Catholic Ethics: A work of Roman Catholic moral theology [Kindle Edition]

by
Ronald L. Conte Jr.
Roman Catholic theologian and
translator of the Catholic Public Domain Version of the Bible.