This post is my moral analysis and commentary on the recent news stories about several different bakeries which refused to sell a wedding cake for a same-sex wedding.

The three fonts of morality are used, in Roman Catholic moral teaching, to determine if an act is moral or immoral:
1) intention
2) moral object
3) circumstances

I could find no online commentary on this issue using this approach to determine the morality of this type of act. Every Catholic commentary on this topic (as far as I could tell from a Google search) ignored the three fonts and the teaching of the Church on the basic principles of ethics.

The three fonts of morality always apply. But when your proposed act is related to the sinful act of another person, these fonts are applied with a particular type of analysis called the principle of cooperation with evil. See my booklet: Roman Catholic Teaching on Cooperation with Evil.

I found a few online comments that mentioned material cooperation in this context, but most used the term incorrectly. Some commentators were under the mistaken impression that remote material cooperation is sinful. To the contrary, the usual case of remote material cooperation is moral. Thus, cooperation with evil is not morally prohibited in all cases. In fact, that is the point to the principle of cooperation with evil, to determine which types of cooperation are moral and which are immoral. For we are all sinners, and we cannot each separate ourselves and our lives from every other sinner.

Suppose that you are a devout Roman Catholic, who owns and operates a bakery, one that makes wedding cakes for sale to the general public. An individual orders a cake and informs you, directly or indirectly, that it is for a gay wedding. If you were to make the cake and sell it to them, what would the moral analysis for the three fonts be? How would the principle of cooperation with evil apply?

1) intention — the intended end; the purpose or reason for choosing the act.

If your intention is to show support for same-sex marriage, or to show disdain for Church teaching, or any other bad intention, then your act would be a sin. An evil intended end makes any act, even prayer or almsgiving, immoral.

If your intention is simply to bake and sell a cake, the intention is not evil. You do not intend the end of same-sex marriage, nor the end of supporting any particular social or political position on that topic. You are simply providing food to a group of persons.

If you intend only good in any act, then that act has a good first font of morality.

Concerning the principle of cooperation with evil, if you intend to cooperation with whatever is sinful in the act of another person, then your cooperation is termed “explicit cooperation” and is therefore sinful. It is always a bad intention to intend to cooperate with the sinful aspects of another person’s behavior.

2) moral object — the end, in terms of morality, toward which the knowingly chosen act is inherently ordered. An evil moral object makes any deliberately-chosen act, which is directly ordered toward that end, intrinsically evil and always immoral.

If you were to perform a wedding ceremony for a same-sex couple, your act would be intrinsically evil. Homosexual acts are intrinsically evil; so, too, are adultery, contraception, and abortion. Some intrinsically evil acts are only venial sins, such as a venial lie. Other intrinsically evil acts are mortal sins. But all intrinsically evil acts are always immoral.

However, the act of baking and selling a cake is not intrinsically evil. The moral object of the act is not evil because it is not in conflict with the love of God above all else, and the love of neighbor as self. Every font of morality is judged by that threefold ordered love of God, neighbor, self. Love is what makes the eternal moral law an expression of justice and truth, rather than a Pharisaical list of demands and prohibitions.

The moral object of baking and selling a wedding cake is to provide enjoyable food for a group of persons. The baker is not responsible, under the principles of cooperation with evil, for the acts of the persons who consume the cake. If he were, then he could not sell cakes to a majority of straight weddings, because sinful behavior is all-too-common at weddings. People drink too much and sometimes commit various sins while inebriated.

A similar moral analysis applies to the baking and selling of a wedding cake to a Catholic wedding. Is the couple divorced and remarried without an annulment? If the baker finds out that fact, must he also refuse his pastry wares to the couple? Does the couple intend to use contraception? If the baker finds out that fact, must he also refuse his baking services to the couple? (You cannot selectively apply the principles of ethics to those issues that are controversial and topical, ignoring all other virtues and vices.)

The principle of cooperation with evil answers this type of question in part by considering whether an act is intrinsically evil or not. Baking and selling a wedding cake is not intrinsically evil. Neither does such an act directly participate in whatever is intrinsically evil in the act of other persons. When your act is intrinsically evil, it is always immoral. When your act is inherently directed at assisting the intrinsically evil act of another person specifically in attaining its moral object, then your act is called formal cooperation. Essentially, formal cooperation is a type of intrinsically evil act. It is always immoral to assist another person, directly, in committing their own intrinsically evil act. But the participation must be direct; for all intrinsically evil acts have a direct and morally-immediate relationship between the deliberately chosen act and the moral object.

In the case of a wedding cake, nothing the baker does, not even putting a pair of same-sex figurines on the cake and delivering the cake to the wedding, is intrinsically evil. These acts do not participate in any intrinsically evil acts by anyone at the same-sex wedding, or at any wedding. Under the eternal moral law, you are only responsible for your own acts. Therefore, baking and selling a wedding cake is not formal cooperation, nor is it intrinsically evil as an act on its own — so the second font is good.

3) circumstances — the reasonably anticipated good and bad consequences of your intentionally-chosen act

If the reasonably anticipated bad consequences of your act morally outweigh the reasonably anticipated good consequences, then your act is a sin. It is always immoral to knowingly choose an act that will do more harm than good.

In the case of the wedding cake for a same-sex marriage, the reasonably anticipated bad consequences are very limited. Someone might incorrectly assume that the owner/baker favors a position contrary to Church teaching. But that consequence can be nullified by the individual speaking publicly, perhaps in a blog post or a book, on the topic. Providing food to other human persons is a good consequence, not a bad one. The role that the cake has in the wedding celebration is perhaps, in some sense, a bad consequence; but a very limited one.

The good consequences include that the owner is not harmed by legal action, and is not harmed by boycotts and protests. This carries considerable weight, especially if the owner anticipates that he might lose his business over the dispute. Nothing in the bad consequences comes close to outweighing the good consequences, so the third font is good.

Concerning the principle of cooperation with evil, the evaluation of the circumstances determines if the act constitutes material cooperation. Given that the intention is good and the act is not intrinsically evil, the circumstances determine the morality of the act. In other words, if the cooperation is neither explicit, nor formal, then we are left with an evaluation as to whether the act is material cooperation, and if so, is it sinful material cooperation or moral material cooperation?

To summarize this principle, if the totality of the reasonably anticipated bad consequences morally outweigh the totality of the reasonably anticipated good consequences, then the material cooperation is sinful. If not, then the material cooperation is not sinful (given that the act is also not explicit or formal cooperation).

The weight of the consequences of your act, in cooperating with the sinful act(s) of another person, are lessened when your act is more remote from, and increased when your act is more proximate to, the sin of the other person. Typically, remote material cooperation is moral, and proximate material cooperation is sinful, for that very reason.

Baking a wedding cake for a same-sex wedding is remote material cooperation, and is generally moral (unless the circumstances are differ from what I’ve considered above).

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