Is Buying Things Made In China A Sin?

[KarenJoanna]

Does the Church have any official teaching on this and if it is, would we have to throw away everything we already own?  The reason why it would be a sin is because of low wages and abortion laws as well as other laws? Are we supporting that when we buy from China?

[cappie]

Catholic moral theology distinguishes between formal and material cooperation with evil. If I assist a co-worker to defraud the company, then I am formally cooperating with his evil act, meaning that our wills share the same evil intention. If, however, I rent a house to someone who then, unbeknownst to me, uses it as a haven for his illicit drug trade, then I only cooperate materially with his action. I (unwittingly) contribute the house used for his evil purposes, but I do not share his evil intention.

 

 we need another distinction – that between proximate and remote material cooperation. In proximate material cooperation, we do not share the intention of the evildoer, but nonetheless we provide, some  condition or instrument  that directly enables the evil act. For instance, If I, as a landlord, become aware that my house is being used for illegal purposes, then I cannot entirely exempt myself from blame if, for fear of not being able to let the house again, I do not inform the authorities. That would be proximate material cooperation.

So proximate material cooperation in evil is wrong, too, though not as wrong as formal cooperation. Sometimes, however, we cooperate with evil only materially and remotely, as in my original example of unwittingly renting a house to someone who uses it to sell illicit drugs. My remoteness to the evil act absolves me from any blame for the crime.

 

This would be the case in buying goods from China.

 

So in summary: Despite the term ‘cooperation with evil,’ our acts are not always sinful merely by being related to the sins of other persons. If that were so, then nearly all acts would be sins, for we live as members of one human family, in one world, and all our acts are in some way at least distantly related to the acts, even the sinful acts, of other persons. So it is true that sometimes we act without sin, even though our act is related to the sin of another person.