Can We Buy At Places That Contribute In Planned Parenthood?

[KarenJoanna]

I read that target,sears and kmart give money to planned parenthood organizations. Is it a sin to buy from these stores?

[cappie]

We cooperate with others in the world in order to achieve or preserve important goods, or in order to diminish or avoid worse evils or harms. According to Catholic moral teaching, it is for these basic reasons that we may legitimately cooperate in a limited way with others who do what we would consider to be wrong, depending on the type of cooperation. If this were not the case, great good that should be done would be neglected, and greater harms that should be avoided would continue. In this context, cooperation in moral wrong can be defined as “any physical or moral assistance knowingly given by an organization to the commission of a morally objectionable act principally performed by another (the principal agent).” The cooperator may or may not be morally culpable or blameworthy, depending on the type of cooperation.

 

To intend the wrongdoing of others is called formal cooperation. Implicit formal cooperation occurs when the organization denies intending the wrongdoing of the principal agent, but participates in the action directly and in such a way that it could not be done without this participation. Catholics are not permitted to engage in either implicit formal or formal cooperation in evil.

 

Formal cooperation is to be distinguished from material cooperation, principally in the matter of intention. Material cooperation occurs when the Catholics do not intend the immoral object of the principal agent’s act, yet  are involved in circumstances that materially contribute to the immoral action in some causal way. Whether material cooperation would be permissible depends on further distinctions, following below.

 

Immediate material cooperation occurs when the organization provides for, contributes to or participates in specific circumstances that are essential to, or are an essential condition for, the principal agent to carry out a specific objectionable action.

 

Mediate material cooperation occurs when the Catholic organization provides for, contributes to or participates in circumstances that are not essential to a principal agent’s specific wrongful action.

 

Proximate mediate material cooperation makes a causal contribution to the principal agent’s act, which is directly ordered to the act. An example would be leasing space to an independent, self-insured family practice group, which in the course of practice writes some contraceptive prescriptions, but where the Catholic lessor neither condones such activity nor contributes anything essential to a contraceptive act itself.

 

Remote mediate material cooperation makes a causal contribution to the principal agent’s act, which is indirectly ordered to the act. An example would be a  Catholic not contributing anything essential to that particular activity.

 

Your question relates to this last one. Remote mediate material cooperation