Category: Moral Theology

A reader writes:

I am moving to college.

I was planning to get a room with my roomate at the dorm.  One of my friends was getting an apartment and asking us to move in with him.  His girlfriend got assigned to a dorm to far away so he decided to move in with my friend and bring her along.  I gotten random roomates the past two years and it has not been a fun experience, so I decided to move into the four bedroom apartment with them.

I signed the lease after much thought, or rather after trying to put it out of my head, but I started thinking about it again.

The apartment is a four bedroom four bathroom apartment, everyone’s is seperate.  There is a communal eating, cooking, and sitting area.  The couple will have seperate rooms, but they will most likely have sex.  I am friends with both of them and I have made it very clear to them that I don’t like them having premarital sex.  They are my good friends though and I love them both and spend a lot of time with them both.

Will living there be approving of those actions in what I do, even though I have said differently?  I have talked to several of my friends and they claim it wouldn’t appear to them like I would be approving of their sex, but they are just college students, what do they know?  The price of rent will not change for them if I move out, so I am not assisting in them living together.

I talked with a representative of the landlord and she said that it would not be a fee to chagne roomates for the next 11 days, but I would be stuck with three random people rather than just one random person.

Would living there be a sin, or will I have to change where I will live?
I talked with a representative of the landlord and she said that it would not be a fee to chagne roomates for the next 11 days, but I would be stuck with three random people rather than just one random person.

Would living there be a sin, or will I have to change where I will live?

I don’t think that under these circumstances you would be signalling your approval of behavior they may or may not be engaging in. You’re not financially subsidizing their behavior, and you’ve made it clear that you don’t approve of their behavior. Consequently, I don’t think that you would be sinning by living there or that you would have to change where you live.

The individuals have separate bed rooms and even separate bathrooms. Physically, they are part of the same apartment only in the sense that they join a common living, dining, and cooking area.

Suppose that the landlord changed his rental policy and said, "Okay, now we’re going to consider each bedroom-bath unit a separate apartment, which will be rented separately to whoever wants to rent them. They’ll be advertised in the paper as separate apartments, and each apartment has access to the common living/dining/cooking area."

In that case could you rent one of the four apartments? Even if you knew that the inhabitants of two of the others were engaging in non-marital sex or some other immoral activity?

It seems to me that you could. If you live in an apartment complex, you have little control over what others in the complex do along these lines, and your presence is not taken as an endorsement of their behavior.

But that’s precisely the situation we’re talking about in your case, only with the semantic lines redrawn.

There is also the consideration that you’d be taking a significant chance with three random roommates. The random roommates (being typical college students) is also significantly likely to engage in sex or other immoral behavior.

I know all about how the random roomate chance can go. When I was living in the dorms in college, I had
three roommates, one of whom was a dud (and wanted to use the dorm room
for immoral behavior), one of whom was crazy (and who threatened violence, promting me to insist on being assigned to a new dorm room), and the last of whom (a friend) was fine. In other words: The two random roommates I had in the dorms were bad experiences and it wasn’t until I moved in with a friend that the situation evened out.

You’re not talking about the dorms at this point, but you are talking about random roommates, and that’s a significant risk that may not improve anything and that, in fact, might land you in a worse situation.

At least with your friends you have reason to believe that you can live peaceably with them, even if two of them are engaging in behavior that they shouldn’t. If you switch to three random college students, at least two of them are likely to be engaging in comparable immoral behavior.

All things considered, I therefore don’t think that you are morally obligated to insist on switching and getting new roommates.

20

A reader writes:

Pretty simple question — but one to which I’ve never heard an intelligent answer.  My parish charges $100.00 each to put a child through one season of religious ed (what we would have called "Sunday School" in my days as a Baptist).  Shouldn’t this be considered simony?  After all, the passing of the faith down to the next generation is part of the Church’s core mission — not some kind of extra added service, like a camping trip.  It’s part of her duty, not something for which she may legitimately demand payment, to my way of thinking…

(I’m asking this, Jimmy, because my still-Baptist parents are scandalized by the very idea; they hear the ghost of Tetzel in this request, the coins still jingling in his cup.  They’ve never heard of simony per se but they do definitely see the principle.  Ironically, however, they see nothing at all wrong with an church counselor who happens to have some kind of psychology degree insisting $50 an hour for his services.  I thought this was simony even when I was still a Baptist!).

I know how one might seek to defend this on canonical grounds. The 1917 Code contained a definition of simony, but this definition was eliminated from the 1983 Code as the result of a policy seeking to eliminate definitions from the new Code. The 1917 definition thus doesn’t have legal force any more, but it does shed light on the kind of things that are classified as the canonical crime of simony. Here’s the def:

Canon 727

§1. By divine law, simony is the studied will to buy or sell fo ra temporal price an intrinsically spiritual thing, for example, Sacraments, ecclesiastical jurisdiction, consecration, indulgences, and so forth, or temporal things so connected with spiritual things that without the spiritual they cannot exist, for example, ecclesiastical benifices, and so on, or a spiritual thing that is, even in part, the object of a contract, for example, the consecration of a chalice consecrated in sale.

One might look at this and say, "Okay, when the 1917 Code refers to ‘things,’ it has in mind something more concrete than Sunday school education"–or one would want to find some way to distinguish Sunday school education from the examples of simony listed here.

My trouble is that I’m not convinced (a) that it is possible to find a relevant distinction here and (b) my instincts tell me that charging for basic instruction in the Christian faith is just wrong.

Now, if the parish is charging a fee for optional teaching aids that a child is not required to have (e.g., workbooks or something) then I can see that.

I also can see having a suggested donation that will be used to pay the teachers for their time then I can also see that ("The worker is worth his wages," after all).

I perhaps could see charging a fee for an advanced course in something that is not basic catechesis.

But if they are really charging for basic instruction in the faith then it seems to me to be simony.

There’s a balance to be struck in the proclamation of the gospel, and Jesus illustrates that balance in the commission to preach that he gives to the disciples in Matthew 10. In verse 8, he tells them "Freely you have received, freely give." He then tells them in verses 9 and 10 not to take money but to depend on the donations they are given, saying that the laborer deserves his food.

It thus seems to me that the logical way to proceed for a parish would be to solicit donations for basic religious education but not to charge for it. The latter would strike me as simony.

So I’m with your parents on that one–assuming that’s what’s happening here and that it isn’t a misunderstanding of the parish’s suggested donation policy.

(NOTE: If the parish is committing simony, one would hope that they aren’t compounding the sin by refusing to grant waivers to those children whose parents can’t or won’t pay.)

A reader writes:

If someone is
working at a store that sells something like condoms, would it be morally
wrong for the cashier to sell the item to the customer?  Would it be
cooroperation with evil?  What about something like softcore pornography
that may be sold or rented at some stores or movie places?  Would the person
who is responsible for checking those items out have any moral obligation to
not sell such an item to the person?  I thought of this when thinking about
people refusing to sell birth control at pharmacies.  To what degree would
it be cooperating with evil when you know what they’re likely to do with
such items, and what moral responsibility if any does a person have if they
work at a store that sells any morally questionable items?

This is an excellent question that is becoming more and more common in our culture, particularly for people with entry-level jobs. It applies all over the place, from supermarkets to convenience stores to pharmacies to video stores to movie theaters to cable companies to Internet companies to . . . well, just about everywhere (or at least that’s what it seems like).

The best thing to do would be to turn to the Church’s official guidelines on cooperation with evil and apply them to these situations.

Only we can’t do that, and for a very good reason: The Church doesn’t have such guidelines. I suspect that it will in the not too distant future, and precisely because the de-Christianization of culture is forcing these questions to the fore more and more.

There are places in Church documents which mention different forms of cooperation, such as in Pre-16’s text on supporting abortion and going to Communion. However, if you look in the Catechism or other official documents for an authoritative taxonomy of these terms and what they mean and what they do and don’t apply to, you won’t find one.

Anywhere!

The universal magisterium of the Church simply has not addressed the subject of cooperation with evil in a systematic fashion . . . yet.

There’s not even an agreed upon locus classicus in one of the historical theologians that can be used as a reference point. (Something I checked out a piece back.)

As a result, one has to fall back on texts that reflect the common opinion of learned persons, such as THIS ARTICLE IN THE CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA or THIS ONE BY FR. WILLIAM SAUNDERS.

Unfortunately, these aren’t always as helpful as one would like, and in the opinion of some conservative, orthodox folks (myself included) not all of the principles that one commonly reads in these texts are formulated in the best manner.

That being said, let’s do the best we can:

1. The first major distinction we have to look at is between doing evil yourself and cooperating with someone else’s doing of evil. You can’t ever do anything instrinsically evil yourself. That is right out. Fortunately, the situations you were asking about involve selling stuff, and selling stuff isn’t intrinsically evil (otherwise the economy would grind to a halt). So in selling stuff, you are not operating evil (if I may put it that way), you are at most cooperating with someone else’s commission of evil.
2. There are different kinds of cooperation with evil, and some are never morally permissible. The main difference among the kinds of cooperation is between what theologians call formal and material cooperation. Basically, you formally cooperate with an evil if you help the person who commits the evil in some way and you approve of the evil. Material cooperation occurs when you help the person in some way but you don’t approve of the evil.
3. Formal cooperation with evil is ALWAYS WRONG. Therefore, if the person selling stuff approves of it being used in bad ways then he is formally cooperating with evil. This is not allowed. It is right out.
4. On the other hand, material cooperation is potentially justifiable. It is so because (remember) you yourself are not doing anything evil. What you’re doing is morally permitted. It is what someone else is doing that is wrong.

To help illustrate this point, let’s look at an example. Suppose you’re a supermarket checker and a customer plops a pack of condoms down on the conveyor belt. You pick the object up and slide it across the scanner and hand it to the bagger. Is there anything wrong in your actions themselves? No. You do these same actions for every other item you scan: bread, butter, hamburger, whatever. (Okay, the bread has lots of evil carbs in it, but that’ll get taken care of in the same cooperation with evil considrations we’re delving into.)

None of the actions you are performing are wrong. It’s what the customer is going to do with the condoms once he gets home that is wrong.

Or maybe not. For all you know, the customer may be a pro-life scientist who is buying the condoms so he can test them in the lab and prove that they aren’t effective at stopping the AIDS virus and so "safe sex" is bogus. Or perhaps he’s a Hollywood prop guy who wants to use them to generate the scales for a giant sandworm in a remake of Dune (that’s what they did for sandworm scales in the first version of Dune). Or who knows what! The fact that the most common use of these things is evil doesn’t mean that that’s their only use (however uncommon some of the others may be).

The same is true of virtually all the bad things people sell today, and this multiplicity of uses (even if the legitimate uses are rare) only further illustrates that none of your actions themselves are wrong. It’s what the customer (most likely) is planning to do that’s wrong.

Now: Because none of your actions are wrong in materially cooperating are wrong, Catholic moral theologians are agreed that materially cooperation is morally justified . . . sometimes.

It’s when we ask "When?" or "In what circumstances?" that things get murkier. The basic criterion that is proposed, though, is that there has to be (a) a proportionate reason for your cooperation given (b) your form of involvement and (c) the alternatives available to you.

In the case of a checker in a supermarket, there is basically nothing you can do on the alternatives front. You can’t refuse to sell what the store carries without getting fired. Neither (under the vast majority of circumstances) could you convince the customer not to buy the condoms. Even trying to do the latter would–again–get you fired. So there are basically no alternatives short of getting fired.

Being fired basically hurts you but doesn’t do much (in most circumstances) to change the fact that the evil act will get done. If you get fired, the manager himself or a different checker or even a different store will sell the customer the condoms. So if he’s determined to use them in an evil manner, that’ll happen anyway. You’ll just be out of a job.

When it comes to your involvement, moral theologians distinguish between remote and proximate involvement. The basic principle is that the more remote your cooperation is, the less of a justifying reason you need in order to cooperate. The more proximate your cooperation is, the more of a justifying reason you need.

The difference between these is not always clear, and there is a spectrum between them. But since you are only selling the condoms, that’s at least somewhat remote. (Let’s not even go into how you might cooperate in their use in a proximate manner, okay?)

So: We have a grave sin (contraceptive sex) that is likely to be committed, but your cooperation is remote and there are no effective alternatives to this other than getting fired (which even the won’t stop the act from happening in all likelihood).

This form of cooperation can be justified if you have a proportionate reason to the above situation. What might be proportionate to that?

How about getting fired!

Unless you’re well off, you likely need a job. If you’re working as a checker, you likely aren’t qualified for a whole lot of different positions–or at least ones that wouldn’t put you in similarly problematic situations (like movie rental clerk or movie ticket salesman or bookseller or what have you). You may be studying for a position that wouldn’t put you in this kind of bind, but that’s the problem with entry-level jobs in today’s culture. They just tend to pose this kind of dilemma, especially ones that allow you to work around a school schedule so you can study for one of those higher, better positions.

Now, perhaps you could find a new job that won’t do this to you. And if you can do so, it would be morally praiseworthy to pursue this possibility. But it requires a lot of effort to do that, and in the meantime, if you refuse to sell the condoms then you’re out of work and a whole host of bad consequences may follow (like losing your apartment, your car, having bad things go on your credit report

It thus seems to me that–given the gravity of what may happen to a person who loses his job over this and the chances of him getting a new, entry-level job that doesn’t pose this kind of dilemma–and given that there are no alternatives other than getting fired then it seems to me that a reason may well exist that is proportionate to what is needed to justify performing selling actions that are themselves justified and sufficiently remote from the evil act that the customer is likely to perform afterwards.

(Sorry if that’s grammatically hard to process, but I’m writing at the end of a long day.)

Now, if you change any of those conditions, the moral evaluation is likely to change as well:

1. If the person is well off and doesn’t need the job then he might ought to quit.
2. If the person has available to him another, equally good job that doesn’t involve this dilemma (like moving to the butcher’s department or the janitorial staff) then he might ought to take it.
3. If the person has an alternative, such as a storeowner who could say with relative ease "Y’know, we’re just not going to sell those things here," then he ought to pursue it.

But for an increasing number of people in our culture today, particularly in entry-level jobs, proportionate reasons for this kind of remote material cooperation are likely to exist. I’m not saying that they do for everyone. Do not get me wrong on that point. But given what’s happening to our culture, they will exist for a larger and larger number of people.

A reader writes:

A neighbor of my parents’ recently passed away after a battle with colon cancer.  A memorial service will be held in the coming days; she is not Catholic, so there will be no funeral mass.  Her remains will be cremated (possibly before the service, I do not believe her remains will be present, body or ashes), and her wishes are to have her ashes scattered in a flower garden in her back yard.

I asked my mom if this "scattering of ashes" is going to be private or extended to other close friends.  My mom has been one of the primary caregivers for this neighbor in the last few weeks as her time came to an end and mentioned that she hoped they would be able to participate/observe when her ashes were spread.

The deceased and her family are not Catholic so I assume they cannot be held to the teachings of the Church.  But out of respect for her humanly body, I would feel it inappropriate to be a witness to the dispersal of her ashes.  I have not been "invited" to witness this event, but since it’s an emotional time, I guess I want to be prepared to know if I should plan to avoid this part or go thru it because of the feelings of those involved.

My questions are:

1)  Would it be wrong for me as a Catholic to witness the scattering of her ashes?

No, it would not be wrong. As you may know, the Church holds that cremation can be morally permissible as long as it is not done as a deliberate sign of disbelief in the faith (which it very seldom is, from what I can tell).
Given the moral permissibility of cremation, that leaves the question of what is to be done with the remains or "cremains" as they are called.

We should then treat the cremains with respect, but what form respect for the dead requires varies dramatically across different cultures. In our American culture, many people feel it to be respectful to the dead to scatter the cremains in a nature setting of some kind. Others find it more respectful to deposit them in an urn, which may itself be placed in a mausoleum. There really isn’t much cultural consistency on this point.

Ultimately, as long as deliberate disrepect is not shown to the cremains, it doesn’t matter so much what different cultures think is respectful. God’s going to put the person back together at the end of time, anyway, and it’s not like the person will be harmed in any way based on where his ashes are or whether they are in one place.

Current Catholic regulations require that the cremains be deposited in a container, but these regulations have disciplinary rather than doctrinal force. This is the way we Catholics currently show our respect for a person’s cremains, but it is not required by divine law that this be done. (Over the centuries, almost any container one could come up with might get broken and the ashes scattered, anyway. It’s not like we can build indestructible urns guaranteed to last until Judgment Day no matter what happens to them.)

Since it is not a matter of divine law and the parties in this case are not Catholic, there is nothing intrinsically evil about their proposal. I find it personally distasteful (a flower bed in the back of a person’s house?), but this is more revealing of my own cultural preferences rather than what is mandated by divine law.

Since what they are proposing is not intrinsically contrary to divine law nor contrary to the law of the Church (in that the law binds only Catholics), you would not be lending your endorsement to an evil act by attending.

2)  If it would, how best would I share this with my Catholic famiy that either a) is not aware of this, or b) is aware, but will be there anyway (if invited to do so)?

Since the act would not be intrinsically contrary to God’s law, I would not even bring it up with them. Just comfort them in their time of grief.

 

A reader writes:

A neighbor of my parents’ recently passed away after a battle with colon cancer.  A memorial service will be held in the coming days; she is not Catholic, so there will be no funeral mass.  Her remains will be cremated (possibly before the service, I do not believe her remains will be present, body or ashes), and her wishes are to have her ashes scattered in a flower garden in her back yard.

I asked my mom if this "scattering of ashes" is going to be private or extended to other close friends.  My mom has been one of the primary caregivers for this neighbor in the last few weeks as her time came to an end and mentioned that she hoped they would be able to participate/observe when her ashes were spread.

The deceased and her family are not Catholic so I assume they cannot be held to the teachings of the Church.  But out of respect for her humanly body, I would feel it inappropriate to be a witness to the dispersal of her ashes.  I have not been "invited" to witness this event, but since it’s an emotional time, I guess I want to be prepared to know if I should plan to avoid this part or go thru it because of the feelings of those involved.

My questions are:

1)  Would it be wrong for me as a Catholic to witness the scattering of her ashes?

No, it would not be wrong. As you may know, the Church holds that cremation can be morally permissible as long as it is not done as a deliberate sign of disbelief in the faith (which it very seldom is, from what I can tell).
Given the moral permissibility of cremation, that leaves the question of what is to be done with the remains or "cremains" as they are called.

We should then treat the cremains with respect, but what form respect for the dead requires varies dramatically across different cultures. In our American culture, many people feel it to be respectful to the dead to scatter the cremains in a nature setting of some kind. Others find it more respectful to deposit them in an urn, which may itself be placed in a mausoleum. There really isn’t much cultural consistency on this point.

Ultimately, as long as deliberate disrepect is not shown to the cremains, it doesn’t matter so much what different cultures think is respectful. God’s going to put the person back together at the end of time, anyway, and it’s not like the person will be harmed in any way based on where his ashes are or whether they are in one place.

Current Catholic regulations require that the cremains be deposited in a container, but these regulations have disciplinary rather than doctrinal force. This is the way we Catholics currently show our respect for a person’s cremains, but it is not required by divine law that this be done. (Over the centuries, almost any container one could come up with might get broken and the ashes scattered, anyway. It’s not like we can build indestructible urns guaranteed to last until Judgment Day no matter what happens to them.)

Since it is not a matter of divine law and the parties in this case are not Catholic, there is nothing intrinsically evil about their proposal. I find it personally distasteful (a flower bed in the back of a person’s house?), but this is more revealing of my own cultural preferences rather than what is mandated by divine law.

Since what they are proposing is not intrinsically contrary to divine law nor contrary to the law of the Church (in that the law binds only Catholics), you would not be lending your endorsement to an evil act by attending.

2)  If it would, how best would I share this with my Catholic famiy that either a) is not aware of this, or b) is aware, but will be there anyway (if invited to do so)?

Since the act would not be intrinsically contrary to God’s law, I would not even bring it up with them. Just comfort them in their time of grief.

 

A reader writes:

1) A protestant believer is convinced that the Catholic Church is the
Body of Christ and that the "authority" claimed within protestantism
is illegitimate. However, he has vowed submission to the session of
elders at his local congregation, who will not release him from that
vow unless he is transferring to an "acceptable" congregation.

2) A protestant congregation has vowed submission to a presbytery but
the leadership of the congregation becomes convinced that the Catholic
Church is the Body of Christ and that the "authority" claimed within
protestantism is illegitimate.

Does the Catholic Church have a position on whether or not such vows
should be honoured? Or how they should be broken or regarded?

The Catholic Church would hold that any vow or promise is null insofar as it requires one to do something immoral.

Those who have recognized the truth of the Catholic faith have a moral obligation to join it. (Indeed, a duty so grave that salvation hinges on it.)

While the timing of joining the Catholic faith may be affected by various considerations (e.g., will it help one’s family come closer to the truth or even join the Church themselves if one waits a bit to give them more time to adjust), the basic obligation to join remains.

Therefore, it would be immoral for those who recognize the truth of the Catholic faith to permanently remain apart from it.

If the promises made to the session or the presbytery would require one to permanently remain apart from the Catholic faith then they require one to do something immoral and so are null. They have no binding force.

If there is a realistic chance that the session would regard the Catholic Church as an "acceptable" church then one might apply to the session for release to the Catholic Church. If there is no realistic chance that the session would do this then one need not apply to them.

That should deal with the first question sufficiently, I hope.

The answer to the second question would be built on similar principles, but I’d need to know more about what exactly the leadership of the congregation is proposing to do before I’d be able to give a concrete answer. If you e-mail me privately on this I may be able to be of more help in this regard.

Hope this helps!

A reader writes:

I want to know if sinful thoughts are mortal sins.

It depends. They can be, but they often aren’t. For a sin of thought to be mortal, three conditions must be met: (1) the thought must involve grave matter (like inflicting grave harm on someone else), (2) you have to know that the thought is gravely sinful, and (3) you have to deliberately endorse the thought (as opposed to having it flit through your mind and you resist it).

When I bring them to the confessional, the priest(s) tell me that I am being overly critical of myself.

This may be the case. Many people scruple unnecessarily about sins of thought and are too hard on themselves. Frequently they confuse temptation with sinning. Having a thought and feeling a pull toward the thought is just temptation. It only crosses the line into sin when you deliberately endorse the thought.

I have had thoughts of resentment and jealously towards others.

Unless you are wishing grave harm on these people (e.g., that they die, that they experience horrible pain, that they have their lives or careers wrecked) then this is probably not a mortal sin because the matter isn’t grave.

I have also had thoughts of attraction towards other men (even though I am married).

This may just be temptation. Everybody is tempted in some way. These thoughts only become mortally sinful if you say, "I don’t care if it’s gravely sinful to have impure thoughts about this guy. I’m going to indulge myself in these thoughts anyway."

Can you offer any words on what the church wants me to do with bad thoughts?

Do your best to ignore them and put them out of your mind. Say a quick prayer. Think about something else. Just relax and ignore them.

Also, don’t go into detail about these thoughts in confession. That will be likely to stir up the thoughts and reinforce them.

If you believe that you need to confess them, do it very simply. Just say "I have had thoughts of resentment and jealousy toward others. I have had impure thoughts."–and then leave it at that! If the priest needs to ask a follow-up question, he will. But don’t burden yourself by trying to describe the details for him unless he asks. Just confess what you did simply and leave it at that.