Page 40 - Vaccines

Vaccines and Catholic morality

into doing so, as also if they committed the sin with them
while approving of it.1⁷ Thus, in the socio-cultural context
of the time, Sánchez gave the example of a servant opening
a door for his master or providing him with a ladder,
knowing that the latter was intending to sin with a prosti-
tute and approving of this or, even if he did not approve,
of actually bringing a prostitute to his master.1⁸ However,
he posed the question of the legitimacy of an act which the
first person might perform which definitely did not
involve any of these things, but which merely “provided
an occasion” or merely provided the “matter” which the
other person misused in order to commit sin, as where the
servant did no more than open a door for his master,
knowing what he had in mind, but not approving of it.1⁹

The whole difficulty lies in the case in which the
thing done or the services provided are indifferent
as to the good or bad use which may be made of
them and where the one selling or offering the
service which he knows the other will misuse
(abuse), doing this, however, without intending
that he do so.2⁰

1⁷ Cf. T. Sánchez, Opus morale in praecepta Decalogi (1613), Lib. I,
cap. VII, nn. i-v, quoted in by R. Roy, “La coopération selon
Sant’Alphonse”, Studia moralia, VI (1968), pp. 377–435 at pp.
380–382 in the footnotes on those pages; the translations from
the Latin texts quoted by Roy in those footnotes are mine. The
synthesis given here follows Roy's analysis of scandal and
cooperation from St. Thomas, through Sánchez to St. Alphonsus.
1⁸ Cf. Ibid, i–iii.
1⁹ Cf. Ibid, iv.
2⁰ Ibid., v. Cf. also A. McLean Cummings, The servant and the ladder:
Cooperation with evil in the twenty-first century (Gracewing,
Leominster, 2014), for a discussion of this point and of its moral
implications more generally.

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