Page 42 - Vaccines

Vaccines and Catholic morality

adultery as distinct from doing so to hide from his
wife the fact that he had been drinking that night.)

2. the more probable it is that, if no cooperation is
provided, the other will not sin (like a person
greatly respected and beyond suspicion refusing to
hand in another’s claims for expenses, which he
knows to have been inflated, realising that the
fraudster would not expose himself by handing
them in himself.)
3. the more certain the effects of the sin may be (for
example, where the other is dependent upon the
cooperation in order to be able to perpetrate the sin,
as where he needs transport in order to be able to act)
4. the more proximate the cooperation is to the sin
committed (the closer or more proximate the coop-
eration, the greater the material contribution to the
sin perpetrated, so that a more morally remote
cooperation would normally be easier to justify,
such as a cook or a cleaner in a general hospital, in
which abortions are also committed, as distinct
from a nurse or other doctor working in the theatre
during such an operation, which would be gravely
immoral).
5. the less right the cooperator has to perform the act
which he enacts (like a client rather than a banker
opening a safe)
6. the more the sin offends against justice and so
damages the rights of third parties (such as an act
of fraud, especially if the amount is substantial, or
if other innocent persons will suffer).21

21 St. Alphonsus de’ Liguori, Theologia moralis (Gaudé, Roma,
1905), I, Liber III, De praeceptis Dei et Ecclesiae, tract III, De quinto
et sexto praecepto, n. 59; my translation.

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