Welcome to the Council of Trent Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Free for All Friday here on the Council of Trent Podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers Apologist Trent Horn. On Mondays and Wednesdays we talk apologetics, theology, how to explain and defend the Catholic faith. But on Friday, we talk about whatever I want to talk about.

Recently, I was invited to the Catholic Money Summit to give an interview on money and cooperation with evil. Now, how to look at that through a Catholic lens. So the Catholic Money Summit is put on by WalletWin. It is a couple who looks at issues related to money and finance from a Catholic perspective. They have a great YouTube channel you can check out, WalletWin. So they invited me to the summit, I gave an interview for them, and they asked me questions about, “Well, what do you do if you’re going to go out and you want to buy something, but the company who sells that thing, they donate money to evil corporations? Where do we draw the line between cooperation with evil companies that’s okay versus cooperation that has now become sinful, and you definitely should not shop there?”

So these are important questions as we try to live out good and holy lives in what is an evil world. Scripture calls the devil the God of this world. Of course, God is God of everything, but Satan certainly has a pretty tight grip on the world around us, so we live in an evil world because of that grip, and we have to be cognizant of that and be prudent in how we spend our money, and those entities within the world that we choose to cooperate with.

So I talk about all of that with Jonathan here in this interview. I hope it is helpful for you. If you want more from Jonathan and WalletWin, check out their YouTube channel, WalletWin. They have a lot of other great content. And without further ado, here is my chat with Jonathan on cooperation and being prudent in an evil world.

This interaction, how do we, as Catholics, right? Our faith should influence every aspect of our lives, every way that we go about living. How do we interact with the world, especially in a time when so many companies seem to be just doing everything they can to tell us how in support they are of certain immoral things? So there’s a call of boycotts, or should we just be activist investors? We should vote with our dollars. That should reflect our faith, but how do we do that? So just how do we start thinking about this?

Well, I think the first thing that we have to start with is ourselves. So to focus on our relationship with God, our moral life, doing an examination of conscience. We won’t be able to change the world until we first change our … We can’t conform the world to Christ until we are conformed to Christ. And so if we are just out on a mission, if we’re blind culture warriors, then we’re going to become toxic individuals who have agendas rather than people that radiate Christ to the world.

Now, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight culture wars. I believe there is a culture war out there. Frankly, they started it by making it legal to kill children in the womb, making it legal and encouraged to mutilate children through so-called gender reassignment surgeries, greed, pornography, drugs, materialism. There is what Pope St. John Paul II called a culture of death, and so we should be engaged in a culture war, but we have to be rooted in Christ when we do that.

So starting with that, and once we have those solid foundations, our own spiritual lives set, living our lives in conformity to Christ. Avoiding two extremes. So we don’t want to avoid the extreme of, “Well, my faith is just on Sunday in church and after that, it doesn’t matter.” Kind of compartmentalism. No. Everything that we do should reflect Christ to the world. Jesus says, “We are the salt of the earth, but if salt loses its flavor, what is it good for?” Right? We’re the light of the world. You don’t hide a light under a bushel basket. You don’t just put a light in church. You brighten the whole world. That’s one extreme.

The other extreme, though, is a kind of legalism that says that, “Every single interaction that I do in the world must always achieve a particular good.” Or as some people say, the perfect becomes the enemy of the good. That we scrutinize every single transaction, every single interaction we have with others. The danger with this approach is that we should always strive for holiness. We have to remember that we’re finite beings. We have a finite amount of income, a finite amount of attention, a finite amount of energy, a finite amount of time that we can spend. One of the problems here is that there are certain evil things we know we should not do, and then there are many different good things that we could do. We can’t do all of them, but we have to discern and be prudent.

So here we have to exercise the virtue of prudence in doing good, and prudence is that virtue that helps us to determine what the good is and how to get there. Because there’s people who try to do the good, but they do it in an imprudent way. So we always have to take steps then in looking at especially our financial interactions to say, “Is this overall promoting the common good, promoting the good of others? Am I avoiding directly doing evil, or unnecessarily cooperating with evil?” And those are terms we can obviously unpack.

Sure thing. Yeah. I very much appreciate, love that the focus is, of course, the starting place is ourselves and our own hearts.

Right.

Like you said, yeah, what’s the point of trying … How could we ever hope to conform the world to Christ if we are not ourselves are conformed? And that’s just a very important spot. And to just always go back and to renew that, to make sure that we are reservoirs, that it’s flowing out from our fruits of our prayer, instead of just kind of dishing it out, giving it out, even if we were in a good spot, and kind of wearing ourselves out and forgetting the most important work of spending time with our Lord.

Right.

We’re trying to look at our consumer behavior, I guess.

Yes.

There’s a lot of terms, and if maybe you think it would be better to define some of this later, that’s fine, but at some point we want to make sure that we talk about … Because I think there’s a lot of words, and frankly maybe we don’t quite use them quite regularly, most of us at least, so it’s hard to maybe understand what they all are. Formal, material, immediate, proximate, remote, all that stuff. This cooperation with evil that you mentioned.

Right.

I don’t think I ever want to cooperate with evil. So what does that mean? How do we look at that, and how do we live that out as Catholics?

Well, the problem here is that we live in an evil world. There’s no getting around that. The Bible is very clear. It even says that the devil is called the God of this world. So we live in an evil world. And now Paul tells us that when he said, “I don’t want you associating with unbelievers,” “I did not say for you to be completely disassociating from them, because then you would have to go out of the world.” Now, some people are called to that. They might be hermits, for example. They’re completely detached from the world, and they pray for this world, and that’s good. But for most of us, especially those of us who discern a vocation of building up society, of marriage, children, of serving roles that build up the common good of society, we’re going to be in the world, and we’re going to cooperate with evil.

Now, it’s going to be to different degrees. You might say, “Well, I’m not cooperating with evil.” Well, the cooperation in most cases is remote, but we’re still involved in a chain of decisions that led to evil. For example, if we buy groceries from a grocery store, the grocery store might donate some of the profits that they make to an organization that promotes values that are antithetical to our Catholic faith, for example.

Or let’s say you are the owner of a brewery, and you make wonderful craft beer. Now, drinking craft beer is a good thing. A lot of people enjoy sitting around, having craft beer, and having really good discussions. As Catholics, we certainly believe that drinking alcohol in and of itself is not sinful. If it were, receiving Jesus, the precious blood, would be very problematic for us, because it’s under the form of wine. But the Bible’s very clear that drunkenness is evil. And if you are a brewer, you know that some people will misuse your beer. That some people statistically will take your beer, and they will drink too much of it, and engage in the sin of drunkenness, and you’ve cooperated with that, but you didn’t intend it to happen. You operate something that people can use well, and other people abuse it. If other people abuse it, that’s not a fault on you.

So when we talk about cooperation with evil, we just have to remember, when we engage with other people, when we support other people, and this happens all the time. In the south, for example, if you live in the south, and you go and buy groceries at a store, they probably came to you on train tracks that had been laid by slaves, or roads that had been created by slaves. If you use an iPhone or if you use almost any cellular phone, the rare earth metals that are in it were probably mined in subhuman conditions, or even under conditions of slavery. It’s an evil world. So the question is, where do we draw those lines to determine, when is it appropriate to cooperate, to act in a way where evil is along the chain of causation, if you will, and when is it inappropriate?

So when we look at cooperation with evil, we can break it down this way. First, we have to make a distinction between formal and material cooperation. So let’s say that Planned Parenthood is doing a barbecue fundraiser, and somebody goes there and they buy a burger, not just because they’re hungry, but because they want to help Planned Parenthood kill babies. They wouldn’t call it that if they support it, but they want to help their so-called reproductive healthcare. That would be always wrong. You can never formally cooperate with evil. Formal cooperation means you assist the evil, and you intend for that evil to occur.

So if you’re our craft brewer, and you’re making beer, and you make it for the explicit purpose, you like when people get drunk, because they end up buying more beer from you, and then when they’re drunk, they’re not counting their dollars as well, well, that would be evil. That would be, you are intending the evil, and so it would be wrong for you to do that.

And the next, though, would be material cooperation with evil. So this is the far more common one. That’s where we help in evil, but we’re not necessarily intending … This is for most of us, is what happens. We give people the material. So if the bartender gives someone a drink, or he sells a keg of beer, I should say, and that person uses it to get drunk, there’s material cooperation there. But here, under material cooperation, we have to distinguish between proximate and remote. Are you close to it? Are you necessary for the evil thing to happen, even though you don’t intend it? Or are you far enough removed that there is a good reason to justify you being associated with this?

So to return to the Planned Parenthood example, I would say it would be inappropriate if just because I’m hungry, buying a cheeseburger, and all that money goes directly to Planned Parenthood. That would be pretty close to proximate. It would definitely be scandalous, and it’d be close to proximate. There’s no proportional reason to justify that, when I can go down the street and get a burger almost anywhere else. Or to make it very clear, let’s say the nurse at an abortion facility. She just wants money. She doesn’t like abortions. She doesn’t do abortions. She just hands the equipment to the abortionist. Well, sorry. That’s proximate material cooperation. Another example would be driving someone to get an abortion. You don’t like it, but you know what, you’re going to help them out in this situation to do that. There’s no proportional, justifying reason.

In remote cases, there are, even though you are helping the evil slightly, there’s a proportionate reason to justify it. So to go back through all these examples, yeah, it would be proximate to drive someone to an abortion facility to get an abortion, but let’s say you’re a bus driver, and you’re driving a bus down the city street, and there’s a bus stop in front of the abortion facility. You know you’re helping some people get there to get abortions. You are remotely cooperating, but there’s a proportional reason for you to be involved. People need public transit. They have to get to other places on the bus line. And you could quit your job. You could say, “I don’t want to ever be involved in this.” That’s fine, but you wouldn’t be obligated to, because somebody else is just going to start driving the bus.

Or let’s say I don’t get a burger at Planned Parenthood. I’m just like, “Well, I’m really, really hungry. I’m going to pull into this fast food joint.” And it turns out, if you look through their forms, one of the corporations they donate to is Planned Parenthood. But that’s certainly not the same thing as buying a burger at a Planned Parenthood fundraising barbecue. It’s a remote cooperation, and there’s a proportional reason to buy a burger there. I need to eat, and this restaurant serves the common good. It feeds people. Maybe not the healthiest food, but it feeds people.

Or to give you another … I mean, I can give them all top of the day, but I think that they-

Oh, yeah. Go for it.

Let me keep going. I love it. Another one might be, let’s say, when we patronize organization, you see [inaudible 00:13:48] proximate or remote. So when we patronize an organization, either by buying a product from them, or donating to them, or buying stock, which would be investing in the company, where we aren’t necessarily giving money directly to the company, but the company’s value increases because we invest in it, and so we’re intertwined in the company’s success.

You’d have to judge also, does the company serve the common good, and does the good they do outweigh the bad they do? Because most companies do a mixture of good and bad. So for example, let’s say you’re driving down the street, and you’re like, “I really want to pack of gum,” and there is a adult pornography store, and you just go in there to get a pack of gum. I’ve never been in one, obviously, but I imagine every other store, they have impulse items at the register. You might say, “Well, I’m not buying porn. I’m buying gum.” Yeah, but you’re going to a pornography store. You’re supporting this store. This store should not exist. Basically, 99% of what they do is evil, except for the gum they sell, perhaps.

But let’s suppose you go then to Walgreens, and you buy gum at the register. Well, I would say 99% of the things that Walgreens sell are good, but some things they sell are evil. They sell condoms. They might even have the morning after pill. But pharmacies, grocery stores, the vast majority of what they do, without them, the common good would be severely diminished. It would be very difficult to have the society we live in. The standard of living would be very, very low, and many people would be harmed without the ability to access food and medicine at the prices that these stores give for us.

So I think that’s another thing we have to keep in mind, formal versus material cooperation. Most of it’s material. If it’s material, are we close to it or are we far away? And is there a proportional reason justifying the interaction? And in particular, is the group that we support, is it primarily promoting the common good, even if some of the things that they offer are not good?

Just to walk through some of that and maybe pick apart the pieces, just to make sure, I mean, I think I’ve got a handle on it, but just in case. So it seems like it’s a very clear example, right, the nurse at the abortion facility.

Sure.

Just to make sure I get this, right, if you just separate things out a bit, responding to someone, helping them reach something they cannot reach-

Right.

… that’s a good thing. That’s a helpful thing. So that in and itself isn’t bad. But because I know, well, as soon as I hand whatever it is to him, he’s going to use that to kill a baby-

The act of evil is made possible directly because of what you are doing.

Because I did it.

Exactly. So that makes your cooperation proximate, in that case. Which would be different than, let’s say, a delivery driver, who his job is to deliver medical supplies, and maybe he stops at the Planned Parenthood and drops the supplies off. Now, once again, if he’s uncomfortable with that work, he could quit. But there’s a proportionate reason to justify what he does. The vast amount of his job is to provide medical supplies to heal people, and one of the things he has to tolerate is when that’s used for evil purposes, but most of them are used for good purposes. But if you spend your whole day handing abortion tools to an abortionist, there is no proportionate, justifying reason there.

Yeah. I know it’s not this. I feel like it might be easy, though, especially maybe if we’re looking to justify something, to slip into just like, “Okay, well, I just look at the good. I look at the bad. Yeah. I mean, they’re doing a lot of good things.” How do we not do that? How do we actually see this properly, and know it’s not just throw the bad up there, and throw the good over there, see which one’s heavier?

Right.

How do we do this correctly?

Well, I think what’s important first is to do an internal examination. To really ask ourselves, “Am I biased when I’m analyzing this company that I support? Do I want to support them, even if it would be wrong to do that?” And so we have to be honest with ourselves in that respect, but also we do have to admit that in most cases, it’s going to be a prudential judgment as to whether we ought to support someone. It’s pretty rare where it’s just obvious, “Yeah, you cannot do that.” In other cases, there’s going to be shades of gray about how much evil do they do versus less evil, and that different people will reach different conclusions on that. But I think we have to be honest with ourselves, confront our own biases, and then maybe seek counsel from others.

If we’re really concerned, we should definitely follow our conscience. If our conscience is telling us to do one thing, but another voice is telling us to do something else, go with your conscience on that matter, and maybe seek out a spiritual director, though, to make sure you’re not being overly scrupulous when you are deciding which companies to support.

Because we also want to make sure, we don’t want to conflate people saying, “Oh, well, any evil is all evil.” Well, no. There’s clearly a difference between me buying something at Target, even though they might have some pornographic books that are on sale, versus buying something at a literal pornography store. If we come to the conclusion that any evil makes anything off limits, well, that won’t lead to moral rigor. It will inevitably lead to moral laxity. What will happen is, you’ll end up saying, “Wow, if any bit of evil is just … I can’t cooperate with it. It’s just wrong, full stop,” you’ll notice that basically every company you work with is evil, so you won’t care if you pick the really bad one or the not so bad one, if you think there is no difference.

Interesting. We’ve been talking about it a lot. I think most of the time, these ideas are brought up of how close we are to another’s actions. It’s all about, right, “I want to avoid evil,” which is a very good thing to try to do.

Right.

Do we apply, should we or can we apply these same principles of proximate and material and all that, to doing good? And how much should we think about that when we are out in the marketplace?

Well, do you mean exactly how much we should do when it comes to doing good, like with investing or purchases?

Yeah. Right? So I don’t know if this is the best example, but right, I could buy a pair of shoes from whoever, Nike, let’s say, and then the big marketing push with Tom’s Shoes was that, “Oh yeah, well, you get a pair, and then we’re going to give a pair to somebody who needs shoes.”

Right.

So that’s a good thing, right? And of course, it makes me feel better about them, and myself, and blah, blah, blah.

Right.

But if there is, I know that by supporting this business or whatever it is, there will be additional good done because of it.

Right. Well, I think that-

Do we go through the same things, or because it’s so remote, does it not even matter?

Well, what I would say is that to determine it, the obligation to do good is not as clear cut as the obligation to not do evil. It’s very clear when we have universal norms. Universal moral norms in the church tend to focus on negative behavior, negative commands. Like, “Don’t kill someone. Don’t commit adultery. Don’t steal. Don’t commit these specific acts.” But as I said earlier, who we give our money towards, there’s always going to be a scale. You could always give one more dollar to a charity. You could always buy the next thing. You could always give more, but there’s always going to be a breaking point, because eventually you could donate so much of your money that you are so impoverished your mental health becomes unbalanced, and you’re unable to provide for yourself, and that threatens your ability to continue to be charitable.

So we have to use prudence there, and we have to make that ultimate decision of, “Have I given enough that I’ve done sufficient good?” And that that’s up to us, ultimately. The church doesn’t give … There is no specific, “You have to give this percentage of your incom... Read more on Catholic.com