The Meaning and Role of Duress in the Cooperation in Wrongdoing

National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (Washington: The United States Catholic Conference, 1994).

For an overview of the principle of cooperation, see Keenan James F. , and Kopfensteiner Thomas R. “The Principle of Cooperation and The Formation of New Partnerships in Health Care.” Health Progress, April 1995, 23–27. A more restrictive interpretation is given by Germain Grisez, “In Answer to Critics: The Revised, Final Version of a Difficult Moral Question About Cooperation by Catholic Hospitals,” Linacre Quarterly, 65 (August, 1998) 59-76.

The issue here was the focus of a CHA task force which dealt with Catholic identity and moral integrity. Part of those discussions is captured in “Catholic Health Ministry in a Changing Environment: Maintaining Ethical Integrity,” in Catholic Health Ministry in Transition, A Handbook for Responsible Leadership (Silver Spring. MD: National Coalition on Catholic Health Care Ministry, 1995) Resource 10. For a different interpretation of the issue see Lawrence Walsh, “An Excessive Claim: Sterilization and Immediate Material Cooperation,” Linacre Quarterly 66 (November, 1999) 4-25; Walsh deals with the issue from an ecclesiological point of view; the case is much more difficult from a moral point of view.

See, for instance, Marcellinus Zalba, Theologiae Moralis Summa, vol. 1 (Matriti: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1957) § 1612.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Some Observations of the November 1993 Draft of the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Facilities of the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine,” emphasis in the original.

Though no example is given, this is made clear by the ethicists at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, “Cooperation with Non-Catholic Partners,” Ethics and Medics 23 (November, 1998) 1–5. Implicit formal cooperation can be illustrated by a case from the manuals. The tradition exemplified it as when a person boosts another through a window so that it can be robbed, that person cannot argue that he did not cooperate in the evil done. He cannot abstractly separate himself from the robbery by saying he only “helped someone through the window of the house.”

United States Catholic Conference, “Sterilization Policy for Catholic Hospitals,” Origins 7 (December 8, 1977) 399.

Pius Pope XII “Allocution to Urologists,” October 8, 1953, Acta Apostolica Sedis 45 (1953) 673–79, AT 695.

USCC. “Sterilization Policy for Catholic Hospitals,” 399–400.

For the variety of institutional arrangements that distance the Catholic hospital from the evil, see Kathleen Kaveny M. , and Keenan James F. “Ethical Issues in Health Care Restructuring,” Theological Studies 56 (1996) 145–50.

See. for instance, McHugh John O.P. , and Callan Charles O.P. Moral Theology: A Complete Course, revised and edited by Edward Farrell, O.P., vol. 1 (London: Herder, 1958) 1506–46. Also, Charles Curran, “The Catholic Identity of Catholic Institutions,” Theological Studies 58 (1997) 94-100.

The way goods other than human life can come into play is overlooked in “Cooperation With Non-Catholic Partners,” 4.

These two criteria cannot be separated artificially. What we truly value will become clear when it is threatened or its loss becomes possible, and what we resolve to protect or refuse to lose will reflect what we truly value and esteem.

This is overlooked by Smith Russell E. , “Duress and Cooperation,” Ethics and Medics 21, no. 11 (1996) 1–2; similarly see his “Immediate Material Cooperation,” Ethics and Medics 23, no. 1 (1998) 1-2.

Catechism of the Catholic Church (Washington: United States Catholic Conference, 1994) no. 2284.

Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Sterilization in Catholic Hospitals,” Origins 6 (June 10, 1976) 35.