[Black Agnes]

“We are permitted to cooperate materially with evil even when the evil is serious if we or other innocent people would experience serious harm by refusing to cooperate.”

Cowardice. This mentality enabled millions to be exterminated in camps in the 40’s. This mentality enables tyrranical dictators worldwide. They’re counting on this cowardice.

[Mrs. Don-o]

I guess it's a question of just how "remote" your material cooperation is. Every taxpayer in the USA is already paying for the gay-rights advocacy being carried out by the DOJ, the DOS and the DOD; already paying for contraception, sterilization, and early-abortion drugs as part of our international "Aid" program (surely just as bad to offer them as "aid" as to offer them as "benefits"); already paying for huge swindles/ponzi schemes known as our fiscal and monetary policies; already paying for murder via Predator Drones; already implicated in increased national indebtedness, i.e. theft from our own descendants down to several generations (if our nation lasts that long.)

That's our material cooperation ALREADY.

This is all tied in with the question of intention. Within recent months I read the short book "Intention" by G.E.M. Anscombe, considered by many to be a masterpiece in the field. I am perplexed and must admit I didn't understand Anscombe at all.

But I'm told she and Mary Geach (her daughter) and others of the Anscombe school take a very hard line on intention: the only way you can say you "did not intend" something is when you can honestly say "I didn't know I was doing that." In other words, complete inadvertence. They make --- I am told --- short shrift of "Double Effect".

I have thought from the start that to offer one's employees an evil as a "benefit" must involve formal cooperation. Under duress from the HHS, yes, but formal.

Can anybody clarify this for me?