Formal and Material Cooperation in Evil
Formal cooperation: intending the evil action that another is doing.
- Sending an assassin to murder an opponent.
- Agreeing that a child should be aborted.
Material cooperation: providing the means to do evil.
- Equipping an assassin with a murder weapon.
- Paying for an abortion.
- Formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense. The Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life. "A person who procures a completed abortion incurs excommunication latae sententiae,"[1] "by the very commission of the offense,"[2] and subject to the conditions provided by Canon Law.[3] The Church does not thereby intend to restrict the scope of mercy. Rather, she makes clear the gravity of the crime committed, the irreparable harm done to the innocent who is put to death, as well as to the parents and the whole of society.
Examples of cooperation in abortion
A person who works at an abortion clinic is cooperating in the murder of innocent children.
If they approve of the murder, they cooperate both formally and materially.
If they do not approve of the murder, they cooperate materially by the work they do for the clinic.
A person whose employer cooperates in murdering children but whose work has nothing to do with the abortion industry only has an accidental, not an essential relationship to the evil done by their employer. If they cannot find adequate employment elsewhere, they may continue to work for their employer because their own work is morally neutral. All of the burden of evildoing rests on the shoulders of the evildoer, not theirs.