Can a well-meaning business idea be bad after all?

[Cherripeeps]

[Possibly a bit over the word limit, but please, I beg you, bear with me. ]]

Hello, awesome staff at Catholic dot Com!

I am really good at creating eye-catching, powerful videos and art in general. Recently I decided I want to share my knowledge with the world by creating an e-store offering a wide and comprehensive range of dirt-cheap courses on how to use various kinds of software, assets and techniques to create amazing, super-effective videos and art. The whole initiative is geared mainly toward empowering entrepreneurs and independent artists, who have a huge need to create this type of high-impact content, but having someone do it for you can be super expensive, and finding high-quality, systematic, step-by-step how-to knowledge is a bit difficult. Though, of course, anyone interested may buy. Basically, I want to make the world of digital art and video super accessible for anyone who wants to create things.

But I suppose maybe I’m a little scrupulous, and I have this nagging doubt. I know I’m about to sound like a Marvel genius-scientist, but… what if my work/knowledge falls into the wrong hands?

I mean, the whole goal of my courses is to teach people how to use complex software with a high skill level and get their message out into the world more effectively. So… what if the message they want to propagate is a bad one? What if my courses are used to serve anti-Catholic or anti-Christian or even (God forbid) Satanic purposes, or to spread ideas that go against Church teaching, or to promote causes such as abortion and the pro-gay movement? I’m seriously worried about this. And I’m not sure how such uses of my work would weigh in at the time of my Judgment, when Jesus and I finally meet face-to-face.

On the other hand, I’m convinced my work could do a lot of good in the world. Not just because I’ll be empowering entrepreneurs and artists to fulfill their dreams. Also because I’ll do awesome things with my e-store, such as giving out all these courses for free to anyone doing Church/Non-Profit/Charity work, and setting up my site so that 30% of the income for every course sold goes to a charity/non-profit, community, person, or religious group in need.

So what do I do, beautiful people? Is it okay to pursue this business idea and make it happen, in spite of the risk of my material being misused?

 

[Fr.Charles_Grondin]

Technology always brings risk:

• The ladder can be used to paint a house or break into a second floor apartment.
• A printer can be used to print a Bible or profanity.
• Telephones can be used to arrange a charity meeting or to arrange a crime.
• Ski masks can be used to keep our faces warm when skiing or to hide our faces when robbing a bank.

As long as our intentions in creating and/or distributing something are good, we have no control how others will use it.

This is called “material cooperation with evil” and “the principal of double effect.” This is when something that is either morally good or neutral has the possibility to be misused by others for evil. You are creating and distributing something good, or at least neutral, and you have the best of intentions therefore you are not morally responsible for its misuse by others.