Companies that fund immoral causes?

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So, I just learned that McDonald’s apparently gives money for abortions. So I would like to ask: Is it wrong to go to McDonald’s and other companies that give money for immoral causes? At first, it may seem that yes, it’s wrong. But there are some arguments that make me doubt:
First, when I buy things at those companies, I don’t give money for immoral causes. It is those companies that decide, freely, to give their money for those causes. So am I really responsible for that?
Secondly, if it is immoral to buy something from someone simply because you know that they will misuse the money, then it leads to some strange conclusions. For example, if you have a friend that has a shop, and you know that this friend use condoms in his personal life, then you can never buy anything from him. Because even if the main purpose of his job is certainly not to buy condoms, he still use a tiny part of his money to buy condoms. So by buying things from him, you know that a very tiny percentage of the money you give will go in those condoms. And if you buy many times from him, this percentage may represent a good amount of money. And since we know that in our society a lot if not most people use money partly for immoral ends (whether condoms, abortion, or other things), the conclusion is that we can buy from practically no one and nowehere. We may be justified to buy the bare minimum of food and clothes but nothing that is not essential, so that as little money as possible goes for immoral ends. However this is clearly not what most Catholics do, and it would be of course quite difficult to live in this way.
 
You might want to use the search feature while you wait for replies. This topic has been discussed on CAF before.
 
Irishmom2 said:
You might want to use the search feature while you wait for replies. This topic has been discussed on CAF before.
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Ok sorry. Now I did it and I found conflicting answers, so not sure if I’m better or worse than before.
 
opop said:
For example: https://www.familycouncil.org/?page_id=14547
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McDonald’s raising money for United Way is NOT “giving money for abortions”.

You are WAY off base.
opop said:
Ok so according to this chart, remote cooperation is acceptable if there is a proportionately serious reason to do so. But that leaves very little room to buy anything.
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Nope. You aren’t understanding the chart or the fact that McDonalds isn’t doing anything evil for you to cooperate with.

I gave this chart in a broader context, not specific to “McDonalds”. In some cases, there are businesses you should avoid because they are doing evil. But others, not.

Perhaps you should talk about this with your pastor.
 
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1ke said:
McDonald’s raising money for United Way is NOT “giving money for abortions”.
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But it depends if United Way makes a campaign specifically for abortion or not, right? But I’m not American so I don’t know how they make their campaigns. I just learned about them recently.
 
opop said:
But it depends if United Way makes a campaign specifically for abortion or not, right? But I’m not American so I don’t know how they make their campaigns. I just learned about them recently.
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United Way is a huge umbrella organization that collects for dozens of charities that do all sorts of things. Many charities that receive money from United Way have nothing to do with abortion, reproductive health, or health care generally. Catholic Charities and other Catholic organizations also receive money via United Way.

Bottom line is it’s pretty extreme to decide a company is “doing evil” just because they run a United Way campaign or contribute funds through United Way. You should use the chart you were given, and if you have questions about it, talk to your pastor, because you don’t seem to have a good understanding of this issue and are taking some pretty extreme positions. If Catholics were forced to avoid every corporate entity that ran a United Way campaign, we would all be living off the grid and eating food we grew/ raised in our yards.
 
opop said:
But it depends if United Way makes a campaign specifically for abortion or not, right?
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United Way does not do so.
opop said:
But I’m not American so I don’t know how they make their campaigns. I just learned about them recently.
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It’s unfortunate that a pro life group would have a list that is so misleading.
 
1ke said:
But it depends if United Way makes a campaign specifically for abortion or not, right?
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Correct.

Also, the United Way is not a monolithic national organization - each local United Way has a great deal of latitude in selecting which charities will receive funds.

For example, in my city United Way has funded Catholic Charities for decades but has never funded Planned Parenthood. In fact, PP and some other agencies that were denied funding by United Way set up a competing fund-raising organization.

While it’s good to be aware of the philanthropic support given by companies, one can carry it to an extreme: McDonald’s has money to pay their employees because I buy food from them. One of their employees donates money to Planned Parenthood. Therefore, a portion of my money is going to Planned Parenthood. As was stated earlier in the thread, such thinking would lead a person to living off the grid and raising their own food. (And yet the government would still want their taxes…and some government funds go to questionable things…)
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Glennon_P said:
While it’s good to be aware of the philanthropic support given by companies, one can carry it to an extreme:
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Yes, I also question this list on its list of “direct support” organizations.

There are better lists, ones that you pay for, that go into detail on how the company is supporting PP. My guess is a number of these on this particular list are through employee match giving, not through an actual relationship between the company and PP.
 
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The United Way in my county grants tens of thousands of dollars each year to three things:

Shelters for the homeless
Utility Assistance for the poor
Rental Assistance for the poor
 
Not to mention that many McDonald’s are franchisee owned not corporate so the money may not be going were you think it’s going (outside the cost of running a franchise that the owner pays corporate)
 
A couple years ago, I did some research on this issue for a paper I was writing. I ended up abandoning the paper and choosing another topic because what I found in my research didn’t amount to enough to fill the ten or so pages I was required to write. But here’s the gist of what I found.

There’s a rumor that goes around on pro-life websites that Starbucks donates $10 million a year to Planned Parenthood. I looked up the breakdown of what they donate, and found out that this is manifestly not true. They barely donate that much to all the charities they donate to combined. What Starbucks does, or at least did in 2013, the year for which I had the most complete data, is employee gift matching. If you work for them, and you donate $2000 to Planned Parenthood, Starbucks will match your gift. But if you donate $2000 to your local parish, Starbucks will also match that gift. In 2013, they actually gave more to churches (of various denominations) than they did to Planned Parenthood.

But let’s take the Mythbusters approach. The original claim having been busted, let’s see what conditions would have to be present in order for the myth to be true. In this case, the claim is “Starbucks donates $10 million/year to PP and one shouldn’t buy from them because you’re supporting abortion.” Let’s pretend for a moment that Starbucks really does give that much money to PP every year. Assume that you go there every day, and you buy your $7 cup of coffee. In one year, you’ve spent $2555. In 2013, Starbucks reported $14.9 billion in revenue. Our mythical $10 million donation to PP would amount to .06% of their total revenue. That means that your total contribution to PP over the course of that year would be $1.53. Congratulations, you’ve just given a pack of Post-it notes to a Planned Parenthood office somewhere.

(continued)
 
All of this is to say that one’s cooperation with the evil of Starbucks donating to Planned Parenthood (if they did donate as much as they are rumored to, which they don’t) is so minimal as to not even matter. The kind of cooperation that is morally illicit is that which enables the evil to take place. A .06% contribution is hardly enabling. The bigger issue with companies like Starbucks and Target and others is not how much money you are giving to whom they are donating. Honestly, they can do whatever they want with their money. It’s that their public stances on certain moral issues are problematic, and so to appear to support those issues by patronizing those businesses can lead to scandal and indifference. Think of it more locally: if the owner of the local hardware store was using the money you spent at his store to support his drug habit, or to donate to immoral causes, that’s his business, honestly. What he does in private with his money is none of your concern. If the owner of the local hardware store announces that his store is fully in support of whatever problematic moral stance and it will donate a certain percentage of proceeds to this or that morally illicit charity, then it would be wrong to shop there. But again, your material cooperation is not the issue, it’s the appearance of supporting the issue by patronizing the business.

Cooperation is among the more complicated issues in moral theology. But as others have said, going to McDonald’s or other businesses like that is not wrong. If we were to avoid anything tainted by participation in evil, we couldn’t buy anything from anyone.

-Fr ACEGC
 
I’m not sure there’s a better explanation.
I’ve worked in defense and aerospace manufacturing for almost 16 years. When I interviewed for the place I currently work for, my future boss, asked me how I felt about working for a defense company that built military equipment. I’d never thought about it that way before. I’d never worked on an active equipment before, my experience was mostly “passive” (radios and flight avionics). My new job would involve control and radar systems, which is plays a more active role. It really made me consider what was the line for me.
 
It is interesting to consider. The ethics of cooperation is one of the reasons that hypothetical situations aren’t usually helpful, since morality happens in the concrete.

I would be inclined to argue that in the case of being an employee of a defense contractor, one’s participation is still several layers removed from the conflict and its own moral or immoral nature. Even within warfare, when we talk about “just war” or “unjust war,” we could be talking about three different things–a just or unjust cause for going to war, the just or unjust prosecution of the war, or the just or unjust conclusion of the war and how it is exited. And even within the context of the prosecution of the war, we might say that this or that campaign or action within a campaign or action of one individual is just or unjust. Since that end of it is already so complicated, it would be hard to see how even the one manufacturing weapons would be in any way morally culpable for the actions of this or that soldier or lieutenant or general prosecuting the war.

But there are many other layers to consider within it. I think things like this are why baseball fascinates me so much–there are so many ways to slice it up. I enjoy thinking about things like this.
 
Short answer, it is near impossible to avoid buying anything that violates your morals or values except in very simple situations e.g. buying from a local farmer. Even then that person could have done things you find objectionable, even your closest friends.

Boycotting something may directly affect the lives of non-involved individuals. Like with McDonalds franchisees or even workers that might be living in near poverty.
 
For me, at least so far, is the actual ordinance. I’m ok working on the control and radar systems but I don’t know if I could work on the actual “bomb”. Not to long ago, we received an order to refurbish some ship guns and I did assist in shipping out some replacement parts but I don’t think I would have been able to work the main program.
 
edward_george1 said:
I would be inclined to argue that in the case of being an employee of a defense contractor, one’s participation is still several layers removed from the conflict and its own moral or immoral nature.
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As somebody who spent years working for a defense contractor and was initially worried about the morality of it, I spent most of my time there working on peacetime stuff for law enforcement or other peacetime use like night vision sensors, communications systems that worked in case of a nuclear attack, early GPS systems, electric cars, and post office mail sorters. Almost everything short of an actual missile, bomb or gun has a major peacetime use as well. Even my husband who had no moral qualms about working on bombs or guns ended up spending a huge amount of time on mine detectors used to clean out old minefields so civilians didn’t get limbs blown off. In the USA, companies often use a defense peg as a way to get research money for technologies that have all kinds of non-violent applications. So unless you’re so anti-war that you just can’t see working anything peripherally related to defense (in which case your tech job options will be super limited, everything relates in some way to defense) it should not be a concern.
 
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