Cooperating with evil?

[utah_rose]

Please let me know if this would be indirectly cooperating with evil, or if I’m so to speak, making a mountain out of a molehill.

Recently Amazon.Com Ceo contributed 2.5 million toward the defeat of Washington states referendom against gay marriage. He contributed to the LGBT organization, and commented that he felt it was “The right thing to do”.

I am an Amazon Prime member and purchase a lot of items from their website, mainly e-books for my Kindle Fire.

I emailed Jeff Bezos and told him from now on I would buy from other sites and borrow books from the library, as I felt that this not only was an immoral thing to do, but was still using profits from Amazon to donate to this group.

Do you believe I’m doing the right thing or that it will make a difference? More and more companies are doing this, and I’m at a loss whether to boycott them in this way or to leave it alone. By the way, the money I’d be spending there I’m contributing to NOM and told him this.

 

[Ron_Conte]

The principle of cooperation with evil, as taught by the Magisterium, permits remote material cooperation. If there is no intention to cooperate with whatever is sinful in the other person’s act, and if the cooperation is not formal (direct involvement in the intrinsically evil act of another person), then the morality of the cooperation depends on the circumstances. If your cooperative act is remote from the sin of the other person, this reduces the gravity of the bad consequences, making remote material cooperation generally moral.

Pope John Paul II says this about cooperation with evil, in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life)

“In order to shed light on this difficult question, it is necessary to recall the general principles concerning cooperation in evil actions. Christians, like all people of good will, are called upon under grave obligation of conscience not to cooperate formally in practices which, even if permitted by civil legislation, are contrary to God’s law. Indeed, from the moral standpoint, it is never licit to cooperate formally in evil. Such cooperation occurs when an action, either by its very nature or by the form it takes in a concrete situation, can be defined as a direct participation in an act against innocent human life or a sharing in the immoral intention of the person committing it. This cooperation can never be justified either by invoking respect for the freedom of others or by appealing to the fact that civil law permits it or requires it. Each individual in fact has moral responsibility for the acts which he personally performs; no one can be exempted from this responsibility, and on the basis of it everyone will be judged by God himself (cf. Rom 2:6; 14:12).”

 

[Timothysis]

Amazon sells products through thousands of vendors throughout the country. If you boycott Amazon for said reason, you will actually be harming those who supply the merchandise, are trying to make an honest living and have nothing to do with the personal actions of the C.E.O.

What Bezos does with his money is his business and he is the only one morally culpable for his actions.

 

[thistle]

Please let me know if this would be indirectly cooperating with evil, or if I’m so to speak, making a mountain out of a molehill.

Recently Amazon.Com Ceo contributed 2.5 million toward the defeat of Washington states referendom against gay marriage. He contributed to the LGBT organization, and commented that he felt it was “The right thing to do”.

I am an Amazon Prime member and purchase a lot of items from their website, mainly e-books for my Kindle Fire.

I emailed Jeff Bezos and told him from now on I would buy from other sites and borrow books from the library, as I felt that this not only was an immoral thing to do, but was still using profits from Amazon to donate to this group.

Do you believe I’m doing the right thing or that it will make a difference? More and more companies are doing this, and I’m at a loss whether to boycott them in this way or to leave it alone. By the way, the money I’d be spending there I’m contributing to NOM and told him this.

Frankly, not buying from Amazon will make no difference to them and anyway you buying from them is not cooperating with evil.

 

[nesguy]

I’m curious about this in a slightly different light. I’ve recently purchased several books from a company that, as part of their main publishing scheme, puts out books that are homoerotic and/or pornographic. This company is branching into a new territory with the books I’m receiving from them (which are translations of a classic comics author from Japan), and contain none of the illicit material they sell in their other lines. In fact, they created an all new imprint for these titles.

I’m curious if I’d also be exempted under the remote material cooperation by supporting this company with my purchase. I mean, I like showing a company like this that there’s a better market with clean and reputable titles by supporting those specifics with my purchases (especially when I like the author they’re importing). Then again, it almost feels like buying children’s books from Playboy. It’s given me a weird vibe that I don’t know what to do about.