Does ability to act always entail responsibility to act?

[DL82]

Does anyone who has a power to change something to make it accord better with the teachings of the Church always have a responsibility at all times to act to change it, or is there a role for prudence?

For example, a Catholic judge who was opposed in conscience to the death penalty could try to exercise clemency wherever possible, and to dissuade prosecutors and juries from passing this sentence, although respecting that at some times a death sentence may be called for by the law, or he can refuse to ever pass the death sentence, even if that means losing his job, and perhaps losing it to a less just or less capable man.

To take another example, an employer may try as far as possible to allow his employees to have Sundays and holy days of obligation off work, but there may come a point at which he has to choose between his business shrinking, making some people unemployed and yielding more market share to a less scrupulous competitor, or making some of his workers work on Sundays.

Does the ability to do a good action entail in every circumstance that it must be done?

 

[Rascalking]

A judge is different. They should follow the law, even if they don’t like it. If they violate the law to stop something they see as evil, where does it stop? They’d take the law into their own hands and eventually it would be heinous. It’s called the law for a reason. If you don’t like, change it. If the death penalty is law of in your state/jurisdiction, you must follow it. If you can’t, then find a different job.

Having said that, I think your on to something. IE-My mother is a nurse. Although she has been doing cancer work for 30 years, she has spent some time in the ER. If she was walking through a mall and someone had a medical emergency, she DOES have the responisbilty to help.

 

[Theophorus]

We should never cooperate in serious moral evils such as abortion, and we should oppose them as best we can. the case of the judge is different as they are an interpreter of the law, but the death penalty (which can be a legitimate recourse in some rare cases) doesn’t automatically follow from a guilty verdict so a life sentence could be given instead

 

[Dtmccameron]

I vote yes, ability to act is placed within us by just as surely as the breath in our lungs, and with it comes the responsibility to do as best we might, in all things.

That’s just my vote. Doesn’t mean I’m right.