Actually, the Church teaches that the act of taking food when one is starving is not an act of justified stealing or lessened culpability. It is an act of a totally different species than stealing. One is never permitted to steal; it is intrinsically evil. But the instance of taking food when starving is not stealing at all.
Sometimes circumstances can be so significant that they alter the very object of the act (St. Thomas calls these conditio principalis). A good example is with sexual intercourse. Sexual intercourse between married people has a morally good object. Now, change the *conditio principalis *to “unmarried” and the act is fundamentally changed to an act with a morally evil object.
This may seem like splitting hairs, but it is the necessary application of the principle that one can never do evil, even if good may come of it.
Sorry for the tangent…
