Concerns about cooperation with evil have marked Christianity from the earliest times. The scribes and Pharisees criticise Jesus for eating with sinners and try to trap him into declaring whether or not to pay taxes to Rome. 1 Peter 2:13-17 instructs its readers to submit to human authority for the Lord’s sake. In the introduction to Rethinking Cooperation with Evil, Ryan Connors argues that in the present day we are faced with an increasing number of questions concerning cooperation with evil. Connors gives two reasons for this increase. Firstly, we live in a progressively interconnected world and, therefore, find ourselves cooperating in a widening field of evil practices. Secondly, Christians are more likely to find themselves in opposition to societal norms and laws (p. 2). It is, therefore, timely to reconsider the question of cooperation in evil, a topic that has been often neglected in post-Vatican II moral theology.
The approach that Connors takes, as the sub-title states, focuses on the virtues and in particular on Aquinas’ presentation of the virtues with its underlying teleological analysis of human acts. Connors contrasts this virtue approach with the casuistic approach developed in the manuals of moral theology that dominated Catholic moral theology in the modern period prior to Vatican II. Whereas Aquinas focuses on the teleological structure of the act, the manuals abstract human acts from the virtues that provide the principles for their operation and present a series of criteria to determine the nature and degree of cooperation with evil: formal and material, remote and proximate, immediate and mediate (p. 3). With no underlying understanding of the teleological nature of the human act moral theologians applied these criteria in widely differing and often opposing ways, providing conflicting pastoral advice and instruction to the faithful.
In Chapter One, Connors begins by examining five topics discussed by Aquinas that involve cooperation with evil. Whereas in the modern period moral theologians followed St Alphonsus Liguori in treating cooperation as a particular topic following their discussion of scandal, Aquinas has no distinct treaties on cooperation but discusses cases as they arise as part of his general discussion of human acts and virtues (pp. 12–13). In contrast to the manualists overplaying the significance of the principle of double effect, Aquinas focuses on the nature of the act performed by the person who cooperates with its teleological ordering and per se effects. After discussing Aquinas, Connors examines the development of his teaching in the works of three of this most influential commentators, Capreolus, Cajetan, and John of St Thomas, before ending Chapter One by outlining the development of the modern tradition in St Alphonsus and the significance of Pope Innocent XI’s condemnation in 1679 of the proposition that a servant aiding his master to carry out an immoral act by carrying a ladder does not commit mortal sin.
Chapter Two provides an analysis of nineteenth- and twentieth-century casuistry on cooperation with evil. Here Ryan shows his scholarship by attending to the distinctions between the various schools, while demonstrating that they shared the underlying assumptions and methodology that involved the application of criteria to acts considered in abstraction from a concrete analysis of their nature. Connors’ purpose is to show the inadequacies of the manualist treatment of cooperation, but he also notes that many of their conclusions were sound should not be rejected (pp. 110–11). He is also sensitive to developments in the twentieth century that opened the path for a more adequate understanding of human acts, such as Bernhard Häring’s The Law of Christ (1954), which broke with the classic manualist tradition (p. 97).
Connors develops his virtue approach to cooperation in Chapter Three by outlining the post-Vatican II renewal of moral theology found in the works of Servais Pinckaers, before examining how Papal teaching in Veritatis splendour, Evangelium vitae, and various other Church documents draws upon a teleological and virtue-based understanding of moral action. He next turns to three contemporary authors who ‘in particular present important work in this area’: Steven A Long, Anthony Fisher OP, and Andrew McLean Cummings. Connors draws heavily of Long’s analysis of the human act, finds in Fisher a helpful discussion of cases that avoids falling into casuistry and in McLean Cummings the most significant contemporary history of the debate on cooperation in the modern period. The influence on Connors of these three authors is clear to see in his analysis of human acts, discussion of particular cases, and reading of the modern history of the debate.
The first three chapters of the book lay the groundwork for Connors’ proposed development of the tradition in Chapter Four. The first part of this chapter brings together the various elements Connors uses in his analysis of human acts in relation to cooperation: teleology, per se ordering, how the context of the act influences its moral analysis, the inadequacy of criteria of proximity in determining the nature of cooperation, and the intrinsic nature of virtue ethics in contrast with the extrinsic nature of the law. These are familiar topics for anyone working within the virtue tradition, and Connors provides an important and essential analysis of their significance for an understanding of cooperation.
After developing these topics, Connors examines how duress affects the moral analysis of acts of cooperation. The manualists did not provide a general treatment of the traditional ‘enemies of the voluntary’ and tended to confine their treatment to the degree of imputability for committing a sin. In contrast, Connors argues that a virtue as opposed to a rule-based ethics has ‘little place for the category of duress and its claim on moral reasoning’ (p. 198). Connors is concerned that an emphasis on duress results from a law-based ethics in which authors are concerned to show that a law no longer applies. I take Connors here to be arguing that in the analysis of the human act as good or evil duress should not play a part, not that the ‘enemies of the voluntary’ should be ignored when assessing moral culpability (the Catechism of the Catholic Church in paragraph 1860 provides a description of factors that can diminish the voluntary character of an act).
After a brief excursus into the question of cooperation with abortion, Chapter Four concludes by examining the role played by the cardinal virtues in addressing cooperation with evil. This is the heart of Connors’ treatise and provides materials for future analysis of how a virtue ethics provides a more realistic and context-based understanding of cooperation as opposed to the abstract analysis of acts common in the manuals. It may come as a surprise, therefore, that Connors finishes the book in Chapter Five by examining some contemporary cases. In these discussions, however, Connors seeks to bring out how the analysis of the per se ordering of the human act and an understanding of the virtues enable us to understand the moral nature of cooperation in a manner not available to the law-based ethics.
Rethinking Cooperation with Evil is a significant work in contemporary virtue ethics that addresses a neglected subject. This is important for moral theology but equally for pastoral practice where many difficult cases involve cooperation in evil. By developing a virtue approach, Connors shows the inadequacies of the manualist law-based approach to cooperation and helps us to see how much contemporary thinking continues to be shaped by this approach.
