Cooperation

COOPERATION. - I. COOPERATION IN EVIL OR SIN.

1. Notion and divisions

Cooperation is etymologically linked to the Latin verb "cooperor" = simul operor and immediately gives the idea of a joint cause.

Cooperation can occur in good and in evil: in both cases it always presupposes the external act, or at least the communication to others of one's intentions.

By cooperation, however, moral theologians mean only complicity in another's fault or the help, even merely negative, given to others in committing a sinful action.

Under the name of cooperation, therefore, scandal does not properly fall, because, while scandal provokes the fault of others, cooperation in another's sin is added to it and generally presupposes it.

Cooperation can take the form of command, of counsel, of approval and praise of evil. One can be a cooperator in evil through silence, non-resistance, concealment, positive participation in the action, patronage, abetting, which can have numerous aspects. One properly speaks of cooperation when the action or omission of the cooperator has a secondary character with respect to a principal agent; but one is accustomed to speak of cooperation also with respect to the principal agent himself. Often in practice it is not easy to distinguish between scandal and cooperation in sin, especially when cooperation is carried out in the form of counsel.

Cooperation can be positive or negative, according to whether it is a matter of action or of omission. Positive cooperators, accomplices in the fault either physically or morally, can in greater or lesser form give their contribution to the execution or in the manner of principal author, of inducer or of simple assistant. One can concur in the bad action either directly (socius) or indirectly (particeps). Direct cooperation, according as it concurs more or less directly in the action, will be called proximate or remote.

This relationship of greater or lesser proximity must be understood, since these are moral problems, not in the sense of material distance to be calculated on the basis of the number of intermediate members, but according to the importance that the accidental action has with respect to that capital action, which is the sin of the other.

Of great importance is the distinction between formal and material cooperation. Cooperation is formal when it embraces the sin as well, consenting to it; it remains instead purely material when it repudiates the sin in itself and consists in an accidental action in a more or less proximate relationship with another's sin. One who, for example, freely holds the ladder on which the thief climbs cooperates formally in the theft: one who does so constrained by a grave threat performs a purely material act.

Cooperation can be formal either explicitly by the agent's own intention, or implicitly when, even without the cooperator's intention, his action by its nature is ordered to the service of another's sin and does not admit a good end.

2. Malice of cooperation

Formal cooperation is doubly sinful, because besides consent to another's sin, it includes in addition a fault against the virtue of charity and at times also against that of justice. And therefore it is always and in all cases forbidden.

A material cooperation that stands in such a close relationship with the sinful act that only through it the action becomes possible is to be equated with implicit formal cooperation. If instead the material cooperation stands in a broader relationship with the principal action, it can be licit, provided certain conditions exist: the cooperator's action, not proximate, must in itself be licit or at least morally indifferent, must occur for serious motives so that the refusal of it appears morally impossible; moreover, one must in no way approve the sin of the other.

The existence of these conditions must be ascertained in individual cases with a very pondered judgment, which takes account of all the circumstances. Above all the motives that excuse cooperation must be all the graver, the greater the sin to which, even if only materially, occasion is given; the greater the probability that, if the material cooperator abstains from the action, the other will not sin; the closer the relationship to the sinful act, and the lesser the necessity or the right to perform the act or omission that is then material cooperation.

Since what is at issue here is the spiritual necessity of one's neighbor, one must also keep in mind the principles that govern this matter and see what one is bound to provide according to the degree of spiritual necessity of one's neighbor.

Cooperation remotely connected with the principal action, which can easily, if one person is lacking, be provided by another, is to be considered licit, if scandal does not intervene. A remote cooperation, not necessary, is licit even for a mediocre inconvenience. A more proximate cooperation, or a remote but necessary cooperation, is licit for a grave inconvenience. The avoidance of a greater evil is to be considered a sufficient excusing cause in the case of material cooperation. To cooperate materially in a grave sin, in such conditions that the help given has a notable connection with the principal action or worse still is indispensable to it, is not licit except for a grave inconvenience of one's own, which must be very grave if the two things occur together, or if very great harm to third parties follows from it. If moreover this third party is the Church or the State, material cooperation can be entirely illicit because of the higher demands of the common good.

Indirect cooperation is licit when it is a matter of preventing an equally great inconvenience of one's own, because charity does not require avoiding another's harm at so high a price.

Nevertheless parents, superiors and others having special obligations are subject in this regard to heavier burdens than others.

Cases of cooperation in sin can present themselves to all categories. More exposed, however, are persons in service, who have a contract of hire of works; merchants and public shopkeepers, in particular, because of their continuous contact with the public; publishers, printers, journalists and writers; theater or cinema entrepreneurs, and even more the people of the theater and cinema; innkeepers or hotelkeepers; professionals and in particular physicians, magistrates and judges; men of government, and deputies, to whom legislative power is entrusted, and their electors. Of all these and of the more singular cases there is discussion under the individual entries.

It should only be noted here that this question of cooperation in evil, especially material cooperation, is a grave question that presents so many varied aspects of difficult solution, and is nevertheless of daily application. Not only the later moral theologians were concerned with it and wrote about it, but from the earliest times questions of this kind kept the Fathers and Christian writers occupied. It suffices to recall Tertullian, who on this point held rather rigid theses (cf. the De corona), Clement of Alexandria and St. Augustine (In Ps. 18, and 2, 13; Serm., 88, 19).

Problems that distressed the first Christians come to the fore again even today in the missionary world and outside it, regarding the licitness, for example, for a Christian to manufacture statues and images of the gods, their temples, etc.: the same may be repeated for Catholics with respect to heretics. And the ecclesiastical magisterium continues to pronounce itself uniformly, evaluating individual cases on the basis of the principles set forth (S. Congregation of Propaganda Fide, 8 Jan. 1851; Holy Office, decrees 14 Jan. 1818, 15 March 1848, 31 Jan. 1872, 26 March 1885, 26 July 1888, 15 June 1889, 12 Dec. 1898) and combating today's indifferentism, which would wish to regard truth and error with an equal eye.

Many new cases of c. have been created by modern secular legislation for magistrates, officials, etc., in the application, for example, of laws on divorce (v.), on secular schools (v. SCUOLE), on the confiscation of ecclesiastical property (v. USUR-RAZIONE). Often the questions are made even more difficult by the supervening of special conditions of dependency or by the economic position of the persons in question. In the light of the principles set forth, the conscience of the Christian must find its orientation, when a more direct intervention of the ecclesiastical magisterium is lacking.

3. Cooperation in wrongdoing

The principles governing compensation for damages arising in the matter of prohibited cooperation belong to the doctrine of restitution (v.). The subject of illicit cooperation sometimes forms the object of particular sanctions in the external forum, and then cooperation in sin becomes cooperation in crime (v. below). For the interrelations between cooperation and occasion of sin, v. OCCASIONE DI PECCATO.

Beyond the material damage, there is often spiritual damage as a consequence of the cooperation. This too must be repaired within the limits of what is possible, and this by justice, when it is a matter of persons who by office were bound to provide for the spiritual advancement of that soul which they instead harmed through the cooperation; or of persons who used unjust means or formally cooperated in the injury. Moreover, charity demands, and in the case of scandal absolutely requires, that the damage be repaired within the limits of what is possible.

BIBLI: Oltre ai testi di teologia morale, cf. E. Waffelaert, Etude sur la coopération au mal surtout en matière politique et religieuse, 2ª ed., Bruges 1892; A. Sleumer, Die Mitwirkung zur fremden Sünde, Limburg a. d. L. 1907; B. Oettl, s. v. in Synopsis rerum moralium et iuris pontificii, 3ª ed., Roma 1912, coll. 1390-1407, nn. 1600-15; E. Dublanchy, s. v. in DThC, III, coll. 1762-70; O. Schilling, Theologia moralis, II, Rottemburg 1940, pp. 322-31, nn. 362-63; G. Frassinetti, Compendio della teologia morale di s. Alfonso M. de' Liguori, 11ª ed., tratt. IV, Del primo preetto del decalogo, cap. 2, diss. 5ª; sulla c. al peccato, Torino 1944, pp. 124-36; St. Willems, De restitutione facienda pro damnificazione materialiter iniusta, in Collationes Brugenses, 38 (1948), pp. 14-22; id., De variis molis cooperandi ad lesionem iuris, ibid., pp. 101-105; id., De restitutione facienda a cooperatorius negativis, ibid., pp. 105-11; id., De restitutione facienda per mandatum aut iussionem, ibid., pp. 186-91; id., De restitutione facienda a cooperatore consulente-consciente-palpone-receptante, ibid., pp. 278-88; id., De restitutione facienda a cooperatorius positivis stricto sensu, ibid., pp. 362-69; W. I. King, Moral aspects of dishonesty in public office, Washington 1949, pp. 96-97, 105, 109, 144.

Pietro Palazzini

II. THE COOPERATION IN THE CRIME

There is cooperation or participation in a crime when the crime is the work of two or more persons (co-participants or accomplices).

The participants are called: a) principal or secondary (the latter also accomplices in the strict sense), depending on the influence their action had on the commission of the crime (the criterion of distinction is not constant in doctrine and in legislations); b) material or moral, according to whether they carried out a physical or only a moral activity for the commission of the crime (moral participation may consist in the mandate, the command, the coercion, the instigation, the counsel).

There is no participation in the case in which several persons agree to commit a crime and then it is not committed (nor even attempted); and likewise in the case in which someone instigates another to commit a crime, without the instigated person then committing or at least attempting to commit the crime. In some cases the agreement or the instigation, not followed by effect, may however themselves constitute a crime.

Likewise there is no cooperation in the crime when someone, without any prior understanding to the crime, helps its perpetrator to escape the investigations of the authority, or to secure for himself the profit of the crime (abetment), or else makes an apology for the crime committed (apology for crime), or participates in the profit of the crime (receiving stolen goods).

While the current Italian Penal Code (arts. 110-119) establishes that all participants in a crime are subject to the penalties established for the perpetrator, save certain exceptions, the CIC instead grades responsibility and penalty according to the extent of the action performed.

It establishes in fact that, unless there is for someone some aggravating or attenuating circumstance, they have equal criminal responsibility, and therefore are subject to the penalty established by law for the perpetrator of the crime: 1) all co-perpetrators of the crime (and this also in the so-called bilateral crimes, such as adultery and incest, or in collective ones, such as conspiracy) and the mandators; 2) the instigators and the other accomplices, if without their participation the crime would not have been committed (cann. 2209 §§ 1-3, 2231). On the other hand, all the accomplices whose action was not decisive have attenuated responsibility, and are therefore punished with a lesser penalty — those, that is, without whose participation the crime would nonetheless have been committed (cann. 2209 § 4 and 2231). Such rules, as is obvious, do not apply in cases in which the law provides as a distinct figure of crime some form of complicity (can. 2331).

Then those accomplices are punished with a lesser penalty, or even are exempt from penalty, who, before the crime was committed, retracted their participation respectively in part or in full (can. 2209 § 5).

Those who lend negative action, that is, limiting themselves to not preventing the crime, when they would have the obligation to prevent it, are subject to responsibility and therefore to a penalty proportionate to the gravity of the obligation (can. 2209 § 6).

The CIC too, in conformity with the principles of modern criminal law, excludes abetment, apology, and receiving stolen goods from being considered cases of participation in crime (can. 2209 § 7). Instigation, in the case in which it has no effect, is equated with the attempted crime (can. 2212 § 3).

Pio Ciprotti