COOPERATION. — I. COOPERATION IN EVIL OR IN SIN.
1. Notion and divisions
C. is etymologically connected with the Latin verb «cooperor» = simul operor and immediately conveys the idea of a concause.Cooperation may 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 understand only complicity in another’s guilt or the assistance, even merely negative, rendered to another in committing a sinful action.
Scandal therefore does not properly fall under the name of cooperation, since, whereas scandal provokes another’s guilt, cooperation in another’s sin is added to it and generally presupposes II.
Cooperation may take the form of command, advice, approval, or praise of evil. One may cooperate in evil through silence, failure to resist, concealment, participation in the action, advocacy, or facilitation, which may take numerous forms. Strictly speaking, one speaks of cooperation when the action or omission of the cooperator has a secondary character in relation to that of a principal agent; but it is customary to speak of cooperation also with reference to the principal agent himself. In practice it is often not easy to distinguish between scandal and cooperation in sin, especially when cooperation takes the form of advice.
Cooperation may be positive or negative, according as it consists in action or omission. Positive cooperators, physically or morally complicit in the guilt, may contribute to the execution to a greater or lesser degree, either as principal author, instigator, or simple assistant. One may concur in the evil action either directly (as an associate) or indirectly (as a participant). Direct cooperation, according as it contributes more or less directly to the action, is called proximate or remote.
This relationship of greater or lesser proximity must be understood, since moral problems are involved, not in the sense of material distance calculated according to the number of intervening members, but according to the importance that the accidental action assumes in relation to the principal one, which is the other’s sin.
Of great importance is the distinction between formal and material cooperation. Cooperation is formal when it also embraces the sin, consenting to it; it remains purely material, on the other hand, when it rejects the sin in itself and consists in an accidental action more or less closely related to the other’s sin. Whoever, for example, freely holds the ladder on which a thief climbs is formally cooperating in the theft; whoever does so under compulsion of a grave threat performs a purely material act.
Cooperation may be formal or explicit through the agent’s own intention, or implicit when, even without the cooperator’s intention, his action is by its nature ordered to serving another’s sin and does not admit of a good end.
2. Malice of cooperation. — Formal cooperation is doubly sinful, because, in addition to consent to another’s sin, it further includes a fault against the virtue of charity and sometimes also against that of justice. It is therefore always and in every case forbidden.
Material cooperation that stands in so close a relationship with the sinful act that the action becomes possible only because of it is to be equated with implicit formal cooperation. If, on the other hand, material cooperation bears a more remote relation to the principal action, it may be licit, provided that certain conditions exist: the cooperator’s action, being non-proximate, must in itself be licit or at least morally indifferent; it must be performed for serious reasons, so that refusal to perform it appears morally impossible; and the other’s sin must in no way be approved.
The existence of these conditions must be established in individual cases by a very careful judgment that takes all the circumstances into account. Above all, the reasons excusing cooperation must be so much more serious, the greater the sin to which, even materially, occasion is given; the greater the likelihood that, if the material cooperator abstained from the action, the other would not sin; the closer the relationship to the sinful act; and the less necessity or right there is to perform the act or omission that subsequently constitutes material cooperation.
Since what is at issue here is the spiritual need of one’s neighbor, the principles governing this matter must also be kept in mind, and one must determine what a person is obliged to provide according to the degree of his neighbor’s spiritual need.
Cooperation remotely connected with the principal action, which, if one person failed to provide it, could easily be provided by another, is to be considered licit, provided that scandal does not intervene. Remote, unnecessary cooperation is licit even for a moderate inconvenience. More proximate cooperation, or remote but necessary cooperation, is licit for a grave inconvenience. The avoidance of a greater evil is to be regarded as a sufficient excusing cause in the case of material cooperation. To cooperate materially in a grave sin under conditions in which the assistance provided has a significant connection with the principal action, or worse still is indispensable to it, is not licit except for the sake of a grave personal inconvenience; this must be most grave if both circumstances occur together, or if very great harm to third parties would result. If that third party is the Church or the State, material cooperation may 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 personal inconvenience, because charity does not require one to avoid harm to another at so high a price.
Parents, superiors, and others with special obligations are nevertheless subject in this regard to heavier duties than others.
Cases of cooperation in sin may arise in every category. Those most exposed, however, are domestic servants, who have a contract for the hiring of their services; merchants and public vendors, in particular, because of their continual contact with the public; publishers, printers, journalists, and writers; theater or cinema entrepreneurs, and even more the people of the theater and cinema; innkeepers and hotelkeepers; members of the professions, especially physicians, magistrates, and judges; government officials, and deputies entrusted with legislative power, as well as their electors. These persons and the more unusual cases are discussed under the individual entries.
It should merely be noted here that this question of cooperation in evil, especially material cooperation, is a grave one, presenting many varied aspects of difficult solution, and yet arising daily in practice. It was not only the later moral theologians who concerned themselves with it and wrote about it; from the earliest times, questions of this kind occupied the Fathers and Christian writers. It is enough to recall Tertullian, who in this regard held rather rigid positions (cf. De corona), Clement of Alexandria, and St. Augustine (In Ps. 18, and 2, 13; Serm., 88, 19).
Problems that troubled the first Christians also arise today in the missionary world and beyond, concerning, for example, whether it is licit for a Christian to make statues and images of the gods, their temples, and so forth; the same applies to Catholics in relation 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; S. Office, decrees of 14 Jan. 1818, 15 March 1848, 31 Jan. 1872, 26 March 1885, 26 July 1888, 15 June 1889, 12 Dec. 1898) and combating the modern indifferentism that would regard truth and error with equal eyes.
Molti nuovi casi di c. hanno creato le legislazioni laiche moderne per magistrati, funzionari, ecc., nell'applicazione, ad es., divorzio (v.), sulla scuola laica (v. SCUOLA), sulla confisca di beni ecclesiastici (v. USUR-RAZIONE). Spesso le questioni sono rese ancor più ardue dal sopravvenire di speciali condizioni di dipendenza o dalla posizione economica delle persone in questione. Al lume dei principi esposti la coscienza del cristiano dovrà orientarsi, quando manchi un più diretto intervento del magistero ecclesiastico.
3. C. al danno. — I principi che regolano il risarcimento dei danni intercorsi in tema di c. restituzione (v.). La materia della c. illecita forma a volte oggetto di particolari sanzioni in foro esterno, ed allora la c. al peccato diventa c. al delitto (v. sotto). Per le interferenze tra c. ed occasione di peccato, V. OCCASIONE DI PECCATO.
Oltre il danno materiale, c'è spesso il danno spirituale, come conseguenza della c. Anche questo è da ripararsi nei limiti del possibile, e ciò per giustizia, quando si tratti di persone che per ufficio dovevano provvedere all'incremento spirituale di quell'anima che invece danneggiarono con la c.; o di persone che usarono mezzi ingiusti o formalmente cooperarono all'ingiuria. Del resto la carità esige, e in caso di scandalo assolutamente, che il danno si ripari nei limiti del possibile.
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. COOPERATION IN CRIME
There is cooperation or complicity in a crime when it is the work of two or more persons (co-perpetrators or accomplices).The participants are called: a) principals or secundarii (the latter also being accomplices in the strict sense), according to the influence their activity has had on the execution of the crime (the criterion of distinction is not consistent in doctrine and legislation); b) material or moral, according as they have carried out physical activity or merely moral activity toward the commission of the crime (moral complicity may consist in a mandate, command, coercion, instigation, or advice).
There is no complicity when several persons agree to commit a crime and it is then not committed (not even attempted); and likewise when someone instigates another to commit a crime, without the person instigated subsequently committing or at least attempting to commit II. In some cases, however, the agreement or instigation, when not followed by an effect, may itself constitute a crime.
Similarly, there is no complicity in a crime when someone, without any prior agreement concerning the crime, helps its perpetrator to evade the investigations of the authorities or to secure the proceeds of the crime (favoreggiamento), or praises the crime committed (apologia di reato), or participates in the proceeds of the crime (ricettazione).
Whereas the currently vigente Italian Penal Code (arts. 110–119) establishes that all participants in a crime are subject to the penalties prescribed for the perpetrator, subject to certain exceptions, the CIC instead grades responsibility and punishment according to the extent of the activity performed.
It establishes, in fact, that, unless any aggravating or mitigating circumstance exists for a given person, the following have equal criminal responsibility and therefore are subject to the penalty prescribed by law for the perpetrator of the crime: 1) all co-perpetrators of the crime (and this also in so-called bilateral crimes, such as adultery and incest, or in collective crimes, such as conspiracy) and those who gave the order; 2) instigators and other accomplices, if the crime would not have been committed without their participation (canons 2209 §§ 1–3, 2231). By contrast, all accomplices whose activity was not decisive—that is, those without whose participation the crime would nevertheless have been committed—have reduced responsibility and are therefore punished with a lesser penalty (canons 2209 § 4 and 2231). Obviously, these rules do not apply in cases in which the law provides for some form of complicity as a distinct type of crime (canon 2331).
Those accomplices who, before the crime is committed, have respectively partially or wholly withdrawn their participation are then punished with a lesser penalty or are even exempt from punishment (canon 2209 § 5).
Those who render negative assistance, that is, merely failing to prevent the crime when they were obliged to prevent it, are subject to responsibility and therefore to a penalty proportionate to the gravity of the obligation (canon 2209 § 6).
The CIC too, in conformity with the principles of modern criminal law, excludes favoreggiamento, apologia, and ricettazione from consideration as cases of complicity in a crime (canon 2209 § 7). Instigation, when it has no effect, is equated with attempted crime (canon 2212 § 3).