Michael asked:I purchased a car and I wanted to purchase another one and a friend told me that the dealership I purchased from advertises on the gay satellite channel. Do I have any culpability?Tim Staples replied:"... If we tried to boycott every company that is involved in any way with anything immoral we would have to go out of this world. We would need to live on the moon. You simply can't do it ... There's nothing wrong with trying the best you can to buy from companies that support what we believe as morally acceptable ...So Michael you do the best you can, but if in fact you buy from a company that is advertising on something ... that is not formal cooperation in sin, that is very remote material cooperation. That doesn't mean that it wouldn't be wrong to say you know what, I'm gonna write these guys a letter. I'm gonna tell them I'm not buying from you because you advertised on this channel, I'm buying from them. You just lost twenty five thousand dollars. That's fine. As long as we understand that there's no moral imperative here, until you get to the place where you have such proximate material cooperation or if there's formal cooperation of course we can never do it. Formal cooperation involves you being involved in something, and by the way you'd also have the intention of doing something that's intrinsically involved in the carrying out of an objectively immoral act. For example if I own a company and I paid the deductible, which by the way the HHS mandate mandates, and I directly pay the deductible or the co-pay for someone to get an abortifacient contraceptive, that is formal cooperation and sin. Because I am paying for them to get this procedure..." Copyrights:Catholic Answers, "Open Forum" (San Diego: Catholic Answers, 2013)Editor's note: This is an excerpt of the answer provided. For the complete response download the podcast. |  Click icon for archived podcast answering this question in its entirety. Show air date: October 1, 2013 Name of show: Open Forum Guest comments by: Tim Staples Question appeared in show: 32:30 |
