 There are also principles governing cooperation, cooperation with different forms of evil. Cooperation in Catholic moral theology is understood as giving aid to what a person judges or believes to be the sinful act of another person. In other words, I do something and someone else appropriates it to use it for a sinful end. Catholic moral theology is generally distinguished between formal and material cooperation. Formal cooperation, the person doesn't engage in the act itself, but fully shares in the intention and the purpose of the one they are assisting. The person who formally cooperates with evil is guilty of the evil even though they do not perform the act. So the nurse in an abortion facility who hands the suction device or the scalpels to the doctor is, even though she doesn't perform the abortion, she is formally cooperating with the evil of abortion. The council who does abortion referrals, who doesn't work at a place that maybe even provides abortions, but simply sends the person down the street to the Planned Parenthood Clinic to get an abortion. That's formal cooperation with evil. The person who smuggles drugs even though they're not selling them on the street or manufacturing them. The first time I gave this course it was in the diocese of Nassau in the Bahamas to a group of deacon candidates and their wives. I know it was a difficult assignment, but someone had to take it. But one of the things I learned about the Bahamas when I was there was that the economy of the Bahamas before it was built on tourism was built on the drug trade. And it's a smuggling center. The drugs that are produced in the southern hemisphere of the Americas and sold and distributed in the northern hemispheres of the Americas are often funneled through places like the Bahamas. That's an example of formal cooperation with evil. Material cooperation with evil refers to the unintentional enabling of another person to do evil. Material cooperation with evil can be morally illicit, can be okay in some circumstances, but material cooperation can also be illicit. So for example, the receptionist who works at the front desk of the abortion clinic, who's not in the room where the abortions are performed, that would be an example of immediate material cooperation which Catholic moral theology said that's implicit formal cooperation and the person is morally guilty of participating in the evil of abortion. Whereas a taxi driver who picks up a pregnant woman who asks to be driven to an abortion clinic and drives her there not knowing what she's going to do. She could be going there to pray a rosary or do sidewalk counseling. He doesn't know and it's his job to drive her from point A to point B. If he drives her to that clinic and she's going there to have an abortion, this would be an example of remote mediated material cooperation. He is an unwitting accomplice to her decision to end the life of her unborn child. The Catholic nurse who works in a healthcare facility prepping a patient for a tubal ligation, a sterilizing procedure or a vasectomy. Hopefully it's not a Catholic healthcare system, but this nurse who knows because the church teaches direct sterilization is morally evil. This nurse in taking a person's vitals before surgery, measuring urine output and blood pressure and everything, that person is, this is probably a case of mediated, approximate mediated material cooperation. It depends on the degree of duress that holds the person there. If the person has moral qualms about what's going on in other parts of the hospital, they should probably look for a job at a place where they don't have a moral objection. There can be gray areas here too. In other words, cases where we really have to get more information or cases where we have some disagreement among Catholic moralists. If someone makes a donation of drug money to build a church, should the local bishop take that? Mother Teresa famously would take money from anyone and use it in the service of God's poor. Buying products from a business that supports a business which contributes to Planned Parenthood or other abortion providers. Many of us do that unwittingly every day. It is incumbent on us to learn a little bit more about how we spend our time and our money.