Cooperation with Evil Reconsidered: The Moral Duty of Resistance

The essay presents an argument for critical retrieval of the framework of cooperation with evil used by the moral manualists who dominated Catholic moral theology in the first part of the 20th century. Both “liberal” and “conservative” Christians are concerned with cooperation but differ as to which issues deserve attention and when cooperation becomes problematic. The key to moving beyond the current impasse is balancing the manualists’ tolerance for material cooperation in the face of conflicting responsibilities with the prophetic sensibilities of womanist theologians who are “troubled in their souls” by the suffering of vulnerable human beings and call Christians to take concrete steps to contribute to the decrease of that suffering.