(b) A greater reason is required when the cooperation is closer. Thus, in supplying meat the butcher cooperates only remotely, while the cook who prepares it and the waiter who serves it cooperate proximately.
(c) A greater reason is necessary when one’s cooperation is essential to the commission of the sin. Thus, in a large town where there are many restaurants, the fact that a customer would quarrel if denied meat on a day of abstinence would excuse cooperation, whereas in a small village which has only one eating place, it seems there should be a more serious reason, such as blasphemies or boycott or strike against one’s business which the refusal of meat might evoke.
(d) A greater reason is called for when the sin of the other person is more certain to follow. Thus, a restaurant-keeper who is patronized by strangers of all kinds, temperate and intemperate, Catholic and non-Catholic, may serve wine at meals, where this is allowed, and provide meat on days of abstinence for all comers; for the diners are not known to him, and it would not be possible for him to inform himself whether they are sober in their habits or exempted from the law of abstinence. But in a boarding house the landlady should not consent to have strong beverages on the table, when she knows that some of those present will thereby become intoxicated; neither should she agree to provide meat on Fridays for a Catholic who is not excused from abstinence, unless there is a serious reason, such as the loss of this boarder which she cannot afford on account of her poverty. Moreover, since dispensation is given from the laws of fast and abstinence but not from the law of temperance, there is less certainty about the intent to sin when one asks for meat on Friday than when one asks for a great quantity of liquor to be brought to one’s table. Drunkenness is also more certain when a person who asks for drink is already somewhat under its influence.
1539. The sins with which one cooperates by supplying food or drink to others who have no right to it are more or less serious according as they violate the natural law or only positive human law.
(a) Thus, violation of fast and abstinence is opposed to the natural law when it is intended as a manifestation of hatred of religion. One may not cooperate with a violation of fast and abstinence which is manifestly of this character.
(b) Violation of temperance is also opposed to natural law, and doubly so when it leads to such evils as quarrels, fights, murders, blasphemies, etc. It is not lawful to cooperate with intemperance, unless this is necessary in order to prevent the commission of a greater sin by the other person, or a serious loss to oneself. Thus, it is not unlawful to supply whisky to a burglar who wishes to get drunk, if this is the only way one can prevent the robbery of a third party or serious injury to oneself.
(c) Violation of a fast or abstinence in itself is opposed only to positive law; and, since fasting is more difficult than abstinence, one is more easily excused from the observance of the former than from that of the latter. Hence, if there is a doubt whether a customer has a right to receive the food or drink he asks for, a restaurant-keeper can decide more readily in the customer’s favor if there is question of fast or abstinence than if there is question of intemperance, and more readily still if there is question of fast than if there is question of abstinence. Generally speaking, a restaurant-keeper may supply meat on Friday to all who ask it, provided he has other substantial food indicated on his bill of fare and shows himself willing to serve that as well as meat.
1540. Renting of Houses or Rooms and cooperation in Sin.—(a) He who rents to persons who wish to carry on disorderly, immoral, idolatrous, unlawful, or other sinful occupations or practices, is guilty of formal or unlawful material cooperation, if he approves of the conduct of the renters or has no sufficient reason for renting to them. The same is true if in a similar way one permits persons bent on evil (e.g., pickpockets) to lounge in one’s offices, hotels, etc.
(b) He who gives the use of his house, room, hall, field, etc., to persons who will employ them for evil, is only a material and not a guilty cooperator, if there is no prohibition of his act, and he has a sufficient reason for it.
1541. Examples of reasons sufficient for cooperation in renting are as follows: