David Gibson parses the bishops' argument on payment for contraception, and finds that their current logic does not match their past logic.
They've found ways to "cooperate with evil" before, such as when Catholics vote for a pro-choice candidate because of considerations other than their position on abortion. In such a case, "remote material cooperation" may be permissable, or so said then-Cardinal Ratzinger in 2004.
There is also a second distinction--"mediate" versus "immediate." "Immediate"--paying directly for contraception--would be worse than "mediate", which is somehow participating, in some distanced way, from enabling contraception. (The HHS compromise is nothing if not "mediate.")
"Mediate" participation in (whatever they may call) "evil" also happens all the time with investment portfolios. It also happens when ordinary people pay taxes for government policies they don't like.
See Gibson for more detail. Meanwhile, this sums it up nicely:
"This is Moral Theology 101," said one moral theologian who, like several others interviewed, spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of angering the hierarchy on such a sensitive topic.
"I do not think the bishops and their advisers have thought all the way through the entire bundle of values at stake," said another. "The bishops do not seem to be able to take yes for an answer."
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