Amnesty International has changed its policy on abortion. Amnesty states that it is not for or against abortion. But it is now a pro-choice organisation.
As a result, some Catholic schools have withdrawn from Amnesty, and the Australian Catholic bishops have now urged Catholics 'to seek other avenues of defending human rights', adopting a position that 'membership of Amnesty International is no longer compatible with Catholic teaching and belief on this important point'.
But within the framework of Catholic moral reflection, to which I shall confine myself in this article, the issue does not permit such a blanket determination. Amnesty, like many modern NGOs, has moved to a 'full spectrum approach' in articulating policies on a broad range of social issues. It maintains its core business which includes the release of prisoners of conscience and fair and prompt trials for political prisoners.
The Australian bishops' blanket determination, in the absence of any published reasoning distinguishing both formal and material cooperation, and permissible and impermissible material cooperation, raises a significant problem.
The issue would be simple if the organisation in question were Children by Choice, an organisation which is dedicated to making abortion more readily available, such that any participation with the organisation would be tainted by cooperation with abortion.
But members of organisations such as Amnesty, which take a full spectrum approach to human rights, are not taken to agree to every item in the organisations' policy statements.
It would be wrong for a Catholic formally to cooperate in providing abortions or in activities aimed at making abortion more readily available. Bishop Anthony Fisher gave a useful description of formal cooperation in a recent address at the University of Sydney entitled 'From Good Doctor to Dr Evil: When Should a Doctor Cooperate in Evil?':
'Formal cooperation is where the cooperator not only does something that foreseeably helps the principal agent do wrong, but the cooperator does so while sharing in the wrongfulness of the principal agent's act — his/her wrongful end or intention or will.'
So it would be wrong for a Catholic to join Amnesty, participate in an Amnesty campaign or donate to Amnesty with the specific intention that abortion be made more readily available. It would not be wrong for a Catholic to participate in an Amnesty campaign which was unrelated to abortion, nor would it be wrong to donate funds to Amnesty for purposes other than the provision of abortion.
It is quite consistent with Catholic moral reasoning for a Catholic to remain a member of, or cooperator with, Amnesty and involve him or herself only in campaigns unrelated to abortion. If troubled by the prospect that some financial contribution would be dedicated to abortion activity, a conscientious Catholic could ask that Amnesty establish bookkeeping practices which would quarantine flagged payments from abortion activities.
Consider an example which has occupied Catholic moralists for generations. All would agree that a conscientious Catholic should not work at an abortion clinic. But surely it is more a matter for individual prudence and prayerful discernment for the conscientious Catholic deciding whether to work (in any role not directly related to the performance of abortions) at a public hospital where abortions are performed.
In the past Catholic bishops have not suggested that Catholics could not serve on the fund raising committees of our prominent and esteemed public hospitals, nor that Catholic surgeons should not work at them because some of their co-workers practise abortion, nor that Catholics should not work as cleaners or domestic staff in such institutions.
In fact, there have been occasions when church leaders have espoused Catholics working in the public health system so that they might influence the system with a coherent Christian health ethic. Could not the same case be made for ongoing involvement with Amnesty?
Participation in a 'tainted' organisation only for untainted purposes is the more readily justified when there is no practical alternative for achieving a good result. For example, there may be no better way to agitate for the release of prisoners of conscience than by signing on with Amnesty.
Though it may be permissible or desirable for individual Catholic adults to remain part of Amnesty, is it a good pedagogical decision to align students with a pro-choice organisation when the other admirable human rights objectives could be achieved without membership of such an organisation?
Alternatively, is it a good pedagogical decision to isolate students from a compromised organisation with otherwise admirable objectives? Wouldn't it be better to educate students in the way of mediate and remote material cooperation with Amnesty while they are at school so they may be better equipped to contribute to the common good in a fallen world, realising that purity and martyrdom are not the daily fare of public political life and activity?
Though respecting the bishops' decision, especially in the absence of any published, persuasive reasons analysing the different types of cooperation, I maintain there must continue to be a place for prudential decisions by persons involved in permissible material cooperation in Amnesty's work.
Fr Brennan is a Jesuit colleague of Fr Chris Middleton, Principal of St Aloysius College in Sydney, who had a very different response to Amnesty's pro-choice stance when he wrote for Eureka Street back in May. To read what Fr Middleton had to say, click here.
Frank Brennan SJ AO is a professor of law in the Institute of Legal Studies at the Australian Catholic University, professor of human rights and social justice at the University of Notre Dame, and Professorial Visiting Fellow, Faculty of Law, University of NSW.