Notre Dame Shame

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Notre Dame is cooperating with evil by supplying students with contraceptives in order to accomplish the so-called good of relieving the "burden" of poor students, who can't afford to buy contraceptives.

Alumni of Notre Dame are strongly objecting to the decision by Notre Dame's president, Fr. John Jenkins, of purchasing contraceptives for students through the university's insurance policy. They identify such an act as cooperating in the sin of contraception. Father Jenkins says he's providing contraceptives for students who are "burdened" with relying on the university's health insurance and who are using birth control.

The Catholic Church has always taught, however, that a person cannot do evil in order to accomplish some apparent good. In paragraph 80 of his 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor, Pope St. John Paul said as much:

[It] is never lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come of it (cf. Rom. 3:8), in other words, to intend directly something which of its very nature contradicts the moral order and which must therefore be judged unworthy of man, even though the intention is to protect or promote the welfare of an individual, of a family or of society in general.

This very basic moral principle restated by John Paul II was a direct quote from his predecessor, Blessed Pope Paul VI, who wrote the exact same statement in paragraph 14 of his 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae. Both popes cite as their source of this moral principle Romans 3:8 in which St. Paul relates that the "damnation is just" of those who say, "Let us do evil, that there may come good."

Father Jenkins says he's personally opposed to the practice of contraception but yet supplies students with contraceptives so they can commit that grave sin. Faithful Catholics see his level of participation in the sin of contraception analogous to giving a suicidal person a loaded gun or a drug addict a syringe full of heroin.

Watch the panel discuss a Catholic institute's peddling of contraception in The Download—Notre Dame Shame.

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