Moral Guidance

I am reading Moral Guidance, a book written in the 1940's by Jesuits and about-you guessed it- moral guidance. Besides being in deep need of moral guidance, I am also motivated to read it in order to sharpen my puny philosophical comprehension skills.

Early on in the text the author discusses the "two fold effect" -

"It is allowable to perform an act that will produce a good and a bad effect, provided (1) the good effect and not the evil effect is directly intended; (2) the action itself is good, or at least indifferent; (3) the good effect is not produced by means of the evil effect and (4) there is a proportionate reason for permitting the foreseen evil effect to occur."

There are actually long explanations of each of these four conditions given later, but I think this is enough for any interested party to help me apply this principle to a number of difficult situations presented by the authors. While they do examine some easily resolved situations at first, the Jesuit fathers leave a series of hard questions for the student (who was presumably a seminarian led by an older priest professor). I found the first one easy to analyze using the four conditions, but the four that followed I was ultimately unable to resolve to my own satisfaction. I shall present them here and, if you are feeling helpful, maybe you can help me out.

I shall begin with the first situation and my examination of it to give you the idea of what I am after.