It is a difference of commission vs omission, but some people like
@mr.moon1488 think that omission is just as bad, so it is less bad to run over 1 person. I thought that my original answer was the Catholic answer to this dilemma but now I am not sure. I will therefore ask the ex priest
@Fagatron about this.
I'm sorry for the slow response
@Jacob Harrison. I've been very busy and wanted to make sure I could answer properly. I'll try to keep it brief though because there is a lot of material on this subject.
In the traditional scenario of the trolleys there are only two acceptable options.
1. Do nothing.
2. Throw yourself under the trolley if that could stop it, but this is allowed only if you don't actually want to die (because dying in the course of living out your faith is noble, denying God's will for when you die by commiting suicide on the other hand is a sin).
This might sound strange at first but hear me out. The concern of Catholics always should be to perform the least amount of sins. I know this doesn't happen in practice but in theory, a Catholic should always refuse to take actions that result in sin. Not making a choice can be a sin (i.e: If you don't try to prevent someone getting an abortion) but very often it's the correct answer.
In this scenario, killing either the group or the single human, results in an unlawful killing (no human has the right to influence another humans time of private judgement/death, with exceptions) and the one who pulls the lever has committed a mortal sin and is now destined for hell (Catholics are called to be Holy, that is loyal to the dictates of God, not "good" in the secular understanding of helping others flourish). Reducing the amount of human suffering is irrelevant in this context as Catholicism does not consider suffering to be necessarily bad and a just punishment for original sin (in fact John 12:8 alongside the words of Mother Teresa are regularly called upon to remind Catholics suffering will always exist and can have important spiritual benefits; e.g you need poor people to offer charity in order to fulfill the duty to minister to the sick). By taking no action, no sin has been comitted. The people who are struck may or may not go to hell but that's irrelevant to the salvation of the individual. Salvation is the core base of Catholic concepts of right and wrong, anything that God leads one away from salvation is wrong no matter how many people it makes happy.
However, to focus back on unlawful killing for a moment just to explain the phrasing there are cases where a Catholic is not only sin free to kill, but is morally obligated to do so. The Chatechism of the Catholic Church condemns those who condemn the death penalty chiefly on the grounds of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Council of Trent's decrees that the answer to unrepentant heretics or those who refuse to convert to Catholicism should be ostracism or death. Ostracism if the individual does not pose a risk to the growth/mantainment of the faith, or death when it does. Which one should be chosen has been a topic of great debate; earlier men like Aquinas strongly advocated for the death of non-believers and heretics ("Best to lose the branch than the Tree [to an infection]") wheras by the time of Trent Catholics were encouraged to shun Protestants (and them likewise the Catholics). If you're a cynic like me you might observe that it became acceptable not to kill Protestants around the same time there were sufficent numbers of them to actually prevent Catholics from doing so, likewise this doctrine appeared for the first time at exactly the same time the Early Church was sufficiently powerful and well placed enough it could attack and persecute Pagans without consequence.
There's also the Just War doctrine were a theoretical Catholic state and population is obligated to go to war and kill when according to 2309 of the Chatechism of the Catholic Church.....
The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:
- the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
- all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
- there must be serious prospects of success;
- the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.
These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the "just war" doctrine.
The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.
Historically the approach was a Catholic state is obligated to wage war and kill if a fellow Catholic state suffered aggression from a non-Catholic power; or if a non-Catholic power was determined to be persecuting Catholics within their own borders such as not allowing missionaries or worship. "Those who have responsibility for the common Good" was historically the Church itself and chiefly the Pope but the phrasing of the modern version is unclear. It can easily be applied to a government, but it's my personal opinion it's kept vague so it can be interpreted to be a modern government but actually still mean the Church itself as well. I'm of this mind because this sort of vauge statements are very in keeping with the modern Catholic approach; Francis' vague airy statements can sound very liberal but when you actually peer in they're not what they seem.
I should add the disclaimer this is all purely from a letter of the law theoretical black and white approach. Francis himself has said he thinks there are better alternatives to the death penalty while likewise observing it would be heretical to ban it, and most Catholics are far more strongly influenced by enlightenment ideas about rights of men and preventing pain than this theology which I've never actually seen anywhere but seminaries, university and the Traditionalist Catholic blogsphere.
