Moral justification for a cause exonerates killers while suppressed guilt resurfaces intrusively.

Evidence

The power of ideology to dispel moral restraint is illustrated in cold-blooded assassinations. Sean O’Callaghan, the young IRA militant, entered a pub and shot at close range a Catholic police inspector erroneously rumored to be abusing IRA prisoners in detention centers (O’Callaghan, 1998). In reflecting on the killing he disclaimed any wrongdoing: “I had done no wrong. I had not committed a crime, a sin. I had no reason to feel guilty.” The worthy purpose was his moral exoneration: “I was fighting for a righteous cause” (O’Callaghan, 1998). Although remorseless about the assassination, he experienced a residual live-with-yourself problem. He was haunted by an intrusive thought—“You’re going to have to pay for this someday”—which he tried to suppress: “I pushed that troublesome thought away. ‘Get your act together, you halfwit,’ I told myself.” — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2216

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘live-with-yourself problem’ despite ideological exoneration parallels the vault’s mechanism claims about how rationalization contains rather than eliminates residual moral discomfort, echoing Frankfurt discussions of guilt being suppressed but not abolished.
• QUESTION: Bandura cites O’Callaghan’s later remorse — worth checking whether the mechanism predicts lasting moral disengagement or whether unresolved guilt is what enabled his transformation into a peace advocate.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2216