Case 1. A Priest Practising Medicine and Surgery

Caius, a physician, renounced the vanities of the world in order to enter a religious Order. Having become a priest, when he is called to the sick he does not hesitate to prescribe remedies suited to bodily diseases, so that not rarely he heals both the souls and the bodies of sick parishioners. Given the opportunity he also does the same for members of the household; indeed, once, in someone’s sudden danger, he amputated an arm. Nevertheless, a doubt occurs to other religious of the same Order whether all these things are lawful for priests. Hence it is asked:

1. Whether and to what extent are the medical and surgical arts prohibited to clerics?

2. Whether and how could a priest exercising those arts incur irregularity?

3. What is to be said of the case?

1. Are clerics forbidden to practise medicine and surgery, and how far?

According to the common opinion clerics are forbidden to practise medicine and surgery without an indult of the Holy See. Some, however, restrict the prohibition to studying medicine and surgery, and practising surgery.

1 Génicot, vol. ii, n. 36.

2. If a priest practised medicine and surgery could he become irregular and how?

He would become irregular if death followed from his performing a surgical operation which he is forbidden to do.¹

1 St. Alphonsus, lib. vii, 384.

3. The case. Caius had better restrict himself as a general rule to looking after the souls of his parishioners, and leaving the practice of medicine to lay doctors. Some religious Orders have a privilege of allowing their members who have studied medicine to prescribe for the sick where there are not suitable lay doctors. In the supposition that the case was one of necessity Caius was justified in amputating the arm, and as he did not commit sin by doing this, neither did he incur irregularity.²

2 Ibid., viii, n. 384.