Book I. Duties Attached to Particular States and Offices

IN the preceding volume we have treated of the duties which are incumbent on all-men, or at any rate on all Catholics, by the natural, divine, and ecclesiastical law. Some special duties, however, arise from the nature of the state in which one is placed or of the office which one holds. Thus a judge or a doctor has as such certain special obligations as well as the cleric or the religious. The confessor should know all the obligations of his penitents, and so moral theologians usually treat in this place of the special duties of judges, doctors, clerics, and religious. We will follow their example in this Book and treat in the first part of the special obligations of certain laymen, in the second of those of clerics, and finally of those of religious.