The Irish standard., 1891-01-03
The CON ESSION Al
The Views Of Medical Man on
the Subject.

& The Rev. Dr. Ta,mage, of brooklyn,
S. Felt the Need of knowing the Sins OF
His People-How Catholics are Taught
@ Properly to Confess.
"A church without the confessional is
like hospital without doctors, writes
f "a Catholic Medical Man. in the Liver
pool "Catholic Times" Allow me to ex-
plain why. The doctors are the preserve
ers and executors. of all that vast store Of
knowledge whic has come down to us,
ever increasing, from before the days of
Hippocrates. The medical textbooks
used in; and the lectures delivered at,
our medical schools are the resultant of
numberless observations and condolences
reposed in countless doctors from the
earliest times Observation is strength
ened and corrected by confidence and
and truthful reply to wise and
necessary questions. That there must
he confidence and full rational dis
closure is evident from the way in
which disease is caused and complicated
by error, or family history, or suspicious
circumstances That medical men may
dishonorably abuse this confidence to
their own advantage or the injury OF
their patient is, of course, possible with
free agents, but no valid reason against
the business and general necessity of the
whole medical profession. 1t would be
as reasonable to take away remedies be-
cause they can be used to destroy life.
The medical profession has it's own pre-
servative etiquette, and provides against
dishonorable conduct by rules, regula-
tions, oaths and laws made and enacted
in the various medical societies, colleges
and universities, and in the General Medi-
cal Council of this realm. The fact then
stands that the patien tmust truthfully
state his case for his own personal bene-
ft That case becomes part of the sum
of the doctors experience from which
many other patients derive benefit 1t
passes into the hands of the profession at
large through discussions, lectures, jour-
nails and text books, where it is thor
oughly sifted, and if found worthy Of.
permanent record is preserved for the
benefit of suffering humanity.
The philosophy involved in medical
case-taking holds good but in a far higher
degree of the system of the Confessional.
Casuistry, or the science of solving the
right and wrong of given cases, has been
decried and written down until the name
has come to signify ingenious fine-spun
sophistry. But look at the question
broadly. Where would medicine he with
out the science of medical diagnosis,
which enables the physician to determine
and discriminate between diseases resem
bling each other. Casuistry is diagnosis
applied to sin and crime, and is as neces-
sary for the confessor as medical diagno-
sis is for the physician. Sin and crime
are everywhere In their grosser forms
thew undermine society and cause loss,
injury, disease and death. Sir Thomas
Crawford. K G. E., M. D., when address,
ing the Sanitary Congress recently held
at Brighton, pointed out that 'the VIOLA
ton of the moral law in such matters as
temperance and chastity stood promi-
nently forward as a fruitful source of
disease" All these violations cause
frightful complications which crop up in
the most unexpected places, not unfre-
quently involving the innocent. The
lesser habits of moral wrong-doing all
lead to states of mind which often end
in serious crime. and little sins have far
reaching consequences. Surely all this
needs studying. These consequences are
only discerned with special knowledge
and experience. AS an instance I may
point out that to give a false age in the
census return or on a certificate of
death looks very small; but is it
soP The return of living ages
has considerable effect on the calculation
of insurance ife-tables; and the record of
average death from disease affects medi-
cal opinion. Here both money and life
are involved, yet further evils might be
traced to these small lies. Can it then
be wrong to study sin and crime in
order to understand them as a means to
properly combat them 1t is plain that
such a course of study is perfectly lcgiti-
mate, yet how can it be properly pursued
unless sin and crime are discussed and
systematized This can only be properly
done through such a. system as the Con-
fessional. For long ages the Roman
Church has been accommodating knowl-
edge OF sin which is ever being more per-
fectly systematized by her writers kon
moral theology. These works are written
in Latin so as to he beyond the reach of
those who might derive harm from read
ing them. The Church, through regularly
constituted channels, is ever supervising
these books, so as to keep them in the
way of her teaching and to exclude any
thing likely to prove breach of the seal
of secrecy; in the same way that medical
textbooks contain no breach of individual
confidence. These are the textbooks of
spiritual medicine which the confessor
uses with his own experience when adj
ministering the sacram ent of Penance
DR.. Talmage, the well-known Baptist
preacher, of Brooklyn, felt the need of
knowing the sins of his people when he
spent six nights visiting the haunts of
vice in the great American city; and the
experiences of these nights he published
In six lectures The Catholic Church