Excerpt from Cases of Conscience, Vol. 1: For English-Speaking Countries

Few, if any, of those for whom this book is intended will be disposed to deny the usefulness and necessity of Casuistry for the ecclesiastical student and the confessor. If the priest's work in the cure of souls and in the confessional is to be done fruitfully and if disastrous mistakes are to be prevented as far as possible, previous and solid training is absolutely necessary. Mere speculative knowledge is not sufficient to fit the priest for his work. His duty is to guide souls according to the principles of the Catholic faith, and a merely speculative knowledge of those principles will not enable him to perform the task imposed upon him. Nobody supposes that book knowledge alone will fit the judge or the doctor for the practical work of the law courts and the sick-room. As little will a knowledge of speculative theology fit the priest for the work that he has to do. He is both a judge and a doctor. Only the cases that he has to decide are often more intricate than those which are heard in the law courts, and the diseases which he is called upon to heal are more difficult to diagnose accurately and to prescribe for than are those of the body. It adds to the difficulty that such practical training for their profession as the judge and the lawyer get is not possible in the case of the priest. The medical student walks the wards of the hospitals and observes how cases of bodily disease are treated by an expert. The judge usually has a long preparatory training in the practice of the law.

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