Given from the Catholic Broadcasting Station 2SM Sydney Australia
Choose a topic from Vol 3:
If the doctor has secured a knowledge of the matter only by promising seriously not to betray his patient's secret, then ordinarily the doctor should not be compelled to make it known. The common good demands that crimes, as a rule, should be detected and punished. But the common good also demands that professional secrecy can be relied upon.However, in certain circumstances the doctor would be free to speak.He would not be free merely because an individual guilty person would escape punishment.But he would be free from obligation to keep quiet if his secrecy would involve the State in some grave positive danger, or, which is more likely perhaps, if some innocent third party were liable to grave injury and injustice.However, even in the case where his silence would mean merely that a guilty person would escape punishment, with no positive injury resulting to others, the doctor would be free in conscience to speak if ordered to do so under pain of grave punishment for himself.No one is supposed to have so obliged himself to secrecy as to endure grave injury rather than speak. The common good also demands freedom in such circumstances, for if one had to keep silent in all such cases, professional men would refuse advice and help.However, the law should not compel a professional man to betray a secret in this case. It is permissible for the Court to insist upon it only when otherwise grave injury is likely to result to other and innocent parties.