What Is a Catholic Physician?

What is a Catholic physician? This article lays a foundation for answering this question by examining the science and art of medicine according to St. Thomas Aquinas. By doing so, we can determine the nature of the physician qua physician so that the impact of Catholicity can be developed in detail in the future. This analysis suggests at least five ways in which Catholicity affects the physician’s professional medical act: knowledge of the physician’s final end as beatitude in God, knowledge of the patient according to all four causes, a conscience formed in truth, a will assisted in choosing the good, and passions ordered to reason. Contrary to some secular conceptions, the Catholic physician is not a lesser physician by nature but one whose powers of the soul have been augmented for truth and goodness.