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            Allow me to begin with some personal details that are not altogether irrelevant. My father being a doctor and I a priest, I have always considered that medicine and the priesthood particularly qualify as service professions - professions dedicated to the service of others. I am also a lawyer, both civil and canonical; but must admit that only in more recent years have I come to consider that the law too has every title to rank as a unique service profession. It is not that I deliberately excluded it before from my idea of major service professions; I just did not positively include it in the list. Now I do, most positively.

The Second Vatican Council, to quote the opening words of its first document, "set out to impart an ever-increasing vigour to the Christian life of the faithful" (SC 1). The renewal envisaged by the Council was to be pastoral; in other words, it was to be a renewal of the Church's role in caring for souls, as it carries on the work of Christ the Eternal Pastor (cf. CD 1). A pastorally renewed Church, according to the mind of the Council, should therefore be a Church where souls are cared for better, where the care they receive is more according to the fullness of Christ's design.