Professional developments: benefits from loss of innocence

As adolescents and young adults we learned that functions of the three primary disciplines – religious studies, law and medicine – were pretty obvious. Prelates had a major role in maintaining stability within society, comforting people and fostering the concept of a next world while avoiding politics. Their rewards lay in the good feelings engendered by their work, acceptance of a coherent philosophy and practice, close contact with like-minded people, and the knowledge that they were secure in a material sense at the level they had chosen to adopt.