Can a good cleric use a wand to cast an evil spell?

Question

Do alignment restrictions apply to spells cast by activating a wand? For example, Infernal Healing is a cleric spell with the [evil] descriptor, so a good cleric or a cleric of a good deity cannot cast it.

If a cleric has a wand with this spell, can she activate it normally? Can she do it with Use Magic Device?

I see two reasons why she could (or couldn't) use the wand:

1. Does the cleric know the spell for the purpose of activating the wand (without making a Use Magic Device check)?

2. The spellcasting class feature of a cleric says that "A cleric can’t cast spells of an alignment opposed to her own or her deity's". Does that include casting the spell from a wand, or only from her own spell slots?

Answer 1

Wands are activated via spell trigger, which states:

Spell trigger items can be used by anyone whose class can cast the corresponding spell.

Whether the spell is known or can be cast specifically by the character is irrelevant- so long as the spell is something that can be cast by the character's class, the character can use the wand.

Which brings us to the cleric's opposing alignments feature. The feature changes what spells a cleric can cast, but not what spells every cleric can cast. It also does not specify whether its restrictions extend to spell-completion items or spell-trigger items.

In the absence of such specificity, I would favor a case of specific beating general- namely, the general rule of the wand activation by anyone with the relevant class being defeated by the specific feature precluding certain spells from use. Regardless, a good-aligned cleric would face severe repercussions even if you allow that they can circumvent the rule.

Answer 2

If a cleric choose a good aligned god to worship then it really isn't a matter of "rules". It is a matter of whether the cleric would chose to cast a spell that opposes their alignment. The cleric should simply choose not to, because it revolts them to do so.

But regardless of what anyone else says or what books are quoted, it really comes down to the one thing. Your world, your rules. If you feel it will not unbalance your game, or that the deity will allow the use of "bad magic" for a "good reason" then do it. Otherwise, don't.