Kenneth R. Mitchell

Ritual in Pastoral Care

Until about fifty years ago, rituals of church life were closely intertwined with pastoral care. The history of pastoral care paralleled the history of ritual (it could even be said that at times it was the history of ritual), for pastoral care was expressed, more often than not, in ritualized forms. After the apostolic era, pastoral responses to critical life situations took on, in many cases, a ritualized and formal character; pastoral responses to human situations were often judged appropriate or inappropriate by how faithfully they clove to established forms. That pattern held sway for much of Christian history. I

Priestly Celibacy from a Psychological Perspective

Speculations about the meaning and the place of priestly celibacy in contemporary life come out of a variety of perspectives: historical, legal, cultural, economic, and psychological, to name but a few. The psychological perspective in particular has engaged the attention of many priests, some of whom wonder about such varied issues as homosexual implications of celibacy, the reality or unreality of choice-making, and the ability or inability of the celibate priest to experience or to transmit love. Recently, I was offered the opportunity to try to engage in some disciplined speculation about celibacy from the psychological perspective. This paper marks the results of one stage of that disciplined speculation.!

Book Review and Resource: Pastoral CounselPastoral Counsel. OdenThomas C. (New York, NY: Crossroad Publishing Co., 1989). 297 pp.

PASTORAL COUNSEL. Thomas C. aden (New York, NY: Crossroad Publishing Co., 1989).297 pp.

19.95. (hardcover)

19.95. (hardcover) Before the historians get their hands on it, history appears to be a complex web of events, or a chaotic jumble. Historians, both amateur and professional, try to discover order within the chaos, to make of the webs tangles a coherent sequence. We are inclined (the amateurs more than the professionals, perhaps) to identify signposts: landmark events or famous names which mark a clear change, send us in a new direction. In the history of pastoral care, those signposts usually include the advent or the impact of dynamic psychology, the life and work of Anton Boisen, and, for those with a particular theological bent, the work of the inventor of the term pastoral theology, Friedrich Schleiermacher. We have read McNeills History oftheCure ojSoulsor Clebsch and Jaekles Pastoral Care in Historical Perspective, so we know that there was life before the 18th century, that pre-Schleiermacher is not the same as prehistory. Still, the Celtic Penetentials, the Desert Fathers, or Gregory the Great are not the sources to which we look for an understanding of the nature and skills of ministry. Professor aden set out several years ago to reclaim the heritage of pastoral care before the 18th century. Pastoral Counsel is the third volume-though the last to be published-of a four-volume series under the rubric of Classical Pastoral Care. (The others are I. Becoming a Minister [1987], II. Ministry Through Word and Sacrament [1989], and IV. CrisisMinistries [1986].) He reached into the early days of the faith to find texts that speak to the issues with which pastoral carers contend. His guiding principle was, in fact, to reach back as far as possible: earlier texts are preferred to later texts, he says, unless the later text is distinctly clearer or broader in implications (p.2). He intends in this volume not to provide an exhaustive or definitive set of normative texts for pastoral practice, but to provide an exemplary group of texts that represent recurrent themes, varied viewpoints, and useful modes of therapeutic wisdom in the classical pastoral tradition (p. 2). Nine key questions need to be addressed, according to Oden: the helping relationship, the nature of pastoral counsel, the relationship between divine empathic caring and human caring, the importance of timing, the language of the body, admonition and discipline, moral guidance, how classic procedures anticipate contemporary assumptions, and the dynamics of the will. His method is consistent throughout. He writes a brief introductory paragraph to each chapter (and to each section with-in a chapter), then turns to relatively lengthy quotations from his classical sources, chaining them together by his own connecting paragraphs. As a clarifying device, adens own material is printed in a typeface somewhat smaller than the typeface used for the quotations from original sources. In the chapter on the relationship between Gods empathic caring and human caring, for example, aden has a section on Scripture as a Source of Good Counsel (pp. 103ff.). He begins the section with an 11-line paragraph of general introduction, fourteen lines of text from the Westminster Confession, then passages from Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Cyril ofJerusalem, Athanasius, and Origen, all interspersed with brief, clear introductory and some-

Lumpy Stew, Motley Crew

It is indeed a stew and not a puree. We are not merely a bland blend in which the constituent ingredients have lost their distinctiveness. In our mix there are chunks which hold firmly to their individual identities: here a liberal Roman Catholic, deeply influenced by Heinz Kohut, working in a midwestern counseling center; there a conservative evangelical, steeped in Carl Rogers, working as a hospital chaplain in southern California; and over there a Yankee who geographically (and theologically) has never escaped New England, but whose work with a congregation and the individuals in it is profoundly marked by family systems theory. The word describing the patched, jarring mix of colors in a medieval jesters costume was motley; doesnt the hackneyed phrase motley crew describe us? What in the world holds us together, other than the questions asked two paragraphs ago?

Book Review and Notice: Dimensions of Family TherapyDimensions of Family Therapy.AndolfiMaurizio and ZwerlingIsrael, Eds. (New York, NY: Guilford Press), 280 pp.

come out fighting. But Stokes also seems to want to get in and scrap with Thornton and Holifield. In fact at one point (note 40, p. 190) she tells us that Holifields thesis in A History of Pastoral Care in America is unconvincing, but she doesnt tell us why. There are several other such pot shots most of which are unnecessary for it seems to me that Thornton and Holifield complement Stokes work. There is room for all three perspectives. All in all this is an important work and must reading for anyone involved in the work of pastoral care and pastoral counseling. The historical material is accurate and well researched. I am particularly grateful for Stokes treatment of Seward Hiltner. As a former student of his and later a close colleague much of what she wrote rang true and some was even new to me. He comes out the true giant in Stokes description of the movement. Indeed he was. BRIAN H. CHILDS, PH.D.

20.00.

What is the underlying paradigm on which pastoral counseling is based? By and large, the answer is: the psychological paradigm. Pastoral counselors have not escaped the imperial claims of the psychological paradigm in our culture. The triumph of the therapeutic, pointed out some years ago by Philip Rieff, has been, among other things, a triumph over attempts to find or to use a theological base for pastoral counseling. The counselor who does not wish to believe that need only ask whether his or her work setting requires the use of DSM-III, implying that when one goes through the nosological exercises one knows something about ones client that one did not know before. There exist agencies and counselors that use an Axis VI for the DSM-III, in which the clinician is required to record a theological thought or two; Charles V. Gerkin (quoting a friend) compares this to slapping a theological bumper sticker on a bus that is pulling out of the terminal and headed for a predetermined psychological destination.

In the Translator's House

Case of a dying teen-age girl is presented. The reactions of the hospital chaplain, the local minister, the girls family, and the home community are critiqued by four experts in pastoral care and counseling.

A Death and a Community: Case Conference

need for roots and for community and for tradition. His polemic against the contemporary liberal religious establishment has the accuracy (and exaggeration) one would expect of the newly deprogrammed. I suspect a great many religious professionals may be in various stages of a similar deconversion experience. This book will raise useful questions for many who have not yet become disenchanted with modernity or who are just beginning to be disenchanted. It may be of particular value for practicioners of pastoral care coming as it does from one who has so importantly contributed to this discipline. A final word. adens book concludes with a list of classics of Christianity. The list is a good one. It would be better if it included examples of the Eastern Orthodox theology which has sought to maintain the continuity for which aden seeks. St. Vladimirs Seminary Press is the best source for obtaining the classics of this tradition in recent English translation. There one will also discover contemporary restatements of orthodoxy by such theologians as Lossky, Schmemann and Meyendorff.

Book Review and Notice: Beyond Grief: Studies in Crisis InterventionBeyond Grief: Studies in Crisis Intervention. LindemannErich M.D., (New York, NY: Jason Aronson, 1979. 274 pp.

During the fall of 1972 (September-December) I served as visiting Professor of Pastoral Psychology at the Catholic University of Nijmegen in The Netherlands under a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship. Because of my ability to speak Dutch and because of the fact that a number of Dutch pastors had trained at the Menninger Foundation, it was possible to make some observations of CPE which may not have been made before.