Pastoral care

In healthcare settings, pastoral care refers to the provision of emotional and spiritual support to patients, visitors, and staff. Services may include listening to life stories, conducting memorial services, providing companionship, or offering one-on-one time with patients. The specific activities vary depending on whether the care provider follows a religious tradition or operates from a secular framework.

History and approach: worldwide

Contemporary

The term "pastoral care" has evolved from its historical association with Christian ministry. Modern institutional pastoral care in Europe includes multi-faith, secular, and humanist approaches. Services offered vary by institution and may include counseling, meditation, and various forms of psychological support. In some cases, clients can request their preferred type of care.
Pastoral care can also be associated with palliative care, depending on the provider.
Pastoral care typically involves the practitioner and client sitting together, with the client sharing personal details. The practitioner listens attentively, keeps the information confidential, and, depending on their training and approach, offers guidance and counsel. This is often closely aligned with the psychological practice of holding space.
In Australia, some private schools use the term "PCG" or "pastoral period" for homeroom, with teachers referred to as "PCAs". In Romania, PCAs also perform counseling roles.

Christian

Definition

Within Christianity, pastoral care is an approach to improve mental distress. It has been practiced since the formation of the Christian Church. This model for pastoral care is based on the Biblical stories of Jesus healing others.
In the early church, the term Poimenic was used to describe this task of soul-care. In the New Testament, the interactions described with the term "pastoral care" are also described with Paraklesis, which broadly means "accompaniment," "encouragement," "admonition," and "consolation".
Pastoral care occurs in various contexts, including congregations, hospital chaplaincy, prison chaplaincy, psychiatry, crisis intervention, telephone helplines, counseling centers, senior care facilities, disability work, hospices, end-of-life care, grief support, and more.
The term "pastoral ministry" relates to shepherds and their role of caring for their sheep. Christians were the first to adopt the term for metaphorical use, although many religions and non-religious traditions also place an emphasis on care and social responsibility. In the West, pastoral ministry has since expanded into pastoral care, embracing many different religions and non-religious beliefs.
The Bible does not explicitly define the role of a pastor but associates it with teaching or "shepherding the flock".

…Shepherding involves protection, tending to needs, strengthening the weak, encouragement, feeding the flock, making provision, shielding, refreshing, restoring, leading by example to move people on in their pursuit of holiness, comforting, guiding.

History

In the ancient church, pastoral care primarily revolved around the Christians' struggle against sin, which jeopardized their ultimate salvation. The theologians Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Eusebius of Caesarea understood this as mainly the concern of individuals for their own souls. Increasingly, the role of pastoral caregivers was seen as assisting individual Christians in this endeavor.
The first pastoral movement emerged among the Desert Fathers, who were often visited by Christians seeking advice, though this was not yet referred to as pastoral care. Similarly, the early monastic-like communities served as such pastoral care centers. The letters of Basil of Ancyra, Gregory of Nazianzus, and John Chrysostom contain numerous examples of pastoral counsel; the term "pastoral care" shifted towards a concern for the souls of others.
At the transition to the Middle Ages, Gregory the Great composed the Liber Regulae Pastoris directed towards the pope, one of the most influential books on pastoral care.
During the Middle Ages, pastoral care was closely tied to the practice of the sacrament of penance, which included confession of sins, making amends, and absolution by the priest. Against the often mechanized routine, particularly from the monastic tradition, efforts were made to address this, such as by Bernard of Clairvaux. The Latin term cura animarum emerged as the proper responsibility of the bishop as the pastor responsible for individual Christians, which he usually delegated to a priest, typically the parish priest. In this sense, cura animarum is also used in today's canon law of the Roman Catholic Church.
Among the Reformers, the emphasis shifted from focus on sin to emphasis on God's forgiveness and comfort, particularly evident in the works of Martin Luther and Heinrich Bullinger. In many cases, however, church discipline soon replaced pastoral care.
In the 19th century, the Protestant theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher established practical theology. He emphasized that pastoral care should strengthen the freedom and autonomy of individual members within a congregation. As early as 1777, the field of pastoral theology was introduced into the curriculum of the University of Vienna under Franz Stephan Rautenstrauch, and was taught in the national language rather than Latin. In Germany, it was further developed and disseminated primarily by Johann Michael Sailer and is considered a precursor to modern pastoral care.
In the United States, Anton Theophilus Boisen, one of the key figures in the American pastoral care movement, developed the concept of "clinical pastoral training" in the 1920s. This concept integrated pastoral care, psychology, and education.
In the mid-1960s, the pastoral care movement spread to Germany through the Netherlands, leading to the development of pastoral psychology. In the theology of the regional churches, pastoral care with a focus on pastoral psychology remains a standard practice today.

Modern context

The field of pastoral care has become specialized.
Browning divided Christian care-giving practices into three different categories: pastoral care, pastoral counseling, and pastoral psychotherapy. According to this definition, pastoral care describes the general work of the clergy of taking care of the people in their community. This comprises funerals, hospital visits, birthday visits, and dialogues.
Pastoral care approaches may vary according to their religious denomination.
Many Protestant Christian approaches to pastoral care include contemporary psychological knowledge, which is reflected in the training of pastoral care practitioners. In Germany, the distinctions and the curricula of the five different pastoral care training approaches are provided by the German Society for Pastoral Psychology. These approaches are clinical pastoral care, the group-organisation-system approach, the Gestalt and psychodrama approach, the person-centric approach, and the depth psychology approach.

Humanist, secular and non-religious

groups, which act on behalf of non-religious people, have developed pastoral care offerings in response to growing demand for the provision of like-minded support from populations undergoing rapid secularisation, such as in the UK. Humanists UK, for example, manages the Non-Religious Pastoral Support Network, a network of trained and accredited volunteers and professionals who operate throughout prisons, hospitals, and universities in the UK. The terms "pastoral care" and "pastoral support" are preferred because these sound less religious than terms such as "chaplaincy." Surveys have shown that more than two thirds of patients support non-religious pastoral care being available in British institutions. Similar offerings are available from humanist groups around Europe and North America.

Pastoral ministry

Catholicism

In Catholic theology, pastoral ministry for the sick and infirm is considered a significant way that members of the Body of Christ continue the ministry and mission of Jesus. Pastoral ministry is considered to be the responsibility of all the baptized. In the broad sense of "helping others," Catholicism considers pastoral ministry the responsibility of all Christians.
Sacramental pastoral ministry is the administration of the sacraments that is reserved to consecrated priests except for baptism and marriage, wherein the spouses are the ministers and the priest is the witness.
Pastoral ministry was understood differently at different times in history. A significant development occurred after the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. The Second Vatican Council applied the word "pastoral" to a variety of situations involving care of souls.
Many Catholic parishes employ lay ecclesial ministers as "pastoral associates" or "pastoral assistants;" lay people who serve in ministerial or administrative roles, assisting the priest in his work—but who are not ordained clerics. They are responsible, among other things, for the spiritual care of the frail and homebound as well as for running a multitude of tasks associated with the sacramental life of the Church. If priests have the necessary qualifications in counseling or in psychotherapy, they may offer professional psychological services when they give pastoral counseling as part of their pastoral ministry of souls.
However, church hierarchy under popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI has emphasized that the sacrament of penance, or reconciliation, is for the forgiveness of sins and not counseling and as such should not be confused with or incorporated into the therapy given to an individual by a priest, even if the therapist priest is also that individual's confessor. The two processes, both of which are privileged and confidential under civil and canon law, are separate by nature.
Youth workers and youth ministers are also finding a place within parishes, and this involves their spirituality. It is common for youth workers and ministers to be involved in pastoral ministry, and they are required to qualify for counseling before entering into this arm of ministry.