pastoral care (poimenics), religious instruction, especially for children and converts (catechetics), and to applying moral and ethical principles to life situations (casuistry), as was the case among Protestants. Also included, however, were training in the administration of the seven sacramental rites and numerous liturgies, canon law, and overseeing various transactions of parish life. As was also true in Protestantism, pastoral theology came to be seen essentially as applied theology, often taking the shape of directions for employing techniques of ministry practice derived from dogmatic precepts. Similarly, pastoral theology was focused exclusively on the ordained priesthood, provided little if any place for laypersons’ participation in the church’s ministries, and fostered an insular existence that attended more to parish membership and maintenance than to a mission to provide for broader and more public needs and concerns (Duffy, 1983).
Post Vatican II
Pastoral theology broadened with the Vatican II reforms to include what Karl Rahner describes as “a theology of the Church in action and of action in the Church” (Rahner, 1968, 25). This has produced several new foci and emphases. First, pastoral theology is not merely applied dogmatics or technical knowledge, but is praxis, the careful scrutiny of dogmatic precepts (theory) in light of concrete, real-life situations. While God is revealed in the church’s doctrines and traditions, so too is God revealed in occasions of tangible ministry taking place in a myriad of contextualized settings both in the church and in the world. This means pastoral theology seeks to understand as richly as possible the current state of affairs and contexts in which the church lives (what Rahner calls ecclesial existentiell) for the purpose of discerning how the Church must actualize itself in the world (Kinast, 1981). In other words, pastoral theology involves reflection on praxis, which then shapes other types of theological reflection, namely fundamental and dogmatic. Both Latin American liberationist thinking, especially that of Gustavo Guitérrez, Clodovis Boff, and Juan L. Segundo, and European political theologies, particularly the work of Johann Baptist Metz, have informed and shaped this change in perspective.
Second, and related, there has been increased attention given to the more public, ecumenical, and even transforming nature of the Christian faith and thus of pastoral theology. In North America, David Tracy has been among the more influential proponents of this view. Third, given the expanded place for the laity in Catholic thinking, no longer is pastoral theology solely the purview of the priesthood. Laypersons too are called to identify and utilize their own gifts for ministry and to contribute to pastoral theology’s reflection and action (Duffy, 1983). Fourth, given its focus on praxis, pastoral theology has enlarged the role of human scientific knowledge and resources in the theological enterprise. Appealing to methods of correlation and various hermeneutical relationships as well as the methods of various critical theories, pastoral theology has become truly interdisciplinary, though typically a final appeal is made to how pastoral theology’s findings may be shaped by the perspectives and teachings of Catholic tradition. Here, too, David Tracy has been among the more influential voices, as have Thomas H. Groome, Dennis P. McCann, and Matthew Lamb in North America, and Johannes A. van der Ven in Europe and South Africa.
Though there has been a rapprochement between Protestant and Catholic understandings of pastoral (practical) theology, with respect to pastoral theology in the more narrow sense (pastoral care) at least two Catholic emphases remain. These are the communal context of both thinking about and offering pastoral care, meaning the larger ecclesial community remains the locus of care, as opposed to a more “professionalized” setting like a counseling center. Second, care is still closely tied to the rituals and liturgies of Catholic life and worship (Duggan, 1994).
2
What Makes Care Pastoral?
Introduction
Pastoral theology has attracted me for nearly two decades. Several of its qualities inform this attraction. One quality has to do with pastoral theologians themselves. I find them to be smart, creative, interesting, wise, and fun. They also tend to take intellectual and professional risks in ways that set them apart. As a result, they intrigue me and garner my admiration and affection.
Another attractive quality relates to pastoral theology’s identity as a field. As Robert C. Dykstra has noted, pastoral theology “typically refuses to behave, especially in terms of conclusively defining itself” (Dykstra, 2005, 5). In other words, pastoral theology and pastoral theologians maintain complex, variable, and often multiple identities. Pastoral theologians also tend to live and work contentedly with a measure of ambiguity, iconoclasm, countercultural appreciation, and even rebellion, all of which I think we need more of in theological education, not to mention the church. For all of these reasons, I find pastoral theology attractive.
I am also attracted to pastoral theology because, at its best, it works mainly with two broad fields of inquiry and practice that I find particularly significant and compelling—namely, the fields of theology and psychology. Of course, pastoral theologians draw from these fields in a variety of ways. Their work involves appealing to multiple forms of theological and psychological knowledge and practical wisdom—that is, appealing to various schools of thought within these wide-ranging disciplines, in both “systematic” and “ad hoc” manners. Pastoral theologians routinely engage other resources relating to the human condition as well, drawing especially from the range of human and social sciences. Making use of multiple approaches allows for intellectual diversity in pastoral theological work. Pastoral theology not only welcomes panoplies of focal subjects, but it remains less wed to prescriptive methods than some other academic fields. Indeed, when engaging in pastoral theological thinking, writing, and practice, one may drink plentifully from deep wells of knowledge and wisdom that attend to some of life’s most profound, pressing, and perplexing concerns; but one may extract from these wells using different types of “pumps” and “containers” appropriate for particular contexts, distinct needs, and available resources. For all of these reasons, pastoral theologians enjoy a measure of freedom uncommon in the academy.
When describing an encounter he had with a colleague who works in another academic discipline, Dykstra writes eloquently of the freedom that pastoral theologians enjoy precisely because pastoral theology “refuses to behave.” After sharing details about his current research with a friend, this friend remarked, “You know, it’s not fair; you pastoral theologians can study whatever you damn well please” (Dykstra, 2001, 48). Reflecting on this encounter, Dykstra writes, “His spontaneous comment . . . served to reinforce my conviction that, at some point long before or during their professional training, ministers and theologians typically learn to hesitate to pursue their own particular passions or to remain interested in what interests them” (48). This perspective helps me clarify further my own attraction to pastoral theology. My attraction follows from encounters with pastoral theology’s complex and multiple identities, but also from encounters with pastoral theologians who enjoy the freedom to remain interested in what interests them, and to study what they damn well please.
In my work as a pastoral theologian, I draw from my own complex and multiple identities. I make use of what might be called my “two selves.” One is my unconventional (and sometimes iconoclastic) self, perhaps most clearly reflected in my work in the psychology of religion and with psychodynamic psychologies (Cole, 1999, 2000, 2003, 2005a, 2005b, 2009b, 2010a, 2010b; Dykstra, Cole, and Capps, 2007). In this type of work, I enjoy swimming against prevailing tides (theologically and otherwise), stretching boundaries, challenging hegemony, and thinking outside of the proverbial “box.” The freedom to engage in this kind of work and, as important, the freedom to learn from those doing similar work, spawned, and later furthered, my interest in pastoral theology. These freedoms have also sustained my desire to make working in pastoral theology my primary vocation.
I think here especially of the shaping influences of scholars such as Donald Capps (1993a, 1995, 1997, 2002, 2008), Robert C. Dykstra (1997; 1999, 2001, 2005, 2007 [with Cole and Capps], 2009), James E. Dittes (1967, 1973, 1996, 1999a, 1999b) Bonnie Miller-McLemore
