502 - Religious Ethics and Pastoral Care & Life Cycle Theory and Pastoral Care & A Roman Catholic Theology of Pastoral Care

Religious Ethics and Pastoral Care
By Don S. Browning

Life Cycle Theory and Pastoral Care
By Donald Capps

A Roman Catholic Theology of Pastoral Care
By Regis A. Duffy, O.F.M.
Philadelphia, Fortress, 1983. 128 pp. $5.95.

These three volumes are the initial titles in a new series on Theology and Pastoral Care published by Fortress Press. Under the general editorship of Don Browning, the series intends to "(1) retrieve the theological and ethical foundations of the Judeo-Christian tradition for pastoral care, (2) develop lines of communication between pastoral theology and the other disciplines of theology, (3) create an ecumenical dialogue on pastoral care, and (4) do this in such a way as to affirm yet go beyond the recent preoccupation of pastoral care with secular psychotherapy and the other-social sciences."

All three are "framework" books. They offer a conceptual context for doing pastoral care: practical moral thinking (Browning), life cycle theory (Capps), the catechumenal process of initiating new members into the church (Duffy). These frameworks are comprehensive but not abstract. Each author makes use of case studies and other examples to illustrate what the framework means and how it actually functions. In addition, the authors review recent trends and provide enough critique of other opinions to sharpen the reader's interest while they advance new models of pastoral care and of the pastoral carer to stretch the reader's imagination. These books are engaging, challenging, and useable for ministers willing to spend the effort reflecting seriously on their ministry.

Taken individually each of the works deserves special comment. Don Browning has been publicly advocating the moral context of pastoral care for the last decade. In his contribution to this series, he briefly summarizes that argument and the reasons for it. Then he elaborates the file levels of practical moral thinking (metaphorical, obligational, tendency-need, contextual-predictive, rule-role) dwelling mostly on the first two.

These levels are well illustrated in two case studies pertaining to homosexuality. The selection and use of homosexuality not only makes the illustration more challenging but it also makes the general schema more convincing. This would have been valuable enough, but Browning adds a final chapter on diagnosis and decision in which he integrates the five levels of practical moral thinking with a four step approach to practical theological action. The four steps are fairly conventional in

503 - Religious Ethics and Pastoral Care & Life Cycle Theory and Pastoral Care & A Roman Catholic Theology of Pastoral Care

pastoral education today but the insertion of Browning's five levels helps fill the biggest gap in the process-critical theological reflection on experience leading to theologically informed action.

Donald Capps has displayed in his previous writings an inclination toward conceptual symmetry, matching Erik Erikson's stages of human development with corresponding theological themes, styles of wisdom writing in the Bible with corresponding counseling situations, steps in a pastoral counseling method with a corresponding model of preaching. He continues this type of synthesis in the present volume.

Erik Erikson still provides the basic framework for Capps, but it is the "later" Erikson, whose discussion of virtues and ritualization complemented his life cycle theory, that Capps focuses on. In doing so, Capps retrieves some often neglected pieces of the Christian tradition and unites them under clear models of pastoral care.

Erikson's discussion of virtue is paired with the classic list of deadly vices and both are unified under the model of pastor as moral counselor. Erikson's discussion of ritualization is paired with ritual opportunities in the daily life of congregations and both are unified under the model of pastor as ritual coordinator.

Capps' own interest in the neglected theme of shame is impressively correlated with the role of pastor as personal comforter while Erikson's combined work on virtue and ritualization is paired with the biblical tradition of wisdom and unified under the model of pastor as clown or wise fool. As he himself acknowledges, Capps' work may be of most direct application to the minister's self reflection, which is not to diminish its value in the minister's exercise of pastoral care for others.

Regis Duffy is more readily identified with liturgical and sacramental theology than with pastoral theology, but his contribution to this series shows how integral those two fields are to each other. After briefly surveying recent developments in pastoral care within the Roman Catholic Church, Duffy offers as a model of pastoral care the catechumenate--one of the most successful ventures in the post Vatican II Roman Catholic Church. Accompanying this model is the medicus as a symbol of pastoral care.

Like the catechumenate process itself, Duffy moves gracefully among a variety of sources, gradually gathering a wealth of theology, history, experience, praxis, and vision. He lifts up key characteristics from the catechumenate to describe pastoral care without saying that pastoral care should be a catechumenate. Among these characteristics are its communal context, its respect for individual experience, its orientation toward conversion and commitment and transcendence, its honest facing of sin and the need for healing.

One need not be familiar with the current restoration of the catechumenate in the Roman Catholic Church to benefit from Duffy's use of it for pastoral care. On the other hand, this model of pastoral care may very well entice readers to reconsider their present process for initiating new members and to seek a closer congruence between initiation and

504 - Religious Ethics and Pastoral Care & Life Cycle Theory and Pastoral Care & A Roman Catholic Theology of Pastoral Care

pastoral care. Indeed, reading any of these books (preferably all of them) should stimulate rethinking, renewal, and respect for the integration of theology and pastoral care.

Robert L. Kinast
The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.