WHY PASTORAL?

Clergy members are usually one of the first, if not the first, persons to be asked for counsel on family problems and domestic violence issues. Historically, clergy have played an important role in the guidance of their parishioners. They are seen as honest, familiar, and understanding. Moreover, those with strong religious faith may view clergy as their ideal resource since the clergy understand their moral and spiritual beliefs. In fact, because people are religious, clergy are often frontline mental health counsellors.

One of the most common problems that ministers encounter are marital problems. Marital problems often include domestic violence issues. Studies have shown that individuals and families that seek counseling on marital problems do not initially disclose that violence is a problem in their relationship.

Clergy often struggle with the tension between salvaging a marriage and protecting victims of spouse abuse. Unfortunately, most clergy are often unprepared or lack sufficient training to help victims of domestic violence. Thus, dealing with domestic violence requires special training and ministry. That’s why it must be viewed from a pastoral perspective.

What is Pastoral Theology? (Thomas Oden)

Pastoral theology is that branch of Christian theology that deals with the office and functions of the pastor. It is theology because it treats of the consequences of God’s self-disclosure in history. It is pastoral because it deals with those consequences as they pertain to the roles, tasks, duties, and work of the pastor.

Pastoral theology is a special form of practical theology because it focuses on the practice of ministry, with particular attention to the systematic definition of the pastoral office and its function. Pastoral theology is also a form of systematic theology, because it attempts a systematic, consistent reflection on the offices and gifts of ministry, and their integral relationship with the tasks of ministry.

Pastoral theology is distinguishable, yet inseparable, from exegesis. historical and systematic theology, ethics, liturgics, and psychology of religion. Even though it interweaves insights from all these disciplines into its understanding of the practice of ministry, it deserves to he viewed as a distinctive discipline.As theology, pastoral theology is attentive to that knowledge of God witnessed to in Scripture, mediated through tradition, reflected upon by systematic reasoning, and embodied in personal and social experience .It seeks to give cleat’ definition to the tasks of ministry and enable its improved practice. Because it is a pastoral discipline, pastoral theology seeks to join the theoretical with the practical. It is theoretical insofar as it seeks to develop a consistent theory of ministry, accountable to Scripture and tradition experientially sound and internally self-consistent. Yet it is not merely a theoretical statement or objective description of what occurs in ministry. It is also a practical discipline, for it is concerned with implementing concrete pastoral tasks rather than merely defining them. Its proximate goal is an improved theory of ministry. Its longer ranged goal is the improved practice of ministry.

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Pastoral theology is defined as a practical theological discipline which focuses on the ministry or care of souls.

Pastoral theology reflects on the scriptures and theology in the light of ministry or care of souls.

The pastoral theologian has the task of structuring a Christian assembly in such a way that ministry can be carried out effectively.

Pastoral theology scientifically and systematically orders the process through which people are led to God.

People seek God for many reasons, and need a pastoral guide who can bring the word of God to bear on their concrete life situations.

Pastoral theology trains the minister to read the signs of the times, and apply the scriptures and theology to the practice of ministry.

The Nature of Pastoral Ministry

The goal of pastoral ministry is to minister as Jesus Christ did, since Jesus Christ is the chief shepherd of the Christian community, and the ultimate model of ministry. What Jesus Christ did during his earthly life, what he commanded, and what is believed he could have done if he were in the world today are generally considered as guiding principles of pastoral ministry. Since Jesus Christ came to serve and not be served, pastoral ministry has service (diakonia) as its primary target. Service of God and neighbour is the bedrock of all pastoral ministries. Pastoral ministry is therefore, not targeted at financial gain, even if a certain financial remuneration may be part of it. Such financial remuneration where applicable, should usually be aimed at meeting the ordinary running cost of providing pastoral ministry.

Pastoral ministry therefore, takes place in the context of a Christian community, as part of the community service towards the promotion of the kingdom of God. Since it involves a community, every exercise of pastoral ministry is public, not private action. One should be accountable to the Christian community for the pastoral ministry exercised within it.

The Role of the Pastoral Minister

The pastoral minister is one who responds positively to a call or vocation from God The pastoral minister is one who is authorized or commissioned by an ecclesial

community to engage in pastoral assignment or pastoral service. One who feels called to engage in a certain pastoral ministry should earnestly search

his or her inward self, considering his or her gifts, skills, capabilities, limitations, attitudes, tendencies, experiences, possibilities and personal life-style, in order to discern whether or not these are in consonance with the demands of the specific ministry to which he or she feels called.

The pastoral minister is primarily accountable, in good conscience, to God, and so tries to be honest with himself or herself and with others in exercising pastoral ministry. It is also the duty of the minister to be accountable to the ecclesial community in and through which pastoral ministry is carried out.

One should note that not all who engage in full-time ministry are ordained ministers. There are many non-ordained or lay ministers who with full dedication and much self-sacrifice, give their energy, talent and time to full-time ministry for the salvation of souls.

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Method of Pastoral Theology (Oden)

What are the sources from which reasonable guidance can be derived for the work of the pastor? By what method shall pastoral theology proceed? Since pastoral theology is theology, it proceeds by the same method as any well-formed theology, utilizing a well-known quadrilateral of sources for understanding God’s self-disclosure in history: Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience.

Scripture provides the primary basis for understanding the pastoral office and its functions. Pastoral theology lives out of Scripture. When the pastoral tradition has quoted Scripture, it has viewed it as an authoritative text for shaping both its understanding and its practice of ministry. We do not put Scripture under our examination, according to criteria alien to it, in order to understand ministry. Rather, Scripture examines our prior understandings of ministry. It puts them to the test.

When understood in this way as canon (a measurement of appropriate teaching) long agree upon by ecumenical consensus, the texts of Scripture become something more than an object for our optional perusal or incidental historical investigation. They are the Word of God, addressed to us for our healing, instruction, and benefit.

Tradition at bottom is the history of exegesis. It implies an ongoing process of trying to understand the address of Scripture in various historical settings. Pastoral ministry has been activated in extremely varied political climates, historical situations, and socio-cultural environments. It is not without historical experience. We do well to listen carefully to the richly varied voices, harmonies, and dialects of that experience. Otherwise we easily become entrapped in the narrowed, biased, often demeaning assumptions of our own limited modern cultural consciousness. A crippling deficit of modern pastoral care has been its intense resistance to premodern pastoral writers. Many modern pastoral writers have looked cynically, disdainfully, and even ignorantly on these historical achievements. In this we fully share the narrow pride of our own modern cultural ethos.

The application of reason as a criterion for pastoral reflection implies an effort to think constructively, rigorously, and consistently; to argue cogently; and to reflect systematically on the cohesive ordering of pastoral wisdom. What is needed is not a long list of detached aphorisms, but a gathering, organizing, and systematic development of a sustained, internally consistent pastoral reflection, so the working pastor does not have to go through the hazards of trial and error experimentation at the expense of dazed parishioners in order to catch up with the wisdoms of the past.

Personal and social experience forms the fourth branch of the quadrilateral of theological method for pastoral theology. This includes factoring into our conception of ministry not only our own existential experience and personal story, but also the experience of others we know who have been engaged in ministry. The best pastoral insight is derived from lived experience of ministry.

Accordingly, pastoral theology seeks to be critically aware of its own cultural situation, its political context, it ever-changing surrounding ethos. Since the gospel addresses us in a particular here-and-now situation, rather than as a timeless abstraction, it is impossible properly to conceive of ministry apart from studied awareness of its current context. This

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does not imply an uncritical acceptance of surrounding cultural assumptions, but rather a serious listening to emerging contemporaneity.

WHY THEOLOGICAL?

The church proclaims the GOOD NEWS. But how can the Church proclaim the GOOD NEWS when violence occurs with its own community and among its members.

Throughout history, religious beliefs, traditions and teachings have been used both to justify and to denounce the use of violence against women. When religious teachings are used to justify domestic violence, they become a tool by which batterers assume and maintain power and control over their partners.

The Church has to recognize that there are religious beliefs, texts, and teachings which are used to legitimize violence against women. Christian Scriptures contain story after story of violence against women: e.g. Dinah (Genesis 34), Tamar (2 Samuel 13), theLevite’s concubine (Judges 19), Jephthah’s daughter (Judges 11), Vashti (Esther 1), Suzannah (Daniel 13), and probably the persistent widow in Luke’s Gospel (Luke 18)2. Later Christian texts also condone male violence against women and the domination of women. For example, the right of chastisement was the enforcer of women’s subordination in marriage.

There are victims of sexual violence who question God's presence as they deal with extreme suffering in the context of their faith. For the Christian victim of sexual violence, concepts of forgiveness and evil arise in new ways and must be addressed.

More so, as a theological issue, domestic violence must be understood as sin.

WHY ETHICAL? A question of justice and accountability

Violence against Women is a Human Rights Violation. Violence against women occurs when the human rights of women are violated, such as when women are physically injured, raped, beaten, held captive, or forced to work or provide services against their will. When women are trapped in violent marriages or homes, repeatedly battered, verbally abused and completely under the control of their husbands or partners, that is violence against women. The physical, mental and emotional abuse that women suffer from as a result of violence have a tremendous impact on the health and well being of women. Abused women are more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety, psychosomatic symptoms, eating problems, sexual dysfunction and reproductive health complications. Violence may affect the reproductive health of women through the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS. Unplanned pregnancies may sometimes become risk factors and lead to more aggression and abuse. Effects of violence maybe fatal as a result of severe injury, homicide or suicide.

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