Pastoral care critical yet neglected

by Letters Editor · October 2, 2014

From Frank Bompas, Johannesburg

One of the most important commissions given by Christ to the Church is pastoral care, and it is the intense interest and concern for people shown by Pope Francis that has enabled him to reach so many who had given up on religion.

“Pastoral care is firstly about ensuring that parishioners and even non-practising Catholics and those who join other denominations experience genuine concern and compassion so that they are given support in the duties and problems of personal and community life.”

Yet it is one of the most misunderstood and neglected aspects of the ministry of the Church. It is far more than getting parishioners together for social occasions and greeting people as they enter or leave the church.

Pastoral care is firstly about ensuring that parishioners and even non-practising Catholics and those who join other denominations experience genuine concern and compassion so that they are given support in the duties and problems of personal and community life.

It is also about giving spiritual advice and support so that the fervent are encouraged to become saintly, the Sunday Catholic fervent, and the straying return to the Church.

In addition, those who are experiencing heavy trials such as ill health, depression and unemployment must become the special object of the love and care that is the heart of the message and ministry of Jesus.

And it is the business of the parish priest, with a pastoral team, to know and minister to each parishioner, and particularly to those who are straying and carry heavy burdens.

I am convinced that the widespread failure of those with pastoral responsibilities to exercise the mission of feeding and caring for the flock of God is the major cause of the decline of the Church in so many countries today.

The Church seems to do virtually nothing meaningful to reach out to the large numbers that have abandoned religious practice or have joined prosperity gospel cults. Those going to Mass Sunday after Sunday, year in and year out, in many parishes never receive a visit.

I think that the origin of the problem lies in the very non-scriptural word �priest� that we use to describe the person who is appointed to be the head of a local church. It suggests that his role is primarily liturgical (totally at odds with the models of community leaders in the New Testament).

Because of this appallingly bad popular theology, many priests today seem to be little more than liturgical functionaries who celebrate Mass and administer the sacraments.

Another factor that further exacerbates the lack of pastoral care in Catholic parishes is the shortage of priests (in great part due to the continued unbiblical insistence on clerical celibacy). So even the largest parishes have only one priest, and even if the priest is extremely energetic and devoted, he would find it nearly impossible to give adequate pastoral care to those in his charge.

While some priests have deacons to assist the priest, they also tend to be little more than liturgical functionaries and are either not given genuine pastoral responsibilities or do not know how to carry out significant pastoral work.

The so-called pastoral parish councils that exist in most parishes appear to do very little related to pastoral care. Those I have served on make no discernible effort to maintain meaningful contact with parishioners.

Neither am I convinced that worthy movements such as Charismatic Renewal and Renew Africa � largely due to a lack of support from clergy � have made any appreciable difference in most parishes to the general ennui that is destroying the Church.

As far as I can gauge, our South African bishops have done little effective to make priests really understand their pastoral responsibilities and carry them out.

And if something quite drastic is not done quite soon, the Catholic Church (at least in this country) will become an ever-shrinking, impotent and insignificant minority.

And our children and grandchildren will probably belong to large, well-organised neo-Pentecostal churches (like Rhema and Rivers), if they are Christian at all.