www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Authenticity and Pastoral Care

Sorry it has been so long since I have visited Byzcath, but I have been occupied with family matters, especially around the death of my father, around which I want to thank you for your prayers.

It was in light of that experience that I had a few thoughts regarding the pastoral care offered by the Church, and wondered if any of them might resonate with people. I have written them down here:

https://priestofthechurch.wordpress.com/2015/05/07/authentic-pastoral-care-a-plea/

and would ask you to feel free to take me up on anything you agree or disagree with. I have tried to avoid specific names, as I do not want to cast aspersions, but you may recognise the sorts of people to whom I refer.

Christ is Risen!!

Well put; well said. It takes real work to approach the grieving individual and the grieving family or other group. The default move is so often to resort to "one size fits all" ways of dealing with people and their grief.

In my years in funeral service, I cannot tell you how many funeral services I have attended with families where the clergy had developed a single or a few stock messages that just had the deceased's name changed. The next assumption is to plow through a liturgical ritual, assuming that what is familiar to the clergy is familiar to the bereaved. When I talk to clergy informally, I often mention this fact and relate that, statistically, a family will have a death only on average every 13 years. What this translates to in reality, however, is that a family will have a cluster of deaths of an age group in a few years and then go on for a generation without experiencing a death in the family. Another factor that enters is that with people being more mobile attending funerals becomes less common because many assume that they do not know someone well enough to attend a funeral, especially when they may only know a co-worker but not the remainder of the family.

I have to admit, too, that many of my colleagues have the same approach when they meet a family that is newly bereaved. And, I believe, that that is why there is a movement in funeral service in my service area to either eliminate a funeral altogether or to engage another planner to create something other than what the funeral professional is comfortable with.

Remarks such as "I know how you feel" are another area that needs to be addressed by both clergy and funeral professionals. We don't, in fact, know how a person is feeling. I have had the experience of meeting people who were thrilled at the death of one their own and been taken to task for assuming that they were grieving.

Bob

I'll chime in more, but I thank you, for the article/post.

Bob, thanks for your words of wisdom, as always.

I lament the situation I was, at times, helping out high school kids get catechized, through my role as a small group leader. The lesson plans were too broad, with little attempt to achieve a sense of depth in responses put out by kids. At, at times I had gotten kids to really dig deep about events in their lives, it was time to move onto the next topic. Too many kids, not enough mentors.

Christ is Risen!!

I heard an interesting suggestion at a continuing ed seminar some time ago. The presenter suggested that we begin to approach the bereaved by asking him/her/them to tell us about their loved one and what that person meant to them.

Always a good place to start, IMHO.

Bob

Thanks for these comments, gentlemen. I have become convinced to draw up a concrete proposal (via the Theotokos Institute) for my own bishop, and possibly for the Latin bishops in this country with a view to implementing some sort of additional pastoral training.

Just to report: the formatting problems that some of you may have noticed (ie. no paragraphs) have just been brought to my attention and are now fixed.

During my time in the Lutheran ministry I would frequently--almost always in the final decade--check my records to determine what were the final scripture texts heard by the deceased, then used those texts in the service.

Note that one of the strengths (and weaknesses) of the Lutheran rite is that there are no prescribed "standard" readings for Runerals. Clergy and bereaved families are free to choose, although they tend to gravitate to three or four favorites.

The strength is that there is flexibility and the possibility for "personalization". The weakness is precisely the same: sometimes families may request, even demand that fairly inappropriate texts be used.