Pastoral Care

I. Prospect and Retrospect

However, in order to understand the Reformers' response to existing practices of the Roman Catholic Church of the Middle Ages, the Roman sacrament of penance and the role of indulgences play in the history of pastoral care must be examined early in this paper and in some detail.
While the presentation of the later Roman Catholic understanding of penance, indulgences and confession will be expanded and compared with the Reformation point of view, the student will be well served to understand the Roman Catholic position at the outset. The reason is because there are nuances that emerge over the centuries that produce an inevitable reaction against the abuses of the Roman Catholic Church. The accumulation of abuses should become obvious as we make our way through the original materials.
In addition to understanding the reason for the protests of the Reformers of the 16th century, the student will come to understand why the Roman Catholic Church condemned the "errors" of predecessors of Reformation, namely, Huss and Wyclif.
That penance, indulgences and confession were seen as manifestations of soul care or pastoral care in the life of the medieval Church, a broader understanding of pastoral care emerges in the course of these pages, too.
Thus, while the ministry of pastoral care originates from the earliest days of the ministry of Christ and ultimately from Christianity, pastoral care deserves a broad historical context, covering several centuries of pastoral care practices, in order to observe how it changed and how it is changing the 21st century.

II. Penance - Changes Over Time

The practice of penance is known in the age of the church fathers, a point Roman Catholics make. Their understanding of the practice of penance hinges on the doctrine of the Church one holds.
Furthermore, the practice of penance undergoes major shifts in emphasis and practices in the Early Church and later when the Church encounters the raw, pagan and barbarian people of Europe. This clash of cultures influences the course and future of the practice of indulgences, confession, church discipline and the like. Even later, as Roman Catholic authors admit, the theory of indulgences was ahead in practice but behind in theological justification.
The New Catholic Encyclopedia (II, 482-484) reports, "The theory of indulgences lagged more than a century behind the practice. It was not until the teaching of Hugh of Saint-Cher (c. 1230) that the source of indulgence grants was related to the Church's treasury of merits and good works stores by Christ, the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM), and the saints of the Church, living or dead. This insight of Hugh -- and it reflected a return to the early principle of Christian solidarity in the Mystical Body of Christ -- was canonized by Pope Clement IV in his jubilee bull of 1343, Unigenitus Dei Filus . . .
"Hugh's appeal to the principle of vicarious satisfaction was developed by the great scholastic Doctors of the 13th century, including St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas Aquinas. Both insisted that an indulgence was not so much a remission of the debt of temporal punishment but a payment (solutio) of the debt from the Church's treasury. To the obvious objection that no one can do penance, or take medicine for another's personal ailment, Bonaventure replied that penance is twofold, satisfaction and medicinal. Punishment as medicinal must be shouldered by the penitent personally; but punishment as vindictive or expiatory can be vicariously assumed." (484).
This initial foray into a discussion of penance is useful if for no other reason than framing the issue of pastoral care prior to the Reformation and the theology and practices of pastoral care among the Reformers.
But pastoral care involves more than a study of penance and indulgences, however.
Historically, pastoral care involves the pastor in a caring ministry, simultaneously and on several levels in which this ministry is carried out. One might designate it as a comprehensive or integrated ministry of care of the person, though the word "person" is of recent origin.
Seen in the light of a comprehensive and integrated ministry of the Church, the ministry of pastoral care to individuals or persons becomes a focal point of the Reformation of the 16th century.
Unfortunately, we may dismiss that component because we often reduce the study of the Reformation either to its history or its theological and doctrinal nuances.
In these sessions, history and Protestant theology will, of necessity, come into play, because what and how they believe shaped pastoral care practices of the Reformers. Observes in Luther's 95th Theses the several theses that deal with pastoral care issues. But more on that in due time.
In addition to laying for a historical perspective that commences in the Early Church and through the Patristic period, and then the Middle Ages and the Reformation critique of existing practices, case studies and representative exhibits will be introduced to demonstrate several points related to the presentations.
The exhibits are intended to give students a sense of working with original materials, in English translation, but this practice will be helpful in remembering the course of pastoral care throughout the history of the Christian Church.
Finally, I hope that whether one is a future pastor, a present pastor and a dedicated church member, he or she will examine his or her own ministry and practices in light of the long history of pastoral care.
We turn to definitions as the first order of business in discussing the shape of pastoral care in the practice of Christian ministry.

III. Definitions

PCHP identifies those representative persons who serve in the ministry of the cure of souls.
First, "representative Christian persons, persons who, de jure or de facto, bring to bear upon human troubles the resources, wisdom, and the authority of Christian faith and life" (4).
At times, their office may be termed "elder," "minister," "pastor," "rector," "priest," "confessor," "bishop," "deacon," "presbyter," or many other names are possible.
Second, who are the "troubled persons" to whom we minister?
Again PCHP notes that "pastoral care begins with an individual person recognizes or feels that his trouble is insolvable in the context of his own private resources, and when he becomes willing, however subconsciously, to carry his hurt and confusion to a person who represents for him, however vaguely, the resources and wisdom and authority of religion." (5)
Third, what are meaningful troubles that elicit the aid of a wise and perceptive Christian leader?
The definition of "meaningful troubles" as we will come to see in the exhibits that are before us cover a wide range of meanings, and some of these, according to the period under study, a representative of presenting needs than at other times.
In the modern world, for example, C.W. Brister in Pastoral Care in the Church offers the profile of contemporary troubled persons. He writes, "Through ignorance, indifference, insecurity, emotional instability, fear, or preoccupation with private burdens, many religious folk leave life's injured bleeding and alone" (7).
On the other hand, Marsha G. Witten's provocative All Is Forgiven: The Secular Message in American Protestantism [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993) records the sad plight of an uncritical American Protestantism.
She writes, "The Paradox of Protestantism" is this: There is a sense in which cheerful lists of social and psychological pleasures one might receive from a church fails to mention "whatsoever of faith or God, let alone of suffering or spiritual striving" (4).
Witten's study of preaching in American Protestantism focussed on the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the Southern Baptist Convention. The study was conducted by a close reading of sermons on the parable of the Prodigal Son.
Witten's work is worth reading if one wishes to avoid an excessive reliance on the shifting norms of relativism and secularism and maintain the truth of the Gospel, and the Gospel's relevance for working with troubled persons.
Fourth, PCHP notes there is a range of "other helping acts" that are adjunct or contiguous to effective pastoral care. These acts include "works of charity, of welfare, of education, of binding up wounds of giving ethical counsel, and so forth . . . " These acts "have been associated with the Christian ideal of love for the neighbor." (7)
Before we press on with our overview and ultimately examine the Reformation materials, it will be helpful to understand the functions of pastoral care in historical perspective.

IV. Functions of Pastoral Care

A. Healing. "Healing is the function in which a representative Christian person helps a debilitated person to be restored to a condition of wholeness, on the assumption that this restoration achieves also a new level of spiritual insight and welfare." (8)
The range of options to begin healing include curative agents and actions and may also seek to elicit spiritual attitudes or actions from the person who is to be healed.
Illustrative of the range of sources available in undertaking a ministry of healing includes instrumentalities as prayer, oil, herbs, medicine, relics, shrines, words of excorism, vows and so forth. Protestant avoid some of these instrumentalities, but some unwisely lump the entire lot together and miss significant opportunity to minister with a service of healing and wholeness and the use of oil or granting words of absolution (as Luther advocated in dealing with confession).
B. Sustaining. "Sustaining consists of helping a hurting person to endure and to transcend a circumstance in which restoration to his former condition or recuperation from which his malady is either impossible or so remote as to seem improbable." ( 9)
The ministry of sustaining has also used prayer, holy objects, regulations and the like. In the large literature of the Christian pastoral care tradition, there exist manuals to show persons how to deal with the inevitable hurts of life and death. Awareness of the material, whether one agrees with all of it or not, is essential if a modern Christian ministry of counsel is to be effective.
The wise counselor identifies the issue or issues involved, presents a range of alternative actions that may be undertaken and is available and supportive of the person sufficiently to push for spiritual growth and yet aware of any potential harm the individual may either continue to do to himself or might likely do to himself.
C.Educative guidance. EG "tends to draw out of the individual's experience and identifies the values and resources" the individual possesses or does not possess. Though a modern term, the word "insight" is a valuable clue and is indicative of how well the person can function. Without an individual's having some insight into the meaning of self, the pastoral counselor is hard-pressed and is likely to take longer to achieve any successful conclusion to the work.
In order to separate the contemporary practice known as "client-centered therapy" (Rogers) from the Inductive guidance of the Christian tradition of pastoral care, it is important to recognize honestly that the latter wisely appeals to the long standing tradition of Christian moral theology and counsel.
Among the tools of a ministry of guidance, Guiding has employed many different techniques of counseling, and has appealed to various codifications of virtues and vices, manuals of advice, and so on.
D. Reconciling function. The goal of reconciliation is to seek "to reestablish broken relationships between man and fellow man and between man and God. (9). Reconciliation appears to require the employment of a simultaneous recognition of a horizontal and a vertical structure. One thinks immediate of the counsel of Jesus to the Rich Young Ruler and the setting forth of the summary of the commandments.
As the PCHP authors suggest the horizontal and vertical relationships are inseparable and operates on two fronts, namely, forgiveness and discipline. This is the classical formulation of reconciliation.
"Classical Christian pastoral care has employed the mode of forgiveness in the sacramental acts of confession and absolution, both of which aim at amendment of life and the restoration of right relations with God and with neighbor." (9)
"Discipline, on the other hand, has classically served as a mode of reconciling function by placing alienated persons into situation in which good relationships can be re-established." (9)
In order to concluded this section in proper fashion, it must be underscored that any distinctions that have been made between the function, the mode, and the means of Christian pastoral care are devised for the sake of clarification but do not represent in practice so sharp a division.
A contemporary example of how this might function is with a pregnant married or unmarried woman who comes for counsel. The wise pastoral counselor operates on many levels in dealing with her and the unborn child, the families, the father (if known and part of the equation), and identifies resources for completion of the pregnancy and how best to deal with the future of the child and the mother.
Therefore, this presentation covers briefly the Old Testament, moves to the New Testament materials, and includes information on the Early Church and subsequently the Patristic period. Once this essential background is in place, attention turns to the Middle Ages and then covers the pastoral care practices of Luther and other Reformers.
Before beginning our thinking about pastoral care, it seems advisable to define who is being counseled and the authority exercised by the counselor.

V. Biblical Background.

A preface to New Testament practices of pastoral care would be incomplete without mention of the wise men of Israel. The influential advise of the Greek philosophers plays a role in Judaism but lies beyond essential background to explain the resurgence of pastoral care and counsel during the 16th century.
Yet it is important to mention the wise and sage counsels of the leaders of Israel, including such a noteworthy person as Solomon (I Kings 4:30) and most especially in the authors of the OT's Wisdom Literature. Proverbs is a rich source of pastoral wisdom, as are some of the books found in the OT Apocrypha. In Ecclesiasticus 6:18-19, Wisdom 6:22, 25; 8:2, 9; Ecclesiasticus 6:34-35.
The teachers of Israel, as wise counsel, in public and private, stressed godliness not less than moral rectitude (McNeill, 11).
In some sense, one may say with McNeill that "The prophets were the crisis theologians of their era: the wise men were the educators of conscience [because] they supplied the daily bread of instruction in reverent attitudes and moral habits, and gave stability to the character of their people." (11).
In the Gospels, one finds Jesus sympathetic and helpful to the suffering among the humanity he encountered. Without exhausting the materials available, it quite enough to remark that the preaching of Jesus regarding repentance (Matthew 4:17) is the message with this his public ministry begins. But the kingdom of heaven is a society of changed individuals who have become fits to enter it through repentance.
The parables in Luke 15 - recovery of lost sheep, happiness of a woman who finds a valuable and lost coin, and the father who rejoices over the return of the lost son - is deemed important as illustrations of redemption but also what joy there is in heaven (and on earth) as a result of finding and restoring that which was thought irretrievably lost.
If one examines the Synoptic Gospels with any case, a reader is impressed with how striking and powerful pastoral images emerge from the texts.
Mark 10:17-22, cf. Matthew 19:16-22.
Luke 19:1-10 - Zachaeus in the tree.
Matthew 9:2-7; Mark 7:24-30 - the Roman Centurion's faith.
In the Gospel according to John 3:1-10 (Nicodemus) and 4:7-42 (the woman of Samaria) there is a great gift offered, namely, "the life of God in the soul of man." New Birth! And essentially a fresh start.
The Gospel according to John records a scene immediately following the Resurrection. It is filled with commissioning 10 apostles present. Thomas is missing. Jesus "breathed on them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if your retain the sins of any, they are retained" (John 20:22-23).
On the other hand, the gift of authority appears in Matthew 16 with Peter as the primary figure, or the whole group in Matthew 18 as the primary figures, or the in the body of the living Apostles with the exception of Thomas the Doubter in John 20:22-23.
Regardless of however authority is granted or received, the element of discipline appears immediately, and it is formidable.
With the arrival of the Apostle Paul, the guidance of day-to-day living is a prominent feature of Paul and the other NT Letters.
Sex ethics - I Corinthians 7:1.
Concept of New Life in Christ - Romans 6:4, 13.
Glorify God with your body - I Cor. 6:9-20.
And in the Book of Romans not only is there a profound exposition of grace, but a brief code of Christian behavior expressed.
"Be transformed . . . renewing your minds" - Romans 12:1.
"Let love be genuine . . . brotherly affection . . . Live in harmony " - Romans 12:9, 12, 16.
"Eating meat offered to idols" - Romans 14:2-6.
Underneath all of the NT pastoral care norms and practices, there lie two principles: (1) edification and (2) fraternal correction.
"Pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding" -Romans 14:19.
"Encourage one another . . . - I Thess. 5:11.
"Confess your sins to one another and prayer for one another, that you may be healed." - James 5:16. The elders (14) offer a prayer for healing.
In summary, just how far-reaching these norms, practices and habits of pastoral care and counsel extended in the early Church one cannot say with absolute certainty. However, by the time of the Age of the Church Fathers, we discover there remain two functions worth noting as they play a major role in the Reformation, namely, (1) discipline and (2) consolation.
Before turning to the Reformation, the issues of that century must be shown within the framework of earlier centuries and claims, beginning with the early Church and continuing throughout in the Middle Ages.
Though it was the medieval penitential system that generated controversy during the Reformation era, as the publication of the 95 Theses makes clear, Luther, and other Reformers, identified the abuses that had crept into penitential practice. And while penitential practice was not altogether bad, because it to pastoral care.

VI. Documents from the Early Church

Some remarks, taken from Thom Oden's Care of Souls in the Classic Tradition, will be used to introduce the Early Church's approach

1. Second Epistle of Clement (c. 150) "Enduring the End of the World."

2. Tertullian of Carthage (c. 160-220) "Exomologesis."

3. Disascalia Apostolorum. "Instructions for Reconciliation."

4. Cyprian (d. 238) - "On Facing Martyrdom."

VII. Middle Ages (600-1500 AD)

The Middle Ages' approach to pastoral care or the cure of souls begins with the 13th century penitential discipline that came to prevail in the Western Church.
But the Medieval disciplines originated much earlier and are to be found in the desert, the desert where monks struggled with God and the inner self, and the origin of monastic life occurs during the Early Church.
Eventually monks entered regulated communities or the monastery and joined monastic orders, but an earlier history must be sketched to make sense of the shift from one form to the other form that is better known to students of the Reformation.
In the desert of the 3rd and 4th centuries of the Christian Era, the eremitic (a hermit or recluse, especially one under religious vow) gave way to the cenobitic (a member of a religious order living in a monastery or convent) life. The change was gradual perhaps but the latter way of religious life and devotion proliferated through a century or two. In due time, the favored form of monastic life became the cenobitic form, and it influences the story we are telling. The rise of the cenobitic form of Christian life introduced a subtle distinction into the ranks of the Christian folk.
Because the religious (monks and nuns) achieved a greater recognition and were held in higher esteem than the ordinary Christians but were held to a higher stand than the ordinary Christian. Nevertheless, by the time of Luther, the abuses associated with the monastic life and the convent often bordered on the scandalous.
Long before the Middle Ages became but shortly after 325 AD and the Edict of Toleration of the Church by the Imperial Head of the State Constantine, the standardization of Christian pastoral care practices became easier and more predictable.
As Charles Norris Cochrane points out in his Christianity and Classical Culture, it was "safe for Christianity" (197) after Constantine and in a safer world, not in the world of periodic persecution, the ministry of sustaining could now "focus on specific personal troubles, like bereavement and incurable ills" (PCHP, 21).
In turn, the focus was on guiding the religious life of the individual to the extent that, as the authors and compilers of PCHP, acknowledge that "the cure of souls found useful in monasteries became the standard for pastoring common folk as well" (21).
The application of monastic rules to common, ordinary, lay life is extremely important if one is to understand the upheaval in the established ecclesiastical and social created by Luther and the other Reformers of the 16th century. More on that later, however.
"The penitentials are practical manuals for the use of confessors and are designed to equip their users to deal with all sorts of persons in all moral and spiritual predicaments," John T. McNeill writes in HCS, 118.
As the earlier manuals were concerned with monks and clerics rather than laymen, however, laity did not face neglect. In the manuals, the severer penalties fell on the clergy and so did the glory.
To illustrate the point about the vitality of monasticism and its relationship to common life at the beginning of the Middle Ages and coursing throughout almost 1000 years, one introduces the revered name of Saint Benedict of Nursia (AD 529). Benedict is well known for the rules he promulgated in his "Order of Saint Benedict," rules that still influence countless communities and non-Roman Catholic orders today.
The rules promulgated by St. Benedict consist of 12-rungs on a ladder that were to lead the monk to follow the monastic ideal.
The monastic ideal sought to "purge the desires of the fresh not only out of fear of God but for the love of God - [and] evoked precise schemes of spiritual development that would kill pride by promoting humility" (21).

The 12-steps on the ladder for a devout monk are:

1. Constantly fear God, remembering that hell awaits those who hold God in contempt and heaven those who fear him;
2. Neither love of his own will nor delight in his own desires;
3. Submit in total obedience to his superior;
4. Endure in silent patience all obstacles and even injuries, that beset his path;
5. Hide neither his evil thoughts nor his secret sins but in humble confession reveal them to his abbot;
6. Be content with lowliness and regard himself as a bad and worthless worker in all that he is assigned to do;
7. Not only acknowledge him himself inferior to all others, but believe it in the depths of his heart;
8. Do nothing unless authorized either by the monastic rule or by the example of his superiors;
9. Keep silence until asked a question;
10. Never be easy or quick to laugh;
11. Speak gently, without laughter, humbly and gravely in a few reasonable words;
12. Exhibit his lowliness to all who see him or his deeds.
(PCHP, 21-22).
The objective of the rule was for the monk to achieve pure behavior of a neighborly love and be able to keep the Church's precepts naturally, not because of the fear of hell, but through love of Christ and though a delight in virtue.
Benedict's Ladder to Heaven owed something to John Cassian's earlier 4th century Conferences. Benedict paraphrased and rearranged the steps of humility devised by John Cassian, the authority on Eastern Christian monasticism. An exhibit of John Cassian's work lies opens before us.
[Exhibit No. 4 - John Cassian, Extract from PCHP]

See also John Cassian, Conferences. Found in The Classics of Western Spirituality. Tr. By Colm Luibheid, Introduction by Owen Chadwick. New York and Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1850.

While it is tempting to imagine the Church, East or Greek or West and Latin, comparably free from political oversight or influence, and thus able to regulate her life without undue outside interference, that is not the case. Neither is it possible to imagine the life of the Church without some sense of its standing or footing in the culture that surrounded her.
When confronted by the Imperial order, either directly or indirectly, the Church assumed her role in cultural transmission in concert with an imperial partner or partners, and utilized existing cultural traditions and models to transmit and interpret the Christian faith to the masses, sometimes crude and illiterate peoples, they were.
Consequently, Christian worship, art, music, preaching and, of course, guidance or care and cure of souls were no exception to the influence and either modified or challenged Christian practice.
For example, after the 5th century in Western Christianity, the Church was confronted with a Herculean task of drawing into itself the hordes of rude peoples who swept over Western and Central Europe at this time.1
The Herculean task facing the Church dictated the some order must be imposed on the life of the Church, the realm, and the uncouth peoples who were in the process of being Christianized.
"While an elite spiritual class [clergy and its ranks] took the monastic ideal as their ideal, secular folks [laity] were to be guided by their pastors." Quite naturally, the monastic schemes of spiritual growth and the ladders of Christian devotion became enormously important in guiding pastoral care not only for the monks but of common, secular, ordinary people" (PCHP, 22). But with mixed results no doubt.
By the 12th century, St. Bernard of Clairvaux elaborated the steps of humility and placed them on a ladder. "This scheme of spiritual and moral living . . [is] as an accomplishment to his own four-step 'ladder of love' : man loves himself for his own sake, then proceeds to love God for man's own sake, then loves God for God's own sake, and finally [in heaven] loves himself for God's sake only." (22)
In Bernard's scheme, humility is reduced to three basic steps.

1. Fear God.
2. Purge one's desires.
3. Finally, obey the Church.

Application of this scheme to common life required a set of concrete and detailed rules that were set forth under ecclesiastical guidance and sanction, and with these basic elements of "moral theology" in hand, pastors were to apply to the daily life of their people.
If Bernard's scheme required three steps, it seems feasible, in retrospect, to recognize a matching scheme surfaced, or close to it, that implemented the desired steps to humility and heaven.

1. The norms of Christian life were guided by rules for living that were carefully devised.
2. Rigid in administration.
3. Strictly sanctioned.

Imagine if you will, as a pastor, you have a rather zestful flock of uncivilized, sexy, sensuous, pagan, earthy folk in the early Middle Ages, and it is your task to bring or introduce these lively folk to a pattern of authentic Christian living.
In order to bring order to the process, an imaginative and gifted Pope, Pope Gregory the Great at the end of the 6th century codified, regularized and stressed the work of pastors as that of guiding troubled people into Christian belief, Christian worship, and Christian morality.
Thus equipped to some extent and facing a vital and undisciplined society, pastors undertook their role with seriousness under these rubrics.
1. Sacrament rites and practices covering every crisis of the common life of individuals and groups were introduced.
2. Pastors taught disturbed people to lay their troubles before the Church of identification and for relief.
3. The Teutonic and Frankish peoples whom the Church encountered brought their own folk culture into Europe with them, providing raw content and energy which, under the auspices and guidance of Mother Church, built European civilization.
4. On the whole, taken as a lot, this folk culture was "earthy, virile, familial and loyal."
5. Pastor's work, therefore, naturally focused strongly upon matters of sexual morality and upon disciplining the other natural appetites and temptations.
6. Finally, Christianity tamed to some degree the nature-paganism of the barbarians of the West.
In light of societal conditions facing Christian pastors, the early Middle Ages required strong inductive guidance as the mode of choice. Inductive guidance reduced the roles previously used the roles of healing, sustaining, and reconciling in the cure of souls to secondary status or shifted the emphasis. Shifts of this nature are not uncommon in Church history, though the shifts are often subtle and not easily detected at the time, but the shifts the Church's ministry to troubled persons in surprising directions, as I believe Luther and the Reformers of the 16th century and his Protestant predecessors and successors recognized and altered.
If pastors were going to change the lives of their parishioners, clearly spiritual realities were going to have to taken into account: the frank recognition of the reality of existing pagan and raw vitality.
To meet the challenge of existing pagan and raw vitality, sacramental means were used, of course, and these raw and rough people were instructed by, exposed to and taught long lists of specific sins and penalties involved in committing these sins.
In retrospect, over centuries, the sin of Pharisees may creep into the Church and its administration. This is something we want watch for in the course of the history of pastoral care, and in the 21st century, too.

VIII. Celtic Penitential Discipline

Celtic discipline dealt with a range of offenses, and the offenses were itemized in the manuals.
"The manuals furnished an index to the censurable habits and dark misdeeds, the evil imaginings and intentions, of medieval people. The authors may not have known accurately the ancient canons but they knew the sinners to whom their clerical readers were to minister. The graver sins of homicide, adultery, sacrilege, theft and perjury are treated in their many varieties and circumstances, and there is much reference to gluttony, including drunkenness. Sexual offenses, even the most repulsive, are listed without apology. We are frequently reminded of the importance of the intention behind an act, and of the time during which an evil course has been pursued. The confessor must computer all factors, including the guilt of the one who 'sins by planning to sin,' though the plan is frustrated (Irish Canons, ca. 675 AD, #251)." [McNeill, 119-20.]

McNeill illuminates the range of offense and lists the remediation required:
1. One who "drinks holy oil to annul a judgment of God" (#339).
2. One who sets fire to a church (#336).
3. One who denies God (#272).
4. One who worships the moon or the sun or the stars (#330).
5. The woman who uses magical philters (#246).
6. The man who intends to hang himself (#291).
7. Those who keep pagan customs for the dead such as the Irish 'keening' dirge (#121).
8. The wizard who conjures up storms (#227).

Clergy as offenders are not excluded from the Irish Canons.

1. The priest who induces another to get drunk for the sake of - humanitatis gratis - good fellowship (#172).
2. The habitually drunken bishop (#153).
3. The monk who talks privately with a woman - for who case Columban assigns a penalty of 200 strokes (#265).
4. The cleric who has stolen a horse (#172).

Then there are those rustic folk who on the way to the Church, singing amatory songs (#273). Or women, who pretend to pray, engage in gossip and [tell] stories during worship (#837).
McNeill demonstrates (120) how comprehensively and completely the penitential manuals cover the range of occurrence in medieval life, and some of the acts of penance were crude and harsh.
Penalties include singing the Beati (Psalm 119 with its Vulgate 176 verses seven times with arms extended in "honest cross-vigil" (Old Irish Penitential, #146). This feat would test the most advanced acetic or someone in very good physical condition.
In a letter ascribed to the Venerable Bede, a monk who is dejected by bereavement or other sorrow is sent to another place and made to fast on bread and water "until he can become joyful" (#168).
Another time, a penalty of one hundred palmatae, presumably and apparently beating of the palms of the hand on a hard floor, is prescribed for contaminating liquid food with a dirty hand (#231).
Floggings are frequently referred to as regular and substitute penalties (#s 145, 163, 265).
A distinction is made between blows and strokes, with one Raban Maur saying the former - blows - were the more severe.
A penance of "seven hundred blows of a lash" for lying seems inhumanly excessive (#163).
In spite of what appears to us in the 21st century as extreme penalties, McNeill reports that in later times, a majority of the prescriptions of penance were more reasonable and the punishment made to fit the crime, restrain the wicked, deliver the young from temptation, protect the weak, and reclaim the fallen (HCS, 121).
In the Patristic period, penance had been controlled and regulated by bishops, the bishops in the Frankish Church failed to exercise this function.
Moreover, the large number of penitential manuals appears to take into account local conditions. As Finnian is reported to have said, "As ' a man of this world, the layman's guilt is lighter in this world and his reward is less than in the world to come." Thus we have the dual kingdoms of heaven, as I call it: one for clergy, one for laity, but the latter is treated to a second-class status.
To note the value of a cleric as compared to a layman, an 8th century penitential ascribed to Dom Bruno Albers to the Venerable Bede (d. 735) contains canons (laws or regulations) that illustrate the distinction between clergy and laity.
"The slayer of a monk or cleric performs a seven-year penance, of a layman only four years: for attempted murder the penalties are respectively three months and three weeks." (HCS, 119).
The Irish Canons (ca. 675) puts values within the ranks of clergy. Heavy payments were required for injuring a bishop. For every hair an assistant plucked from a bishop's head of hair, the assistant lost 12 hairs, which suggests retaliation.
If a bishop received a wound so that blood flows and a bandage is require, "wise men judge that he who shed the blood be crucified or pay [the value of] three female slaves." Princes and scribes are given the same protective insurance (#124).
It is obvious, also, that in addition to penance, the punishments or penalties helped toward security and the maintenance of rank and authority in Church and State.

[Halitgar (c. 830) Prescriptions for Sins - Exhibit No. 3]

It seems that every parish or locality had its favorite handbook for the administration of penance by which errant Christian folk might make amends for their sins and be restored too good standing in the Church.
Halitgar, bishop of Cambrai in the north of France from 817 to 831 to compiled a standard penitential handbook for all the clergy under Ebbo, archbishop of Reims during the Reign of Louis the Pious, one of Charlesmange's sons.
The penitential guide was to be prepared from the writings of the Church Fathers and the official Canons of the Church. The new handbook was to be used throughout Ebbo's jurisdiction.
The problem, however, is Haltigar's task was onerous because the type of discipline of the Celtic penitential was unknown to the Church Fathers and the Canons. (PCHP, 150ff.)
The manual was completed in 830 AD. Halitgar's penitential specified:
1. Confession, penance and reconciliation were to be done privately rather than publicly, and it made the priest rather than the bishop the chief officer in administering penance.
2. Fasting became a reduction in the amount of food or a temporary omission of food, rather than involving, as many previous penitentials, prescriptions against certain foods like meat, butter, wine or beer.
3. However, the usual practice of commuting penance penance into money payment was allowed, and this payment was to be set in proportion to the penitent's wealth.
4. Recitation of psalms and prayers, and employment of certain postures and gestures, were regarded as especially therapeutic.
5. The penitent might be required to say the Lord's Prayer with hands extended upward or with the body bent and arms held outward - previously known in penitentials as a combination of genuflections and bowings accompanied with psalmody and prayer which are recognized.
6. One of Halitgar's more severe innovations in penance is the use of flagellations, which had been thought as appropriate for persons prone to sins of the flesh like gluttony and lust. But Halitgar imposed the penalty on a priest who stammered during his chanting of the prayer after the elevation of the chalice during the Mass.
7. Absolutions in this penitential code were simple prayers of reconciliation that appealed to the pardoning mercy of God.
8. Haltigar's model attempted to regulate the behavior of the zestful and lively people. The Haltigar prescription attempted to deal with:

a. 67th prescription: against "simple kissing."
b. "lascivious kissing."
c. "kissing 'with pollution or embrace."' The last brought a penance twice as heavy as the first.

IX. Medieval Christendom, Sacramental Healing and the Confessional

"The schemes of spiritual growth and ladders for Christian devotion were of enormous importance for the pastoral care not only of monks but of common, secular people," it must be emphasized time and again. [PCHP, 23].
Throughout the early Middle Ages from the time of Pope Gregory the Great at the end of the 6th century, pastoral care centered on guidance. The purpose of this model, as we have said, was to bring troubled people into Christian belief, introduce them to worship, using Christian and regulated rites and rituals, and a firm grounding the elementary and essential rules of Christian morality.
By the 11th century, the Roman Catholic Church had successfully permeated European society and guidance became the means of pastoral care.
From Constantine's Edict of Toleration (325 AD) to the beginning of the 1200s, the Christianizing society required a long period of time and employed, deployed and made expendable an extensive list of missionaries, martyrs, bishops, priests and ordinary Christian folk.
The result of this process of penetration of society by Christian influences led to religious and social cohesion and gave rise to European unity under twin heads, namely, the Pope in Rome and the Holy Roman Emperors.
The unity and influence of Church, empire and society during the Middle Ages may be visually demonstrated. In the beginning settlements became established villages and towns and many of parish church or cathedral was deliberately located at the center of the village and town.
The implication of this unification of Church, empire or state and society is immense in terms of pastoral care for the flock and their pastors.
In the midst of such a startling exertion of power and prestige afforded the Medieval Church and its pervasive influence throughout the Empire and on the social structure, it was inevitable that the cure of souls shifted.
Now, it was possible to institutionalize the power of divine grace to heal the inherent and accidental deformities of human existence, or attempt the same, and undertake and accomplish that through sacraments. The modes of pastoral care easily acquired the aura of sacramental embodiment or convey divine grace through Seven Sacraments.
Illustrative of the sacramental means of grace and the rise of the Seven Sacraments in the Roman Catholic Church is to examine briefly the influence of the predecessors and successors of Peter Lombard (1095-1160 AD).

[John Hannah, Charts of Ancient and Medieval Church History]
The Medieval Period of Church History
From 600 to 1500 AD
Charts Nos. 94 through 108.

If one is to understand how the Seven Sacraments functioned in pastoral care and in conferring divine grace, it is imperative that one examine, not in minute detail, what was accomplished in and through each.
The Seven Sacraments were and are:

1. Baptism.
2. Confirmation.
3. The Eucharist.
4. Penance.
5. Extreme Unction.
6. Marriage.
7. Holy Orders.

Jaroslav Pelikan's The Riddle of Roman Catholicism, correctly notes, "For every Roman Catholic believer, five sacraments - baptism, confirmation, Eucharist, penance and extreme unction - constitute the sacramental life they should faithfully observe" (122).
And if one notes, however briefly, the development of Roman Catholic sacramental theology, it owes a lot to Peter Lombard (1095-1160 AD) and Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274 AD), who argued that the sacraments are essential for salvation. Unfortunately and naturally, the administration and observance of the sacraments became mechanical in the hands of many practitioners.
Pelikan's wise evaluation of how sacraments' function is related to how one does pastoral care is useful to note.

The average Protestant . . . will frequently dismiss
Roman Catholic sacramentalism as "magic." He will accuse
the sacramental system of trying to manipulate God or to encase Christ in some sacred objects or action. There is plenty of evidence in Roman Catholic piety past and present to make such accusations plausible. The tendency of Roman Catholicism is to debase the mystery into magic, while Protestantism often shows signs that it will flatten the mystery of the sacraments into a rationalistic formula of a mere sign. (111)

What is a sacrament by Roman Catholic definition? The modern definition of what constitutes a sacrament in Roman Catholicism must meet these conditions:

1. It must employ an external means that is perceptible to the senses.
2. Christ must institute it as a permanent part of the Church's life.
3. It must be intended as a means of grace, both symbolizing and conveying the grace of God. (111)

"In the early Middle Ages, catechetical training in basic Christian ethics, along with elaborate penitentials classifying sin and their appropriate penalties, was the dominant means of guiding people" (PCHP, 13).
It was the medieval penitential system and its elaborate codification of sins and requirements that generated much controversy during the Reformation era.
The publication of the 95 Theses challenges the legitimacy of penance and the marketing of indulgences.
Luther and other Reformers identified the abuses that had crept into penitential practice. Initially, Luther retained the sacrament of confession but later he came to see that unlike baptism or the Eucharist, the sacrament of penance (or absolution) lacked any material or physical (such as water, wine and bread) and thus the sacrament of penance was not comparable to the other two (Arnold and Fry, The Way. . ., 247.)
In spite of the lack of material or physical elements, Luther kept the office of confession as a peculiar church power, according to Arnold and Fry, and supported it from scripture and in the Small Catechism.
Appended to the Small Catechism is a section on confession. "For some, it is the sixth article of the Lutheran enchiridion" (Arnold and Fry, 247), and confession is retained. Since confession is part of the pastoral ministry of Lutheran Christianity, confession is used as part of prayer and may also be consider a pastoral work either private and in public. The public aspect may be thought of as offering a corporate confession of prayer in worship.

X. Representative Roman Catholic and Protestant Approaches to Pastoral Care Prior and During the Reformation

A. Roman Catholic Documents

[See Roman Catholic documents on grace, the Church, sacrament sin general, penance (and confession) and indulgence consult The Church Teaches: Documents of the Church in English Translation. St. Louis and London: Herder, 5th printing, 1962.]

1. Grace - Condemnation of Luther's Errors
2. Church - Condemnation of Luther's Errors
3. Sacraments in General - a Reprise
4. Penance (and confession)
5. Indulgences

B. Protestant Documents

1. Kurt Aland, "The Ninty-Five Theses and A Sermon on Indulgence and Grace."

2. From Luther's Works, edited by Hugh T. Kerr, and found in A Compendium of Luther's Theology, we listen to Luther's own words regarding the his understanding of repentance and confession (95-98).

3. Luther's understanding of justification by faith (98-99), and then we move to the preaching of the Church (147-151).

4. Luther on "The Nature and Function of the Church" (123-132).

5. Luther on "Consoling an Anxious Man."

6. John Calvin on "Death: The Moment of Truth."

7. John Knox on "A Liturgy for Reconciliation."

C. Luther As Pastoral Counselor

Based on August Nehe's, Luther als Seelsorger (1896).

1. How Luther Cared for His Own Soul.

2. How Luther Ministered to the Sick.

3. How Luther Interested Himself in the Forlorn.

4. How Luther Admonished the Earring.

5. How Luther Comforted the Mourning.

6. How Luther Strengthened the Tempted.

7. How Luther Dealt with the Dying.