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PASTORAL PSYCHOLOGY
When a spiritual adviser is dealing with a Christian or a
religious enquirer, his most important task is to give the
confidant the guidance that will enable him to understand and
appropriate the means of Grace in the Christian Church. In this
situation it is seldom sufficient, however, to give information
about the means of Grace or to recommend a diligent use of
them. What is needed, above all, is the spiritual adviser’s
practical guidance and loving surveillance of his confidant’s
convictions and behaviour: his attitude to baptism and Holy
Communion, his use of the Bible, his prayers and the Christian
fellowship. Very often, however, one finds that the confidant’s
difficulties do not arise from lack either of knowledge or
selfdiscipline. They are often of a quite different kind. Many
aberrations in the religious life and difficulties concerning the
faith that seem, on the surface, to be of intellectual origin
often have their roots in moral and personal problems. They
appear in a disguised form because there is a strong subconscious
reluctance to reveal them in their true significance either to
the spiritual adviser or to the confidant himself. The aim of
treatment in such cases must be to help the confidant to
acknowledge and deal with his real difficulties, for they not only create
the intellectual dilemmas that trouble him but make both his
personal and religious life unhappy and ineffective.
Mental and spiritual training have proved to be effective
aids in spiritual treatment. Mental training, in the form of
exercises in observation, concentration and disciplined thinking,
is valuable for counteracting bad habits and in promoting the
re-education and readjustment of the personality when it is
necessary to build up new patterns of response to ideas and
situations where hitherto the reaction has been destructive.
Part of this mental training may with advantage take the form
of set periods of relaxation and meditation. Of the greatest
value are spiritual exercises in the form of religious meditations,
presented by the spiritual adviser, and having as their aim the
deepening of the sense of communion with God, increasing
the knowledge of the self, strengthening spiritual discipline and
in general enriching both the content and the quality of the
devotional life. As a rule, it is desirable to preface spiritual
exercises with a preparatory course of mental exercises to make
the confidant familiar with the method.
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