Early in the book, the author establishes his strong belief in pastoral counseling. He writes, "Counseling can help save those areas of our lives that are shipwrecked in the storms of our daily living, broken on the hidden reefs of anxiety, guilt, and lack of integrity" (Clinebell 13)
It fuses people to their values and forges them to common purpose, as orators such as Cato, Churchill and Martin Luther King knew. (Just 8)
While representing themselves as activists, their goal places primacy on the economic rather than the spiritual. Nonetheless, Liberation Theologians have established "ecclesial base communities," which have been growing since the 1970s: "These are 'small, grassroots, lay groups of the poor or the ordinary people, meeting to pray, conduct Bible studies, and wrestle concretely with social and political obligations in their settings'"(Rhodes)
The Concept of Pastoral Care The concept of pastoral care and counseling is defined by Roy as "a safe environment in which people may share stories that have not yet found a venue for expression and thus potential healing" (9). Rhythm and ritual play an important part in the creation of such a venue: "Ritualization is about the ordering of experience and the creating of meaning" (Roy 9)
According to Leonardo Boff, pastoral care and counseling is dependent upon a re-interpretation of the Lord's Prayer: "Liberate us from the evil one…embodied in an elitist, exclusivist social system that has no solidarity with the great multitudes of the poor. He has a name; he is the Capitalism of private property and the Capitalism of the state" (Sigmund 85)
This is particularly true in hospital settings. The crucial question of when and how to refer is discussed in the final chapter (Switzer, 175)