Pastoral Counseling as Sacramental Act

Abstract

Pastoral Counseling centers are burgeoning because a whole new community of persons is developing with new sacramental needs. The anachronistic methods of the institutional church have resulted in the pastoral counselor taking on the role of priest and performing the fourfold Eucharistic function (take, bless, break, give) in therapy. Pastoral counseling is now a sacramental act, and may in fact develop into a sacrament. Pastoral counselors have a unique combination of psychological and theological training, though in their zeal for professional acceptance they often emphasize the former at the expense of the latter. The pastoral counseling community has a responsibility to use its unique training to influence the institutional church to effectively meet the new sacramental, liturgical, and spiritual needs of its people. To be able to inform the growth of the historical community of faith and to adequately function sacramentally in the therapeutic setting, pastoral counselors must first examine their own spirituality.