Spiritual Advisor Research Articles

Situational Gamblers: Prospect Theory and the Commonalities of Presidential Campaign Management

In this article, prospect theory helps shed light on an underdeveloped topic in political science: the management strategies of presidential campaigns. In particular, prospect theory is used to understand critical decisions made by the campaigns of Edward Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush during three critical junctures of the 1980 presidential primary season. Prospect theory's central finding—that individuals are risk averse when facing gains and risk acceptant when facing losses—provides a systematic and empirically grounded explanation for seemingly puzzling decisions made by each campaign. In a broad sense, this essay begins the process of developing a general perspective on presidential campaign management.

Sharing Sacred Secrets: Is It (Past) Time for a Dangerous Person Exception to the Clergy-Penitent Privilege?

TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION I. PURPOSE AND HISTORY OF THE CLERGY-PENITENT PRIVILEGE A. Rationale for the Privilege B. History of the Privilege II. STATE STATUTES TODAY A. The Discipline Enjoined Requirement B. Types of Protected Communications C. Who Holds the Privilege? D. Who Constitutes a Cleric? III. THE EVOLVING FEDERAL PRIVILEGE IV. CLERGY OBLIGATIONS WITH RESPECT TO DANGEROUS PERSONS: LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE MANDATED REPORTING STATUTES V. LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE OTHER PROFESSIONS: THE HOMICIDAL SPOUSE EXAMPLE A. Responsibilities of the Psychotherapist B. Responsibilities of the Attorney C. Responsibilities of the Clergy VI. CLOSING THE GAP VII. CONSTITUTIONAL CONSIDERATIONS A. The Free Exercise Clause B. The Establishment Clause CONCLUSION Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed, and nothing hidden that will not become known. (1) INTRODUCTION The growing crisis of pedophilia in the Roman Catholic Church (2) has cast renewed focus on the clergy-penitent privilege in America. (3) As many state legislatures scramble to consider proposed amendments to their child abuse reporting statutes that would designate clergy as mandated reporters, (4) the scandal has prompted widespread debate about whether information learned from otherwise privileged communications should be excluded from the statutory obligation to report. (5) This debate has highlighted the tension between respecting clergy confidences and protecting the public welfare. In this Article, I suggest that it is time to revisit the clergy-penitent privilege, and to question seriously whether its presently broad application truly serves the public interest. The clergy-penitent privilege is deeply engrained in American culture. (6) Although the privilege has its origins in the seal of the confessional of the Roman Catholic Church, (7) statutory forms of the privilege in most states now protect any confidential communications with a clergy member for the purposes of penitential confession or spiritual advice from compelled disclosure. (8) In recent years, another area of growth in the doctrine has been in the expanding definition of who constitutes a cleric for purposes of the privilege. (9) Many nonhierarchical religions rely on peer counseling rather than counseling by ordained ministers. (10) Other churches are experiencing a scarcity of ordained clergy, and increasingly are relying on lay ministers to perform certain spiritual functions previously performed only by the officially ordained. (11) Just as courts and legislatures over the past several decades have expanded the definition of what constitutes a protected communication, many states have taken a similarly broad view of who constitutes a clergy member for purposes of their clergy-penitent privilege statutes. (12) As a consequence of this interpretive growth, more types of religious officers and functionaries are now recognized as ministers, and more types of communications, such as marital counseling sessions, are recognized as falling within the ambit of spiritual counseling or advice. (13) This expanding application of the privilege during the twentieth century has been motivated in part by a growing respect for the diversity of religious affiliation and spiritual belief in our society, if not an explicit concern for potential collision with the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses of the First Amendment. (14) The doctrinal creep of the clergy-penitent privilege described in this Article has come with serious collateral costs. (15) Whenever more types of conversations with more types of religious or quasi-religious functionaries are protected from disclosure, society pays a price in terms of relevant and highly probative evidence being excluded from the fact-finding process. (16) Because ministers are often intimately involved in the lives of many citizens, they frequently have relevant and highly probative evidence to offer a judicial tribunal on a wide variety of subjects including, among others, paternity, domestic violence, child abuse, child custody, and will contests. …

Without Buddha I Could not Be a Christian (review)

Reviewed by: Without Buddha I Could not Be a Christian Peter A. Huff Without Buddha I Could not Be a Christian. By Paul F. Knitter. Oxford: Oneworld, 2009. xvii + 240 pp. Paul Knitter’s contributions to interfaith dialogue and Christian theologies of religions are well known and widely appreciated. Even critics of Christian theories of pluralism, most prominently Pope Benedict XVI, have acknowledged the significance of Knitter’s strategic integration of perspectives from liberation theology into what is sometimes an overly abstract field of inquiry. Colleagues active in Buddhist-Christian studies hold Knitter in especially high esteem as a writer, teacher, translator, [End Page 211] editor, self-described interreligious theologian, and unapologetic person of faith. This book, his first major publication since accepting the Paul Tillich chair at Union Theological Seminary, offers a uniquely first-person reflection on the spiritual fruits of a career profoundly and provocatively shaped by two religious traditions. Written for a popular audience, the book, the author says, has been in the works “for the past forty years” (p. xv). The reader gains valuable insight into the professional and private life of a remarkable “dialogical theologian” (p. xv), whose experience includes a rather conventional upbringing in working-class Midwestern Catholicism, some twenty years of service as a seminarian and missionary priest with the Society of the Divine Word, graduate education in Europe with the likes of Bernard Lonergan (1904–1984) and Karl Rahner (1904–1984) during the revolutionary years of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), and nearly four decades of pioneering work as a productive scholar-activist in mainstream academic theology. At times Knitter even quotes from his unpublished journals in an effort to document fully his unscripted intellectual and spiritual development. Though highly personal, the book is not primarily an autobiography or conversion narrative. Instead, it is an introspective analysis of the internal dialogue that virtually all participants in interreligious affairs recognize as the heart of the global ecumenical encounter. Knitter’s book serves as something of an apologia for what is known today as dual religious belonging or hyphenated religious identity. The author concludes his text with this intriguing but not surprising spiritual self-portrait: both lifelong baptized Christian and “card-carrying Buddhist” (p. 216). The challenge of accounting for this “both /and” orientation grants the book its distinctive character and its reason for being. Knitter borrows his method from the twentieth-century minor classic The Way of All the Earth: Experiments in Truth and Religion (1978). In that work, Notre Dame theology professor and Holy Cross priest James Dunne suggested that the path to holiness in the contemporary West leads inevitably through intimate engagement with the ancient wisdom traditions of the East. Even a casual review of the spiritual history of the last century or so will confirm how earnest seekers in modernity’s secular city have renewed, rediscovered, or critically redefined their native faith commitment through life-changing contact with the ideas and values of Asian religious traditions. It is a story familiar to anyone acquainted with the extraordinary religious pilgrimages of interfaith saints such as Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968), Thomas Merton (1915–1968), and Bede Griffiths (1906–1993). Dunne dubbed this experience the “spiritual adventure of our time” (p. 2); Knitter passionately agrees. He applies Dunne’s dialectical method and his special terminology to his own spiritual odyssey, “passing over” from Christian questions and problems to possible answers and solutions in the Buddhist tradition and then “passing back” to Christian belief and practice with enhanced purpose and a fresh sense of integrity. The starting point for Knitter’s project is cognitive, moral, even emotional dissatisfaction with some of the fundamental structures of the historic Christian worldview: God as transcendent creator and lord of history, Jesus Christ as incarnate Logos and [End Page 212] universal savior, and salvation as the survival of human personality after death and the eschatological redemption of all finite reality. In essence, Knitter claims, traditional theism and the core myth of Christianity as expressed in scripture, creed, and liturgy appear painfully ineffective and to a large extent incoherent in the context of modern life and the international interface of world religions. What especially drives the...

County-Level Estimates of Need for Mental Health Professionals in the United States

County-Level Estimates of Need for Mental Health Professionals in the United States

Sterbebegleitung im Krankenhaus – erste Erfahrungen mit dem „Liverpool Care Pathway” (LCP) in Deutschland

In the last few years public interest in the care of severely ill and dying patients has been growing. The aim of palliative medicine is to improve the care of the dying. However, this is still not achieved in many general hospitals. The Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP) for the care of the dying intends to change this situation. The aim of this study was to explore the views of professionals using the LCP as a framework for ensuring good care of the dying. A qualitative study was conducted with an interdisciplinary focus group of ten professionals (nurses, physicians, spiritual adviser, social worker, physiotherapist and art therapist) to explore their views and experience after implementation of the LCP in a palliative care unit (PCU). The recorded discussion between them was transcribed verbatim and analysed using content analysis by three independent reviewers. Seven nurses and three physicians with an average work experience of 16 years each took part in the focus group. Based on the experience of 24 patients, the LCP was evaluated as very positive by all participants. In particular, three aspects were emphasized as having high relevance for a good quality of care: improvement of self-confidence, better control of symptoms, and enhancement of the communication between professionals and with patients and their relatives. However, some weaknesses were also mentioned, e.g. inadequate effort of documenting the beginning of implementing the scheme. The LCP was well received by professionals after the initial implementation of the LCP in a German PCU. The LCP was judged as an appropriate and helpful framework in the care of the dying.

Der Verein zur Abwehr des Antisemitismus: Zum Verhältnis von Protestantismus und Judentum im Kaiserreich und in der Weimarer Republik (review)

Der Verein zur Abwehr des Antisemitismus: Zum Verhaltnis von Protestantismus und Judentum im Kaiserreich und in der Weimarer Republik, by Auguste Zeis-Horbach. Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2008. 462 pp. euro44. The book under review is a dissertation, handed in at faculty of theology at University of Leipzig. Its author, Auguste Zeis-Horbach, working currently as parish pastor and spiritual advisor in hospitals, claims at outset of her investigation that her main objective is to make a contribution to determine relationship between Protestantism and Jewt y in German Empire and in Republic of Weimar (p. U) by analyzing history of Verein zur Abwehr des Antisemitismus (VAA, Association in Defense against Antisemitism), founded in 1893. This organization assembled numerous more or less renowned Protestant intellectuals, politicians (like Heinrich Rickert and Friedrich Naumann), and clergymen but also Catholics and German Jews (pp. 63-66), though in far lesser numbers. Unlike other related topics, this subject hitherto has been largely neglected (a fact, by way, which Zeis-Horbach fails to point out clearly enough [pp. 21-28], perhaps for reasons of false modesty). This could be because sources are difficult to trace. In particular, archive of VAA is regarded as lost, except for personal papers of former civil servant and later politician Georg Gothein, chairman from 1909 until nearly voluntarily self-dissolution of VAA in July 1933, and the search for other sources is arduous, as author stresses (p. 29; cf. p. 113). Zeis-Horbach tried to make best out of this bad situation by exploring an impressive amount of material in many archives and even a vast amount of published sources, first of all official organ of VAA, Mitteilungen (Notes, Information) which in 1925 received catchier (p. 33) title Abwehrblatter (Sheets of Defense). Hence, by and large, Zeis-Horbach succeeds in closing above-stated research deficit in a quite convincing and extensive manner. She not only gives a rather broad account of evolution of VAA, illustrating it also by means of a case study, which she calls - somewhat exaggeratedly - a regional paradigm (p. 13), but she also explores values and of its members in general, who belonged basically to a milieu of left-wing liberal German citizens, so-called cultural-protestants (Kulturprotestanten, p. 15), as well as of numerous Protestant theologians in particular. Above all, she argues convincingly that many Jews didn't feel represented by VAA, which led to decision to found, as early as 1893, Centralverein deutscher Staatsburger judischen Glaubens (Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith, pp. 132-134). This situation was caused by two fundamental problems, which were, first, a lack of broad public effect, a consequence not least because of an aversion to cut rent methods of political mobilization; and second, certain inconsistencies among members of VAA concerning attitudes against Jews as Jews. …

Traditional Healers in the Treatment of Common Mental Disorders in South Africa

There are few population-level insights into the use of traditional healers and other forms of alternative care for the treatment of common mental disorders in sub-Saharan Africa. We examined the extent to which alternative practitioners are consulted, and predictors of traditional healer visits. A national survey was conducted with 3651 adult South Africans between 2002 and 2004, using the World Health Organization Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI) to generate DSM-IV diagnoses for common mood, anxiety, and substance use disorders. A minority of participants with a lifetime DSM-IV diagnosis obtained treatment from Western (29%) or alternative (20%) practitioners. Traditional healers were consulted by 9% of the respondents and 11% consulted a religious or spiritual advisor. Use of traditional healers in the full sample was predicted by older age, black race, unemployment, lower education, and having an anxiety or a substance use disorder. Alternative practitioners, including traditional healers and religious advisors, appear to play a notable role in the delivery of mental health care in South Africa.

Predictors of Likelihood and Intensity of Past-Year Mental Health Service Use in an Active Canadian Military Sample

Predictors of Likelihood and Intensity of Past-Year Mental Health Service Use in an Active Canadian Military Sample

The Lady or the Horse: Tristan at the Grail Pentecost

The Prose Tristan's modification of the Grail Pentecost highlights paradoxes within the Arthurian ideal and prepares even greater changes in the late medieval versions. (JPT) Within the long prose tradition of the Tristan legend, the thirteenthcentury versions announce a clear desire to integrate Tristan into Arthur's court and also lay the groundwork for substantial changes the late medieval versions make in the story. Tristan's participation in the grail quest announces some of the most radical changes to the Tristan story, and the widely differing ways in which later romances handled Tristan's grail quest reflect how problematic this innovation was. The grail Pentecost constitutes a pivotal moment in the Vulgate Queste del Saint Graal, the first work to present it.1 Designed to develop the saintly side of the Arthurian legend, the quest shifts attention from Arthur, Lancelot, and the worldly concerns of Logres to the pseudo-Biblical, spiritual adventure of Galahad. For a short time, the Arthurian world's preoccupation with the chivalric and courtly gives way to a completely different preoccupation, one that presumes the highest manifestation of these two attitudes but also intends to subvert them by demonstrating that they alone are insufficient for success on the 'high' quest of the grail. The grail Pentecost serves a comparably pivotal role in the Prose Tristan. As Colette-Anne Van Coolput has so expertly argued, the inclusion of the grail quest in the Tristan in turn subverts the quest and its hero.2 The logic for making Tristan equal or superior to Lancelot is clear-in Tristan's story he must dominate. Yet the grail quest is designed as part of Lancelot's story, not Tristan's. Including Tristan within the quest causes his story to function as a lens through which to see the weaknesses of the Arthurian world. At the grail Pentecost the tensions within Logres start to become overt-tensions between obligations to lord and lady, between worldly and heavenly aspirations, between disruptive and ennobling love. They ultimately destroy the Arthurian world in the Vulgate as well as in the Tristan, but because Tristan is essentially incompatible with grail matters, his presence at the Pentecost greatly emphasizes the paradoxes within the Arthurian ideal and suggests why the Tavola Ritonda and later Tristan versions treat this scene so differently. The prose retellings of Tristan's story and especially of his participation in the quest constitute a complex literary tradition that blends content from several sources with much new material. The thirteenth-century Prose Tristan itself exists in two major versions (the shorter V.I and the longer V.II), distinguished to a great extent by whether or not they include the Vulgate Queste.3 Both place Tristan in the Pentecost scene, and Tristan departs with his Round Table fellows to seek the grail. Then V.I continues with Tristan's worldly adventures while V.II retells most of the Queste at times verbatim but in alternation with the adventures of Tristan. This substantial difference may suggest why the later versions vary so much. For example, the early fourteenthcentury Tavola Ritonda retains Tristan's participation in the Pentecost scene and quest story, but with substantial abbreviation of quest material and frank presentation of Tristan as the focus of the chivalric adventures. In the fifteenth century, manuscript BnF fr. 112 orients the Tristan story in much the same way as the Tavola, while another highly popular text, BnF fr. 103, refocuses the story on the tragic love of Tristan and Yseut and completely drops the quest material. In this review of how the Pentecost episode evolved through versions of the Tristan legend from the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries, we will begin by examining Tristan's presence at the grail Pentecost according to V.II. Next we will examine how the fourteenth-century Tavola Ritonda reworked this key episode in the quest story. …

Religious traditions and prenatal genetic counseling.

Members of organized religious groups may look to their faith traditions for guidance regarding the moral implications of prenatal diagnosis and intervention. Many denominations have doctrinal statements relevant to these deliberations. In this article, common spiritual issues arising in the genetic counseling encounter are described. Representative doctrinal positions, derived from the responses of 31 U.S. religious denominations to a survey relating to prenatal genetic counseling, are given. Because the long-term adjustment of patients may be dependent in part on their ability to reconcile their actions with their faith traditions, genetic counselors best serve their patients when they invite discussion of matters of faith. Unless invited, patients may assume these topics are "off limits" or that care providers are indifferent to their beliefs. Although genetics professionals ought not assume the role of spiritual advisor, a working knowledge of doctrinal approaches should help counselors frame the issues, and avoid missteps.

S31-03 Religion and spiritual advice as surrogate care provision for mental health problems in the ESEMED survey

Objective:To complete missing information on the influence of spiritual and religious advisors as informal providers for mental health problems in Europe.Methods:Recourse to religious practice or belief when coping with mental health problems was evaluated using data from the ESEMED survey. This was a stratified, multistage, clustered-area probability sample survey of mental health carried out in six European countries which included 8796 subjects. Between countries differences in sociodemographic characteristics, religious affiliation, and prevalence of mental disorders and management of mental disorders were evaluated.Results:Religion appears to play a limited role in coping with mental health problems in Europe. Only 7.9% of individuals seeking help for such problems turned to a religious advisor. This proportion differed between countries from 13% in Italy, 12.5% in Germany, 10.5% in the Netherlands, 5.8% in France, 4.7% in Belgium to 4% in Spain. In addition, seeking help exclusively from religion was reported by only 1.3% of subjects. Practicing religion at least once a week and considering religion as important in daily life were predictors of using religion versus conventional health care only. Use of religion was not influenced by gender and age. Non-Christian respondents and individuals with alcohol disorders were more likely to use religion. In Spain, the use of religion is much lower than average.Conclusions:Unlike the situation in the United States, organised religion does not provide alternative informal mental health care in Europe. At best, it could be considered as an adjunct to conventional care.

Luther as a Spiritual Adviser: the Interface of Theology and Piety in Luther's Devotional Writings – By Dennis Ngien

Luther as a Spiritual Adviser: the Interface of Theology and Piety in Luther's Devotional Writings – By Dennis Ngien

The Elder at Iasnaia Poliana: Lev Tolstoi and the Orthodox Starets Tradition

In his activity as religious teacher and counselor, Lev Tolstoi consciously stepped into the tradition of the Orthodox startsy or elders. We can see this both the way he organized his ministry--publishing books of spiritual advice and receiving the faithful at Iasnaia Poliana--and the way he was perceived and described by his contemporaries. On the one hand, this emulation rather surprising, since Tolstoi on number of occasions vehemently attacked the Russian Church and all it stood for. On the other, it may not be so incongruous after all: for Tolstoi, as for most Russians, Orthodoxy was the variety of Christianity they grew up with and knew, and its influence rubbed off also on its critics. Tolstoi discussed Orthodox theology and spirituality directly or indirectly several of his post-conversion writings. This true both of fictional works like Farber Sergii (1890-98) and Resurrection (1899), and of religious tracts like What I Believe (1884) and The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1890-93). In his famous Reply to the Holy Synod, which 1901 had promulgated public warning against Tolstoi's religious teaching, Tolstoi retaliated by calling the teaching of the Russian Church in its theory, an insidious and dangerous lie, and practical terms, collection of the coarsest and most superstitious sorcery. (1) Indeed, Tolstoi often seemed to go out of his way to insult the religious sentiments of Russian believers, as the famous communion scene Resurrection. Another such case The Investigation of Dogmatic Theology, which he characterized the content of some of the most commonly used textbooks of Orthodox theology as pure fantasy, blasphemous hallucinations, outright lies, and pitiable and villainous distortions. (2) A modern commentator, Daniel Rancour-Laferriere, concludes, not unreasonably, that many respects The Investigatian a huge anti-Orthodox pamphlet. (3) This not, however, all that can be said about Tolstoi's relationship to Orthodoxy. Rancour-Laferriere points out that some later writings Tolstoi softens and even completely alters his stance on some of the issues addressed The Investigation, and as I have demonstrated elsewhere, even the message of The Investigation itself much more ambiguous than what meets the eye: this book, Tolstoi attacks the official Orthodox teaching about the nature of God--the doctrine of His omnipresence, His omniscience, and so on--by arguing that the essence of God's being completely unknown to us: He nepostizhim. As it turns out, Tolstoi's argument on this point closely akin to the so-called negative or apophatic theology the Eastern tradition, way of thinking about God that Tolstoi had fact found many of the Orthodox texts he had read and by which he was clearly influenced. (4) Most Western monographs on Tolstoi's religion ignore the possible influence of Orthodoxy, while some Tolstoi experts acknowledge--but passing only--that traces of Orthodox thinking may be found Tolstoi's teaching. (5) Thus, for instance, Robert Donahoo has remarked that Tolstoi's theology is strange mixture of orthodox Christianity, nineteenth-century European humanista, and personal idiosyncracies, while A. N. Wilson claims that Tolstoy some ways oddly Russian Orthodox. (6) The literary scholar who most consistently has studied Tolstoi's system of thought against the background of Russian Orthodoxy Richard F. Gustafson. In his celebrated study Leo Talstoy: Resident and Stranger (1986), Gustafson went further than most downplaying the theological differences between Tolstoi and the Russian Orthodox Church. He claimed, for instance, that Tolstoy's God of Life and Love an Eastern Christian God. (7) However, even if it can be demonstrated that Tolstoi was deeply imbued with and influenced by Orthodox thinking, this does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that he was less heterodox than he himself claimed and most of his contemporaries took for granted. …

The Letters of Adam Marsh

Professor C.H. Lawrence's edition of Adam Marsh's letters has been long and eagerly awaited, and for some obvious reasons. Marsh enjoyed high standing in two different but related worlds. The greatest biblical scholar of his age, and lector to the Oxford Franciscans for most of the 1240s, he was in the vanguard of those who sought to make available the academic learning of the schools as a practical instrument for the pastoral training of the priesthood. Yet he was also intensely involved with secular society, often more so than he wished to be: frequently at the beck and call of the king and queen, the religious counsellor of Simon de Montfort and his wife, and an attender at parliaments and councils, he found that the value set on his spiritual advice, and on what Lawrence rightly calls his ‘practical sagacity', brought its own form of punishment. The letters which record much of this multifarious activity are characterised in the present edition as ‘arguably the most important collection of private letters to have been produced in England before the fifteenth century'. Yet they have hitherto been extremely difficult to approach. Marsh's style is prolix, rambling, opaque and syntactically complicated—the Latin equivalent of late Henry James, and the bane of many scholars, who have probably resorted, in shamefaced secrecy, to the useful guide provided by J.S. Brewer's brief English summaries and marginal notes in the old Rolls Series edition. Now, however, we can at last discard Brewer not only for a modern edition of the text but, especially, for a translation. For this the present editor may be blessed by generations yet unborn.

Spiritual advisors and old age psychiatry in the United Kingdom

This survey investigates the role and views of NHS spiritual advisors across the United Kingdom on the provision of pastoral care for elderly people with mental health needs. The College of Health Care Chaplains provided a database, and questionnaires were sent to 405 registered NHS chaplains/spiritual advisors. The response rate was 59%. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were carried out. Spiritual advisors describe their working patterns and understanding of their roles within the modern NHS, and their observations of the level of NHS staff awareness of the importance of spiritual issues in the mental health care of older adults. They provide insights into possible negative and positive perceptions of their roles at a service level, and contribute suggestions of topics relevant to shared education between pastoral care and clinical services. This survey further highlights ethical and operational dimensions at the point of integration of the work of spiritual advisors and multidisciplinary teams.

Entrances and Exits: Performing the Psalms in Goscelin's "Liber confortatorius"

In about 1080 the young English nun Eva decided to step up her religious com mitment and become a recluse. Apparently without discussing her move with any one, she secretly left her convent, the prestigious royal abbey of Wilton, and crossed to Angers, where she joined what appears to have been an established community of anchoresses attached to a church there. Her former teacher and mentor, the monk, hagiographer, and musician Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, learned of her departure after some delay. His Liber confortatorius, datable to about 1082/ 83, is by far the most personal and most original text in his considerable oeuvre, expressing deep personal grief about Eva's departure.1 It is a book of spiritual advice, in the tradition of Jerome and Ambrose, or more recent masters like John of Fecamp and Anselm, and anticipating later and more familiar anchoritic texts like Aelred of Rievaulx's De institutione inclusarum and the Ancrene Wisse. It is an anthology of texts and excerpts that Goscelin and Eva both valued. It is a guide to meditation. It is also a personal letter, a lament, a consolation, and self consolation. One of the exciting things about the Liber confortatorius, apart from its per sonal engagement and its sometimes disconcerting glimpses of more than just spiritual attachment, is precisely its early date. Goscelin tends to anticipate ideas and practices that are familiar to us from the later Middle Ages, and it is often surprising to find them in the 1080s. And, as is often the case with letters of spiritual counsel, one has the impression of watching someone's private theology unfold-not so much original thought as a personal mix of reflections and de votions. Some religious practices that later in the Middle Ages gelled into standard usage or hardened into prescriptive rules are offered as personal habits, an exchange of ideas, suggestions, shoptalk along the lines of I do it like or here is something you might want to try. For instance, the Little Office of the Virgin, not exactly referred to in this text but certainly implied, had evidently been around in personal, voluntary, or local usage some two centuries before it became near-universal monastic practice in the twelfth century and a centerpiece of lay devotion with the development of the book of hours.2 Goscelin's comments on

A Journey of Deceptions and Leaps of Faith: Personal Reflections about Undertaking a Doctor of Philosophy Research Project

In my reflections on undertaking my Doctor of Philosophy research project, I describe it as an emotional, intellectual and spiritual adventure. Marked by deceptions, it has demanded personal commitment, endurance and persistence to manoeuvre past these deceptions. However, with leaps of faith it has been one of the most valuable and enriching experiences, with opportunities for many life changing encounters and personal growth. I also acknowledge a lot of valuable support that has also been sourced from both informal and formal exchanges of ideas, experiences and interactions with a community of researchers involving supervisors, colleagues undertaking the same journey, early career researchers and past students met online. I draw on motivational constructs consisting of achievement motivation by Ames and Archer (1988), Ames (1992), Elliot and Dweck (1988) and Meece, Blumenfeld and Hayle (1988), self-efficacy by Bandura (1994) and intrinsic motivation by Deci and Ryan (1985) for theoretical support. Motivational writers have also boosted my morale when parts of the journey became a challenge.

Tensions in Textual Exegesis: Word and Picture in an Illustrated Manuscript of the Meditationes Vitae Christi

The famous Franciscan devotional text, the Meditationes Vitae Christi, has long been cited by art historians as a source for late medieval iconographic innovations. This paper explores the tensions between text and image in a manuscript that offers rare insight into the Meditationes’ visual exegesis: Paris Bibliotheque Nationale Ms. Ital. 115. The earliest known illustrated copy of the Meditationes, Ms. ital. 115 was likely made in or near Pisa circa 1350 for an unknown group of Poor Clare nuns. The manuscript contains evidence of textual interpretation in the form of instructions to the artists in its margins and captions or tituli within its illustrations. The instructions and captions were written by the same person, apparently an “advisor” who was responsible for planning the manuscript’s image program and later checking it. This person, probably a friar serving as a spiritual advisor to a Poor Clare convent, thereby acted as a translator of the Meditationes. The unknown artists of Ms. ital. 115 gener...

F. THOMAS LUONGO. The Saintly Politics of Catherine of Siena. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. 2006. Pp. xiii, 233. $39.95

F. Thomas Luongo's book follows in a distinguished line of scholarly research that has attempted to free Catherine of Siena from the hagiographical shrine in which she has been encased ever since Raymond of Capua, her confessor, spiritual advisor, and biographer, wrote the Legenda maior, the vita meant to serve the cause for her canonization, which occurred in 1461. Beginning in 1921, and followed up with subsequent publications in 1930 and 1948, French scholar Robert Fawtier launched his attack on the Catherinian hagiographical tradition. More recent scholars such as Sofia Boesch Gajano, Odile Redon, Suzanne Noffke, and Karen Scott, while abjuring Fawtier's polemics, also have argued in various ways that Raymond's Catherine is a hagiographical construct composed with an agenda, not a historical portrait. In search of the historical person rather than the saint, they have read Raymond's vita against Catherine's own letters in an attempt to reconstruct her life and reassess her spirituality, along with the public nature of her mission or apostolate. In this slim volume of five chapters, Luongo does this, too, but he moves the discussion forward in a welcome and innovative way by historicizing Catherine in the social and political culture of late medieval Siena. Luongo also intends his work to stand as a critique of the voluminous scholarship on female sanctity that has appeared in the wake of Caroline Walker Bynum's influential book, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (1987). He argues that much of the recent work on sanctity privileging gender as the primary category of analysis has had the unfortunate effect of deracinating holiness from its local context, simplifying and reifying it rather than complicating our vision of it. To rectify this problem, his study plants Catherine Benincasa firmly back into the Sienese soil of the fourteenth century.

Comments on ‘The unknown in psychotherapy and counselling’

… if the spiritual adventure of our time is the exposure of human consciousness to the undefined and indefinable, there would seem to be good reasons for thinking that even the Boundless is pervade...