Theme: Psycho-Spiritual Approach to Youth Counselling
Priestly ministry is no ministry at all if it is not pastoral ministry.

 

Jesus Christ is our great model for the successful pastoral ministry. Jesus’ personal contact with people characterized his pastoral ministry.
The model science of counselling is accepted to be contributing a lot towards and effective pastoral ministry. It is imperative that the counselling is made profuse use of in the formation houses of diocesan priests.

 

Where there is no counsel the people perish. But in the multitude o counsellors there is safety.
Pastoral counselling Psychology is much neglected ministry in the parishes of the Indian Church. This is partially because, at times, the parishes are very large and populated. The pastors/parish priests are too busy baptising infants. Solemnizing weddings and burying the dead that they find no time to provide counsel to their flocks. As the author rightly points out, undue tension and mental conflicts in everyday life are taking a heavy tool on the people.
Unlike in the west, counselling is not much of a profession in India. This is everybody provides in formal counselling to others. But providing and receiving counsel in the formal sense is very rare. Though believers do not go to their pastors for counselling, counselling can be done through pastoral visits, or when that people visit the pastors.
A pastor in his ministry encounters various people in different stages of life with varied psychological needs and problems. If he does not know at least the basic of counselling the adolescents, the youth , the married, the middle aged, alcoholics, the aged and those prone to suicide he will be misfit in his ministry a liability. Priestly ministry is a ministry with the people and for the people. A priest is not an Ordinary person in People’s view and they expect that a priest/pastor knows at least something about several things of that he will not misguide them.
A priest/pastor is different from a psychologist or a counsellor. Yet a priest/pastor has to be a psychologist and a counsellor. A priest/pastor needn’t be a professional counsellor but he should imbibe within himself the qualities of a good counsellor.