Glebe, Delton J.

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Meeting Places for Pastoral Care Between Judiciary and Church

Wilfrid Laurier University

ConsensusVolume 25Issue 1 Contextual Perspectives in Pastoral Care andCounsellingArticle 25-1-1999Meeting Places for Pastoral Care Between Judiciaryand ChurchDelton J. GlebeFollow this and additional works at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/consensusThis Articles is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Consensus by anauthorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact scholarscommons@wlu.ca.Recommended CitationGlebe, Delton J. (1999) "Meeting Places for Pastoral Care Between Judiciary and Church," Consensus: Vol. 25 : Iss. 1 , Article 2.Available at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/consensus/vol25/iss1/2Meeting Places for Pastoral CareBetween Judiciary and ChurchDelton J. GlebePrincipal-Dean Emeritus and Professor of Pastoral Care andCounsellingWaterloo Lutheran Seminaryohn Patton in his volume Pastoral Care in Context^ identi-fies three types of Pastoral Care. The meeting place forClassical PastoraX Care is primarily in the church and homeand delivered through sermons, rituals, teaching, visitation and con-versation. The meeting place for Clinical PastoraX Care is primarilyin hospitals, prisons, retirement centres, counselling centres and of-fices with an emphasis on methods and skills. The meeting place forContextual Pastoral Care is in the systems and the contexts andsearches out both causes and resources related to people’s prob-lems in the context in which they live.Recently a physician friend of mine said his diagnoses includenot only clinical examinations in his office but also the context inwhich the patient lives and works. Likewise Pastoral Care’s meetingplaces are also contextual including institutions, agencies, organiza-tions and systems and courthouses where people live and move andhave their being. Theoretically, then, even the judicial system is ameeting place for Contextual Pastoral Care.Inevitably not only the Correctional Chaplain but also the Pastorwill encounter the Judicial system. At first glance this is a foreignworld. And the Pastor struggles to find meeting places betweenChurch and Judiciary in which Pastoral Care can occur.Such meeting places may sound preposterous to those who in-sist upon separation of Church and State. Is it not the Judiciary’s12 Consensustask to administer the law and the Church’s task to save souls? Is itnot the Judiciary’s task to interpret the law and the Church’s task toproclaim the Gospel? This article explores three meeting places.I was an elected member of the Court of Adjudication of a Na-tional Church body. The Court membership includes clergy, laityand lawyers (male and female), one of whom is professionally a Mas-ter of the Court and also president of our Court. Following a hearingby our Court we reflected upon the interfacing of judicial principlesand procedures and the Church’s concern for compassion. We ac-tually sat in the place where law and gospel met. We were gratified todiscover more compatibility than conflict between law and gospel.One lawyer member quipped: “Wasn’t it God who invented the law?”The first meeting place for Judiciary and Church is law and gos-pel. A long standing challenge in the Church has been to use the lawin the service of the gospel. Our court’s primary task deals with thelaw, but this also includes concerns for change. Despite our soci-ety’s clamoring for punishment, our courts, like Church, engage inthe redemptive use of the law. Our first meeting place for Judiciaryand Church is law and gospel, where law is used in the service of thegospel.A second meeting place for Judiciary and Church is in the pur-suit of forms of Justice. Here I am indebted to my colleague, socialethicist Dr. Richard Crossman, who, in turn, is somewhat indebted tothe world-renowned theologian, the late Dr. Paul Tillich.There are three basic forms of justice: There is, first, the Justiceof Certainty. It is based upon the assumption of universal principles,true for all times and in all situations. These principles are presumedto be forever and always true. Decisions made on the basis of Cer-tainty can indeed provide justice by sticking to the letter of the law:“an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”. Seeing situations fromthe perspective of absolute black and white avoids the confusioncaused by areas of grey. But there is also a dark side to the Justice ofCertainty. It can become authoritarian and forget that laws are madefor people and not people for the laws. The Justice of Certainty issometimes expressed as Retributive Justice.A second form is the Justice ofAdaptabiiity Because there areno universal rules, it is commonly known as situational ethics. TheMeeting Places 13approach is one of cost-benefit analysis, and is popular with the prag-matism of our time. The Justice of Adaptability is sometimes ex-pressed as Distributive Justice. It currently comes under fire in thiskind of news headlines: “A Judicial system that protects criminalsmore than victims.”A third form is the Justice of Vision. This form of Justice judgesneither by universal truths nor by cost-benefit analysis but by settingup a vision of the Ideal. Ideals, while not achievable, can provide forpositive motivation as Robert Browing said: ‘Ah, but one’s reachshould exceed one’s grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” But there is alsoa dark side. A person or a group or a movement can use their idealto tyrannize those who do not subscribe to their ideal. Abuse may beheaped upon those who question their ideal. Ideals and visions canbe turned into absolutes. An example of this is in today’s need to bepoliticaliy correct. As a word of caution about ideals and visionssomeone has said: “The Neurotic person builds castles in the sky,the Psychotic person lives in them, the Psychiatrist collects rent fromboth.” The Justice of Vision is referred to also as /<Ve5//5//c Justice.All three forms of Justice, Certainty, Adaptability and Vision, havetheir own validity and integrity in making decisions. But they all havetheir dark side. When any one of them is absolutized, we may losesight of the many ambiguities in life. And we may create a legalismthat breeds prejudice and injustice. The Church employs these threeforms of Justice in its attempt to instruct and to act ethically, and inits attempt to practice and preserve justice. Both Judiciary and Churchare involved in the pursuit of these basic forms of justice. It is theirsecond meeting place.There is a third meeting place for Judiciary and Church. It is inthe search for a new paradigm for doing Justice, a paradigm whichcan permeate our traditional forms of Justice and simultaneouslyreach beyond with humanizing and wholistic perspectives. Such aparadigm would in fact be a “paradigm shift”. In a paradigm shiftyou get “the rest of the story”. You get the different perspective. Youhave a change of understanding of the situation.For example, a sophisticated well-dressed gentleman is riding onthe bus, reading his morning paper on his way to work. At the nextstop, on comes a father with his five children totally out of control.They run up and down the aisle, scream and climb over the seats14 Consensusand grab the newspaper, creating havoc and chaos. The father, tuned-out, seems totally indifferent. After a few moments of watching thischaos the gentleman turns to the father of these children and says:“Sir. Would you please keep your children under control.” With thatthe father shakes his head and comes back to earth. “1 am sorry, 1 doneed to control my children, but 1 don’t know how to handle them.You see we just left the hospital. My wife died. Their mother is dead.1 guess they don’t know how to handle it either. I’ll do what 1 can tocontrol them. Suddenly, the gentleman has a paradigm shift. Hereceives the rest of the story. He begins to see the whole picture.And the paradigm shift is revising his judgment and response.Such a paradigm shift in doing Justice is called Creative Justice.Creative Justice looks for the rest of the story. It begins to see thewhole story. Creative Justice seeks the perspective of the whole pic-ture. The Creative Justice paradigm sees the situation with wholistic,humanized understanding.Volumes have been unable to communicate Creative Justicecompletely. Nevertheless 1 will try to offer a brief glimpse. CreativeJustice means establishing policies, procedures, laws, customs, re-lationships and decisions which facilitate the greatest amount ofempowerment and the greatest amount of compassion in any givensituation. Let me illustrate with reference to the individual and thecommunity.A task force in the Gnited States stated: “The lack of self-esteemis central to most personal and social ills plaguing our nation, as weapproach the end of the 20th century.” In response to this lack ofself-esteem our society has pressed for individual rights — humanrights! The bright side of this is the empowerment of the individual.The dark side of this is the fostering of the anti-social attitude, “I’vegot to be me”, and the narcissistic demand, “1 want it all now”. Some-one said to me recently: “If our narcissistic life-style escalates it willsoon come to the point where we won’t speak to one another with-out our lawyer present.”Dr. Donald Morgenson in a recent article in the Kitchener Recordwrote: “1 firmly believe in self-esteem as important, but somethinghas happened to self-esteem. Whereas once it was defined as asense of personal efficacy, when we speak of it today we mean merelyfeeling good about oneself... In the past our self-esteem was builtMeeting Places 15fronn a sense of caring for others.”A sense of caring for others! A sense of compassion! CreativeJustice calls for situations not only with the greatest amount of em-powerment, but also with the greatest amount of compassion. Em-powered individuals need situations to experience a sense of com-passion and they need situations which create communities wherepersons value and listen to each other, relate to and protect eachother. By the same accounting, a community, group or movementseeking only its own empowerment will inevitably become, as Dr.Morgenson says, “cultures of contempt”, where communities, likeindividuals, treat each other with contempt. Yet communities, likeindividuals, need to receive and to give the greatest amount of em-powerment and simultaneously the greatest amount of compassionto enact Creative Justice.The Church understands itself as a community, a communion ofsaints, a community of empowerment and compassion, becausesaints are sinners being transformed, and that’s Creative Justice!Creative Justice does not eliminate Retributive, Distributive or Ideal-istic Justice, but it redeems them from becoming ends in themselves.Creative Justice is not without risk and vulnerability, but it createshope for the future. Creative Justice is “possibility thinking”.Creative Justice has been and is being practiced in our Courts inone form or another. Our Judiciary is to be highly commended forthis venture and vision. But some forces in our society are clamoringfor “zero tolerance” and “guilty until proven innocent”. Therefore,wisdom, imagination and courage need to be recruited and revivedin support of the redeeming potential of Creative Justice. CreativeJustice is where God’s will and God’s love meet and where Judiciaryand Church meet.A judicial friend of mine from Western Canada wrote recently tome: “Creative Justice started with Solomon; it doesn’t have to stopnow. It requires creative minds, a truly independent Judiciary andlong term public acceptance.”Creative Justice is a special meeting place for Judiciary andChurch.16 ConsensusOf the three meeting places for Pastoral Care between Judiciaryand Church, creative justice appears as a particularly special place.As a meeting place for contextual Pastoral Care it has a two -foldconcern. Pastoral Care has a concern for persons, both offenderand offended, who are or have been in the context of our JudicialSystem. Pastoral Care ministers to persons in context. Furthermore,contextual Pastoral Care is concerned also that the methods, proce-dures, laws and decisions of our Justice system practiced by theJudiciary will maximize the healing and health of both offender andoffended through Creative Justice.Notes^ John Patton, Pastoral Care in Context: An Introduction to PastoralC5/"e (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993).^ Stephen R. Covey. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Fireside:Simon S Shuster, 1990) 30-31.

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