Jesuits' Answer to a Generic Chaplaincy. What Can Ignatian Spirituality Offer to the Contemporary Hospital Pastoral Care?
Father Jaroslaw Mikuczewski, St. Louis University
The reality in which we live in today's western society is complex and multilayered. To understand some of its characteristics, we need to look through the correct epistemological lenses. It is only with such an "assisted viewing" that reality can be correctly named. Sigmund Bauman, polish-born sociologist, and philosopher who dedicated much of his academic work to analyze and critique the nature of modern liberal societies can be for us at particular help in this task.
In his texts, among which most prominent are, Modernity and the Holocaust and Liquid Modernity, he argues that the modern industrial and bureaucratic paradigms transform society and the way people understand their commitments to each other. Eventually, as Bauman notices, a modern social organization becomes more and more institutional and less communitarian.
This wave of modernity and bureaucracy on its marching ahead does not spare any field of human's activity. After this, what remains, is a series of supposedly new entities; new structures, new approaches, new mentalities, and even new religiosity. It looks as though there is no way back from this mentality, and whether we accept it or not, we have to live with it.
In this modern industrial and bureaucratic landscape, health care, like a lens, focuses all tensions and challenges related to this reality. Patients and doctors are trapped in this system, forced to act according to new principles. In a particularly challenging position seems to be a hospital pastoral care, forced to operate within a new general spirituality mode. Modernity's paradigms of efficiency and efficacy transform pastoral care into the market product.
In this reality, religion and spirituality are understood in a purely pragmatic and materialistic way, as a matter which can be manipulated according to the desired standard of usefulness. Consequently, a hospital pastoral care is treated, and applied like a “pain killer,” adjustable and effective to everyone no matter what their religious or spiritual identity is if any they have. The prime task of this kind of care is to secure a patient's spiritual well-being, by applying some miraculous, universally applicable and efficient tools.
In my presentation, I will argue that pastoral care based on Ignatian spirituality can be an alternative to the superficial, modernistic and bureaucratic model of a generic chaplaincy. I will also point out, how the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola provides specific tools for ministry with the sick. During my presentation I will discuss three main aspects.
The first one would be a current social context and the way how modernistic and bureaucratic ideas have fundamentally altered the way how institutions operate, in particular hospitals, and also how the model of pastoral care has been changed. Second, I will focus on the main characteristics of Ignatian Spirituality. Third, I will describe how these elements of Ignatian Spirituality, can be used in pastoral ministry in a hospital setting.
In his texts, among which most prominent are, Modernity and the Holocaust and Liquid Modernity, he argues that the modern industrial and bureaucratic paradigms transform society and the way people understand their commitments to each other. Eventually, as Bauman notices, a modern social organization becomes more and more institutional and less communitarian.
This wave of modernity and bureaucracy on its marching ahead does not spare any field of human's activity. After this, what remains, is a series of supposedly new entities; new structures, new approaches, new mentalities, and even new religiosity. It looks as though there is no way back from this mentality, and whether we accept it or not, we have to live with it.
In this modern industrial and bureaucratic landscape, health care, like a lens, focuses all tensions and challenges related to this reality. Patients and doctors are trapped in this system, forced to act according to new principles. In a particularly challenging position seems to be a hospital pastoral care, forced to operate within a new general spirituality mode. Modernity's paradigms of efficiency and efficacy transform pastoral care into the market product.
In this reality, religion and spirituality are understood in a purely pragmatic and materialistic way, as a matter which can be manipulated according to the desired standard of usefulness. Consequently, a hospital pastoral care is treated, and applied like a “pain killer,” adjustable and effective to everyone no matter what their religious or spiritual identity is if any they have. The prime task of this kind of care is to secure a patient's spiritual well-being, by applying some miraculous, universally applicable and efficient tools.
In my presentation, I will argue that pastoral care based on Ignatian spirituality can be an alternative to the superficial, modernistic and bureaucratic model of a generic chaplaincy. I will also point out, how the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola provides specific tools for ministry with the sick. During my presentation I will discuss three main aspects.
The first one would be a current social context and the way how modernistic and bureaucratic ideas have fundamentally altered the way how institutions operate, in particular hospitals, and also how the model of pastoral care has been changed. Second, I will focus on the main characteristics of Ignatian Spirituality. Third, I will describe how these elements of Ignatian Spirituality, can be used in pastoral ministry in a hospital setting.