Church for the sake of the people" is the guideline that is applied to the therapy of the church in this lecture. This sets a premise that does not need to be justified in detail in terms of its validity. In the Christian faith, we refer to a God who became man in Jesus Christ (John 1:14; Phil 2:7). This incarnation of God took place, as we pray in the Great Creed, "propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem", for us humans and for our salvation. This corresponds to the postulate that Jesus formulated for the organisation of all practices and expressions of faith: "The Sabbath is for man, not man for the Sabbath." (Mark 2:27) If the church is to be the community of faith that bears witness to the God of Jesus Christ, then this fundamental principle must also apply to the church itself: The church is there for man, not man for the church.
But does this premise really represent something familiar and valid in our current church thought patterns and practices? Maxims and postulates that are constantly heard and read in the real church business suggest otherwise: "contribute to the life of the church"; "vibrant church"; "serve the church"; "commit to the church"; "give the church a future"; "co-operate in the church"; "love the church"; "give the church credibility". All of these topoi are a reversal of the purpose-means relationship: In them, the church itself operates as the purpose of church action; people are supposed to be or do something for the sake of the church. If you consider how widely, emphatically and - not infrequently - with what penetrating pressure of conscience such maxims are still imposed on people today as requirements of their life of faith, then there is good reason to ask yourself whether you really agree with the premise "church for the sake of people".
Alfred Delp's admonition
A few months before his execution by the National Socialists on 2 February 1945 in Berlin-Plötzensee, the Jesuit Alfred Delp formulated a final, last warning to his church. According to him, whether the church finds its way to the people depends "decisively on the return of the churches to 'diakonia': to the service of humanity. And to a service that is determined by the needs of humanity, not by our taste or the consuetudinarianism of a church community, however tried and tested. 'The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve' (Mk 10:45). You only have to call the various realities of ecclesial existence under this law and measure them against this statement to know enough. No one will believe in the message of salvation and the Saviour as long as we have not bloodied ourselves in the service of physically, psychologically, socially, economically, morally or otherwise sick people ... I said 'return to diakonia'. What I mean by this is the commitment to people in all their situations with the intention of helping them to master them, without subsequently filling out a column or section somewhere. By this I mean following and wandering after people, even in the most extreme forlornness and uprightness, in order to be with them precisely and especially when they are surrounded by forlornness and uprightness." (Delp, Alfred: The fate of the churches; in: Delp, Alfred: Gesammelte Schriften. Volume IV: From prison. Ed. by Roman Bleistein, Frankfurt a. M. 1984, 318-323, 319f.)
We can assume that Alfred Delp was not concerned with any kind of momentary idea in this existentially pressing situation. He probably saw his admonition more as a requirement that really mattered, the fulfilment of which would determine the Church's right to exist, but also people's position in relation to this Church.
The Delp quote is used everywhere to draw attention to the connection between the church and diakonia and to turn the social acceptance of diakonia into a regained acceptance of the church among the people. However, Alfred Delp was not concerned with a return of people to the institutional church, but with a return of the churches to diakonia. The demand for conversion applies to the church, or more precisely: to the responsible forces in the church. They must realign themselves with the purpose of a church that calls upon the God of Jesus Christ.
The church, with its structures, its practices, its institutions, its teachings and its ministries, must once again place itself at the service of the people. In service to people - not just to Christians, not just to Catholic or Protestant church members, not just to the committed and like-minded, not just to the agreeable, enthusiastic and simple believers - but to radically all people. The "for all people" is an inescapable theological norm if it is true that God turns to all people with his will of salvation. The attempt to limit God's salvation to certain people, e.g. through a "for many", is ultimately a blasphemous act; an act that violates the nature of God as the infinite. And: the church must allow itself to be taken into a service for people that is truly selfless, a service that does not incidentally or covertly aim at any purpose or interest in favour of the church - no missionary effect of church loyalty, no motivation for congregational commitment, no plausibilisation of doctrines of faith, not even a justification for the existence of the church in society. The church must - in the words of Delp - serve the people without subsequently filling out a column or section for itself. This is what is meant by "return to diakonia".
Pastoral care and diaconia
However, the church's selfless service for people is not limited to dedicated diaconia or caritas, i.e. Christian-motivated aid in favour of people in need. It also takes place in what is commonly called "pastoral care". Pastoral care" is one of the most frequently used but least clarified terms in pastoral theology. The difficult term "soul" in particular proves to be a stumbling block, because it is not possible to determine exactly what the soul actually is. In my opinion, however, this very vagueness of the term "pastoral care" should be preserved because it fulfils an important function. For example, when we use the phrase "this is a soul of a person" or "this is a faithful soul", we do not mean a specific part of this person by "soul", but their whole being, their personality. "Soul" serves us as an auxiliary term for something that cannot be precisely determined: that which makes a person an individual person; for the fact that a person is not simply the sum of their individual determinable parts (body, mind, psyche, feelings ...), but "more than their parts", a unique person.
Precisely because the term "soul" cannot be precisely determined, it is suitable for indicating their non-determinability, their incommensurability when talking about people. Pastoral care, the "care of the soul", can then be understood as the care of a person's humanity, as the care that this specific person can become and be an independent, individual, unavailable personality. Formulated a little more abstractly, pastoral care means acting in accordance with the Christian faith and based on professional expertise to help people cope with their life's journey. The aim of assistance ("care") is to enable people to bring together the many parts of their person - body, mind, emotions, relationships, psyche - to form a coherent personality ("soul") and to live as this personality in an individually fulfilling and socially responsible way.
I believe it is in the spirit of Alfred Delp to extend his admonition to the postulate of "returning to pastoral care and diaconia". Understood in this way, pastoral care is the accompaniment of people in all their situations with the intention of helping them to master them; the pursuit and pursuit of even the outermost lostnesses and upsets of people in order to be with them precisely and precisely when they are surrounded by lostness and upsets.
The church's turning away from pastoral care and diaconia
Talk of a "return to pastoral care and diaconia" presupposes that the church has previously turned away from pastoral care and diaconia. By this turning away, I do not mean the process in which many forms of pastoral and diaconal care have shifted away from conventional congregations to specialised professions and institutions such as hospitals, care facilities, forms of therapy or counselling centres. This professionalisation and institutionalisation is proving to be quite simply necessary in many areas, as it is the only way to provide help for affected people in the required professional quality.
What I am criticising here as a "turning away from pastoral care and diaconia" is the continuing tendency for an increasing proportion of the church's pastoral staff to be forced by the structural changes in the church to disengage from these fields of practice or to deliberately distance themselves from direct, concrete tasks in pastoral care and diaconia.
The large pastoral structures
For several decades now, the formation of large pastoral structures ("pastoral care units", "parish groups", "pastoral areas", etc.) has been taking over church resources. It is well known that these new pastoral structures are seen as an inevitable reaction to the so-called "priest shortage", which means that not nearly all existing parishes can be staffed by a priest. A consistent element of the relevant concepts is to locate the full-time pastoral staff at the level of the larger structural unit. The direct assignment of pastors to a parish is no longer necessary. The latter is probably the measure that most clearly demonstrates the new pastoral structures as a departure from pastoral care and diaconia. This is because pastoral practice loses its decisive, indispensable basis, namely its closeness to the world, the relationship of pastoral workers to the everyday reality of people's lives.
With reference to the overburdening of pastoral staff, many leaders see the "ideal solution" in recruiting as many believers as possible as volunteers in the parishes so that they can take on as many pastoral tasks as possible themselves. In return, professional pastoral workers should see it as their task to recruit, empower and support volunteers at a meta-level. In this mixed situation, a pattern of explanations solidifies into a seemingly unavoidable requirement: pastoral workers have less and less time for pastoral and diaconal tasks; it is up to the faithful to accept that pastoral and diaconal forms of practice - e.g. bereavement counselling, home visits, care for the dying, visits to the sick, charitable assistance, fixed office hours - are significantly reduced or no longer offered at all.
In a pastoral area of the archdiocese of Paderborn, for example, the head priest one day decreed in an apodictic tone: "From now on, there will be no more requiems for deaths." In the process, the empirical diagnosis of the shortage of priests shifts to a conceptual principle of pastoral staff. A basic tone of pastoral larmoyance creeps in. Many members of the pastoral professions give the impression that it is they who are suffering the most from this situation. The gesture that they have no time is becoming a characteristic habit of many pastoral workers.
The problem of turning away from pastoral care and diaconia is therefore not actually the extent to which pastoral staff are objectively overburdened. Rather, it lies in the fact that the subjective but collectively guiding awareness is spreading in the church that the concrete pastoral and diaconal work in direct encounters with people is no longer a natural task of the pastoral professions.
The unwillingness to provide pastoral care and diaconia
I have been working in academic theology and dealing with theology students for 42 years. Throughout this time, I have observed a trend, especially among prospective priests, that many of them aspire to this profession but decidedly do not want to carry out pastoral and certainly not diaconal activities. They dream themselves into a clericalistically deformed priestly fantasy from the outset and see this profession primarily as an opportunity to savour this priestly fantasy for themselves. They consider it incompatible with their sacred dignity to deal with worldly concerns such as everyday life problems and social needs.
Unfortunately, the tendency towards a decided unwillingness to provide pastoral care and diaconia is evident among members of all pastoral professions, but tends to be more common among younger people. It is a phenomenon that has so far been largely taboo. But it must be named (even at the risk of causing outrage) - out of responsibility towards the people who have to deal with these "pastors" who are unwilling to provide pastoral care and diaconia, who are disappointed by them or who suffer from them.
Certainly not all, but a considerable number of pastoral workers are very willing to adapt to the mechanisms of the new pastoral structures. The fact that these dissolve their direct assignment to a parish offers them the opportunity to detach themselves from the immediate pastoral care fields on site and release themselves from their own concrete pastoral care and diaconal activities.
Some people are happy with this gesture as they hope to establish themselves at the higher structural levels with supposedly more important tasks. The direct work in pastoral care and diaconia is considered unattractive, too lowly, too inferior, too unprestigious. It is not suitable for making a name for oneself in the public eye; pastoral care and diaconia require discretion and it is not possible to place success stories in the media about pastoral conversations. Pastoral care and diaconia are not suited to succeeding in the established circles of society or the church and recommending oneself for higher office; one has to get "dirty", to enter into the impurities, fractures and shadows of everyday realities of life. Pastoral care and diaconia are not suitable for the quick satisfaction of one's own need for success; they are exhausting, often frustrating and their effects are not easily predictable. And finally, the work in pastoral care and diaconia is simply exhausting; it often places excessive demands on the person of the pastor; it requires a high level of professional and personal competence. Some counsellors feel - usually instinctively and unacknowledged - that they are not really up to the demands of this profession and look for harmless ways to get rid of them.
In my opinion, this tabooed but unmistakable unwillingness to engage in concrete pastoral and diaconal work among many members of the pastoral professions is one of the reasons why a meta-apparatus of planning departments, projects, project staff, coordination centres, committees, organisational consultants and the like has been able to proliferate to an irresponsible extent in many German dioceses - because many would rather indulge in these functions of conceptual work than expose themselves to direct encounters with people in need of help.
A few years ago, a then young pastor declared with unwavering self-assurance: "The church still expects the pastor to be there. But the priest is not in the village and he is not coming back" (Krems, Sebastian quoted from: Must the church return to the village? (https://www.katholisch.de/aktuelles/
aktuelle-artikel/muss-die-kirche-zuruck-ins-dorf - accessed on 31 July 2015). And another church actor seconded him: "There are numerous competitors on the market [i.e. pastoral care - H. H.]: They offer 'free baptisms', they marry and bury, they advise and accompany, they comfort and heal - and often even better (i.e. according to today's criteria: more individualised) than church pastoral workers." (Leven, Benjamin: gd Editorial, in: Gottesdienst 49 (2015) Heft 12, 1.) Do those who say this realise what they are saying? If church officials categorically declare the presence of pastoral workers on site to be over and if they consider the exercise of pastoral care and diaconia by the pastoral staff of the church to be no longer necessary because the non-church "competitors" do it "better" anyway, then this is a shocking bankruptcy.
The need to return to pastoral care and diaconia
On 22 July 2016, an 18-year-old German-Iranian killed nine people in a rampage at the Olympia shopping centre in Munich. A report on the incident in the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper stated succinctly: "And counsellors were needed." This should give us in the church pause for thought for several reasons. Even a major secular daily newspaper - one of those media that are notoriously defamed by traditionalist forces in the church as secularised and anti-church - is so familiar with the term "pastoral care" or "pastoral worker" that it uses it as a matter of course, without further explanation. The term is understandable to the general public. The same applies to the terms "Diakonie" or "Caritas". Moreover, the author of the report obviously used the term "counsellor" in an emphatically positive sense. The newspaper and society therefore consider it a good thing and are happy that there are counsellors who provide help in such a situation.
It is true that normal situations of pastoral care and diakonia are not so sensational. But the fact that pastoral care is experienced as necessary and helpful even in such extreme situations suggests that it is generally recognised and, where necessary, desired by the vast majority of society even in normal life situations. A return to pastoral care and diaconia is therefore necessary because they are needed in society, because they are necessary. Three considerations seem important to me here.
Identity of the pastoral professions
Assisting people with pastoral care and diaconal help is the essential task of pastoral workers - namely the concrete pastoral and diaconal work in direct encounters with people. This is quite simply the identity of the pastoral professions, especially the priestly profession. Pastoral workers have chosen this profession (for nothing else); they are employed by the Church for this activity (for nothing else); these tasks (for nothing else) justify the acceptance of the Church in society and its privileged status in society. This does not negate the fact that, for example, liturgy, sacraments or preaching are also part of the essential activities of the church. But the exercise of these activities always loses its theological coherence where the obligation to pastoral care and diaconia is denied in their favour.
The pastoral professions must not make the withdrawal of pastoral care and diaconia or their delegation to the faithful the maxim of their self-image. They would then - in a fictitious analogy - resemble bakers who declare: We bakers have to restructure our profession; due to the workload in the organisation of our businesses, we no longer have time for direct bakery work; the customers now have to bake bread themselves in voluntary work and thus contribute to the life of the bakeries. The comparison may sound absurd. But it is the same absurdity that people feel when members of the pastoral professions are no longer prepared to provide direct pastoral care and diaconia and pass this on to the faithful volunteers. No profession in the world can afford such a self-liquidation of its professionalism.
We need a pastoral culture in which, for example, a priest is naturally active in open youth work without even asking whether this is a priestly task; in which, for example, a pastoral worker visits elderly people as a matter of course without having to justify why she does not leave this to volunteers.
Responsibility towards the people affected
The return of pastoral professions to concrete pastoral and diaconal work is dictated by responsibility towards the people concerned. They have every right in the world to expect the church to provide professional support and assistance. This is all the more true as pastoral care and diaconia are indeed highly demanding and responsible professional activities. Bereavement counselling, life counselling, ritual celebrations, care for the dying, visiting the sick, interpreting everyday experiences, working with children and young people, dealing with conflicts, providing social assistance, supporting disabled people, intervening in families, partnership counselling, helping in acute crisis situations, caring for those in need of care - all of these tasks demand professional competence, often involve difficult challenges and professional misconduct can cause serious harm to the people concerned. Conversely - and this is also often overlooked in theology and the church - pastoral and diaconal relationships demand a very high level of trust from the people concerned. They themselves - not the counsellors - are the ones who have to (to put it bluntly) "let their trousers down"; in other words, they have to show the most personal, often stressful or shameful parts of their lives and must therefore be able to rely on them being handled discreetly, carefully and with the best possible professional competence.
The church counts pastoral care and diaconia among its fields of practice and presents itself to society with the claim that it can fulfil these demanding tasks in a professional, high-quality and trustworthy manner. In doing so, it enters into a relationship with all those people who make use of its services. However, as soon as the church initiates such a relationship, it assumes responsibility towards the people concerned. As soon as church personnel appear and act towards people in the role of pastor or helper, any dilettantism, any arbitrariness, any convenient delegation to people who cannot carry out this activity with certainty at a good professional level is prohibited.
If, for example, a volunteer can provide a professional visiting service in a retirement home, then that is a good thing. But it is good because it is good for the elderly - and not because the visiting service is provided on a voluntary basis. Taking this to heart requires responsibility towards the people concerned. Because the work in pastoral care and social welfare must serve these people - not the volunteers or their full-time mentors. Against the hypertrophic propagation of volunteerism in the church and against the thoroughly questionable praise of volunteerism, because it is a sand in the eyes, it must be stated clearly and unequivocally: Volunteering is not an end in itself. Voluntary work must also fulfil its responsibility towards the people concerned. And if it fails to do so, it must be stopped.
The church's obligation to society
Returning to pastoral care and diaconia is ultimately a duty of the church towards society as a whole. Here in Germany at least, the church has entered into a very specific, close arrangement with the state: The state supports the church in financial, structural and legal terms because it considers its professional services to be significant and necessary for society as a whole; in return, the church undertakes to provide these services. Particularly with regard to the church's social work and pastoral activities, this context of conditions is repeatedly cited to justify both the state's support and the church's social presence.
There is an unwritten agreement: The vast majority of society is in favour of the church providing pastoral care and social support in certain situations in life. Conversely, it seems justified that the church receives financial and other resources from the general state resources - far beyond the dedicated church tax. Among other things, they are used for theological and pastoral training, the upkeep of the many church institutions, the subsidisation of practical fields and, to a certain extent, the remuneration of church staff. Funds that are generated and provided by society as a whole are therefore used to organise pastoral care and diaconia.
Church leaders repeatedly legitimise this support of the church for society as a whole by referring to the high professional demands of pastoral and diaconal tasks and the high professional quality with which the church fulfils these for the benefit of society as a whole. Opinions can differ on such a link between church and state or society. But if the church gets involved, it must honour the agreement made in the process as far as possible.
By turning away from pastoral care and diaconia as described, on the other hand, they do so with a disconcerting lack of concern. Imagine if doctors were told that the health policy framework had developed unfavourably for them, so that they felt compelled to have medical treatment carried out by volunteers, but that health insurance should continue to exist and guarantee doctors' remuneration. That would be downright grotesque. But this is exactly what those church officials do who are happy to accept that pastoral care and diaconia are largely financed by the community as a whole, but who at the same time declare that they can no longer perform these tasks themselves and must transfer them to the local faithful.
A final story: the rescue centre
Once upon a time there was a small, miserable rescue station on a dangerous coast. The building was little more than a hut, but the people of the rescue service were on constant watch and ventured out tirelessly, day and night, regardless of their own lives, to rescue shipwrecked people. Many of the rescuers and other local people were happy to sacrifice time, money and energy to support the station. New boats were bought and new crews were trained. The small station grew and prospered.
Those responsible for the rescue centre no longer liked the poor and ill-equipped building. The rescued people needed a more comfortable place as their first refuge. The storage facilities were therefore replaced with proper beds and the building was equipped with better furniture. However, this made the rescue station increasingly popular with the men as a place to stay; they made themselves even more comfortable as it served as a kind of clubhouse. Fewer and fewer members of the rescue service were willing to go on rescue missions. So they hired their own crew for the lifeboats. Nevertheless, the emblem of the rescue service still adorned the rooms everywhere, and a model of a large lifeboat hung from the ceiling of the room where the first day of a new club member was usually celebrated.
Around this time, a large ship foundered off the coast and the sailors who had been hired returned with whole boatloads of freezing, soaked and half-drunk people. Chaos reigned in the beautiful clubhouse. The management committee therefore had outdoor shower cubicles built immediately afterwards so that the shipwrecked people could be thoroughly cleaned before entering the clubhouse.
At the next meeting, there was a dispute among the members. Most wanted to stop the rescue service as it was unpleasant and a hindrance to normal club operations. Some, however, argued that saving lives was the primary task and that the club also called itself a "lifesaving centre". They were quickly overruled. They were told that they could open their own rescue centre somewhere else. And so they did.
The years went by and the new station changed just like the first one. It became a clubhouse and a third rescue centre was founded. But here too, history repeated itself. If you visit this coast today, you will find a considerable number of exclusive clubs. It is still the doom of many ships; only most of the shipwrecked drown. (Wedel, Theodore Otto: Evangelism - the Mission of the Church to Those Outside Her Life, in: The Ecumenical Review, Vol. 6 (1), October 1953, 19-25 - German translation according to: Peter Bleeser (ed.): Geschichten für Sinndeuter, Düsseldorf 1981, 23-25).
