Early in 2002, the Center's librarian forwarded an email to me. Its author, Arthur Dobrin, a pastor on Long Island, wanted to know whether we might be interested in publishing a paper he had written on the ethics of pastoral counseling. I wrote back that I was interested enough to read the paper. I made no promises but recalled that some of the better issues of Perspectives had come from letters like his-and that I was then looking for an idea for the Fall 2001 issue, something that would allow me to bring Perspectives' publication schedule back in line with the calendar so that I could gracefully resign as editor after 15 years in that office.

Dobrin sent the paper a few days later. Though much too long for Perspectives, the paper raised some questions I had never considered. Here, I thought, was the topic I was looking for-and someone to help me quickly recruit the three other writers that would complete the issue. I told Dobrin my plan. He agreed. We began well enough. Within a few weeks, he had condensed his long paper into a piece suited to Perspectives. We then began contacting clergy he knew.

Such A Long Way
At first we sought "diversity." Dobrin's first list (February 1, 2002) was wonderful: Baha'i, Buddhism (Mahaya and Theravada), Confucianism, Jainism, Shintoism, Sikhism, Taoism, Vodoun, Wiccan, and so on. For most of these religions, Dobrin had the name of at least one potential writer (someone who had contributed to a religious reader he had put together for a class at Hofstra University). But soon we began to learn more about religion. The destruction of the World Trade Center seemed to have made Islam's imams shyer than they might otherwise have been; the sex scandal seemed to have had a similar effect on the Catholic clergy. When Dobrin contacted the Jain on his list, he was informed that Jams (like Quakers) do not have clergy; hence, they do not have pastoral counseling. (His Jain was "merely a scholar.") Some clergy simply reported no ethical issues; hence, nothing to write about. There was also a more general discovery: clergy tend to be quite busy, have little inclination to write about the counseling they do, and may even feel that they should not write about the counseling they do because what goes on in counseling should be confidential.

I formally resigned as editor on April 1, 2002, promising to complete the issue on pastoral counseling before actually ceasing to work. April 1, a day for practical jokes, may not have been the right day to submit a letter of resignation. The Center's director was slow to appoint my successor. For many months, she simply smiled when I mentioned the subject. April Fool's Day certainly proved inauspicious. Weeks turned into months, months into semesters. More and more, the joke seemed to be on me.

Success At Last
Several times Dobrin and I, now relaxed "email buddies;" were close to giving up. But each time we were, we found one more contributor. Some of those we found eventually evaporated, finding they could not write what they had promised. But, at last, we had three more articles in hand. We did not have the diversity we had hoped for. All our contributors are at least part-time academics (the part of the clergy most likely to write for publication). Two of the four are Christians: Jeffrey Olson, a Mormon bishop, and Russel Burck, a Protestant hospital chaplain; the other two are from religions closely related to Christianity: one, Elliot Dorff, is a rabbi; the other, Dobrin himself, belongs to one of those religious establishments, the Ethical Society, that makes religion so hard to define, what happened when Judaism met Emersonian Transcendentatalism. All four contributors share a conception of pastoral counseling as combining the individualism of ordinary counseling with the special commitments of some community of aspiration. What distinguishes each contributor from the other three are differences in how they, and the religions to which they (respectively) belong, try to solve the ethical problems that their common attempt to combine individualism and community seems to generate.

For Dobrin, the problems are largely practical. Most of his counseling is informal, a matter of exchanges in a hallway after a meeting or over the phone. His counseling is a part of his pastoring. Though a local Ethical Society is an institution quite unlike a Catholic church, especially in its lack of hierarchy and outside regulation, Dobrin's stories of counseling sound much like Catholic stories about the "sacredness of the confessional." Dobrin knows more than it is good to know about some with whom he must work closely and about some about whom those with whom he works closely would like to know. He must keep much of that knowledge secret for years; some of the secrets must die with him. Though knowledge is power, it sometimes comes at a price he would rather not pay; the knowledge can make the job of pastor much harder than it otherwise would be (for example. when one must preside at the funeral of a much beloved member of the congregation whom one knows to have considered himself a murderer).

Bishops, Rabbis, and Chaplains
For Dobrin, pastoral counseling seems to be largely a matter of listening (and keeping confidences). For Bishop Olson, it is a matter of providing guidance. But it is guidance within a community that expects the individual to seek the guidance on their own and to receive it directly from God. Pastoral counseling is a matter of preparing the client to receive guidance. This preparation seems to involve listening much like that Dobrin does and hence, the learning of a great many unpleasant secrets. It also includes making ordinary counseling resources available. But, for Olson, that is not the ethically interesting part of counseling. For him, the problem is to be active enough as a counselor to prepare the way, without being so active as to get in the way. Olson believes himself to have God's help in this; he too receives "impressions." Still, some of his interventions must have given him pause, such as trying to reassure troubled parents by reporting a vision of their children "dressed in white in one of our temples."

For Rabbi Dorff, confidentiality is also an important part of pastoral counseling, but his question is whether a rabbi must adhere to a higher standard of confidentiality than others bound by Judaic law. His answer reveals more about the distinctive way Judaism approaches questions of religious ethics than about any fundamental way rabbis differ from "other pastors" in the handling of secrets. Unlike Mormons, Jews even rabbis have no direct guidance from God. They must look for guidance to the five books of Moses (the Torah), to the ancient commentaries on those books (the Talmud), and to more recent Jewish writing (such as a sixteenth century code of Jewish law). They must interpret specific rules in light of general purposes. They must also take into account contemporary circumstances (such as the rise of professions and the state of secular law). Lawyers will recognize this reasoning. They will also recognize the conclusion: rabbis should adhere to a higher standard of confidentiality than even the high standard Judaic law sets for all Jews, but rabbis must also forgo some opportunities to do good deeds that Judaic law requires other Jews to take advantage of.

Rev. Burck gives us some of the history of pastoral counseling, locating its origins in the absorption of important ideas of psychological counseling into the mainstream of American Protestantism. For Burck, there is a specific profession of pastoral counseling (as well as a more general function represented by the preceding three contributors). This pastoral counseling goes on in offices, as does ordinary psychological counseling. It is nonetheless plainly pastoral, helping clients see their problems within the religious community to which they belong. Often, that is difficult because the counselor does not belong to the precise denomination the client does and small denominational differences can suddenly become important. Some denominations have clear answers to certain questions about baptism, divorce, sexual preference, and so on. To be a member of such a denomination is to have certain moral commitments. How does the counselor combine those commitments with the counselor's commitment not to "judge"?

The Future
Completing this issue is Vivian Weil's long overdue "At The Center." It does not include the announcement that I am retiring as editor, but I have already made that clear. While CSEP searches for the new editor, Perspectives will have a guest editor for the next issue, Ullica Segerstrale. She is a sociologist, well known for her studies of scientists, and Chair of IIT's Social Sciences Department. I look back to my first effort, the December 1986 issue, with general satisfaction in how many interesting topics have been discussed and how many pieces have proved helpful enough to be reprinted.