Pastoral Relationship with People with Intellectual ... - Theses

272values of justice and peace. 651 As Swinton claims, from a mental healthperspective, the very act of ‘being with’ those who have been historicallyoppressed is of itself an act of liberation. 652 It is a ‘being with’ which, whilstcertainly not dismissive of pastoral care as action, firstly places the focus onrelationship rather than task. 653It is also an act of friendship because friends don’t have to do anything torealize their friendship. 654 Solidarity and strength can be found in the one who issimply committed to the other as a friend. Such commitment contains a liberatingdimension when considered in contrast to the prevailing medicalised mode ofinstitutional relationship. It dares to value the whole person and not just theobjectified medical identity.In terms of developing a liberating model of pastoral care for people withintellectual disability this point is invaluable because it accords value in terms ofwho they are rather than their limited cognitive capacity. It also acknowledges thesocio-political location in which the caring occurs, thus accounting for the effectof place upon the lives of those who engage in pastoral relationship. It alsodescribes the need for the pastoral carer to divest himself or herself of all thatmay prevent the carer from being fully attentive to the agenda of the other.7.1.4 EmbraceThis is a pastoral model originally authored by liberation theologianMiroslav Volf in his volume, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Explorationof Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation. Against the radical exclusionarynature of ‘ethnic otherness,’ 655 he develops a four-part pastoral process called‘Embrace’ which is defined as “the will to give ourselves to others and ‘welcome’them, to readjust our identities to make space for them, ... prior to any judgementabout others, except that of identifying them in their humanity." 656 It is at thepoint of ‘identification of humanity’ that this model bears application to those‘medicalised others’ who are the focus of this extended reflection.The process of embracing is thus described:651 Pattison, A Critique of Pastoral Care, 99.652 Swinton, Resurrecting the Person, 22.653 O'Connor, Thomas. "Ministry without a Future: A Pastoral Care Approach to Patientswith Senile Dementia." The Journal of Pastoral Care 46, no. 1 (1992): 5-12, 12.654 Swinton, Resurrecting the Person, 190.655 Volf, Exclusion and Embrace, 57-92.656 ibid., 29.