RESPECT FOR AUTONOMY AND AUTHENTICITY

IN PASTORAL CARE

A qualitative empirical moral–theological study

SUMMARY

A female pastoral worker visits a young woman she knows well. She was involved

in the woman’s marriage preparation, and together they went with the parish

youth group to Taizé. But now the woman, named Fleur, is not doing well. She

hints at committing suicide. �e worker tries to talk her out of it. When the

worker gets home she is afraid that Fleur might kill herself while she is abroad

the coming weekend and she calls Fleur’s family doctor for advice. When she

returns to Fleur and tells her of her consultation with the GP, Fleur is angry at her.

�e worker responds: ‘Okay, you may be angry, but I don’t mind. We’re talking

about human life here. God wants us to live.’ Later the worker escorts Fleur to a

psychologist, with whom they talk about psychiatric treatment. When the start

of this treatment draws near, Fleur hesitates. She asks the worker to end their

pastoral counselling relationship and let her go. �e worker answers: ‘Yes, one

day, but not now.’ In an interview, she explains: ‘I had the feeling God was saying

something to me: do not let her go, and let her feel too that I too do not want to let

her go.’ A�er a blessing for the sick, for which she asked the worker, Fleur is able

to enter treatment. She thanks the worker for her commitment.

�is pastoral case can be read as an example of violating the principle of respect

for personal autonomy. �e pastoral worker should have asked for permis-

sion prior to consulting Fleur’s doctor and should have refrained from doing

so without her consent. When Fleur asked her to end their pastoral counsel-

ling relationship, she should have ended it. Unless Fleur was incompetent, the

worker in this case can be said to have acted in a paternalistic manner. In reality,

the pastoral worker was well aware of the appropriate considerations. In one of

the interviews I had with her as part of my qualitative empirical research, she

said: ‘At that moment, I had the impression that her illness was in�uencing her

(…) I thought: are you responsible enough to ask me to let you go?’ She also

hastened to tell Fleur that she had called Fleur’s doctor the same day. Her main

538 gezien de ander

justi�cation for what she did, however, was not Fleur’s wellbeing in combina-

tion with a potential lack of competence, but her own view of her responsi-

bilities as a pastor and what she believed God wanted of her at that particular

moment and in that particular pastoral relationship. Although she was aware

of overstepping the bounds set by Fleur, she did what she deemed a prudent

pastor should do. �e way in which she did so re�ects this awareness. Ethical

re�ection on the meaning, relevance and scope of the principle of respect for

personal autonomy in a particular practice should take into consideration what

this practice is about, and what kind of relationship there is between practitio-

ners and the persons involved in their practice. And it should look carefully.

* * *

In this dissertation I report on a moral–theological inquiry, which employed

qualitative empirical methods, into autonomy and authenticity as moral goods

in pastoral care. My research question is:

What can we learn from the practices of select parish workers regarding

autonomy and authenticity as moral goods?

In the �rst section, I situate my research, deepen the awareness of the problem,

and sensitise for what I have been looking at and have found. As a border crosser,

I move from one discipline — moral theology — to other disciplines — philo-

sophical ethics, research methodology and practical theology — and back. I do

so, because these other disciplines provide tools and information which cannot

easily be found in my own discipline. Because I cannot simply apply what I �nd

in these other disciplines to my discipline of moral theology, I have to thor-

oughly examine these newly gained insights, inquire into their premises, then

transform and focus them. �erefore I have conducted a number of thorough

surveys in the literature. In the second part of this thesis I report on the empir-

ical part of my research. Being a pastoral worker myself, I have asked several

priests and lay pastoral workers to submit cases from their practice of personal

pastoral care and have interviewed them about these cases. I then analysed the

case descriptions and the transcribed interview texts with the help of the so!-

ware package ATLAS.ti. In the third and �nal section, I link the �ndings of the

empirical part of my research to my literature explorations of the �rst segment.

Chapter 1 is about the discipline in which I work, moral theology, and the

539summary

position I occupy within it. As a theological discipline, moral theology re�ects

on human action from the perspective of God’s relation to people. Because this

kind of ethics is not only applicable for Roman Catholics but rather re�ects and

guides the actions of all men and women, I am in this chapter in discussion

with philosophical ethics. To do justice to the moral–theological insight that all

human faculties have a morally orientating force, and that re�ection on good

and evil has to be aware of what retrospectively and in the moral scope of the

action itself is revealed to be good or evil, I practise in this study a non–conse-

quentialist, heuristic teleological moral theology. I understand ‘moral theology’

as the systematic and critical normative re�ection upon human acting — both

the acting of human persons in the context of their conduct of life and the

acting of social institutions in the context of the ordering of society — from the

point of view of good and bad, right and wrong, humane and inhumane, and

in the light of Christian faith. By ‘non–consequentialist teleological,’ I mean

that actions are considered not only in the light of their consequences, but in

their entirety, that is, with all the elements of bodily posture and movement,

intention, situation, consequences, goals internal to the action etcetera, and

judged and justi�ed in the light of their internal goals and of the ultimate goal

of human life. By ‘heuristic teleological,’ I mean that goals and ends are not

metaphysically given beforehand, de�ned, for example, by the essence of being

human, but have to be discovered by looking closely and critically at the action

under consideration and at what has revealed itself in the action to be (a) good.

In this study, I am interested in a particular professional practice and in the

moral sense of the practitioners as it is formed in and by the practice itself. �e

traditional term for this particular moral sense is practical wisdom, a practical

knowing how to act in speci�c, concrete and o�en complex situations, without

being able to make entirely explicit why at that time one is acting in a partic-

ular way. Because I believe that the morally relevant insights of practitioners

derive their plausibility largely from the fact that they are gained in a practice,

I develop my own view of practice, based on MacIntyre’s understanding of the

term and the criticism his understanding elicited:

A practice consists of a complex, yet coherent set of actions, partly given, partly

�owing from the doing itself, done within a speci�c institutional context by

practitioners and the people regarding whom they act, and managed through

practical wisdom. �ese actions are guided by rules and standards of excel-

lence, established and extended by the community of practitioners inter-

acting with the people regarding whom they act and with society and its social

540 gezien de ander

traditions, that are focused on speci�c goals inherent to the said practice and

are accompanied by a discourse which also provides room for criticism and

transformation.

Because I assume that what matters from a moral perspective is not added to

a world in itself morally neutral but is found in a morally laden world, I speak

in this study of moral goods and not of moral values. A moral good can be

described as: what I as a friend wish to another so that he or she can come to

ful!lment. To be able to understand the connection between moral goods that

we observe and the recognition thereof by acting persons, I use Arto Laitinen’s

elaboration and interpretation of Charles Taylor’s views on strong evaluations

and moral goods. In short, a person’s cognitive–a"ective–conative responses

reveal the goods that are at issue for the person, that is, those goods that he

or she encounters in reality. #e technical term for this view is cultural moral

realism. Besides moral goods — such as justice, respect for the dignity of the

person, and responsibility — there are multiple kinds of goods that from a moral

point of view can be highly relevant in a given context or situation. Examples

of such goods are life, health and mind. #ese cannot be achieved by our free

acting, but do make possible freedom of action or, failing that, impossible. It is

here where I also introduce the term, morally relevant goods.

Chapter 2 is about the way I designed and conducted my research, in partic-

ular the use of qualitative empirical research methods, techniques and strate-

gies. #e use of empirical methods in moral theology is not self–evident and

therefore requires explanation and justi!cation. Moreover, anyone who unre-

$ectively adopts methods from other disciplines runs the risk of losing sight

of the scope of their own discipline. Behavioural sciences are interested in

the behaviour of people in light of e%cient causes and e"ects while in moral

theology — at least of the type that I practise in this study — we are interested

in human acting, the inherent goals of human actions and the motives of

those who act. Ultimately, moral theology is interested in the orientation to

the moral good that is present in the acting itself. I call the kind of research I

perform here, empirically grounded normative ethics. Empirically grounded

normative ethics conceives of reality as morally laden: a reality where good

and evil manifest themselves explicitly, not only by subsequent re$ection.

Moreover, it conceives of practical reason as receptive and concrete meaning

that in concrete situations, practical reason recognises what is a good and

what is a bad.

541summary

As a theological discipline, moral theology — at least as I perceive it

here — focuses on the experiences of real and embodied men and women living

in the world of today as the place where God actively reveals Himself through

His involvement with human beings. At the same time, moral theology also

acknowledges the historical insights gained by our predecessors in the faith

through their lived Gospel experiences. By experience, I mean not only what

Dietmar Mieth calls empirical experience, experience based on processed

perception, but primarily what he calls experiential experience, experience

based on processed intense experiences of certain events or situations and

processed encounters with others who somehow leave an impression. According

to Mieth, experiential experience is mediated by giving a good example, by

recounting one’s own experience of life, remembering it, or showing its poten-

tial for problem solving. Access to this kind of experience can be none other

than an engaged, life–worldly and hermeneutical approach. I extend Mieths

conception of experiential experience to the following two areas: the experience

gained by practitioners in their practice and the use of qualitative empirical

methods in the research into this experience.

Using qualitative empirical research methods, techniques and strategies

in a moral–theological study requires a critical consideration of their origins

and assumptions. Qualitative empirical research is a form of interpretive

understanding of the life–world of social actors and of what they say, do and

experience, paying attention to the preconceptions of the researcher. It has

its philosophical roots in micro–interactionism, phenomenology and herme-

neutics, from where it has its focus on people as individual actors interacting

with other individual actors. �is type of research also acknowledges the life–

world as a horizon for all the experiencing, thinking and knowing of men and

women, and the interpretative understanding of how people live their lives. In

the acting, experiencing, entering into relationships, self–understanding and

expressing themselves of human beings, an indispensible value is placed on

meaning attribution as well as on the communication between them. Knowl-

edge is closely linked to acting and to social processes. �e everyday, concrete

life–world is the reality people are familiar with and of which they have real

knowledge. �is life–world is intersubjectively, socially and communicatively

produced and reproduced, and is in�uenced by social structures and systems

interested in remaining invisible. Human action is inherently meaningful

and calls for an interpretative understanding. With these philosophical roots

however, qualitative empirical research also has a problematic aspect, namely

542 gezien de ander

where too much or even exclusive attention is given to individuals and to

human meaning attribution and construction. In contrast, I want to have an

eye for power di�erences between people and groups of people and to the inter-

ests of established groups and institutions. I also want to uphold that reality is

indeed resistant to meaning attribution and construction and that it is possible

to distinguish between di�erent interpretations in terms of better and worse.In

this study, I associate myself with a certain approach within qualitative empir-

ical research: the so–called grounded theory approach. �is approach aims at

developing empirically grounded theories concerning particular situations or

practices. It simultaneously runs data collection and data analysis, analyses the

empirical data for the purpose of developing theoretical concepts, and not only

of arriving at adequate descriptions, samples purposively and uses constant

comparison of situations, issues, processes, interactions, contexts, etcetera. I

follow a variant of the grounded theory approach that uses a pre–designed theo-

retical framework in an open way. My research is a multiple case study where

the data is collected by eliciting documents from practitioners and interviewing

them regarding these documents. My research is knowledge oriented with

some generalisation intended, primarily for the practice of personal pastoral

care by parish ministers and subsequently for the practice of spiritual care in

institutions, for example. �is involves a form of variation–based generalisation

and receptive generalisation. In my research, I rely on saturation, purposive

sampling, consultation with colleagues — especially my supervisors — and, to

a lesser degree, checking with the participants, as methods of collecting and

analysing my data. In this thesis, I describe the path and decisions I took to help

me arrive at my conclusions.

Chapter 3 involves a deepening of the problem awareness and a sensitising for

what I was looking at and have found, in relation to the practice of personal

pastoral care by parish ministers. Contemporary faith, church and ministry take

place in a late modern society that is the provisional outcome of a radicalised

process of modernisation. In this late modern society, identity is a comprehen-

sive, continuous and re!ective process for which the individual has become

responsible while support from society has largely disappeared. As identity is

increasingly sought for in a coherent and continuous life narrative, pastoral

counselling has become a signi"cant source of support in identity formation.

As an additional problematic element however, the professional identity, words,

and actions of the pastoral practitioner are no longer self–evident. Increasingly,

543summary

professionals in the ministry are dependent on their own personal identity,

integrity and biography. �roughout its history, the practice of personal pastoral

care has always received a historical and situated content. Pastoral care in the

�rst centuries o�ered people assistance with regards to their speci�c needs at

that time. In the sixth century, Gregory the Great drew attention to the pastoral

relationship from the perspective of the pastor — at the same time physician,

ascete and abbot — and his inner self in relation to God. Since the second half of

last century, a variety of pastoral care concepts has been brought into existence

both in theory and in praxis. �is diversity can be divided into three types:

mystagogical, psychological, and contextual concepts. Despite its displacement

by the concept of psyche in the 18th century, I would like to keep the concept of

soul in the discussion. Pastoral care as care of souls concerns the whole person

in all her relations to herself, to the world around her, to what transcends her

world, and to the fullness of life.

Within the framework of sensitisation, with a focus on the late modern

context and the subject of this study, some contemporary concepts of pastoral

care merit further discussion. Narrative concepts of pastoral care do justice to

the fact that pastoral care as support of identity formation should be conducted

narratively to a signi�cant degree, and should also be maximally open to the

emergence of (moral) goods. �e presence approach is developed to accompany

contemporary people in an emptied form and to do justice to the brokenness

in and of their lifes. �is approach also �nds resonance in many parish minis-

ters as something that is, or at least should be, an important quality of their

work. �is approach is about presence: quali�ed closeness and commitment,

a being–with others up to a being–for others. Diagnosis and treatment are not

central, but the concerted e�ort to sensible interpretation, which is biograph-

ical in nature and narratively established. Ethical views of pastoral care give

primary focus to the ethical duty of the pastor: from the Christian perspec-

tive, guiding people in becoming moral subjects by clarifying ethical issues and

moral dilemmas. �e promised, by the pastor attested and in the pastoral rela-

tionship experienced forgiveness of God allows the pastoree to become a subject

that can give an account.

In pastoral professional ethics, the moral quality of the pastoral relationship,

the trust between pastor and pastoree and the acting of the pastor is re�ected

upon. For good pastoral care, a well–formed character, re�ned re�ective capacity

to observe, and well–practised virtues are important. �ere is a morally rele-

vant di�erence in position, knowledge and expertise between the pastor and

544 gezien de ander

the pastoree which designates primary responsibility to the pastor in terms of

managing the relationship, guarding against violent exercitation of power, and

handling con�dential information carefully. From a moral–theological point

of view, the following elements are important: �rstly, accepting the task of

managing the pastoral relationship by the pastor and by the pastoree; secondly,

equality in worth, and within this equality a certain inequality because of posi-

tion and expertise of the pastor; thirdly, the importance of moral discernment,

and, lastly, the importance of spirituality. A pastor can acknowledge, respect

and promote personal autonomy and authenticity of the pastoree as long as it

stays within the orientation on the internal goals of pastoral care. �ese internal

goals are not given in advance but are found in the acting itself of the pastor.

From this discussion of pastoral care and concepts of pastoral care, a picture

emerges of pastoral counselling as a process with a great openness to whatever

emerges. Di�erent external factors and powers exercise their in�uence upon

this process and under this in�uence di�erent processes can occur at any given

time respective of circumstance. As such, what is going on, where the pastor

is required to focus, and where his counselling should lead is never fully clear.

In any case, the pastoral relationship in pastoral care is essential. It serves and

nourishes all the other relationships in which the pastoree participates, espe-

cially his or her relation to God.

Chapter 4 also involves a deepening of the problem awareness and a sensitising

for what I was looking at and have found, in relation to autonomy and authen-

ticity as moral goods. I discuss a series of philosophical, ethical and theological

discussions on various problems in which autonomy and authenticity play an

important role. �is is necessary in order to see how autonomy and authenticity

are concepts that are very broad yet very contextual. In di�erent discussions

and contexts, distinct aspects of autonomy and authenticity come to the fore, in

varying relations to each other. �e words autonomy and authenticity have their

roots in antiquity and have evolved in their meaning even before the beginning

of modernity. Surveying this development, I come to the following provisional

de�nitions of what the concepts of autonomy and authenticity entail:

Autonomy indicates that within the whole to which I belong and that imposes

laws on me in many domains of life, except in relation to a particular life

domain where I have certain freedom, I impose upon myself a law which I

myself put into words. Authenticity indicates that within the whole to which

I belong and that appeals to me, I am the one who acted, is in charge, and

shows myself.

545summary

Both autonomy and authenticity are ideals for the actor himself — I impose a law

on myself, I stand for something — as a claim to others to keep distance — I get

the room to impose a law upon myself or to stand for something. In both cases,

there exists the risk that belonging to a greater whole — given, not chosen — is

pushed to the background. In such an instance, being autonomous would mean:

governing oneself without interference from others, whereas being authentic

would mean: being oneself without reckoning with others.

�rough the development of autonomy into one of the keywords of moder-

nity, three developments can be distinguished: �rstly, the development of

autonomy’s crucial role as the foundation of a modern conception of morality,

particularly by Immanuel Kant; secondly, the formation of modern iden-

tity with autonomy as personal ideal; and thirdly, the demarcation of mutual

rights and duties between citizens and the state in which a defensive notion of

autonomy has come to play a central role. Authenticity is also a historical and

situated value where reason and imagination play a role in relation to historical

reality. In reviewing all these developments, I come to a second preliminary

determination of what the concepts of autonomy and authenticity concern:

Autonomy means: as much as other people, being able to understand what it

means to be a good person and to move myself e�ectively to live accordingly.

�at is what makes me free and provides me with dignity as everyone else. I

may therefore expect other people and the state to respect my dignity and leave

me room to live my own life. I commit myself and in my commitments I search

for freedom. I make my life into something for which I take responsibility, but

I also receive something, including my involvement with others, to which I am

able to relate. I take something upon me, but make sure that I will not succumb

beneath it. Authenticity means: from the beginning I am a�ected and perma-

nently in�uenced by my surroundings and by particular persons around me,

but am also faithful to what concerns me, I take my own life upon myself with

an imagination that is both creative and responsive, that is, with the inex-

haustible ability to develop new visions that are at the same time the expres-

sion of what happens to me and of what I notice in myself and around me.

Only in a very narrow sense, can autonomy be understood as free self–determi-

nation, and authenticity as unrestrained self–development.

�e contextuality of autonomy comes even closer to the fore by discussing

two concrete examples, namely state paternalism and public health. In the latter

context, the principle of respect for someone’s autonomy is sometimes over-

ruled by doubts of the authenticity of that person’s volitions. In late modernity,

546 gezien de ander

authenticity is understood in various ways: as a moral ideal for example, of

which the core is being–true–to–oneself (Charles Taylor), or as a narrative under-

standing of an always situated identity (Alessandro Ferrara). Autonomy and

authenticity exist in a complementary and contradictory relationship to each

other assuming and making each other possible, and mutually reinforcing and

sometimes debilitating each other. Both concepts are intersubjective, dialogical,

and social. Based on the discussion of various discussions, I come to a third

preliminary assessment of what the concepts of autonomy and authenticity

concern:

Autonomy — or rather respect for autonomy — means: as far as I am able in

a particular area of my life to make my own responsible decisions regarding

my involvement with others, I am entitled to make my own choices, even

when those choices impede or even threaten my welfare in the eyes of

others — my fellow citizens, the government, authorities, health care profes-

sionals, institutions — given that those choices are indeed my choices, that

is, choices expressing somehow who I am in conjunction with others, and

who I want to be. Authenticity means, from the perspective of a semi–trans-

parent subject: to be able to relate a narrative about who I am — in relation

to myself and others — and who I want to be — true to myself and to others to

whom I have made commitments — with all its inconsistencies and contra-

dictions, about what has concerned me and still concerns me, about how I

have become and have changed who I am now and who I want to be. In this

narrative, I discover and construct at the same time who I am and who I

want to be, without becoming completely transparant for myself or others. I

can only tell this narrative against the background of what is important for

me, the people around me, the institutional context in which I �nd myself,

and society as a whole. At the same time, I am able to relate myself critically

to that background and can also relate to my self–image and to how I mani-

fest myself to others. In this way, being authentic can be challenging and can

make a person vulnerable, but it is also a source of joy, ful�llment and inner

strength.

In the traditional theological vocabulary, personal autonomy and authenticity,

at least as far as their anthropological meaning is concerned, do not have a

self–evident place. In both concepts, something is addressed that is relatively

new to moral theology, not just freedom, but freedom in relation to the consti-

tutive signi!cance of the subject itself to morality. Di"erent theological tradi-

tions, although not in terms of autonomy and authenticity, have re#ected upon

human subjects who can say ‘I’, who can relate themselves to themselves, to the

547summary

world around them and to what transcends them and their worlds, and who act

and account for themselves. Based on the discussion of three such traditions, I

come to a fourth, theological de�nition of autonomy and authenticity:

From a theological perspective, autonomy and authenticity are related to each

other the same way freedom and truth are related to each other. Autonomy is

the necessary assumption of authenticity and authenticity the ful�llment of

autonomy. Autonomy means knowing how to relate with the whole person to

the determinations of human life and human acting and, within these deter-

minations, the searching for a union with Christ complete with a resoluteness

to the good and a life model of following His example. Authenticity means

responding to the call for a personal relationship with God with the whole

person — a relationship which enables experiences of grace, hope, love, and

forgiveness, and — knowing of the determinacy of the human subject — allows

for responsibility for oneself and for others.

Finally, I discuss a philosophical tradition that is extremely critical to the human

subject and its perceived or claimed autonomy and authenticity. Based on the

ideas of Nietzsche and, in his train of thought, Michel Foucault, it thematises,

both nominally and actually, the wickedness of people and systems, and reveals

that people are o!en classi�ed as super"uous. Instead of being a subject that

posits and rests in itself, the human subject is, both externally and internally, an

uncertain subject, besetted by multiple forms of disciplining, permanent self–

inspection, exercising of power, and self–care. Towards the end, this chapter

results in four conceptual charts that summarise and further investigate the

foregoing discussions and, in the empirical part of my research, help to look at

the cases in a sensitised way.

In Chapter 5, I describe the research design and the data collection. I invited

parish ministers to participate and deliver brief descriptions of cases from their

practice of personal pastoral care. For each participant, I selected two of these

brief case descriptions to be described in detail. With regard to these two cases,

I interviewed the pastor using a specially developed topic list. #e elicited case

description plus the transcribed text of the interview was my research unit.

Ten parish minsters were willing to provide cases and to be interviewed about

their case descriptions: priests and lay pastoral workers, men and women, from

di$erent dioceses in the Netherlands. #e way I recruited them and what I asked

of them resulted in a particular selection of workers. #ey shared the conviction

548 gezien de ander

that personal pastoral care was an important part of their vocation and job

and they made time for it, valued re�ection upon and research into it, that

were willing to allow a researcher to explore their own practice and to engage

in discussion about it. Based on the nineteen cases I �nally documented, the

following picture emerged. Parish workers deal with many di�erent situations

and o�en take on a great deal of work: burnout, life a�er the death of a partner

or a divorce, borderline cases, family relationships, adultery, asylum seekers,

suicide. �ey make themselves available to anyone calling upon them and are

very loyal and dedicated. In spite of every claim to the contrary, they assume

the self–evident existence of a community. �ey encounter their pastorees

around church services, invite them to become a volunteer, refer back to what

is discussed in a catechesis group. �eir support for others is beyond price and

they are clearly very involved in what they do at a personal level. But there is

also confusion concerning their role, their diagnostics, their task; and there is

resistance to admitting that they do what the interviewer observed them doing,

namely making God momentarily present every now and again. Many have

their own theological articulation of what they consider their ministry entails,

a phrasing that o�en clari�es what they actually do and sometimes how they

see themselves as a person. Finally, in the cases autonomy and authenticity are

indeed found, even though these words are not used by the pastors themselves.

In Chapter 6, I describe in detail the analysis of ten of the nineteen cases.

Appendix 5.6 contains of each of these ten case summaries (in Dutch). Anal-

ysis is a cyclical process of data reduction, data display and the drawing and

testing of conclusions. �is process has taken place in my research both within

and between cases, meaning that I �rst analysed the individual cases, each

consisting of the case description and the interview text, and then compared

them to the other cases. In this sense, my research is a multiple case study. I

initially analysed three cases, then added two to the analysis, then again two

more, and then �nally added the last three. In this way I was able to control

the interactive process of coding, constant comparison and re�ection. For the

analysis of the last three cases I have only used the most relevant part of the

developed instruments. �e analysis was conducted by using the computer

program ATLAS.ti as well as other outside analysing procedures. During the

process, many routes were followed, sometimes consecutively, sometimes over-

lapping, sometimes interrupted and later picked up, sometimes followed to the

end, sometimes cut o� half–way, and so on.

549summary

Using the method of constant comparison, I described the pastoral process in

ten of the nineteen cases, divided these processes into episodes, and identi�ed

the responses of the worker in question. Based on Laitinens interpretation of

Taylors conceptions of goods, I took the responses as revealing goods and tried

to identify as many of these goods as possible. �is enabled me to reconstruct

the episodic course of the pastoral process in each case, to formulate its theme,

and to identify the salient goods, goods that are highly relevant for under-

standing the case as a whole and the most important responses of the worker.

To better understand the similarities and di�erences between the cases, I iden-

ti�ed those characteristics most relevant to my research focus, and compared

the various cases at that level. �roughout the entire process, I checked and

re–checked my interpretations, hypotheses, and conclusions with my supervi-

sors (‘peer debrie�ng’). In some cases, I checked my interpretation partly with

the worker who delivered the case (‘respondent validation’).

It appeared possible to analyse the cases according to the episodic course

of the pastoral process and upon the salient goods connected to the di�erent

episodes. Discovering what matters, morally speaking, has a course, a Werde-

gang. �is is one of the important insights that have become evident from my

research. Morality is not about ‘having values’ or ‘applying norms and rules,’

rather it is about gradually discovering what matters, morally speaking, while

participating in a practice. Moreover, one can discern discrepancies between

what people state to be their values and what really matters to them. In this way,

what it means that something has revealed itself as good is ripened or ‘cured’. In

the cases analysed, the workers demonsrated considerable variation in the way

in which they dealt with the people they encountered, from ‘let them be’ to ‘that

has to change.’ �ere seemed to be a certain range or bandwidth within which

the workers acknowledged the persons they engage with and respected them for

who they were on the one hand, and tried to change their behaviour and their

way of thinking about themselves on the other.

During the analysis, a theoretical deepening was required in regards to

con�gured goods, steersmanship and (inner) freedom. A con�gured good is a

good situationally composed of various goods that manifests itself in di�erent

situations in di�erent situated forms, but nevertheless has a certain coherence.

In Chapter 7, I describe the substantive and methodological �ndings of the

empirical research. �e substantive �ndings consist of a chart of goods

consisting of seven clusters of goods in personal pastoral care, the identi-

�ed goals of personal pastoral care, six identi�ed types of pastoral processes

550 gezien de ander

interpreted as forms of steersmanship, and the identi�ed forms of autonomy

and authenticity. �e methodological output consists of a description and eval-

uation of how I developed and used conceptual charts, goods, episodic course,

and data matrices in my empirical research.

In the course of a pastoral process — a path that pastoree and pastor go on

with each other in the context of a pastoral relationship — a multiplicity of

goods can be at issue. Some of these goods are in the foreground from start to

�nish, while others emerge at a certain point or disappear into the background.

�ere are those which concern the pastoral relationship itself and those which

concern the life of the pastoree outside that relationship. Among the goods that

concern the pastoral relationship itself, there are those related to taking upon

oneself the pastoral relationship by the pastor, others have to do with taking

upon oneself the pastoral relationship by the pastoree and still others concern

the engaging with each other as christians, reaching for salvation together.

Among the goods that concern the life of the pastoree, there are those who deal

with one’s relationship to oneself, others have to do with one’s relationship to

the world around oneself and still others have to do with one’s relationship to

what transcends oneself. A separate cluster of goods concerning the life of the

pastoree has to do with human dignity. Against the background of the chart of

goods relevant to the course of a pastoral process, it was possible to identify the

goals of pastoral care. To this end, I identi�ed the (clusters of) salient con�g-

ured goods as the goals of pastoral care. Based on the �ndings of my research, I

conclude that the goal of personal pastoral care is:

to promote (1) inner freedom, (2) a meaningful place among people and (3) the

experience of God’s love by (4) being available in a clear and sustainable way,

(5) carefully recognising the pastoree as a person and (6) engaging in a shared

quest for God.

In the analysis process of identifying and naming case characteristics relevant

to my research, hosting those characteristics in a data matrix, organising,

adding, rearranging and compacting of the data matrix and the appointment of

‘types’ of cases, steermanship as a metaphor for the management of the pastoral

process emerged. Indispensable for the emergence of this metaphor was the

identi�cation and naming of movements in the pastoral process, toward goods

and away from goods. I �nally found six types of steermanship. �e �rst

�ve I found in the ten cases analysed in this dissertation, while the sixth is a

construction based on the property–space. �ese six are divided into two main

551summary

types: �xed course steering control and responsively correcting management.

In the �rst type, there is a clear, unequivocal course followed consistently. �e

salient goods manifest themselves in the course of the pastoral process from

beginning to end. In the second type, although there is a course direction,

there are feedback moments when the pastor corrects the course in response

to the process. �e various salient goods show themselves in the course of the

pastoral process in di�erent episodes and the various sub–types are distin-

guished among others by the extent to which the pastor is aware of his moving

away or toward a particular issue. I was able to place the forms of autonomy

and authenticity identi�ed in the di�erent cases in a two–dimensional space

with autonomy, in the sense of governing oneself, making one’s own choices,

versus authenticity, in the sense of being oneself, being true to who one is, on

the vertical axis, and elementary / general versus elaborated / speci�c on the

horizontal axis. �e �gure thus created (see below), gives a kind of map of the

con�gured good “autonomy & authenticity”. In this map it can be noticed that

the forms concerning the pastoree are more to the side of autonomy, and those

concerning the pastor are more on the side of authenticity.

�e con�gured moral good “autonomy & authenticity”

552 gezien de ander

In Chapter 8 I examine the !ndings of the empirical part of my research, and

confront them with the moral–theological, ethical, methodological and prac-

tical–theological literature discussed in the !rst part of this thesis in an e"ort to

present my contribution to discussions within these disciplines. In this chapter, I

reach the !nal answer to my research questions, especially the !#h subquestion

which I called, summative evaluative: How does the pastor, based on the identi-

!ed content of autonomy and authenticity, contribute to the moral strength of

the pastoree in a manner appropriate to the identi!ed goals of pastoral care?

$e answer is: by showing oneself as an autonomous, authentic, and faithful

fellow human being in an appropriate way within the pastoral relationship. “In

an appropriate way” means that the pastor allows himself to be called to partici-

pate in God’s saving activity towards the pastoree, based on his perception of

the freedom, mobility and self–course of the pastoree.

* * *

I have illustrated the importance of conducting empirical research into what

is morally relevant, and of assigning a privileged position in empirical ethical

research to practices and the tacit knowing of advanced, re%ective, and delib-

erative practitioners. I have presented an approach in which looking into a prac-

tice in a very precise and methodologically sound manner is combined with

conceptual clari!cation. To the conceptual challenges emanating from this

research belongs rethinking the concepts of practice and the ends internal to a

practice, the concepts of personal autonomy and authenticity, as well as the idea

that people ‘have values.’ People, rather, appear to discern what is important to

them gradually, in living their lives. Practitioners appear to discover the ends

of that practice gradually, while practising their practice. $e role of the other

members of the community that participates in the said practice in !nding

out these goals has to be elaborated further. My research delivers a dynamic,

empirically grounded picture of the emerging aspects, goods and ends of the

practice of personal pastoral care. Confronting this picture with the abstract

conceptions that can be found in the practical theological literature will help to

better understand this practice. $e approach I have chosen in this study, that

of a qualitative empirically grounded moral theology interested in practical

wisdom, provides a more contextual, realistic and morally laden conception of

autonomy and authenticity. $is view criticises the dominant thinking in both

theory and practice which upholds that personal autonomy and authenticity

are related to having control and direction of one’s life.

GEZIEN DE ANDER:

EERBIED VOOR AUTONOMIE EN

AUTHENTICITEIT IN HET PASTORAAT

Een kwalitatief–empirische, moraaltheologische studie

RESPECT FOR AUTONOMY AND

AUTHENTICITY IN PASTORAL CARE

A qualitative empirical, moral–theological study

(with a summary in English)

Proefschri� ter verkrijging van de graad van

doctor aan de Universiteit van Tilburg,

op gezag van de rector magni�cus, prof. dr. Ph. Eijlander,

in het openbaar te verdedigen ten overstaan van een door het college voor promoties

aangewezen commissie in de aula van de Universiteit op

woensdag 13 april 2011 om 14.15 uur door

Augustinus Bernardus Timmerman,

geboren op 8 augustus 1961 te Gendringen