Training for pastoral care and its ecumenical dimension

Summary Responsible to a pluralistic society more directly than to a denominational constituency, ministers in training for pastoral care in public institutions engage simultaneously in ecumenical associations and in the construction of an ecumenically validated pastoral theology. The process was clearly under way in the pioneering work of Boisen, and it continues today with greater scope and a larger harvest. If present indications have predictive value, the history of ecumenicity in the last half of the Twentieth Century will make a modest but secure place for the discovery and use of clinical methods of training for pastoral care.