Aspects Regarding the Pastoral Counseling of the Terminally Ill Patients
Aspects Regarding the Pastoral Counseling of the Terminally Ill Patients

Summary/Abstract: The pastoral care of the Church towards man manifests itself from birth to death. Both the secular history and the church one demonstrate that the fundamentals of the Christian philanthropy were established together with the work of preaching the Gospel of Christ, more precisely, after the first Christians had become aware of the importance of this message, its impact and its social characteristic, that of assistance and sacrificial love of the others, as it is obvious from the life and preaching of the Saviour. In this respect, especially after the Mediolan edict (313), since the beginning of the 4th century, the Christian Church has achieved and coordinated numerous and extensive interpersonal solidarity programs, especially for those in material, as well as social need and, especially, for the sick ones. Pastoral counselling in the confused modernity of our time must be seen as a duty, which is not easy at all, sometimes being even impossible, if it were carried out only by the limitations and the incapabilities of the fallen humanity. The term counselor used in the pastoral endeavour has also been imposed by the need of approaching the spiritual guidance in the light of the outcomes of the scientific researches undertaken by the psycho-social disciplines, which developed in the 20th century. The Romanian Counselors Association defines counseling as follows: "Counseling is a complex process that includes a wide range of interventions that require specialized professional training. More specifically, the term counseling describes the interpersonal support relationship between a specialized person, the counselor, and another person who is requesting specialized assistance, the client." Starting from these general considerations, our study aims at illustrating some pastoral aspects regarding the counseling of terminally ill patients.

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