Four fatal flaws in recent spirituality research.

The answer to the question of whether clinical pastoral education and professional chaplaincy need become more scientific should be a Tillichian "yes and no." Pastoral care and counseling is both an art and a science. The field is thus subject ineluctably to scientific examination.

Discrete varieties of care in the clinical pastoral tradition: continuing the dialogue.

In the current cultural context, clinically trained ministers, lay and ordained, offer themselves to troubled souls through at least three distinct varieties of assistance: pastoral care, pastoral counseling, and pastoral psychotherapy. This essay delineates three accepted disciplines, emphasizing the importance of ascertaining, and perhaps re-evaluating, the particular needs and desires of persons who are in physical, mental, or spiritual distress. "Pastoral care," "pastoral counseling," and "pastoral psychotherapy" each play an important role in fulfilling the traditional mandate for "the cure of souls.

The witches' brew of spirituality and medicine.

Recent proposals to join spirituality and medicine are facile and ill defined. The notion that physicians have the time or training to make assessments and recommendations about spirituality is misguided. Whenever a physician demonstrates personal caring for a patient, the healing process is likely enhanced, and in that sense, physicians often promote the spirituality of the patient.