ABSTRACT
An exclusive focus on priests as the agents and conduits of pastoral care, with pastoralia as its medium, may canalise the concept and its analysis too much, especially as the message was received and taken into hearts in the later medieval centuries. This chapter shows that its reception generated quasi-ministerial relationships among the laity, reshaping the spiritual landscape and expanding the scope, mechanisms and responsibility of and for pastoral care. The concept of pastoral care is so much interwoven into church history and the continuing Christian traditions that its meaning seems self-evident: it is the preserve of priests and ministers, those engaged with pastoral theology. The top-down construction of pastoral care owes much to the way in which its initial summaries were promulgated. The complete catechism encapsulates ‘pastoral care’. The commonality of pastoral care established by the Spiritual Works of Mercy begins to shift the perspective in the evaluation of pastoral care in general.
