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Book Review: Newman

Pastoral care for those who suffer experience of loss (whether by divorce or death) seems to be an amalgam of problem-solving techniques and measures to strengthen those who must needs live with unsolved or insoluble problems. It is the latter rather than the former which enables spiritual growth to occur: problem-solving treats disturbance as an irritant to be removed rather than as a stimulus to growth. Mrs Bryce, like the authors of Letting Go) is explicit in seeing the loss experience as an opportunity for growth. By contrast, for the clinicians, growth possibilities tend to be implicit if not unconscious: problem-solving techniques have their own fascination, whether in the relief of pain or in the organization of services for delivering care to those who need it. This is an observation, not a criticism: music therapy is not a problem-solving technique; and one can only applaud the clinician writing on pain relief who says, 'What we speak (to a patient) is not truth unless it is communicated in love'. The two books invite reflection on the proper relation of problem-solving to theology. Problem-solving implies techniques, and these can be used well or badly, and for bad ends or good ones. In themselves they are morally neutral. Perhaps this is why theology seems a little uncomfortable in the clinical atmosphere, but relatively quite at home in Mrs Bryce's treatment of divorce, whether or not one shares her theological stance.