Aid for Emotional Ills

Perhaps 2,200 of the Episcopal Church's 9,000 ministers are in need of pastoral counseling because of frustration in their jobs, estimates the Rt. Rev. Chandler W. Sterling. Properly appalled by this gloomy statistic, Bishop Sterling is now planning what he hopes will become a nationwide rehabilitation program for troubled clergymen, to be known as PARDON.* A dropout from the diocesan ministry himself, Sterling, 57, resigned last October as Bishop of Montana because he felt "completely frustrated in my work." A zealous Christian activist, he was discouraged by the failure of Montana Episcopalians to support such measures as laws against racial discrimination in housing, and the organization of urban ministries.

As Sterling views it, all too many clergymen suffer from similar frustrations. Often, he says, it is the "maddening nothingness of their contemporary ministry" that drives clerics to abandon the pulpit; those who resist such pressures frequently become ineffective victims of "overstay" in their parishes. Compounding their plight, disturbed priests are usually afraid or ashamed to discuss their feelings with their bishops or parishioners.

With support from the Anglo-Catholic American Church Union, of which he is president, Sterling will open his first rehabilitation center in Manhattan's Greenwich Village this spring, hopes to set up five more by 1970. PARDON will accept clergymen of any faith, find them living quarters and temporary secular jobs while they undergo up to 90 days of pastoral counseling provided by ministers with lengthy parish experience. Those in need of psychiatric care will be referred to hospitals and clinics. Sterling expects that at least a third of his clients will use PARDON as a "halfway house" to ease their transition to secular life--but the rest, he hopes, may be able to return to the ministry with a renewed sense of zeal.

* Standing, in good acronymic tradition, for Pastors' Anonymous Recovery-Directed Order for Newness.

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