Spiritual Care in Public Institutions in Europe Eds

Spiritual Care in Public Institutions in Europe. Eds. J. R. Tretera, Z. Horák, Z. Horák. Berlin: Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2019, 140 pp. - the review.

Pastoral care in public institutions is one of the current issues of state ecclesiastical law. It concerns areas traditionally referred to as res mixtae, namely health care, the army and the armed forces, the police, prisons, but also other public institutions as well as emerging areas (e.g. migration-related issues). The Churches are well aware that it is necessary to prepare experts for these areas who are versed not only in theology and the corresponding fields but who are also capable of ecumenical cooperation and often primarily non-missionary work. Their activities in these areas are based on the principle of religious freedom, guaranteed by concordat treaties in the case of the Catholic Church, similar treaties with other Churches and religious societies, and the legislation of individual countries.
The presented monograph Spiritual Care in Public Institutions in Europe edited by Záboj Horák and Jiří Rajmund Tretera from Charles University in Prague captures the current legislation and various tasks of chaplains, volunteers and teams in many European countries in eleven chapters by individual authors. It also constitutes the proceedings of the international conference Fourth Prague Dialogues on Church and State Relations: Spiritual Care in Public Institutions, held by the Prague Faculty of Law on 13-14 June 2019.
In the introductory chapter, Jiří Rajmund Tretera recapitulates the general characteristics and new trends in the approach to pastoral care in public institutions in Europe. The introduction thus presents the starting points for further reading of the monograph.
Chapter Two by Gerhard Robbers of Trier describes pastoral care in public institutions in Germany, and briefly mentions pastoral care in the area of immigrant centres, transport (airports, motorways, railways) and in the German parliament, too. In Chapter Three, the English author Mark Hill QC summarises the historical, legal and practical context of pastoral care in public institutions and presents it to the reader as a longterm integral part of English society. On the other side of the spectrum, there is the French approach described by Francis Messner (Strasbourg) in his considerations (Chapter Four) on these services in the French secularised model.
The Swiss specificity is summarised by Adrian Loretan (Chapter Five), who explains the pastoral service in the Swiss direct democracy and in their systems of diversity. Wolfgang Wiesheider's contribution (Chapter Six) summarises the Austrian approach, including the data protection provided by the law of the European Union. Chaplaincy in Hungary, including a brief introduction to historical and sociological circumstances, is presented by Balázs Schanda from Budapest (Chapter Seven). The Polish model of Church-state relations, in turn, and individual areas of traditional Church activities (army, health care, prisons) is described by Piotr Stanisz from Lublin (Chapter Eight). The last three chapters are devoted to the states of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Martin Šabo and Michaela Moravčíková present the Slovak situation, particularly the role of individual ministries (of defence, justice, finance, health care and others) in cooperation with the provision of the care in question with individual Churches.
The penultimate chapter by the author Damián Němec focuses in detail on the area of Czech health care and thus goes beyond the overall concept of the other contributions. The reason for this deeper exposition was precisely the topicality of the issue in the Czech Republic and the difficulty of negotiations and clarification of the views of the stakeholders.
The final chapter by Záboj Horák then summarizes the overall pastoral care in public institutions in the Czech Republic, both in terms of theoretical principles, bases and historical experience, as well as current legislation in individual areas.
Most of the contributions recapitulate the situation of spiritual care in public institutions in individual countries in a general way. The only difference is the concept of the contribution of Damián Němec, who focused in more detail on the sphere of health care in the Czech Republic. The reason for this choice was the current situation in the Czech Republic. After a long period of negotiations between the Churches represented by the Czech Bishops' Conference and the Ecumenical Council of Churches and between the Ministry of Health of the Czech Republic, there was achieved the legislative basis in the trilateral agreement between the Czech Bishops' Conference, the Ecumenical Council of Churches and the Ministry of Health of the Czech Republic on 11 July 2019.
The book was published in the German language by Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag in the series Kirche und Recht-Beihefte in English. In this way it offers a better linguistic approach and it can be a summary presentation of this issue, but also a contribution to the presentation of the current situation in not only the European area, and an incentive to enrich other legislation and discussion in the European legal area and beyond, too.