The Mystery of God and the Power of Redemptive Relationships

With these essays we honour Roy Bradley, who played a major role in the development of pastoral care in Australia, particularly in the introduction of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE). His dual training as a priest and CPE supervisor enabled him to embrace the modern emphasis on the psychological and spiritual need of the individual without losing sight of the key elements of the long-standing faith traditions of pastoral care. Roy also had a great intuitive capacity to hold all these threads together in his ministry and supervision. All this eventually led him to the distillation of pastoral care as the art of helping people remain open to the mystery of God through the power of redemptive relationships. The statement could be embraced by people from different religious traditions or by people whose spirituality does not stand in any such tradition. Roy’s distillation of pastoral care holds together mystery and power, the real power of redemptive relationships in diverse settings and shows the depth of Roy’s pioneering work. In Roy’s hands, CPE took a distinctive Australian form shown in the breadth of the many programmes he pioneered across the country over several decades.