Prison Chaplain’s Work Described

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30562, 3 October 1964, Page 19

Prison Chaplain’s Work Described

“A prison chaplain must be able to hear the most hairraising things and still see the person who says them as a child of God,” the senior chaplain, Justice Department (the Rev. E. S. Qoddinott) told the Christchurch Presbyterian Social Service Association at its annual meeting, "Until one is prepared to love the unlovely among these people, one ' has no right to talk to them about the Christian faith or anything else,” he said. Prison chaplaincy was looked on by some church people as restrictive, said Mr Hoddinott. He was often told that a minister should not’ be in this kind of work too long before getting back into the “real” ministry. It was true that the prison chaplain did not enjoy many of the social niceties of parish life such as were attached to marriage and infant baptism, and he could not rely on there being

the same team of workers to support him that he .could normally expect in a parish; but this was a ministry with a very special challenge. “You can’t bluff your way here: you’ve got to be specific in applying the Christian faith to a man who needs just that,” he said. As. for the length of time One should be a chaplain, he said that while he was in the United States and Britain last year he met many senior prison chaplains who. had found their life work in this service.

The normal theological college training of a minister was not adequate for prison chaplaincy work, even with the new stress on counselling and the pastoral ministry which had entered most college courses. A course was planned this year for the first time in which theological students would be guided in clinical counselling in the prison situation, and it was hoped that courses such as this would provide many of the chaplains of the future.