Pastoral Counseling Licensure (Question from Sanantone)

I’ve taken the liberty of transposing this question here in case sanantone wants to take it over there. Since I’m not registered on the other forum (snob that I am), it’s not worth the hassle of registering just over this issue. :naughty:

But, to answer the question, when last I checked, only two states had specific legislation for the licensure of pastoral counselors: Maine and North Carolina. Would the statutes in those states stand up to scrutiny if they were challenged? Probably not, on Constitutional grounds, but they’ve never been challenged.

When I did legislative testimony in Pennsylvania on counselor licensure, the mandatory practice bill under consideration would have licensed pastoral counselors who had an “M.Div. or the Equivalent.” That was a joke, since most M.Div. programs have only six credits in counseling: three in each of “Introduction to Counseling” and “Marriage and Family Counseling.”

In the two master’s degree programs in Christian counseling in which I was teaching at the time, both of which were 60 credits, there were at least 36 credits in counseling per se. Big difference. Yet the graduates of both programs would not have qualified for licensure since they did not have the meager six credits they would have gotten in an M.Div. program. That would have resulted in the closure of freestanding Christian counseling centers as well as other spiritual counselors, nutritional counselors, new age counselors, ad infinitum.

Are the Maine and North Carolina statutes enforced? Were they ever? Not to my knowledge. Do they even still exist? I have no idea – I’m busy pursuing my preferred activity of bopping around the country in a tractor-trailer.

When I did the legislative testimony, I was representing folks ranging from Fundamentalists (including the two schools at which I taught, as well as several others) to New Agers, to nutritional counselors, to Scientologists. (In other words, groups that would never talk to each other, but who all had a vested interest in not seeing the bill pass.) We were successful in killing the bill, which was reintroduced as a voluntary title act in the next legislative session without pastoral counseling licensure – and passed.
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Massachusetts does not license pastoral counselors, but clergy are afforded the same confidentiality as licensed counselors and psychologists.

 

Bruce, as usual, raises a good point – clergy confidentiality is protected in most, though not all, states.

To be protected, it must fall under the rubric of penitential counseling – the rite of confession, for example, or similar principles as applied to non-Catholic denominations.

This is a sensitive issue with regard to the issue of child abuse (including child sexual abuse). In some states, clergy are exempt from reporting child abuse if they learned of it through penitential counseling, as in, “Pastor, I beat my kid and I repent of that.” On the other hand, if the offender says, “Pastor I beat my kid. Can you recommend a good lawyer?” there is no such protection and the pastor is permitted (if not required) to report it to appropriate authorities.

On yet another hand, absent the sacrament of confession in the R.C. church, many pastors lean toward reporting instances of abuse from a preventive standpoint, and the courts tend to back them up on that. Likewise, those laws that ensure confidentiality apply only to clergy and not to day care workers, day school or Sunday school teachers, church bus drivers, etc. They are required to report instances of child abuse.
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I did a search, and a website listed Kentucky, Maine, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Arkansas, and Tennessee. I only dug further on Arkansas and North Carolina. Arkansas' website is terrible, so I didn't bother with searching for specific requirements.

 

As far as I've been able to find out, there are no restrictions on the confidentiality of clergy in Massachusetts, other than the usual ones placed on any mental health professional (immediate danger of hurting themselves or hurting others), so any minister, priest, rabbi, or imam can counsel individuals, couples, or families, and there's nothing the state can do about it.

This is also the state that afforded the same confidentiality to police officers assigned to peer support units (also known as stress units), with absolutely no requirements of any education, training, or certification in counseling. Literally, a police officer assigned as a peer counselor that got a GED is afforded the same confidentiality rights as a licensed counselor with a graduate degree.

BERNARD vs. COMMONWEALTH, 424 Mass. 32