A pastoral counseling center for Naga City: A proposal

• Main Author: Aguilar, Pablo V.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 1979
• Subjects: Pastoral counseling centers; Pastoral counseling; Counseling
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_masteral/739
• Institution: De La Salle University

The aim of the present investigation is to propose a Pastoral Counseling Center for Naga City. More specifically, answers to the following questions were sought: 1) What are the needs of the respondents and how are these ranked in their order of priority? 2) What are the services available to the respondents at present to help them satisfy their needs and by whom are these services rendered? 3) Are the services perceived by the respondents as adequate? 4) Will a Pastoral Counseling Center help to adequately meet the needs? 5) How will the center be organized and administered? The descriptive design was used in this investigation. The subjects of this study comprised two groups. The first was a randomly selected 22% of the members of the religious organizations of the city or 276 persons. The second group of subjects was made up of 5 priests working in the city either as parish priest or as assistant parish priest and 13 persons, 4 of whom were priests, 6 sisters and 3 lay persons, who direct or supervise works of service under church auspices in Naga City. The instruments made use of in this study were the questionnaire and the interview. Since these data did not form the main focus of the investigation but used only as basis for finding out a need, no statistical treatment was made of them, save to get the frequencies and different percentages of each variable, and to order these from the greatest to the least. Based on the findings: 1) The most common problems of the subjects were: financial, family, with others, occupational, spiritual/moral, about/with self, and marriage, with the first three as the most crucial in their life, and in the same order. 2) Some of these problems they tried to solve by themselves, for others they sought the assistance of other people, especially priests in confession, family members and friends, and some service agencies, mostly operated by the Government and the Church. 3) The solution to their problem they arrived at by themselves and the help from others, including that of the agencies, the subjects found satisfactory only at times. 4) There was overwhelming agreement on the helpfulness of a Pastoral Counseling Center in Naga City and on the assurance that they will avail of the services offered by it, preferring priest counselors to either Sister counselors or lay counselors.