Pastoral loneliness

In his Escape from Loneliness. (pp. 22-3) , Paul Tournier laments the “tragic isolation of the elite” that he sees in the Swiss Protestant church. He writes, “I have rarely felt the modern man’s isolation more grippingly tha in a certain deaconness or a certain pastor. Carried away in the activism rampant in the church, the latter holds meeting upon meeting, always preaching, even in personal conversation, with a program so burdened that he never finds time for meditation, never opening his Bible except to find subjects for his sermons. It no longer nourishes him personally.”

He observes that pastors discuss theology, church affairs, and even pastoral care, but “they practice no mutual pastoral care. They struggle alone with their inextricable family problems, with their temptations, with the guilt of their secret faults, never daring to unburden themselves to their colleagues or to their parishioners because they are afraid of being condemned or of causing a scandal. I have known one pastor who used to confess to a priest in order to find inner peace.”

I wonder if this is a constant of church life, or if there’s something peculiar to modern Christianity, or Protestantism in particular, that creates the sad situation Tournier describes.