Claim. Pastoral care for the conscience can be pre-emptive, not only reparative: naming an impossible moral bind and interceding before a person walks into it is itself care.
Elaboration. Before the knight Ferrarius marched on Cucuron, he laid his bind before the holy woman Delphine — “afraid of going into battle, but also afraid of not going because retreating would bring this unbearable shame.” Both roads wounded him: to fight was to kill (which “the church understood as a wound to the soul”) or to die; to refuse was cowardice and ruin. The essay says Delphine “is basically doing her best to try and manage his moral injury before it even happens” — she names the trap, promises he will kill no one, and intercedes for him. Questioned later under oath, Ferrarius admitted his “fear of shame would have overridden his fear of death.” The lesson is that the people we disciple often already stand at a fork where every option costs the soul something; meeting them there, in advance, with honest naming and prayer, is real shepherding.