Spirituality & Health Care: Reaching toward a Holistic Future (Special Topics in Health and Faith)

In today's culture, interest in the spiritual continues to grow. And as it does, the interaction between health care and spirituality increases - and changes. How should the two interact? How might they enrich one another?

To begin with, suggests Shea, each side needs to speak to the other not only from its own internal viewpoint, but also with the particularities of the other in mind. To advance such a dialogue, he describes six spiritual interests that have arisen in health care,explores the reality of what undergirds spiritualities, and then considers how these outlined interests and spiritualities might interact. In time-honored spiritual tradition, the author concludes with eight spiritual imperatives, which serve as an invitation to yet further exploration of the growing relationship between spirituality and health care.

John Shea, S.T.D., Advocate Health Care Senior Scholar-in-Residence, is an author and former director of the Doctor of Ministry Program at the University of St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein, Illinois. As scholar-in-residence, Dr. Shea has spent the past several months evaluating the modern literature on spiritulality and aging in light of the classic traditions of spirituality. Based on this analysis, he is writing a series of articles suggesting ways for churches and other spiritually sensitive organizations to address the spiritual needs of the aging populations they serve. In addition, he has designed and its testing in three very different settings a program of spiritual formation for use in churches and other organizations.