Commodified Health Care and Lay Catholic Social Spirituality: A Sociotheological-Synodal Approach

This book establishes a lay social spirituality for health care practitioners that pursues the Catholic Church’s social teachings on the preferential option for the poor, structural sin, and health care reform to address today’s commodification of the health care system where maximizing profit and patient’s capacity to pay become the primary consideration. Applying a sociotheological approach that combines the perspectives of modern sociology, Catholic social doctrines, and Pope Francis's inductive synodal theology, as well as drawing from secondary literature, media reports, and church documents, it argues for the necessity of a holistic, interdisciplinary, and synodal lay Catholic social spirituality that is informed by Pope Francis’s synodality. Presenting sociological research for health care practitioners to uphold options for the poor in public health, it envisions a lay spirituality that participates in civil society’s health care reform agenda at the macro level, and practices Christian and Ignatian discernment at the micro level, as its main behavioral components. This book appeals to Christian health care actors, entrepreneurs, and spiritual directors as well as scholars and students in sociology, religion, moral theology, bioethics, and spirituality.