If you attend 8:30 a.m. Sunday Mass at St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church, 1234 Ky., you’ll likely see Tony and Marie Ice seated in the pews.

“We never miss Mass, unless it’s just totally impossible to make it,” says Marie, 71.

“I can count on the fingers of one hand how many times we’ve missed in the last 50 years. I missed a couple of times when I was in the hospital having a baby. Tony might miss, if he were really sick.”

In addition to being fixtures at Mass, the couple has made prayer — as well as an overall spiritual mindset — a central part of their lives.

Tony, 82, and his wife both feel they’ve gained much by adopting this life-affirming approach.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt about it. It certainly gives me peace of mind. I know we’re in the evening years of our lives, and I don’t fear that at all,” Marie says. “I think it’s through the spiritual life that you learn to trust in God and have faith. And that’s what life is about.”

The Ices would seem to be living proof that spirituality and the practice of religion can contribute to the health and well-being of older adults.

Whether that assumption is actually the case is the focus of work being done at Kansas University by Holly Nelson-Becker, an assistant professor of social welfare. Nelson-Becker is a gerontology expert who has long studied the ways religion and spirituality appear to help older adults — healthy or infirm — meet life’s challenges. She’s conducting research that has been following senior citizens under hospice care in Topeka and her hometown of Chicago.

According to a previous study of older adults living independently that she conducted, about 92 percent of those who reported that religion or spirituality was important to them also reported a high level of well-being.

“It doesn’t help everybody. But to those for whom religion and spirituality are important, it gives meaning and purpose, it gives hope, it gives a sense of compassion and understanding,” Nelson-Becker says.

“It seems to be a pathway for some people to achieve a higher quality of life.”

The 60 senior citizens Nelson-Becker will survey for her current research project at KU are at three hospice sites: Midland Hospice in Topeka and Ottawa; and Saint Thomas Hospice in the Chicago suburb of Burr Ridge, Ill. The research recently received $100,000 in funding from the John A. Hartford Foundation in New York that was administered through the Geronotological Society of America.

Rapidly aging society

Ken Weihe, left, and Lila Botone, center, receive Communion from Carrie Mayhew during a worship service held at the Pioneer Ridge Retirement Community, 4851 Harvard Road. A study by Kansas University professor Holly Nelson-Becker showed spirituality aids the well-being of many older adults.

Nelson-Becker is asking the older adults in her study about their use of spiritual and nonspiritual coping strategies — such as prayer and meditation or talking to friends — and she will measure their responses according to three standardized instruments. She will use the Ways of Coping Scale; the Missoula-VITAS quality of life index; and the Spiritual Strategies Scale, which she helped develop.

Organized religion might play some part in the reports of well-being, but Nelson-Becker points out that the study, “Spirituality and Religion: An Exploration of Factors in the Health and Well-Being of Older Adults,” focuses more on spirituality — not the particular beliefs of any one faith.

For the purpose of the study, spirituality was defined as the idea of connections with a power, purpose or idea that transcends the self, and religion as the identification of the practices, rituals and beliefs associated with a particular institutional pattern.

There is another year and a half left to go in the KU study. Data collection should be done by September.

The funding from the Hartford Foundation helps address a growing need to focus more research on the physical and mental health needs of a rapidly growing elderly population, according to Nelson-Becker.

“It’s especially important, because the Hartford Foundation saw a real disconnect between this particular demographic and the rest of society. Our society is quickly aging, and by 2030 about 20 percent of all Americans will be 65 years or older,” she says.

Holly Nelson-Becker, an assistant professor of social welfare at Kansas University, is a gerontology expert. She studies the effects of religion and spirituality on older adults.

Spiritual presence

The funding for Nelson-Becker’s research also focuses on the current lack of training among health professionals who work with older adults.

“It’s an area that hasn’t really been addressed adequately. Even though social work had religious roots, we have distanced ourselves from it,” she says. “In the last four or five years, though, we have started getting back to that — not just in social work but in other health-related professions as well.”

Nelson-Becker says she’s honored to work with older adults, to witness their wisdom and resiliency. And though the power of spirituality is often hard to define, this researcher knows it when she sees it.

“You can feel it. You can sense when people are talking to you of a spiritual presence. It’s a way of seeing,” she says.

“I believe there is a spiritual presence in the world that’s there for everyone, but not everyone chooses to access it.”