Ilia Delio on catholicity

A beautiful little book arrived in the mail to me the other day from Amazon.com.  I am not sure if it was ordered for me by my Dad or by his friend Nelson.  The book is Making All Things New: Catholicity, Cosmology and Consciousness, by Franciscan sister, Ilia Delio.  Dr. Delio is Director of the Catholic Studies Program and Visiting Professor at Georgetown University.  She holds doctorates in pharmcology and historical theology.

So far I have only read the introduction, and I am thoroughly intrigued.  She presents the term catholicity as derived from the Greek work katholicos, meaning "of the whole," or "a sense of wholeness," describing attunement to the universe, in harmony with both the physical and spiritual order of the world.  Early Christians later adopted the word catholic to describe the Church as disciples gathered in the name of Christ.  Only over time did the emphasis of the word shift from wholeness to orthodoxy.  Delio states "Catholicity does not mean that everyone is to become Catholic;  rather to be catholic is to be aware of belonging  to a whole and to act according to the whole, including the galaxies, stars, earth, animals, plants and human life."

My favorite part of the introduction to the book is an extended quote from a letter from Pope John Paul II to Father George Coyne, S.J., Director of the Vatican Observatory.  Saint John Paul II wrote "Science develops best when its concepts and conclusions can be integrated into the wider human culture and its concerns for ultimate meaning and value."  Sister Delio adds to this, the observation that "Religion, too, develops best when its doctrines are not abstract and fixed in an ancient past, but integrated into the wider stream of life."

The quote from Pope John Paul II continues,

The church does not propose that science should become religion or religion science.  On the contrary, unity always presupposes the diversity and integrity of its elements.  Each of these elements should become not less itself but more itself in a dynamic interchange, for a unity in which one of the elements is reduced to the other is destructive, false in its promises of harmony, and ruinous of the integrity of its components.  We are asked to become one. We are not asked to become each other. ... Unity involves the drive of the human mind towards understanding and the desire of the human spirit for love. ... We move towards unity as we move towards meaning in our lives.  Unity is also the consequence of love.  If love is genuine, it moves not toward the assimilation of the other, but toward union with the other.  Human community begins in desire when that union has not been achieved, and it is completed in joy when those who have been apart are now united.

Although the late pope was speaking of science and religion, my mind turns toward the application of his words to Christian unity.  Ever since I began thinking about requesting reception into the Catholic Church, I have struggled with a sense of how to embrace the goal of wholeness represented by the word "catholic", without compromising the integrity of my existing Christian life, formed in a variety of Protestant Churches.  There is not yet a path, as far as I can tell, for a Protestant Christian to become united to the Catholic Church without becoming Catholic, that is without "becoming the other,"  which Pope John Paul II describes as ruinous.  I did, in fact, experience a sense of ruin in my spiritual life--a disconnectedness from my true self, from that part of myself that was able to pray.  My goal was not to "convert" to a different strand of Christianity but to broaden my understanding of what it means to be Christian.  My motivation was very much like what John Paul II describes as "the drive of the human mind towards understanding and the desire of the human spirit for love."  As John Paul II explains, genuine love moves toward union rather than assimilation.  My experience of the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (RCIA) in the Catholic Church was that it was designed for assimilation rather than for union.  I wonder what a program designed for growth in mutual understanding and love would look like?  Could there be a ritual by which Protestant Christians who desire greater unity with the Catholic Church could be formally recognized and welcomed by that Church while continuing their ongoing conversion to Christ both within the context of their original church, and also in communion with the Catholic Church?