by Ilia Delio.  Published by Orbis Books 2015.  Reviewed by Nicola Hoggard Creegan 

This book is emotionally, spiritually and intellectually rich — and is not an easy read. Franciscan Ilia Delio, scientist and theologian, challenges our mechanistic world-view and presents an astounding new way of understanding being “catholic”. The theme of the book is that God in Christ is urging us to greater and wider levels of catholicity, which she defines as higher levels of integration or wholeness. Her book is about how “sun, moon, stars, Kepler, Saturn, maple trees, muddy rivers, amoeba, bacteria and all peoples of the earth form a whole”. The move to wholeness is catholicity.

Delio undergirds this idea of catholicity with a profound understanding of contemporary science, especially physics, and a theologically astute faith. In a world where it is often stated, or assumed, that humans are the only source of consciousness (plus or minus a few animals) and that we invent all significant categories, Delio takes another view: 

“the whole exists before we do; consciousness is present even in bosons”. On the other hand reality is deeply relational — we live in a “participatory universe”. 

 Reality is relational but not invented by humans. She does not stop to notice that this is a stunning refutation of ultra-Darwinian randomness. And not unsurprisingly her spiritual and intellectual father is Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

Delio says the catholicity she is speaking about does not belong to any church but belongs to the cosmos and the preceding wholeness and is then affirmed by humans. Humans cooperate with wholeness and hence become more catholic. This catholicity is profoundly ecological. She says we become catholic as we recognise our place in the great web of life, undergirded by wholeness, interconnection and prior consciousness.

Delio’s theological revolution is profound. Jesus is the revelation of the deeper whole — the “strange attractor”. Jesus is the one in whom the whole comes together. The veil of reality was peeled back in Jesus. Jesus challenges our truncated mechanical worldview at the deepest level.

Delio explores the expansiveness of the catholic story and the Franciscan ethic in this book. It gives brief introductions to important concepts in modern physics and asks vital questions about consciousness and its location. Making all Things New gives a renewed understanding of Jesus and the meaning of incarnation. It is a serious read and will provide a deeper motivation for the challenges of Laudato Si’.