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[Expositions 9.1 (2015) 56–68]  Expositions (online) ISSN: 1747–5376 
 

Identity and the Catholic University: Culture or Epistemology? 

 
ILIA DELIO, O. S. F. 

Georgetown University 

 

 

Higher education is undergoing major revisions today due to a number of factors including 

changing demographics, online education, financial constraints, and a selective job market. How 

to educate for today’s world has become the crucial question. The Catholic college or university 

finds itself in the same competitive sphere of higher education as it secular counterparts: jobs, 

attractive majors, tuition costs, and online versus onsite teaching are frequent topics of faculty and 

administrative meetings. Survival of the four-year undergraduate college or university, religious 

or secular, has become a competition of the fittest—or at least the richest. The fact that Catholic 

schools of higher learning find themselves on the same racetrack as their secular peers raises the 

question: Does the Catholic college or university have anything distinctive to offer to today’s 

world? Does Catholic education make a difference? 

This paper argues that Catholicism does have a distinct approach to learning and that the 

Catholic intellectual tradition can make a valuable contribution to higher education today. To do 

so, however, the Catholic intellectual tradition must find its own voice and epistemology. The 

Jesuit charism, with its deep incarnational commitment, coupled with the Jesuit mission of 

education, has yielded some outstanding thinkers in this regard. Here I focus on several Jesuit 

thinkers of the twentieth century who have contributed to a deepened understanding of the Catholic 

intellectual tradition in the modern age. Their names are familiar to many—John Courtney Murray, 

Walter Ong, Bernard Lonergan, John Haughey—but the one name not usually associated with 

higher education is Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Yet, it is Teilhard’s evolutionary paradigm of 

Christianity that allows the Catholic intellectual tradition to acquire a new vision. My thesis rests 

on the relationship between catholicity and cosmology: unless we educate for a cosmos in 

evolution, and thus the work of God in evolution, we shall not know where we are going or how 

to get there. Our Jesuit thinkers map some new paths for the future of Catholic higher education 

in an evolutionary age, and it is to them that I now turn. 

 

Murray, Ong, Longergan, Haughey 

 

John Courtney Murray is best known for his insights regarding Church-State relations; however, 

he was keenly aware of the critical role Catholic higher education plays in secular society. He was 

concerned that a narrow Catholicism could deaden the spirit, and he countered that the purpose of 

Catholic education is not to shrink the soul but to widen its capacity for the unity of truth. 



57  Delio 
 

According to Murray, the Catholic scholar, rooted in the Catholic tradition, must be open to all 

streams of thought in the modern world.1 Without broad knowledge that can engage pluralism and 

complexity, Catholic education risks being insular and thus impotent to effect real change in the 

world. Murray asked: “Is the Catholic scholar a self-enclosed spiritual monad in a secularist world? 

Is the Catholic institution of learning simply a citadel, a fortress of defense, or an asylum of 

escape?”2 In his view, all knowledge moves dynamically toward an ultimate horizon, and 

educators must foster that movement. The Christian educator is “a ‘midwife’ who helps to bring 

to birth the full humanity of the students.”3 

Murray’s hope was that the Catholic university could create a new unity between the sacral and 

the secular realms, a unity fully respecting the integrity of both orders. In this way, the Catholic 

university could create an “intellectual apostolate” to nurture both mind and soul, producing 

spiritually mature, committed young scholars who would be a leaven to the world they enter upon 

graduation. This apostolate would require a sincere engagement of Catholic thought with modern 

developments in science, literature, history, philosophy, and the social sciences.4 The Catholic 

university would be a place of enlarged dialogue characterized by a healthy secularity—that is, 

openness to and engagement with the secular world—and a community of teachers, scholars, 

students, and administrators explicitly committed to sharing an intellectual journey. Grounded in 

an Incarnational commitment to intellectual and spiritual wholeness, the Catholic university would 

engage real conversation in pursuit of the wholeness of truth.5 

Closely aligned with Murray’s thought (befitting a former student of Murray), Jesuit theologian 

John Haughey has argued for an expansive understanding of what it means to participate in the 

Catholic intellectual tradition. His explorations have focused specifically on developing an 

epistemology for Catholic higher education. His thesis is a response to the question: Is all 

knowledge the same, regardless whether it is sacred or secular, or is there a particular “catholic” 

way of knowing? Haughey locates the root of the word “catholic” in the “Letter to the Smyrnaeans” 

composed by the second-century bishop Ignatius of Antioch (d. AD 110), as he was on his way to 

martyrdom.6 In this letter, Ignatius reflected on the divinity of Christ, the Eucharist as medicine of 

immortality, and the relationship between bishop and Church, and he exhorted the faithful to gather 

together as the one Body of Christ. He used the Greek word katholikos (καθολικός), meaning 

according to (kata-) the whole (holos), or more colloquially, “universal,” to identify the purpose 

of the early Christians. 

Building on this Greek word, Haughey unpacks the word “catholic” as a dynamic principle of 

“wholemaking” in a way that is consonant with Murray’s thought.7 The word “catholic” describes 

movement toward universality or wholeness. Hence the term “catholicity” means openness in 

contrast to what is incomplete, partial, sectarian, factional, tribal, and selective. It connotes a 

dynamic principle of gathering together what is fragmented or separated. The philologist Walter 

Ong likened the dynamic of catholicity to the parable of the yeast (Mt 13:33) or the gathering 



Identity and the Catholic University  58 
 

together into the one loaf of bread described in the Didache (9.4): “Even as this broken bread was 

scattered over the hills, and was gathered together and became one, so let your church be gathered 

together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom.” Ong wrote:  

 

“Catholic” is commonly said to mean “universal,” a term from the Latin 

universalis. The equation is not quite exact. If “universal” is the adequate meaning 

of “catholic,” why did the Latin church, which in its vernacular language had the 

word universalis, not use the word but rather borrow from the Greek the term 

katholikos instead, speaking of the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic church” 

instead of the “one, holy, universal and apostolic church”?8 

 

Ong states that universality, as used historically by Christians, was not often an inclusive concept 

because everything that was not in the circle of universality was excluded from it. The word 

“catholic,” by contrast, simply means “through-the-whole” or “throughout-the-whole,” like yeast 

which leavens bread. It connotes an active presence of wholemaking or leavening the stuff of life 

to create a greater whole. 

Haughey sees the work of epistemology as “thinking that makes greater wholes.” By “whole,” 

I understand him to mean greater unity, connectedness, depth, and insight. Our understanding is 

always partial and thus open to more depth and breadth which occurs when the mind can explore 

the uncharted territories of knowledge freely. An epistemology of “wholemaking,” or what might 

be called a “catholic” epistemology, requires an openness of the mind, such that the mind does not 

have pre-set ideas to be verified, but is open to the experience of concrete reality. The word “mind,” 

in this usage, includes the range of intellect and emotions that comprise personhood and can 

expand and change.9 The knowing process is an orientation to the real and the potentialities of 

being, but one must be conscious of and open to being. Following Bernard Lonergan, thinking 

begins with a subject’s grasp of oneself as open to the real. The best route to knowledge is to 

develop a strong grasp of one’s own subjectivity and of the operations of one’s own consciousness 

rather than seeking more and more information about stuff “out there.”10 By contrast, our 

educational system is like cardboard boxes in a room that someone fills with mental stuff. In an 

information-laden age, information overload counters true knowledge by preventing the gathering 

of insights into new horizons of meaning; hence, we know more and more about less and less.11 

Knowledge which forms from the dynamism of the mind’s thought processes is not simply 

information-gathering and certainly not storing concepts in a mental warehouse; rather, knowledge 

flows from that deep center of desire within the human person who is searching for truth. 

Haughey speaks of “catholicity” as the gathering of fragments into greater wholes, a “virtue of 

ceaseless wonder” that, by nature of its own inner spiritual dynamism, cannot be controlled or 

manipulated.12 This gathering process is the work of the Creator Spirit in our lives. It is the Spirit 



59  Delio 
 

of God co-laboring with us to create anew, as we seek ultimate meaning and truth. Hence 

catholicity is also an orientation toward the one, true, good, and beautiful, a grace-filled orientation 

toward God. As a dynamic engagement of the mind, catholicity is bound up with personal 

authenticity, having a grasp of one’s own self and self-consciousness. This exploration of the mind, 

seeking to form wholes out of thought fragments gained from experience, intelligence, and 

judgment, is an ever deepening of love. God is the name of genuine unrestricted love bubbling up 

at the heart of life, attracting more insight, wonder, and creativity. Catholicity, accordingly, is a 

way of knowing by which we enter more deeply into love. 

 

Catholicity and Cosmology 

 

The Jesuit emphasis on catholicity as the dynamism of the mind toward making wholes is highly 

consonant with the original meaning of catholicity as the Greeks first conceived it. To understand 

the Greek notion of catholicity is to realize that the word emerges with the new consciousness of 

cosmos. For the Greeks, catholicity and cosmology were integrally related. The word “cosmos” 

emerged in the axial period (900–200 B.C.E.). Beginning in the Hellenic Ages, the universe came 

to be seen existing apart from human action and possessing a kind of wisdom that humanity did 

not have. The word “cosmos” rose among the Greeks and referred to the “whole” or that which 

makes the world a “world.” The pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus (c. 540–c. 480 

B.C.E.) referred to ta panta (the “all things”), which another pre-Socratic, Empedocles (c. 490–430 

B.C.E.), transformed into the singular to pan, or “the all.” The Greeks’ most innovative step was 

the formulation of a special word for the world. The word they chose, kosmos, was first used in 

Homer’s Iliad to mean “in good order” or the order which gives rise to beauty, such as an ornament. 

(Hence, the word “cosmos” is related to “cosmetics”!) 

The ancient Greek separation of “human” from “world” allowed the Greeks to discover a 

“cosmos” that could provide humans with models of perfection to gaze upon (cosmology) and 

natural spaces to define and conquer (cosmography). In this context, “world” was as much a 

concept as a concrete place; it meant not just physical creation but also the environment in which 

humans function. Prior to the axial period, the “world” was thought to be a flat, two-tiered 

structure, with the sky above and earth below. The Greeks conceived of the cosmos as three-

dimensional with height, depth, and width. One could suggest that awareness of a spatial, three-

dimensional cosmos impelled the ancient Greeks to separate “human” from “world” in a way that 

allowed them to discover a “cosmos.” In other words, the human was no longer part of an 

interdependent nature; now the human had “self-consciousness” and consciousness of “other” that 

was called “world.” Catholicity was coined to describe a consciousness of the whole, as awareness 

of the cosmos other than human but to which the human was connected. Catholicity is not a 

physical order or a spiritual one; it does not connote geographical extension. Kath’ holou 



Identity and the Catholic University  60 
 

(according to the whole) is not the same as kata pantos (according to all things). Catholicity 

belongs not to the phenomenal and empirical, but to the noumenal and ontological plane; it 

describes the essential nature of reality, not the external manifestations. Catholicity is an 

orientation of being toward wholeness; for the Greeks it was how the human stood in relation to 

the stars and attended to the stars as mediators of the Good. 

This is to say that the cosmos was a mirror for human action. The human was not simply in the 

world; the world was also in the human. It gave rhythm to our history, defined our aspirations and 

directed our physical structure. The human was to contemplate superior things, intelligible things, 

the harmonious disposition of which was taken to reveal profound mysteries.13 Plato’s cosmology 

influenced thinkers of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages; the cosmos influenced what one ought 

to be and what one was to do.14 Justice was the result of the agreement between cosmos and 

humanity, each with its own nature, instilled by God. As Rémi Brague writes, “Cosmology had an 

ethical dimension. In turn, the task of transporting such good into the here below where we live 

enriched ethics with a cosmological dimension.”15 

 

The Mechanistic University 

 

It is not difficult to see why early Christians appropriated the Greek word “catholic” to describe 

the early Church. Just as the Incarnation fulfills the potential within creation for union with God, 

so too catholicity (as an epistemology) fulfills the mind desire for unity. We see this virtue of 

“catholicity” played out in the life of Jesus, shown in the way he brought people together—

physically, emotionally, and spiritually—and healed them of their divisions. He preached oneness 

of mind and heart, centered in God, and spoke of the reign of God as a dynamic process of 

relatedness by which the world could move forward to a new level of unity, with God dwelling in 

its midst. Jesus was a “wholemaker.” He directed himself to those in need of being made whole: 

the brokenhearted, the captives, those in darkness, the prisoners, those who were mourning and 

grieving, the poor, the blind, and the oppressed. He indicated that his mission is not one of abusive 

power but a different type of power, one of healing or making wholes through the “the Spirit of 

the Lord,” the Spirit who anointed Jesus to reach out to those who are broken or disconnected from 

the fullness of life.16 We see catholicity in the early Church in the way Christians gathered around 

the Bishop and Eucharist, a consciousness of part of a new creation in Christ. That mindfulness of 

unity was compromised, however, in the Constantinian era as the battle over Arianism was bitterly 

fought. The inner dynamic of catholicity was compromised as wholemaking succumbed to 

orthodoxy. 

Over the centuries, catholicity has narrowed its field of gathering power. The rise of university 

in the modern period followed the paradigm of Newton’s world, as the rise of mechanistic 

structures made possible a systematic program of education. The cosmology of the modern 



61  Delio 
 

university reflects a mechanistic model, a Newtonian order, of interacting parts. Catholic 

universities have followed suit, developing along the cosmological lines of Newton’s world, that 

is, along the lines of an established fixed order (cosmology) of mechanized and specialized parts. 

Individual departments, tenured faculty, and a hierarchy of positions from staff to president, 

comprise the parts of the university “machine.” Students are encouraged to succeed in their 

individual studies rather than search for the wholeness of truth. Everything has its niche, its fixity 

of place, space, and function within the established order. If a part wears out (retires) or breaks 

down (tenure denied), it can be replaced with little to no disturbance of the machine’s overall 

operation. Such a model cannot adequately embrace the inner dynamic of catholicity because there 

is no room for this spirit-filled epistemology to expand the mind in its desire to gather knowledge 

into greater wholes. 

Interestingly, Newton’s world held little room for God because the internal laws of the machine 

world were believed to be regulated according to the natural laws of time, space, and motion. God 

governs the world from above, but God is not necessary to the daily operations of the world. 

Similarly, one could make the argument that the university does not need God as the animating 

core of its life; rather, God is governor of the whole operation in which each part (or department) 

operates according to its own internal laws and demands. Instead of educating to know the universe 

as a web of interconnected life, consonant with contemporary Big Bang cosmology and quantum 

physics, education has become the study of highly specialized fields.17 Not only do students 

concentrate in a discipline, but they do so to the exclusion of others. The whole idea of developing 

human identity integral to the cosmos is subsumed in the drive for mastery and success. Elaine 

Ecklund notes, “movements to secularize the academy have relegated religious perspectives to the 

sidelines, or shut them out altogether.”18 

Systems thinking has changed the way we consider the relations of parts to wholes and 

undergirds the shift from mechanism to holism. We are beginning to see that the world not is not 

a collection of isolated objects but a network of phenomena that are fundamentally interconnected 

and interdependent. Whereas in the mechanistic paradigm parts are autonomous units, in the 

holistic, open system, a part is a pattern in an inseparable web of relationships. The properties of 

parts, therefore, are not intrinsic properties but understood only within the context of the larger 

whole. A brief comparison of mechanistic and holistic systems shows that the difference between 

linear and holistic thinking results in a difference of values:19 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Identity and the Catholic University  62 
 

Thinking Values 

Mechanistic  Holistic   Mechanistic   Holistic 

rational  intuitive   conservation  expansion 

analysis  synthesis   competition  cooperation 

reductionist  integrative   quantity  quality 

linear   nonlinear   domination  partnership 

 

Although open systems now mark just about every level of biological life, the training of the mind 

on the level of higher education still follows the closed system paradigm. 

 

Teilhard on Thinking and Evolution 

 

If catholicity is a function of cosmology, as the Greeks originally conceived it, then we have some 

rethinking to do. Our cosmos today is not static and fixed; it does not operate on mechanistic 

principles. Rather, we find ourselves in a 13.8 billion-year-old universe that is large, dynamic, and 

interconnected. Evolution is term that best describes the ongoing development of life, from simple 

isolated forms to complex, self-conscious species such as our own. Evolution means that nature 

does not operate according to fixed laws but the dynamic interplay of law, chance, and deep time; 

that is, one cannot understand natural processes apart from developmental categories. Evolution is 

a general condition from which all theories, systems, and hypotheses must conform and which 

they must satisfy if they are to be thinkable and true. It is not background to the human story; it is 

the human story. What makes the world in which we live specifically modern—what distinguishes 

it from past worlds—is evolution, a word which now defines virtually every science as a history 

of systems.20 Teilhard de Chardin wrote: 
 

They truly are blind who do not see the scope of a movement whose orbit, infinitely 

transcending that of the natural sciences, has successively overtaken and invaded 

the surrounding fields of chemistry, physics, sociology, and even mathematics and 

history of religions. Drawn along together by a single fundamental current, one 

after the other all the domains of human knowledge have set off toward the study 

of some kind of development […]. Evolution is a general condition, which all 

theories, all hypotheses, all systems must submit to and satisfy from now on in order 

to be conceivable and true.21 

 

Teilhard saw evolution of the human person as part of the whole natural process of creativity 

and generativity. The human person is integrally part of evolution in that we rise from the process, 

but in reflecting on the process we stand apart from it, as well. He defined reflection as “the power 



63  Delio 
 

acquired by a consciousness of turning in on itself and taking possession of itself as an object 

endowed with its own particular consistency and value; no longer only to know something—but 

to know itself; no longer only to know, but to know that knows.”22 Thus the human person is “the 

point of emergence in nature, at which this deep cosmic evolution culminates and declares itself.”23 

The human person is the arrow of evolution. 

By locating the human person as the growing tip of the cosmic evolutionary process, Teilhard 

saw a link between epistemology and evolution. He did not view mind apart from matter; rather, 

mind is the “withinness” of matter, from the beginning of evolution. Consciousness, for Teilhard, 

is active at all levels of reality. Thus, he considered matter and consciousness not as two substances 

or two different modes of existence but as two aspects of the same cosmic stuff. The within is the 

mental aspect and the without is the physical aspect of the same stuff; physical and psychic are co-

related in the evolutionary movement of convergence and complexity. 

Teilhard also held that knowledge and faith are critical to the direction evolution will take. To 

form the first living cell, the elements had to reach beyond their individual identity, beyond what 

was “given.” He asked, “Are not nature’s countless experiments all variants of a single act of 

faith?”24 Within the inner dimension of every being there is a desire for more being; hence, on 

every level of existence there is yearning for greater unity or wholeness. Similarly, on the level of 

the human person, there is an implicit faith in ultimate wholeness, that is, for more being and life 

through a deepening of consciousness. Attracted by the desire to create greater wholes, the mind 

seeks to create new unities by reaching beyond simple recognition of the “given” of experience. 

Teilhard’s epistemology is consonant with the catholicity of Murray, Lonergan, and Haughey. 

Teilhard warned against abstract knowledge divorced from physical reality; abstract knowledge, 

he claimed, is a faded reality compared to boundless presence. It forms ideas but leaves the 

physical world adrift. Such knowledge can only lead to fragmentation. Even among physicists, he 

noted, the advent of quantum physics and the non-deterministic nature of reality has led to the 

recognition of the primacy of thought in interpreting the shifting patterns of phenomena.25 In other 

words, knowledge is not for oneself alone but shapes the way one participates in the evolution of 

self and world. Teilhard was concerned that knowledge was being sought apart from physical 

reality and said that true knowledge must engage all levels of reality, including physical reality, 

because this reality is the basis of who we are. Knowledge is essential to the ongoing process of 

evolution. To know is to dynamically participate in the concrete experience of reality. 

 

The Cosmology of the Catholic University  

 

How do we make sense of this dynamic principle of catholicity on the level of the Catholic 

university? To ask, “what forms a Catholic university” is to recap the insights of our Jesuit 

scholars. For Murray and Haughey, catholicity is epistemological. The word “catholic” does not 



Identity and the Catholic University  64 
 

connote so much what a person is but what a person does. A “catholic” is one who gathers or 

unites. As an epistemology, it is a way of knowing by co-laboring with the Spirit of God, seeking 

to unify the partials of what we know into greater wholes. How do we educate for a world in 

evolution where we know ourselves increasingly to be part of an interconnected web of life? How 

do we educate to evolve toward a sustainable future of life? 

The starting point for rethinking the Catholic university is awakening to the fact that we no 

longer live in a mechanistic universe. Ours is an evolutionary universe. Mechanisms can operate 

efficiently but they cannot evolve toward more being and consciousness. Teilhard relentlessly 

argued that Christianity is not only compatible with evolution; it is a religion of evolution.26 By its 

very nature, it demands a new way of thinking and acting. Catholicity is an Incarnational 

commitment to thinking as a way of contributing to the development of life—an epistemology that 

evokes more being and consciousness of God at the heart of life.27 This type of catholic thinking 

should evoke a new zest for life, a “waking up” to the presence of God who is empowering 

evolution towards a new future. 

In light of Teilhard, I would suggest that a Catholic institution must be a system open to creating 

a new future through new relationships, consciousness, and a deepening of love. The aim of the 

institution is to advance knowing as a spiritual act, instilling knowledge as the contemplative 

dimension of being itself. In a world saturated with information, Catholic education has the 

capacity to transform “flatland thinking” (exponential amounts of information that flatten out 

interior depth) into interior thinking, where depth and the mystical dimensions of reality become 

integral to the knowing process. Thinking is the work not only of the human spirit but God’s Spirit. 

Each time the mind comprehends something it unites the world in a new way.28 “To discover and 

know,” Teilhard wrote, “is to actually extend the universe ahead and to complete it.”29 We pursue 

knowledge not to gain information or control life but to deepen and unify life toward the fullness 

of Christ. 

The Catholic university, grounded in its Incarnational commitment, has the capacity to breathe 

new life into the educative process by inviting new ways of knowing through engagement, 

participation, and dialogue. Discovery of the world is ultimately self-discovery and discovery of 

God. The human’s evolving consciousness must be seen as integral to the physical world, and the 

physical world must be seen as integral to the human’s desire to know. Murray noted over fifty 

years ago that all knowledge moves dynamically toward an ultimate horizon, and educators must 

foster that movement. Knowledge must be both deep and wide, a dynamic spirit of engagement 

that undergirds the richness of diverse disciplines and worldviews. One sees deeply into a truth 

when one sees it in relationship to other truths, in all its premises and conclusions, in all its 

applications to life. A deep knowledge, therefore, is nourished by fact and structured into a system 

of knowledge.30 



65  Delio 
 

This type of integrative knowledge does not dismiss specializations within disciplines but calls 

for less bounded disciplines and more integration via dialogue across disciplines. It also calls for 

a new vision of education where prayer and meditation are enfolded into the core curriculum so 

that the mind can focus on the priorities of wisdom. In an information-saturated age, we are losing 

the capacity to think and thus the capacity to unify. Teilhard believed that Christianity could evolve 

the world towards a new humanity, a new unity, and a new future in God. What better place to 

begin this evolution than on the level of Catholic education? 

 

 

Notes 

 
1. Garcia 2012, 893. 

2. Murray 1949, 40. 

3. Murray 1994, 124; Garcia 2012, 892. 

4. Garcia 2012, 895. 

5. Murray 1994, 124. Murray was clear that Catholic higher education is to be based on the 

doctrine of the Incarnation. 

6. Ignatius 1900. 

7. Haughey 2010, 40. 

8. Ong 1990, 347. 

9. Contemporary neuroscience is revealing a new understanding of mind that includes the 

emotions and environment. For a current scientific understanding of mind, see Gazzaniga, 

Ivry, and Mangun 2002; Varela, Thompson, and Rosch 1991; Damasio 1995; Damasio 

1999. 

10. Haughey 2010, 42. 

11. Jonah Lehrer notes that too much information can actually interfere with understanding in 

Lehrer 2009, 164. 

12. Haughey 2010, 44–46. 

13. Brague 2003, 101. 



Identity and the Catholic University  66 
 

14. Ibid., 105. 

15. Ibid., 121. 

16. See Delio 2011a, 64–9; Haughey 2010, 47–49. 

17. Einstein’s theory of relativity changed our understanding of space and time. Today, 

cosmologists indicate that the universe came into being about 13.8 billion years ago, 

rapidly inflated, and subsequently began cooling, marked by expansion. For a discussion 

of Big Bang cosmology, see Frank 2009, 146; Singh 2004, 120–128. 

18. Ecklund 2010; Delio 2011b, 16. 

19. Capra 1996, 10. 

20. For a broad discussion on evolution and its use in non-scientific areas, see Phipps 2012.  

21. Teilhard de Chardin 1999, 152; italics added. 

22. Ibid., 110. 

23. Teilhard de Chardin 1969, 23. Teilhard’s position on human evolution put him at odds with 

Church teaching, primarily because he rejected the idea of original sin in light of evolution. 

The Church has taken a moderate position on evolution, accepting it as a plausible 

explanation for the physical body, but maintaining that the soul is created immediately by 

God. In his 1950 encyclical Humani Generis, Pope Pius XII wrote: “The Teaching 

Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human 

sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in 

both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into 

the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter—for the 

Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God” (emphasis 

added). See Pope Pius XII 1950, §36. 

24. Teilhard de Chardin 1964, 179. 

25. Ibid., 5. 

26. Teilhard de Chardin 2002, 207–208. 

27. Haught 2008. 

28. King 1981, 36. 

29. Ibid., 35. 



67  Delio 
 

30. Garcia 2012, 896. 

 

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_____. 1999. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of 

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Delio, Ilia. 2011a. The Emergent Christ: Exploring the Meaning of Catholic in an Evolutionary 

Universe. New York: Orbis. 

_____. 2011b. “Faith and the Cosmos.” America 204 (April 4): 15–19. 

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