James T. Keane, the senior editor for the Jesuit-run “America” magazine, awakened my curiosity with his September 2023 article titled, “Pope Francis caused a stir by quoting Teilhard de Chardin, the often ‘misunderstood’ Jesuit.”
Saying that Teilhard de Chardin was “misunderstood” is like saying that Martin Luther was “misunderstood” since he also was a properly ordained Catholic priest, and “reformed” the church by fragmenting Her into thousands of sects.
I was interested in the “misunderstood” writings of Teilhard because in my high school days, a great many moons ago, I debated Teilhard de Chardin’s findings in both science and theology with a biology teacher and a trendy Jesuit priest.
Since then, I thought that Teilhard de Chardin had been relegated to the dustbin of history – without further ado – as a neo-pagan “theologian” and a fraudulent “scientist”. But, seeing that Pope Francis referred to him as an “often misunderstood” Jesuit, I decided to dig out my study notes among my old papers and put together this series of articles.
In September of 2023, Pope Francis recalled the prayer that the Jesuit Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin offered to God exactly “a hundred years ago, in the desert,” during his historic visit to Mongolia at the conclusion of Mass in Ulaanbaatar.
Here is the “prayer” (sic!): “Radiant Word, blazing Power, you who mold the manifold so as to breathe life into it, I pray you, lay on us those your hands—powerful, considerate, omnipresent”.
If any reader can give me a precise interpretation of these obscure words in Catholic terms, and how they reflect in any way the Gospel of Jesus Christ, I would be grateful. It is not accurate to say that Teilhard was only “often misunderstood”: No, he was also often unintelligible.
James T. Keane continues: “The mention of Teilhard caused a bit of a stir among reporters and Vatican watchers, not least because many fans of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.—whose writings were placed under a Vatican monitum in 1962 (renewed in 1981, just in case) for ‘dangerous ambiguities and grave errors’—have hoped for years that Pope Francis would remove any Vatican warnings from Teilhard’s writings and rehabilitate the theologian/scientist”.
What were the contents of the Vatican Monitum of 1962? The “Osservatore Romano,” French edition of July 13, 1962, published the following “Monitum” of the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office:
Certain works of Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, even posthumous works, are published and find no small favor.
Apart from the judgment as to what belongs to the field of the positive sciences, in matters of philosophy and theology, it is clearly manifested that the above-mentioned works contain such ambiguities and even such serious errors, that they offend Catholic doctrine.
Hence, the Fathers of the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office exhort all Ordinaries and Superiors of religious institutes, rectors of seminaries and presidents of universities to defend the minds, especially those of the young, against the dangers of the works of Father Teilhard de Chardin and his disciples.
Given at Rome, in the Palace of the Holy Office, June 30, 1962.
SEBASTIANUS MASALA Notarius».
Roma Locuta est, causa finita est. In the sixties, as throughout most of Church history, the issue was cut and dried: Rome spoke, the debate is over. Since Rome declared that Teilhard’s writings were ambiguous, dangerous, and offensive to Catholic doctrine, that’s the end of it. But his fans today want to take the man’s doctrines out of the grave and elevate him to the level of… a Doctor of the Church!
Editor’s Note: In January 2018, the heterodox National Catholic Reporter published an article about an initiative to have Chardin declared a Doctor of the Church.
Teilhard de Chardin spent several years studying paleontology and became famous for “discovering” the Piltdown man: Actually, it was a blatant FRAUD; he then traveled to China on a ‘scientific’ expedition culminating in the ‘discovery’ of the Peking Man, the Synanthropus Pekinensis, which turned out to be a complete falsification, a BLUFF. His work on the theory of evolution he invented incurred the condemnation of his doctrines. Keane states:
“He was not allowed to publish or teach during his lifetime. In recent years, scholars have identified racist and eugenicist passages in Teilhard’s work on the biological and spiritual evolution of humanity”.
“Much of Teilhard’s fame came posthumously, particularly with the publication of his major works The Divine Milieu and The Phenomenon of Man. He is remembered mostly for his concepts of the social evolution of humanity, which could be partially directed by humanity itself (transcending physical evolution); the convergence of all creation toward a moment of omniscience and unity of consciousness, which he called the “Omega Point” and identified with the Logos of Christ; and the integral relationship between humanity and the rest of matter in a constantly evolving universe”.
That is, all beings in the universe are continuously evolving towards a more perfect state, and are also converging towards a final point, which he calls the Omega point, or the Cosmic Christ, and this universal mega-synthesis or pleromization (his words) immerges is God, who is also evolving alongside the universe.
Among those who championed his work was the famed theologian of the Second Vatican Council, Henri de Lubac, S.J., who in 1965 published Teilhard de Chardin: The Man and His Meaning, followed by four more books on Teilhard in the coming years.
“Everything That Rises Must Converge…” And probably Teilhard’s most famous dogma comes from his 1936 essay, “The Evolution of Chastity”:
“Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire” (sic!).
I do not claim to understand this total ambiguity, but it reminds me of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger who said, “Ambiguity is the mark of the demonic” (The Ratzinger Report, 1985, p. 150).
Thomas M. King, S.J., once noted in Amerika, “Teilhard was striving for sanctity by working in science, and this effort would require a new understanding of what it means to be holy.”(sic!)
Indeed, it required a completely neo-pagan concept of holiness, as we’ll see in this series.
In the aforementioned National Catholic Reporter article by Heidi Schlumpf, she wrote that “Naming Jesuit Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin a doctor of the church— or at least removing the “warning” from his writings — would give the Jesuit scientist and philosopher more legitimacy in the church, his supporters say. And two separate petitions to the Vatican aim to do just that.”
Wow! Impressive! From authoring ambiguous and erroneous doctrines and being involved in “scientific” frauds and bluffs to becoming a Doctor of the Church is like a major somersault jump from the depth of hell to the height of heaven!
Next article: The move to make the Dissenter a Doctor of the Church!
The fog of Satan. Even a moderately catechised Catholic would be able to identify the blatant heresy, errors and nonsense of this pitiful “man’s” words. He is,demonstrably, a viper and a liar. Let him, and any who would promote his evil, be anathema.