Words of the Fathers, Part 1: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin – UPDATE

I’ve been meaning to start a series of posts, which may evolve into a book (due to my raging jealousy of Jay Boyd and her publishing), on the words of various conciliar “fathers” of Vatican II.  These posts are not meant to be comprehensive in any way.  They will simply include various selections of statements made by various men highly influential upon the most recent Council.  Even though de Chardin died long before the Council, there was probably no man more influential upon its direction and outcome than the six-times condemned Jesuit.  I will in the future, God willing, also review various statements by other fathers from both sides of the ecclesial divide (and what a tragedy it is that the existence of such a divide is unquestionable) ranging from Yves Congar and Henri de Lubac to one who is increasingly my modern hero Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Cardinal Ottaviani, Fr. Joseph Clifford Fenton, and others. For today, most of the words come from Fr. Paul A Wickens short book Christ Denied.  I can state that many of these quotes are also available in Roberto de Mattei’s Second Vatican Council: An Unwritten History and Michael Davies’ Pope John’s Council.

A very brief biography of de Chardin.  He was a Jesuit highly influenced by the excommunicated Fr. George Tyrell, SJ.  de Chardin almost never served in ministry to souls. He spent most of his time traveling and making specious, completely fabricated archeological “finds.” Both his “Piltdown man” and “Peking man,” pathetic attempts to provide the “missing link” between apes and humans (thus reveailng de Chardin’s unquestioning acceptance of “evolution”) and, more importantly, to gain notoriety for himself, were completely discredited within months or years of his “discoveries.”  Between travels and his “discoveries,” he taught from time to time, but he was barred from teaching in Europe for several decades and was, in fact, exiled as a missionary to China (where he discovered “Peking Man,” a crude use of monkey bones he had modified to look “human”) but he did no missionary work. He almost never offered Mass. He was a prolific writer, whose evolution-derived theories of faithiness were incredibly influential, for reasons that are difficult to fathom.  Several prelates at the Council made interventions declaring de Chardin the intellectual “father” of Vatican II.  As I stated before, his works were condemned 6 times, there were monitums issued banning the publication of some of his most key works (but that didn’t stop their publication), and he was frequently accused of heresy.  The Vatican’s demands that he stop printing and teaching were generally simply ignored, or submitted to with a feigned submission while de Chardin kept right on keepin’ on.

To the quotes:

I do not think God should be worshipped – from a conference given in 1947

Very definitely there was no Adam and Eve and no Original Sin – from a similar conference, date not given, but this quote is entirely consistent with de Chardin’s views on evolution

Rome does not want me to return to my professorship. They do not seem to have taken a dislike to me, far from it; but they want to save Religion…..I would take enormous delight in breaking all ties (the reference here is to breaking all ties to traditional Catholic belief, and the Church as a whole – from letter written Feb. 14 1927)

What increasingly dominates my interest is the effort to establish within myself, and to diffuse around me, a new religion (let’s call it an improved Christianity if you like) whose personal God is no longer the great neolithic landowner of times gone by, but the Soul of the world……(Letter to Leontine Zanta, Jan 26 1936)

Christ saves. But must we not hasten to add that Christ, too, is saved by evolution? (Le Christique, 1955)

I have got so many friends in good strategic positions, that I feel quite safe about the future (Letter, Sept. 24, 1947, wherein de Chardin remarks on his numerous disciples in positions of great influence in the Church, which would certainly appear to have been borne out by the accolades given de Chardin during the Council)

I want to teach people how to see God everywhere, to see Him in all that is hidden, most solid, and most ultimate in the world. I am essentially Pantheist in my thinking and in my temperament. (no source, but I’ve seen this many places)

Since once again, Lord, I have neither bread nor wine nor altar  I will raise myself beyond these symbols, up to the pure majesty of the real itself; I, your priest, will make the whole  earth my altar, and on it will offer you all the labors and suffering of the world.

Sometimes I am a bit afraid, when I think of the transposition to which I must submit my mind concerning the common notions of creation, inspiration, miracle, original sin, resurrection, etc., in order to be able to accept them. (Letter of Dec. 17, 1922 to a friend, remarking on how he must radically change his desired thinking to accept such core Doctrines as the Resurrection or Original Sin)

Fascism opens its arms to the future….Fascism quite possibly represents……..the blueprint for the world tomorrow (de Chardin flirted quite heavily with Fascism in the 30s, before opposing after it was crushed in the 40s)

Peace cannot mean anything but a higher process of conquest

Personally, I would forgive the ruthless ways of fascism, if fascism did not shelter anti-progressive forces

A progressive democrat is not fundamentally different from a really progressive totalitarian (hey, he was right! – no source given for any of these)

No humane hopes for an organized society (in territories held as colonies by European powers) must cause us to forget that the human stratum may not be homogeneous. If it were not, it would be necessary to find for the Chinese, as for the Negroes, their special function, which may not (by biological impossibility) be that of the whites (April 6, 1927 letter – I would imagine China’s status today is a sufficient rebuke for de Chardin’s racism)

The Hindus have been a disappointement to me. In them, too, the creative power seems in a pretty poor way. India seems just as incapable of self-government as China or Malaya

Written about de Chardin, by Msgr. Leo S Schumacher, PhD: de Chardin……….really intended to start a new religion and revamped Catholic doctrine to suit his purpose…..So he produced a new faith, a new religion which masquerades as the Catholic Faith because it uses Catholic terminology. The words may be Catholic, but the meaning very often is not. Thus, many are deceived and go on to misinterpret Teilhard even where he is very clear in stating what he is up to.

Final note: I know that Pope Benedict to some degree fancied some of de Chardin, especially his “cosmic” exposition on the Mass. I know his writings are praised by many.  That’s why I’m just quoting his own words.  But I should note that even the Vatican listed de Chardin’s beliefs as a source of the new age religion, and he has been criticized heavily as much as he has been praised, if not more.

UPDATE:  A note about heresy and heretics.  It is very rare that someone is completely heretical – that is to say, that they reject everything the Church believes. It is unlikely such a person has ever existed. Because all heretics contain some measure of truth in their beliefs, some people seem to believe that makes them somehow OK, or at least, a manageable problem, so long as one can separate the wheat from the chaff.  I would caution people against doing so.  In order to be assured of not falling under some pernicious influence on the part of the problematic or heretical source, one would have to be very confident they possessed such a strong knowledge of the Faith, theology, philosophy, liturgy, et. al., as to be able to have an assured capability to separate those problematic areas from the ostensible “good.”  I think our view of heretics has been very misshapen by the protestant revolt, where there grew up sects of men who rejected whole swaths of revealed Truth.  Historically, that has not been the case. There have been many condemned heretics who perhaps held only one or two beliefs that could not be reconciled with the Faith.  But because the Faith is so intertwined, depending on those beliefs, they can have a spillover effect into all manner of Catholic Truth.  Arius the arch-heretic “only” believed the Christ was somehow less than God.  But that one belief is enough to collapse all of Christianity, and has the Arian sects developed, that’s exactly what occurred.  As  St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, the Moral Doctor of the Church, stated, one bad book is enough to destroy a monastery – or millions of souls.