by
Damien F. Mackey
(This article was originally written in February, 1996)
Although the French Jesuit, Fr. Teilhard de Chardin, died in 1955, his influence is obviously still being felt today. This is evidenced by the fact that two major educational programs in Sydney, Australia, in recent years - that of the Discalced Carmelites and the Northern Deanery's "Religious Education II: Theory and Practice for Parents and Teachers" in 1994 - have both included talks on Fr. Teilhard de Chardin.
The questions to be posed here are: "Why does de Chardin still exert an influence on the modern mind?"
And: "What sort of an influence is it?"
De Chardin's Broad Reach
The writings of Pere Teilhard de Chardin have embraced a wide range of disciplines. Thus today we can read books that try to analyse the Jesuit's so-called scientific views; or his anthropological and sociological beliefs; or his metaphysico-philosophical arguments; or even his theosophical, religious and mystical doctrines.
In the minds of some, Fr. de Chardin is actually considered to be a Saint; equal (if not greater) in the loftiness of his thought to St. Thomas Aquinas.
Others regard him as a mystic, for whom only the exalted medium of poetry was sufficient for him to express his seraphic aspirations.
For others, however, he is nothing but a scientific fraud; one who had willingly participated in the Piltdown Man hoax. Or an incompetent in philosophy, his reasoning contradicting the most basic laws of human thinking.
More damning still is the following view of him that was expressed by a writer in "TRIUMPH" magazine, after his having read through de Chardin's paper, "The Human Sense":
As the reader goes through this longish essay, he will be struck by Teilhard's boorishness. Where he is not outrageous, he is insufferably silly. Whether he assumes the garb of the sociologist, the theologian or the historian of ideas, the result is always the same: the garb hangs in bulky and comic surplus around the shoulders of a midget.
In only one pose is Teilhard really, in a perverse way, convincing: that of the anti-Christian prophet. He says that mankind, possessed by the utopian-secularist vision that he lauds as the "human sense", will ever more despise the Christ of papal teaching. We agree. And so it has transpired. The only difference lies in the side that one chooses".
["The Teilhard Papers II", Dec. 1971, 28. Emphasis added].
Strong words from that writer.
Are they true or not?
Was de Chardin really a bit of an ignoramus, whose only genuine - though dubious - claim to 'fame' was as an "anti-Christian prophet"? A Hitler-type in Jesuit's garb, if you like, in the sense that he was able to get away with the most absurd anthropological and sociological views (compare Hitler's Mein Kampf), because he bore a message that for some mysterious reason had stirred the imaginations of his contemporaries.
In regard to this comparison with Hitler, recent writings have shown rather plausibly that de Chardin shared the same Weltanschauung as the Nazis; both having common roots in the occult Theosophical Society of the mid-nineteenth century. Most particularly, their views have been traced back to the school of Madame Blavatsky and her colleagues.
In other words, de Chardin's 'metaphysics' owes more to theosophy than it does to philosophy.
Now, one extremely nasty feature that both de Chardin and the Nazis apparently inherited from this Theosophical Society was its xenophobia: a contempt for what were perceived to be the 'inferior' races (in de Chardin's case, the Chinese and the Negroid peoples).
Most relevant to the request of the Secular Carmelites, however (more than de Chardin's purported racist views, or his 'philosophical' quirks) are his opinions pertaining to Catholic Faith.
What Was de Chardin's Aim?
We do not need to rack our brains too hard to try to discern what de Chardin was bent upon achieving, because he himself has stated in quite unequivocal terms what that was. In 1936 he explained that his dominant interest was to create a "new religion", and to spread it:
What increasingly dominates my interest is the effort to establish within myself and to diffuse around me a new religion in which the personal God is no longer the great neolithic landowner of times gone by, but the soul of the world, as the cultural and religious stage we have reached now demands. [26th January, 1936; quoted in "Letters to L. Zanta", 114. Emphasis added].
The advent of this "new religion" - a movement that de Chardin believed would be "much more profound" even than the Protestant Reformation - would be achieved only by a complete re-interpretation of Catholic dogma. Thus he wrote only two years before he died:
I have come to the conclusion that, in order to pay for a drastic valorization and amortization of the substance of things, a whole series of re-shaping of certain representations or attitudes, which seem to us definitely fixed by Catholic dogma, has become necessary, if we sincerely want to Christify evolution. Seen thus, and because of an ineluctable necessity, one could say that a hitherto unknown form of religion is gradually germinating in the heart of modern man in the furrow opened up by the idea of evolution. ["Stuff of the Universe", 1953. Emphasis added].
Now, not by the wildest stretch of the imagination can Catholicism be properly described by de Chardin's phrase: "... a hitherto unknown form of religion".
So - despite what the Jesuit himself tried to maintain - it could not have been Catholicism that he saw as "gradually germinating in the heart of modern man in the furrow opened up by the idea of evolution", but rather de Chardin's "new religion".
How then, we ask, can any Catholic (e.g. a Fr. Ross Collings; or the lecturers employed by the Northern Deanery) claim to be able to use Teilhard de Chardin's writings for the enrichment of Catholic Faith?
De Chardin has, by his very own words, admitted to having directed all of his writings and his energies towards establishing a "hitherto unknown form of religion".
The answer is that those who enthusiastically teach de Chardin's doctrines have no interest at all in enhancing Catholic Faith.
Thus Christopher Bounds, the Religious Education Co-ordinator of Mary MacKillop College, who lectured in 1994 to Catholic Parents and Teachers of the Northern Deanery, told those assembled: "If your kids become genuine Buddhists you've succeeded". (The writer was present at the time, with a witness).
In regard to this false presumption that all religions - even the non-Christian ones - are equal with Catholicism, have not certain perceptive commentators on De Chardin observed that he was really the first to make eastern (e.g. Buddhist) mysticism attractive to the scientific western mind?
"Today", observed John Paul II, "we are seeing a certain diffusion of Buddhism in the West". [Crossing the Threshold of Hope p.85]. Was John Paul II pleased about this tendency? Not on your life! "... the Buddhist tradition and the methods deriving from it", he goes on to warn, "have an almost exclusively negative soteriology. The "enlightenment" experienced by Buddha comes down to the conviction that the world is bad, that it is the source of evil and of suffering for man". (Ibid.).
Not that the followers of de Chardin are about to be swayed by the views of the Holy Father, for which they generally show contempt. Mr. Bounds, for instance, seemed determined in class to undermine the authority of Pope John Paul II in whatever way he could; even to the extent of making such ridiculous statements as "John Paul II is not a teacher", because presumably "... he's never been in a classroom situation".
Bounds also stated quite categorically that he was not going to teach his students about "Humanae Vitae", because it was beyond them. Nor would the Catechism of the Catholic Church be used in the classrooms.
Soon we shall discover what de Chardin himself thought about papal encyclicals.
De Chardin's Synthesising Idea
If one were to look for a common, synthesising idea throughout de Chardin's writings it would undoubtedly be that of "evolution". For him, evolution was really everything, godlike. "Evolution", he wrote on one occasion, "is not just hypotheses or theories: it is a general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow and which they must satisfy if they are thinkable and true ...".
We really need to pause here to take in that last statement.
Having let de Chardin's words sink in, we can only exclaim: What a statement of breathtaking arrogance! Everything, he claims, every idea, every system of thought, "must bow" to the theory of evolution.
Why?
Because de Chardin says so.
And he means literally everything, even Christ. Yes even Christ - according to de Chardin's jaundiced view - is dependent on the biological (and, may we add, scientifically quite unproven) process of evolution.
Thus Teilhard wrote in "Le Christique" (1955), just before he died: "Christ saves, but must we not hasten to add, Christ too is saved by evolution".
The Divine Person, Jesus Christ, dependent upon evolution for salvation.
Not likely!
But for de Chardin, who envisaged God, not as One who pre-existed, and who was really distinct from, His creation (as most Christians believe), but as nothing other than "the soul of the world", then the idea of an evolving "God" was an inevitable conclusion.
De Chardin's Contempt for Papal Thinking
Some decades before De Chardin had begun to write his books and articles, Pope St. Pius X had already - in his now celebrated encyclical, "Pascendi" (1907) - unravelled the complex thought processes of the typical Modernist, showing these to be quite subjectively based.
Today, the expression "personal faith experience" is commonly used to describe this particular 'religious' attitude.
What it boils down to is that the individual perceives himself or herself, rather than an external authority (Church), to be the final judge of his or her own private "religious experiences".
Now it is this subjective approach that precisely motivated de Chardin, just as today it motivates those who follow and/or promote his views in the face of numerous warnings, bannings and even condemnations against these by the legitimate Church authorities.
Religious subjectivism is likewise the motivation for the numerous followers of unapproved apparitions. What all of these religious subjectivists have in common is that they themselves want the power to determine their own 'spiritual' path, to map out their own course for 'salvation', according to their own timetable, without any 'obstruction' or 'interference' from the Church.
But the Holy Spirit never ceases to guide the Church and to warn the faithful against the dangers to salvation posed by such attitudes.
Through the writings and warnings of Pope St. Pius X, Modernism was exposed and unmasked at its very inception. For decades this pernicious system, rightly called the "synthesis of all heresies", was forced to go underground. However, with the popularisation of the theory of Evolution the Modernists seemed to gain a second wind. Pope Pius XII rose to tackle this new situation, insofar as it impinged upon Faith.
Thus, in 1950, the Holy Father wrote in his encyclical "Humani Generis" words that - as we are going to find - are perfectly applicable to the thinking of de Chardin:
Some will contend that the theory of evolution as it is called - a theory that has not yet been proved beyond contradiction even in the sphere of natural science - applies to the origin of all things whatsoever .... These false evolutionary notions, with their denial of all that is absolute or fixed or abiding in human experience (tradition) have paved the way for a new philosophy of error.
[Emphasis added].
Although Pope Pius XII did not specifically mention de Chardin here, the fact that the Holy Father's description could be applied without any forcing to the Jesuit's thinking (e.g. his implication that even God was subject to the evolutionary process) was not lost on de Chardin's colleague, an ex-priest (Dominican) who had rejected Catholicism. Thus the former Dominican, fully aware that "Humani Generis" was condemning the very views that de Chardin held, and himself seeing no hope for fermenting these new ideas within so strong a Church, invited de Chardin by letter to join him in battle to change the Church from the outside.
But de Chardin's schemes were more sophisticated than that.
He was hell bent on changing the Catholic Church "from within". He anticipated, even boasted about, an imminent change within the Catholic Church "much more profound" than the Protestant Reformation (which had eventually gone outside the Church).
Here is de Chardin's reply to his ex-priest friend:
Basically I consider - as you do - that the Church reaches a period of mutation or necessary reformation. To be more precise: I consider that the reformation in question (and much more profound a one than that of the sixteenth century) is no longer a simple matter of institutions and ethics, but of faith. Having stated my views I still cannot see any better means of bringing about what I anticipate than to work towards this re-form from within. In the course of the last fifty years I have watched the revitalization of Catholic thought and life taking place around me - in spite of the encyclicals - too closely not to have un-bounded confidence in the ability of the old Roman stem to re-vivify itself. Let us then each work in our separate sphere: all upward movements converge.
From the above, it is quite obvious that De Chardin knew exactly what he was doing. He wanted to re-cast the entire Catholic system according to his evolutionary views. This, as he thought, would enable him to do away with dogma and papal teaching. The whole thing was conspiratorial. He would proceed with his new religion "... in spite of the encyclicals".
It therefore comes as no surprise to find that the lecturer from the de Chardin influenced Northern Deanery, Chris Bounds, should have told his class regarding the then current encyclical, "Veritatis Splendor", that (said with approval): "Some of my colleagues call the Pope's encyclical 'Supercilious Veritatis'".
In the light of the above, it would be folly to construe de Chardin's writings as do some, as assuming mere "poetic licence". His were the systematic words and actions of a man who knew exactly what he was about. "To lay the axe at the root itself, that is Faith", is how Pope St. Pius X had (more than forty years earlier) described the intentions of the Modernists.
And judging by that famous post-conciliar remark of Pope Paul VI, that the "smoke of Satan" had begun to seep into the Church through cracks and crevices, the efforts by de Chardin and his colleagues to change the Church from within were by the 1970's having a profound effect.
De Chardin Today
What is the great appeal of de Chardin today, now in the Third Millennium?
It is not difficult to ascertain why de Chardin's writings still have a strong appeal today.
They offer to human pride the same temptations that were offered to our First Parents in the Garden: to be like God; to be able to determine the course of one's own salvation; to disobey; to wield power.
Messiah-like, De Chardin promises those who will follow him an easy road to salvation. Having done away with, as he believed, the outdated notions of Adam and Eve (for de Chardin was a polygenist), and of Original Sin - even of God as we know Him - and having presumably replaced all of this with a transcendent evolutionary process by means of which all (God "the Soul of the World", ourselves) must inevitably reach perfection (or what de Chardin called "Omega Point") the Jesuit was then able to conclude that there was no need for a Redeeming Christ, because there was no sin. Hence there was no longer any necessity for one to follow the steep and painful way to salvation as marked out by the Gospels. De Chardin was in fact convinced that the world of his time had outgrown its use for the Gospels, with their old-fashioned doctrine of sin and the need for personal salvation. The Gospels, the "Imitation of Christ", he boldly declared in "The Human Sense", needed to be replaced:
A collective optimism, realistic and courageous, must defi-nitely replace the pessimism and individualism, whose over-grown notions of sin and personal salvation have gradually burdened and perverted the Christian spirit. Let us then ac-knowledge the situation honestly: not only the "Imitation of Christ" but also the Gospel itself needs to undergo this correction, and the whole world will make them undergo it.
Despite de Chardin's frenetic attempts to play at once the roles of priest, prophet, evangelist and 'Messiah', and to re-interpret the entire history and pattern of salvation that has been revealed to us through the Scriptures and Tradition, the road to Heaven remains the same as it has always been: the narrow, bloodstained way of the Cross, trodden first by our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, on our behalf. It is a road of suffering and self denial (Matthew 16:24); a narrow door (John 10:7). Christ, and He alone, is the Way to salvation, the Way to the Father, and there is no other (John 14:6). Anyone who tries to force another way is "a thief and a robber" (John 10:1).
In so many places does the New Testament recall to mind for us the fact that one needs to work hard at one's salvation. It is not easily obtained, not even by the good. St. Peter, quoting from the Book of Proverbs, made this quite clear when he said that: "If the righteous man is scarcely saved, where will the impious and sinner appear?" (I Peter 4:18).
So despite de Chardin and similar prophets of an anti-Christ mentality, the way of the Cross still remains the only way of salvation. And on this feast-day of Our Lady of Lourdes it is appropriate to recall the words that the Blessed Virgin spoke to St. Bernadette as given at the top of this article: "I do not promise to make you happy in this world, but in the next."
No Cross, no Crown!
Promoting a New Age ‘Jesus’
“[Rob] Bell promoted his next major title, The ZimZum of Love: A New Way of Understanding Marriage, on Oprah’s show, using a secular humanistic argument to try and override the ages-old tried-and-proven Bible teaching that God blesses marriage only between one man and one woman”.
Apparently Oprah Winfrey quoted the French Jesuit, père Teilhard de Chardin, during a 2014 tour in San José, California, accompanied by Rob Bell.
Firstly, who is Rob Bell you ask?
Bell (with his wife, Kristen) is quite a piece of work, even for a one-time megachurch pastor. The following should make this abundantly clear:
https://www.onenewsnow.com/culture/2015/02/21/rob-bell-stands-with-oprah-re-writes-bible-on-marriage
Bestselling author Rob Bell, the former megachurch pastor who became notorious for his book arguing that there’s no such thing as hell, is at it again … this time taking aim at biblical marriage while promoting same-sex “marriage” via the new book he touted on Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday program.
Poised to make more money from attacking another biblical principle, Bell, the former pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church, told Oprah Winfrey that the American Church is just “moments away” from supporting “gay marriage,” proclaiming that the transformation is “inevitable.”
Bell promoted his next major title, The ZimZum of Love: A New Way of Understanding Marriage, on Oprah’s show, using a secular humanistic argument to try and override the ages-old tried-and-proven Bible teaching that God blesses marriage only between one man and one woman.
Bell’s wife, Kristen, joined him to tell Oprah that they are fully on board with the LGBT community concerning same-sex marriage, which is now legalized in 37 states … and counting.
"Marriage, gay and straight, is a gift to the world because the world needs more — not less — love, fidelity, commitment, devotion and sacrifice," Kristen Bell told Oprah and her millions of viewers.
In Oprah’s corner
Pleased that the Bells are on her side of the same-sex marriage debate in their book, Oprah inquired what it was that made them support homosexuality in the sacred institution.
"One of the oldest aches in the bones of humanity is loneliness," Rob Bell responded to Oprah, one of the wealthiest entertainers on earth. "Loneliness is not good for the world. Whoever you are, gay or straight, it is totally normal, natural and healthy to want someone to go through life with. It's central to our humanity. We want someone to go on the journey with."
Ecstatic over Bell’s reply, Oprah posed another question regarding Christians embracing the controversial union.
"When is the church going to get that?" Oprah asked.
"We're close," the controversial author said before his wife chirped in, "I think it's evolving."
The former pastor then articulated on where he thought the Church was going on the issue.
"Lots of people are already there,” insisted Bell, who publicly “arrived” at his new stance on marriage back in 2013. “We think it's inevitable and we're moments away from the Church accepting it." ….
Oprah Winfrey and the New Age ‘Jesus’
“As Oprah entered, it looked like a re-creation of the so-called BIG BANG explosion, which evolutionists believe created the universe. The whole background and the whole arena, with the thousands of lighted wristbands, made it seem like everyone was in outer space. As she entered, it appeared to be an attempt to recreate the supposed creation of the universe by the “BIG BANG.”
An “insider” has provided this report of it:
https://ezekielcountdown.wordpress.com/2014/12/12/an-insiders-view-of-oprahs-life-you-want-weekend-tour-2014-with-rob-bell-bringing-americans-to-the-new-age-christ/
An Insider’s View of Oprah’s Life You Want Weekend Tour 2014 With Rob Bell – Bringing Americans to the New Age “Christ”
LTRP Note: The following “notes” were written by an attendee at the recent Oprah Winfrey tour in San Jose, California, Oprah’s Life You Want Weekend Tour 2014. Along with a number of New Age speakers was emergent former pastor Rob Bell. While the following is lengthy, it is well written—and we have posted it because it is a perfect example of how a false New Age christ is being brought to millions of Americans through two of its most popular figures, Oprah to the secular, Rob Bell to the young with a Christian background. Warren B. Smith, a former New Ager, was contacted by this attendee, who in turn agreed to allow Lighthouse Trails to post this. In Smith’s book, False Christ Coming: Does Anybody Care?, he describes how a false christ will deceive millions and millions into believing he is the Savior of the world through meditation. We are witnessing this happening today in both the world and shockingly, in the church (through the Spiritual Formation movement).
Written by an anonymous attendee:
Note: The quotes from the various speakers in this account are approximate, based on copious notes rather than precise transcription.
FRIDAY DAYTIME (O’ Town)
O’ Town was a pop-up town square. Inside, there was a gigantic “O” where participants could get a photo in the “O.” There was also a station for massages, make-overs, a kiosk selling Oprah’s books, various Oprah bags, t-shirts, etc., and the books of those “hand-picked spiritual trailblazers” (as Oprah called them) speaking at the conference. There also was an Oprah Show Photo Gallery with various celebrity photos of her guests over the 25-year run of the show. Notable photos included Oprah with President Barack and Michelle Obama, Marianne Williamson, Eckhart Tolle, Rhonda Byrne [the Secret], Dr. Mehmet Oz, and a host of Hollywood New Agers. Once inside “O Town,” attendees were given an “O Tour Wristband,” a special souvenir. They were told to wear it during the weekend. The wristband had internal lights that would later on be controlled remotely, once inside the arena. A Yoga Session also was held during the day.
FRIDAY EVENING
Friday evening was Oprah’s 2-hour New Age testimony. As the intro to her grand entrance, the entire arena was darkened, and everyone’s wristbands lit up into various colors, controlled remotely. They used these wristbands for visual effects (thousands of people with blue lights on their wrists, green lights, red lights, etc.) Also, the wristbands blinked when they wanted people back in the arena. As Oprah entered, it looked like a re-creation of the so-called BIG BANG explosion, which evolutionists believe created the universe. The whole background and the whole arena, with the thousands of lighted wristbands, made it seem like everyone was in outer space. As she entered, it appeared to be an attempt to recreate the supposed creation of the universe by the “BIG BANG.”
Oprah started out the talk by quoting the poem “Invictus”:
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
Next, she held up the picture of her “meditation chair”: a white chair surrounded by a bunch of trees. She said she goes there often and enters into the silence. Then, she quoted Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
She then talked about how “it,” “the voice” had been giving her signs all along to guide her life . . .
She began by showing a cute photo of herself at age 5. She shared how she was born in Mississippi, born an illegitimate child. She attended an African-American Southern Baptist church where she memorized her pastor’s sermons and tried to re-preach them, complete with her pastor’s mannerisms, to her classmates. She joked that “that didn’t go over too well as you can imagine.” In her early childhood, she was raised by her Grandma Hattie Mae, who was a maid for a white family. Grandma Hattie’s only adult aspiration for Oprah was for her to find a decent family to work for as a maid. It was then that Oprah claimed, while sitting on her grandmother’s porch, she “heard the voice telling me that I wasn’t (going to be a maid) . . . it told me to not tell my grandmother that.”
Oprah then shared about her teenage pregnancy at age 14, and her baby boy that died. At that point, she had moved in with her birth father Vernon. She had contemplated suicide, but her father told her it was her “second chance.” She then talked about the importance of living each day to the max, and how to be grateful for everything.
It was at this point the arena darkened again, and the background slide was Newton’s Cradle (also known as an Executive Ball Clicker). This Newton’s cradle (or Executive Ball Clicker) consisted of 5 identically sized metal balls suspended in a metal frame, so that they were just touching each other at rest. Each ball was attached to the frame by two wires of equal length, angled away from each other.
With Newton’s Cradle on the background screen, Oprah started talking about Newton’s Law of Motion. She said: “I love Newton’s Third Law, which basically says that ‘every action has an equal and opposite reaction.’ ” She then started the repeating/looping video clip, complete with sound effects, of Newton’s cradle. The looping video clip with sound effects kept showing the last ball on one end being lifted up by its string on one end and released, colliding with the other 4 stationary balls. The impact from the first ball was transmitted through the stationary balls to the last ball at the other end of Newton’s Cradle. For seemingly quite a long time (5 minutes perhaps) she kept looping that video clip with the loud “CLANG” every time there was a collision of balls. The time lapse between each sound of collision (“CLANG”) was around 5 seconds, so she was able to interject her talk and make points while the looping video was going on.
Of course, while the video clip is looping, she wasn’t really explaining anything. She kept talking throughout the looping video clip, but always paused when there was the loud noise of collision of balls. She went on to say “Every cause has an effect . . . every action a reaction . . . your actions/intentions have consequences . . . every action has a reaction . . . Every action creates another reaction, which then creates a new counter action. Actions and reactions . . . actions and reactions . . . This is karma . . .” The main point she made was how she LOVES Newton’s Third Law or Law of Motion. She repeated several times with the loud “CLANG” of the ball/sphere collisions: “Your intentions matter . . . your actions matter . . . action and reaction . . . action and reaction . . .”
The repetition of “CLANG” interspersed with her comments about karma was very mesmerizing, but in a very light weight kind of way, to warm people up to belief in karma by using very simple sounds and visualizations.
Following the Newton’s Cradle illustration, she went on to talk about how her new OWN television network’s purpose is to help others become spiritual. She basically preached a New Age sermon and even sang the refrain of the hymn “I surrender all” but she modified it. The actual song goes: “All to Jesus I surrender . . .. I surrender all, I surrender all, All to thee, my blessed Savior, I surrender all.” But Oprah left out the “All to Jesus” and “blessed Savior” parts. She said the turning point in her life, when she transitioned from her Southern Baptist roots, was when she finally figured out what “surrender” meant. She said the moment that changed her was when she realized in church, she had been told surrender was bowing her knees (and she bowed her knees on stage), but she realized that surrender is standing up with arms stretched upwards, reaching upwards (and she did this on stage). She said that was surrender, not bowing the knee. That was pivotal for her. She said this was related to her shift in her spiritual life when she got the role of Sophia in Color Purple. She said she became Sophia, and it transformed her life. “The voice” had told her she was destined to get the role.
Oprah said she wanted to make sure everyone understood that they are co-creators with the universe. That everyone’s intentions have power. Their words have power. That they all have their own path and energy field, but they must not mess or interfere with anyone else’s energy field. “Don’t interfere with anyone else’s energy field,” she repeated. She ended the talk with the last line of Invictus again “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”
“Oprah said she wanted to make sure everyone understood that they are co-creators with the universe”. Now, according to Celia Deane-Drummond, in her book Pierre Teilhard De Chardin on People and Planet (emphasis added):
In Teilhard's theology, Jesus Christ risen is more present to creation through his creative love than creation is present to itself. His creative love creates, makes creation to be created, not God, not Jesus Christ, but itself (Teilhard de Chardin 1956: 2-11).
The Lord's creative loving presence to me makes me myself; he creates me; his love creates me, holds me in existence, moves me forward into the future. This is true of each of us and of every creature and of all creation.
We co-create with God the Creator. Whatever we do in the direction of unification, of love, of building or maintaining toward Jesus, toward the Kingdom, participates in the process of creation, of the reconciliation of all things in Christ.
We are co-creators with the Creator. ….
In Teilhard’s “ineluctable” system, sins become just inevitable mistakes along the way”:
https://onepeterfive.com/teilhard-chardin-vii-architect/
“As for Teilhard, the problem of evil is not due to angelic or human malice, but is an inevitable side-effect of the evolutionary process: “In our modern perspective of a Universe in a process of cosmogenesis, the problem of evil no longer exists.” The “Multiple” is “essentially subject to the play of probabilities of chance in its arrangements.” It is “absolutely unable to progress toward unity without engendering [evil] here or there by statistical necessity” [vii]. It appears, then, that there is no room for error or sin, as all is inevitably evolving toward the “Omega Point” drawn on by the infinite love of Christ”.
U.S. nuns embracing “conscious evolution”
“Cardinal Gerhard Müller, head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith … warned them that if the nuns persist in pursuing such dangerous ideas, Rome could cut them loose”.
One may find that religious wholly involved in charitable works can sometimes be woolly about truth (doctrinal) matters; whilst, conversely, the champions in matters of truth can sometimes be judgmental and somewhat lacking in charity.
I recall that friends and I were once surprised to find those most charitable of the charitable, Mother Teresa’s missionary nuns, reading the writings of Teilhard de Chardin. When we commented critically about this, one of them suggested that we “leave him alone, he is dead”.
Or something like that.
I then tried a different tack. I gave that particular nun whom everyone liked, who was Indian - and who admitted to being “just a simple person” - some literature on Teilhard de Chardin that showed him to be a racist (and not highly favourable about Indians).
The nun got a shock, and then admitted: “We need to be careful”.
Teilhard de Chardin was xenophobic and a racist:
http://oneaccordtt.org/news/1-latest/87-when-evolution-is-racist-ideology.html
…. Later as a palaeontologist, he becomes convinced that there is not a single evolution from one stock. For Teilhard the different “races” are evidence of differing evolutions. It was his determination to produce proof of this which ended up in the scandal of the Piltdown man. This, proof of a separate European evolution, turned out to be a massive fraud.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote to Jaimie Torres Bodet (then Director General of UNESCO) concerning UNESCO’s 1950 Declaration on Race which Teilhard refused to sign. In this Declaration Geneticists had declared the biological equality of races.
In his letter Teilhard de Chardin wrote: “The diverse human Races are not biologically equal, but different and complementary. …. Such a perspective, not on the equality of races, but of their complementarity by convergence, is the one thing which may explain the fact (historically evident) that before the modern movement of compression which has forced them to come together, the various human ethnic groups have followed cycles of development that were partially independent to the point where many of them would have remained stationary forever (or fallen tomorrow into stagnation) if they had not been revived …. by more progressive and younger groups. …. And even if certain spirits, insufficiently humanised, are upset because in the common human advancement there exists not only individuals, but groups which are more gifted than others, the group-leaders, what can we do about it? In Sociology as in Physics, it is necessary that we at last recognise that there are laws against which one does not play ….” (My translation from the French.)
The letter is extraordinary it states clearly that “complementarity” and “difference” are not equality. “Convergence” is meant to be under the leadership of certain groups that are more highly gifted than others. In this “complementarity” and “convergence” Teilhard presents what by 1950 was known as the classic justification for the European colonisation of India and semi-colonisation of China i.e. their cultures were stagnant. As such they could not proceed to capitalism without colonisation by Europe. Evolution turned out to be not only science. It could be used as a handy component of racist ideology. ….
David Gibson writes about the U.S. nuns:
https://www.ncronline.org/news/vatican/us-nuns-haunted-dead-jesuit-ghost-pierre-teilhard-
U.S. nuns haunted by dead Jesuit:
the ghost of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Are American nuns paying for the sins of a Jesuit priest who died in the 1950s?
It might seem that way, given the ongoing showdown between doctrinal hard-liners in the Vatican and leaders representing more than 40,000 U.S. sisters, with one of Rome's chief complaints being the nuns' continuing embrace of the notion of "conscious evolution."
To many ears, "conscious evolution" probably sounds like a squishy catchphrase picked up after too much time in a New Age sweat lodge, and that's pretty much how Cardinal Gerhard Müller, head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, views it.
The German theologian bluntly told heads of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious last month that the principles of "conscious evolution" -- that mankind is transforming through the integration of science, spirituality and technology -- are "opposed to Christian Revelation" and lead to "fundamental errors."
That's tough talk, and Müller warned them that if the nuns persist in pursuing such dangerous ideas, Rome could cut them loose.
Yet those principles, and indeed the very term "conscious evolution," also lead directly back to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), a French Jesuit who was by turns a philosopher and theologian, geologist and paleontologist.
It was Teilhard's thinking about humanity's future evolution that got him in trouble with church authorities, however.
Teilhard argued, for example, that creation is still evolving and that mankind is changing with it; we are, he said, advancing in an interactive "noosphere" of human thought through an evolutionary process that leads inexorably toward an Omega Point -- Jesus Christ -- that is pulling all the cosmos to itself.
"Everything that rises must converge," as Teilhard put it, a phrase so evocative that Flannery O'Connor appropriated it for her story collection. This process of "complexification" -- another of his signature terms -- is intensifying and Catholic theology could aid in that process if it, too, adapts.
Now, that's a perilously brief sketch of what is an intricate and often impenetrable series of concepts, but that language is enough to show why, as early as the 1920s, Teilhard's Jesuit superiors barred him first from publishing and then from teaching, and then effectively exiled him to China to dig for fossils (which he did with great success).
In fact, most of Teilhard's works were not published until after his death, and in 1962 a nervous Vatican issued a formal warning about "the dangers presented by the works of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin and his followers."
Yet if few remember who Teilhard was, his views on faith and science continued to resonate, and today, remarkably, he's actually enjoying something of a renaissance. ….
Goodbye to Adam and Eve, etc.
“From one single stock He created the whole human race
so that they could occupy the entire earth”.
Acts 17:26
Kenneth Baker defends this biblical truth in his book, Fundamentals of Catholicism: God, Trinity, Creation, Christ, Mary, p. 145):
According to the Bible, Adam and Eve were the very first man and woman. Thus, we read in Genesis 2:5 that before Adam "there was not a man to till the earth.” Also, Adam "named his wife 'Eve’ because she was the mother of all those who live” (Gen 3:20). St. Paul teaches the same truth in Acts 17:26, "From one single stock he created the whole human race so that they could occupy the entire earth”.
Not so for Cardinal George Pell, however. Many Christians shuddered during his TV debate with Richard Dawkins in which - to the great surprise of Dawkins and the ABC’s (non-impartial) facilitator, Tony Jones, Cardinal Pell flatly denied the existence of Adam and Eve.
He was doing the atheists’ job for them.
One Protestant viewer reacted as follows:
https://www.christianfaith.com/resources/george-pell-v-richard-dawkins
George Pell v Richard Dawkins
My son said he 'cringed'.
My friend could not watch it anymore.
I was not feeling at all well today so I stayed in the very comfortable leather chair, in front of the new LCD TV and watched the program.
Why do I allow myself to do these things?
It wasn't just awful - it was unsettling. And I was already unsettled!
Yes folks; I watched 'Q&A' - I watched Richard (there is no God) Dawkins debate Cardinal George (not sure about my Bible) Pell - the most influential Roman Catholic in Australia.
Yes folks; I watched and listened to George Pell declare that Adam and Eve never existed; they were a myth. Alas, if that was the only gaff I heard!
….
Though shocking, this is hardly surprising considering that Pell, in 1967, presented a dissertation in Rome defending the theology of Teilhard de Chardin for which he was granted high honours.
Susan Claire Potts summed up Teilhard’s own approach to Adam and Eve, and related matters, in her article for The Remnant: “Teilhard de Chardin and the Catholic 'Evolution'”, when she wrote: “Forget Genesis. Forget Adam and Eve. They did not actually exist. To Teilhard, the universe began from something—a je ne sais quoi, perhaps the God Particle the Cern scientists are trying to isolate”.
Here is her feisty article in full:
I was in the backyard, scissors in hand, checking my flowers. The roses were in bloom, and I wanted to cut some for the crystal bud vase in my kitchen. I walked over to the largest bush. It was so tall it almost reached the breakfast room window. It dwarfed the bushes on each side.
Why is that one so much bigger than the rest? I wondered as I hurried over to it. When I got closer, I was surprised to see how bare the branches were. There were only a few blooms and fewer buds on the bush. But the thing’s huge, I said to myself. Where are the roses?
Curious, I reached for the tallest stalk. It had leaves and thorns, but no blossoms. Green as the leaves of the floribunda, strong as the stem, and thicker than my thumb, I recoiled when I realized what it was.
Although the branches grew beside and within and over the rosebush, the thing was not part of it.
It was fake.
And worse than that, it was choking the life out of the rosebush.
No way! I wasn’t about to let that happen. I attacked the weed with a vengeance. As I yanked and pulled and cut the sterile branches out from my struggling rosebush, the metaphor hit me square in the face.
The plight of the rose and the vigor of the weed are like what’s happening to the Church. A new teaching has taken root. The weed is Teilhardism, and it is killing the rose. It’s sapping its strength and crowding the rose out of its rightful place in the garden. If left alone, it will destroy the rose.
Don’t expect the master gardeners to get rid of it. They love the Weed. They nurture it, extol its beauty, and feed it. Like the courtiers around the emperor with no clothes, they proclaim its magnificence: See the wonder of the Weed! See how lovely the color! See the freshness of the leaves! Smell its fragrance!
Don’t listen to them. Don’t go near it.
Let’s take a look at this thing.
We’re not dealing with known heresies, with denials of certain points of doctrine nor even the serpentine modernism that infiltrates the Church and suffocates her members. We are facing nothing less than a bizarre new religion.
It masquerades as Catholicism, renewed and reclothed for the modern mind—which makes it even more insidious, more difficult to pinpoint and excise. But it’s here, there’s no denying it. The Thing has risen up from the sea of unbelief like the Beast of the Apocalypse ready to devour the Woman.
As I wrote in Against the Wolves the new faith was imagined and fleshed out by one man, Fr. Teilhard de Chardin[1], a world-enamored priest rhapsodizing over his baby—a reimagined Christianity. Unlike heretics, Teilhard doesn’t dispute this or that point of doctrine. Unlike schismatics, he doesn’t deny the authority of the Roman Church. No, he simply sidesteps the whole thing. He reinterprets the Faith, then argues from the reinterpretation.
As Mohammedism has no history before Mohammed,
Mackey’s comment: I have argued in various articles that there was no historical Mohammed, that Mohammed (Muhammad) was basically a biblical composite.
so the new religion sprang fully formed from the mind of the rambling Jesuit. Just as Mohammed wove threads from the Old Covenant, early Christianity, and the Arab worship of the moon god Al-Ilah into a cloth called Islam, so Teilhard has sewn a garment of Eastern mysticism, speculative science, and spiritual evolution. Thrown over the Body of Christ, it lies like a shroud over the Church.
Like every heresiarch before him, Teilhard laid out the philosophical roadmap. He ransacked the Sacred Teachings of our Faith, picking out an idea here, a dogma there; and then, like a diabolical sorcerer, he threw them into a cauldron with a pseudo-scientific bouquet of fine herbs and hung the pot over the fire to cook his poison.
His prose soars, his erudition shines, but it’s not Catholic. He twists what we believe, sprinkling the admixture of disputed science and empty theology with lovely Latin phrases and quotes from the masters of the spiritual life.
His disciples (who are legion) extol the brilliance of his work. A reconciliation of theology and science, they proclaim it a faith fit for Modern Man. It’s about Love and Progress and ultimate Divinization. There is no sin--error perhaps, but, no worries, it’s all being caught up in the forward rush of History. “Everything in the world follows the road to unification.”[2]
Teilhard whispers words of encouragement; he offers a new viaticum: “Our spiritual being is continually nourished by the continuous energies of the perceptible universe.”
Distinctions will fall away. The rocks, the rivers, the distant stars, the shimmering moon—all will be swept up in a great transcendent burst of energy. It will be the Parousia, the Second Coming:
Mackey’s comment: For my own view on this, see my article:
Beyond the "Second Coming"
https://www.academia.edu/29837194/Beyond_the_Second_Coming_
the revelation of the Cosmic Christ—the divinization of the Universe.
“Men of little faith,” Teilhard shouts, “Why then do you fear or repudiate the progress of the world?...To divinize does not mean to destroy but to sur-create.”[3]
So the World is becoming Christ.
I’m serious. That’s the goal. The Omega Point. Not Heaven or Hell. Not Judgment or Mercy. Where is the Holy Trinity in his work? Where are the Blessed Mother and the saints? Where are the angels?
He even recasts the meaning of the Cross. Sir Julian Huxley, in his introduction to The Human Phenomenon[4], explains it for us: “The redemption of the cross had to be reconciled with the salvation of the world through active co-operation in the building up of the universe.”[5]
Say what?
The whole thing is a spawn of Hell, a dark system of belief that uses Catholic words, wears the vestments, and light the candles, but there is no truth in it. It is false.
Don’t take my word for it. Pick up his books and read them if you can. They make no sense. Reason has been cast to the wind. Huxley goes on: “Teilhard uses convergence to denote the tendency of mankind, during its evolution to superpose centripetal on centrifugal trends so as to prevent centrifugal differentiation from leading to fragmentation:”[6]
Get it? Everything is converging, everything is unifying. It will all be stuck together by sap. Don’t laugh. That’s what Teilhard calls it. He posits a “positive confluence of Christian life with the natural sap of the universe.”
All things work together, not for the Glory of God and the salvation of souls, but for the realization of the Cosmic Christ. Jesus of Nazareth? Ah, he was just the “historical Jesus,” not the same thing at all. We await the Pleroma, the fullness of time, when in a great burst of something, the entire universe is transformed and the Cosmic Christ revealed.
This is worse than nonsense. There is no salvation in it, no God to adore—only divinized Matter. Evolution is “matter becoming cephalized.” How do you like that? Rocks becoming conscious, lying beneath the Noosphere[7]—that imagined membrane on the earth’s surface, a supposed thinking layer superimposed on the lifeless layer of inorganic matter.
It gets worse. Forget Genesis. Forget Adam and Eve. They did not actually exist. To Teilhard, the universe began from something—a je ne sais quoi, perhaps the God Particle the Cern scientists are trying to isolate. Over eons and eons the universe evolved according to its own inner becoming. Man appeared as an epiphenomenon, conscious, as the whole cosmos someday will be.
Individual salvation is not mentioned. The Second Coming? What’s that? Teilhard would rather call it by the unfamiliar name, The Parousia. That way he can reinterpret it. We don’t have to worry about sin or repentance, virtue or grace. All we have to do is let ourselves be united with the universe. We must not be divisive or contrary. We must not stop this deifying Movement. All will be One. And peace will reign forever.
I’m telling you—if you start thinking this creature can be domesticated, tamed to live peacefully with Tradition, you’re mistaken. This isn’t the time for gentle speech. The beast needs to be driven out of the Church before all the lambs are dead.
It’s not like we weren’t warned. We were taught about the End Times and the Great Apostasy. We were warned of the Antichrist. We were told that hearts would grow cold and people would believe fables.
The world has always been at odds with Truth, but now, a Trojan Horse has entered the City of God and laid waste the fields and the meadows. The fig tree is sterile, and there is no Glory in the Olive.
Archbishop Sheen once said that we are living in the days of the Apocalypse.[8] I think we’re there.
….
[1] Teilhard de Chardin, S.J., 1881 – 1955. A French Jesuit, Teilhard was trained as a paleontologist and geologist. His principal works are Le Phenomene Humain, The Mass on the World, and The Divine Milieu. Forbidden by his superiors to publish during his lifetime, his manuscripts were copied and spread by his devotees. His works were published after his death, and the Holy Office issued a monitum against them.
[2]
[3] Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu, Harper and Row, New York, 1960, p. 154.
[4] The English translation was once called The Phenomenon of Man but man as a generic term for humanity is not allowed in the modern lexicon.
[5] Ibid. p. 34
[6] Ibid.
[7] Another of Teilhard’s neologisms.
[8] Buehner, Jim, Is it Closing Time ST. James Books, Torrance, CA, 1980., p. 186
Not without reason did I use the phrase “Sheer Silliness” for this series on de Chardin!
Thomas L. McFadden on Teilhard
“It could be said that Père Teilhard was as much a poet and mystic as he was a scientist.
It is no small thing to be a poet and a mystic (St. John of the Cross managed it impressively), but poetry and mysticism are not fit substitutes for empirical science”.
Dennis Q. McInerny
Professor Dennis Q. McInerny touches on this subject in his review of McFadden’s excellent book, Creation, Evolution, and Catholicism: A Discussion for Those Who Believe (2016):
https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/review-of-creation-evolution-and-catholicism-a-discussion-for-those-who-bel when he writes:
Evolution, theology and the Teilhardian heresy
The book’s treatment of the relation between evolution and theology, which is the subject taken up in Chapter 7, is especially noteworthy for its discussion of the thought of Père Teilhard de Chardin. His not entirely felicitous influence, especially among Catholic intellectuals, has had the effect of leading them, many of whom were clearly unacquainted with the relevant scientific data, to see in the whole way of evolutionary thinking an intellectual hardiness, and a potential for beneficial wide-ranging applicability, which it simply doesn’t have.
It could be said that Père Teilhard was as much a poet and mystic as he was a scientist. It is no small thing to be a poet and a mystic (St. John of the Cross managed it impressively), but poetry and mysticism are not fit substitutes for empirical science. In any event, Sir Julian Huxley, in the Introduction he wrote for the English translation of The Phenomenon of Man, revealingly refers to Père Teilhard as a strong visualizer, and does not seem to have much to say about the strictly scientific aspects of the Jesuit’s thought.
A particularly perspicacious critique of Père Teilhard’s ideas appears as an appendix to Jacques Maritain’s The Peasant of Garonne; the French philosopher ends his short essay with this pointed sentence: “He was without a doubt a man of great imagination.” (269) The best book length study of Père Teilhard’s thought to date is Wolfgang Smith’s Theistic Evolution: The Teilhardian Heresy, which was published in 2012. Mr. McFadden weaves much pertinent information into this chapter, and in doing so builds a commanding case against evolution as a viable scientific theory.
Humani Generis and evolution
But for that matter the entire book is chock full of pertinent information regarding evolution and its many ramifications, specifically as affecting Catholic faith. I was particularly struck by the studied treatment the author gives to Pope Pius XII’s encyclical, Humani Generis, a document which is especially important for what it has to say about evolution.
It is often read without proper care, unfortunately, with the result that the ways in which it is sometimes interpreted are not consonant with the text itself. Mr. McFadden sets the record straight in that respect, and thereby performs a valuable service. He is quite right in saying that in the encyclical the pope is by no means giving anything like a blanket endorsement of evolutionary theory. The larger concern of the encyclical, as Mr. McFadden points out, has to do with the problematic aspects which are to be found in modern philosophy as a whole. The pope discusses evolution as a particular instance of what is worrisome about much contemporary thought. ….
[End of quote]
And, regarding philosopher Jacques Maritain’s opinion of Teilhard de Chardin in Maritain’s classic, The Peasant of the Garonne, John B. Killoran will write in “FALSE AND GENUINE KNOWLEDGE: A PHILOSOPHICAL LOOK AT THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE: http://people.stfx.ca/wsweet/EM/08-%201992/No.%208%20John%20B.%20Killoran.pdf
….
Ironically enough, the most powerful salvos of The Peasant of the Garonne were reserved for a thinker who cannot be considered an ideosopher, viz., Pere Teilhard de Chardin. For the generation of Catholics that came to maturity in the 1960's, Pere Teilhard was more than just a distinguished Catholic paleontologist. He was rather the living embodiment of aggiornomento, Catholicism's opening to the world of modem thought. Maritain writes that Teilhard had a healthy sense of reality -- indeed Teilhard's thought is permeated by an incarnational view of the universe. Nevertheless, like many of his scientistic contemporaries, Teilhard fell prey to the cardinal error of the modern era, the failure to make distinctions, for "the idea of a specific distinction between the different degrees of knowledge was always completely foreign to him.”39 In Teilhard writings poetic intuition masquerades as theology, with the result that the line between nonconceptual and conceptual knowledge is obliterated. What emerges is a sort of "theology-fiction.”4O How else is one to interpret the neologisms such as "noosphere" that abound in the Teilhardian vocabulary than as the consequence of an effort to marry a profound poetic vision to an "up-to-date" scientifically based metaphysics? While Maritain, of course, has no objection to a metaphysics that takes into consideration to discoveries of modern science, he points out to the disciples of Teilhard that if the appropriate distinctions are not made the consequence will be the proliferation of a false knowledge that purports to answer the most fundamental questions of the human mind but which, in the end, leaves it entirely barren. This intellectual emptiness is what false knowledge has instilled into modern life. ….
