The works of the controversial French Jesuit were formally censured by the Vatican in 1962.
Edward Pentin | April 8, 2025 | National Catholic Register
VATICAN CITY — The 70th anniversary of the death on April 10 of Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the controversial French Jesuit whose works the Vatican formally censured in 1962, has given further reason for those sympathetic to his thought — including Pope Francis and senior Vatican officials — to celebrate his life and legacy.
The latest efforts, which have amounted to an effective rehabilitation of Teilhard as he was familiarly called, came in a two-page spread in the March 27 edition of the Vatican’s semi-official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano.
Among the six articles in the newspaper’s tribute, which extolled the late philosopher and paleontologist for being, among other attributes, a “brilliant and stimulating thinker” and a “Moses of the 20th century,” were several articles on a new favorable biography published March 31 by the Vatican’s own publishing house, Libreria Editrice Vaticana.
Titled Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: A Biography, author Mercè Prats has examined the works of Teilhard “at a time when questions about the future of the planet are increasingly important,” says the book’s blurb. “Teilhard de Chardin’s passionate quest can be viewed through the prism of ecology, following his ever-hopeful outlook,” it continues.
Long-Standing Criticism
The works of Teilhard, who died at age 73 of a heart attack on Easter Sunday, April 10, 1955, after attending Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, have drawn significant criticism over the years on both theological and philosophical grounds.
The Holy Office’s 1962 monitum (“warning”) stated that Teilhard’s theological works, which have never received the Church’s imprimatur, “abound in such ambiguities, and indeed even serious errors, as to offend Catholic doctrine.” It also urged Church leaders to protect “the minds, particularly of the youth,” from his writings. Recent scholarship has appeared to confirm his “firm commitment” to eugenics and his questionable views on race. In a 1981 statement, Pope John Paul II reaffirmed that the monitum remained in effect…
Teilhard de Chardin: Model of Ambiguity for a Future Pope
Peter Kwasniewski, PhD
To a degree not yet as widely recognized as it should be, Pope Francis – Jorge Bergoglio, S.J. – is showing himself to be an admirable disciple of his Jesuit forerunner Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. (1881-1955), the Piltdown paleontologist and “Omega Point” mystagogue, who exercised an enormous influence on the young Jesuit Turks of the twentieth century. Gerard M. Verschuuren, in his new book The Myth of an Anti-Science Church: Galileo, Darwin, Teilhard, Hawking, Dawkins – just released by Angelico Press, and worth reading for many reasons, but above all, because of the superbly written chapter on this controversial figure – tells us… Continue
The Teilhardian Vapor. Thomist philosopher Etienne Gilson wrote to de Lubac, “The ravages he [Teilhard] wrought, which I have witnessed, are horrifying…” More
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Teilhard de Chardin: False Prophet
From Trojan Horse in the City of God,
by Dietrich von Hildebrand.
I MET TEILHARD DE CHARDIN in 1949 at a dinner arranged by Father Robert Gannon, S.J., then president of Fordham University. Previously, the noted scholars Father Henri de Lubac and Msgr. Bruno de Solages had highly recommended him to me. I was, therefore, full of expectations. After the meal, Father Teilhard delivered a long exposition of his views.
Teilhard’s lecture was a great disappointment, for it manifested utter philosophical confusion, especially in his conception of the human person. I was even more upset by his theological primitiveness. He ignored completely the decisive difference between nature and supernature. After a lively discussion in which I ventured a criticism of his ideas, I had an opportunity to speak to Teilhard privately. When our talk touched on St. Augustine, he exclaimed violently: “Don’t mention that unfortunate man; he spoiled everything by introducing the supernatural.” This remark confirmed the impression I had gained of the crass naturalism of his views, but it also struck me in another way. The criticism of St. Augustine, the greatest of the Fathers of the Church, betrayed Teilhard’s lack of a genuine sense of intellectual and spiritual grandeur.
It was only after reading several of Teilhard’s work’s, however, that I fully realized the catastrophic implications of his philosophical ideas and the absolute incompatibility of his theology fiction (as Etienne Gilson calls it) with Christian revelation and the doctrine of the Church.
Teilhard was not a careful scientist
Many Catholics view Teilhard de Chardin as a great scientist who has reconciled science with the Christian faith by introducing a grandiose new theology and metaphysics that take modern scientific findings into account and thus fit into our scientific age. Although I am not a competent judge of Teilhard as a scientist, this opinion may be questioned without expertise. For one thing, every careful thinker knows that a reconciliation of science and the Christian faith has never been needed, because true science (in contradistinction to false philosophies disguised in scientific garments) can never be incompatible with Christian faith. Science can neither prove nor disprove the truth of the faith. Let us also note several judgments of Teilhard by outstanding scientists…. Continue
Catholic Critique 