Summing up the saga of a failed ‘scientist’ and a neo-pagan ‘theologian”

[Editor’s Note: this is the sixth article in Sir Raymond de Souza’s Teilhard de Chardin series. Here are links to the first five –

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Part 6]

In this series, we have been considering the views of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin from his supposed ‘scientific’ and ‘theological’ viewpoints. In summary, the sad reality is that the Jesuit “paleontologist” Fr. Pierre Marie Teilhard de Chardin, who some ‘progressive’ nuns and writers from the National Catholic Reporter want to have the Church remove the condemnation of his works, and eventually (horresco referens!) elevate him to Doctor of the Church, was a failure in his ‘scientific’ studies and an apostate in his ‘theological’ conclusions. 

He was involved in the blatant Piltdown Man fraud, exposed by a group of British researchers who demonstrated, over ten years, that everything was fraudulent in the Piltdown find: the evolutionists put together a gorilla jaw with a human skull; both dyed with iron sulfate to make them look aged; lithic implements also dyed, bones of prehistoric animals brought from other regions, et. cetera. 

For a while, it was thought that the skull was ancient, and the monkey jaw recent. Not true, since age measurements made with radioactive carbon (cf. H. de Vries and H. P. Oakley — “Nature“, vol. 184, p. 224, 1959) showed that the “prehistoric” skull of Piltdown was only 600 years old! The mortal remains of a medieval man…it is not known for sure who the fabricators of the fraudulent monkey-jawed, man-skulled monster found 

In short, it was a FRAUD! 

He was also involved in the blatant bluff of the Sinanthropus Pekinensis, when fossils of apes hunted by local prehistoric men were supposedly – and conveniently – identified as ‘ape-men fossils’, named the Peking Man. 

Now, common procedure in the archaeological and paleontological sciences is to photograph in detail the finds “on site” as well as after they have been cleared of all the accretions. However, in about 14 years of excavations in China, no photographs of the Sinanthropic fossils have appeared in scientific publications! 

What had appeared to the public, then? What had been promoted through evolutionist publications were the photograph of the entire model made of mass, by Davidson Black in 1933, and of the other, no less artificial model, assembled by Weidenreich in 1936. 

These are the only photos of the mythical Peking Man that appeared in textbooks and publicity works. The photographs show that the Synanthrope skull was entirely made of artificial mass! 

But what about fossils? If you don’t have pictures, you have fossils anyway, don’t you? Well, here comes another scandalous fact, which is the outcome of the story. On December 5, 1941, during the war, the synanthrope fossils, which had never been photographed, were boxed up and mailed from Beijing to Tientsin. And they disappeared without a trace! To this day, no one knows what happened to them… (cf. H. Brodrick, «El Hombre Pré-Histórico» — Fondo de Cultura Econômica — 1955). 

Such was the result of Fr. Teilhard’s great finding of a second cave man… a cheap bluff. He also contradicted himself several times in his eagerness to “prove” evolution, as we have shown in previous articles. 

As a ‘theologian’, Fr. Teilhard de Chardin was not a mere heretic, like Luther or Calvin; he was a gnostic, completely anti-Christian. He wrote: “We know atoms, the sum of nuclei and electrons — molecules, sum of atoms — cells, sum of molecules (…). Is there not before us a humanity in formation, a sum of organized people?” (La Vision du Passé, p. 321). In simple terms, from mineral atoms living tissues and beings were formed… as if the law of genetics did not work, and God’s creation had become meaningless to him. 

But his evolution has a purpose: To unite everything in the universe into what he calls the Omega Point, gratuitously designated as the ‘Cosmic Christ”: The lines of cosmic development go to a point called Omega: 

“By this name, Omega Point, I have designated (…) an ultimate pole, and subsisting in itself, of consciousness, sufficiently mixed with the world to be able to gather in itself, by union, the cosmic elements reached the extreme of their “centering” by technical arrangement” (in “Comment je vois“, apud “Teilhard de Chardin o la Religión de la Evolución” (Ediciones Theoria, Buenos Aires, 1965, p. 143). 

The Omega Point would be the height of the evolutionary process in his distorted mind, when the mineral particles would become alive and develop into plants, animals, finally conscious men, moving to the Cosmic Christ, who is finally formed. Thus, the union between Christ and the Universe, according to Teilhard, is the final goal of evolution. 

A study by Fr. Julio Meinvielle, where the Teilhardian system is described and criticized precisely from the angle of the conception of the universe, and where more information on this subject is found is the book “La Cosmovisión de Teilhard de Chardin” (Ediciones Cruzada, Buenos Aires, 1960). 

A complete critique of the evolutionary system of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin would involve different aspects, namely, the methodological, the paleontological, the biological, the philosophical and the theological. It is not our purpose to present all the arguments that the experimental sciences, philosophy, and theology formulate for rejecting such a system. 

An interesting book by Fr. Malachi Martin entitled “Hostage to the Devil”, where he related the exorcisms performed on six living Americans in the late 1970s, related the case of another Jesuit priest, who, as possessed by the devil, became possessed by his adherence to the views of Teilhard de Chardin. I read the book, but do not recommend it due to its disturbing contents. The young priest had become possessed by the devil precisely for his adherence to the gnostic view of the universe’s evolution proposed by Father Teilhard de Chardin. 

One last quotation from the neo-pagan Jesuit to confirm his apostasy from the Christian faith, his belief in the universe’s divinity: 

“If, in consequence of some interior turnaround, I were to lose, successively, my faith in Christ, my faith in a personal God, my faith in the Spirit, it seems to me that I would continue to believe in the world. The world (the value, the infallibility, and the goodness of the world), such is, in ultimate analysis, the first and only thing in which I believe. It is for this faith that I live, and it is in this faith that – I feel it – at the moment of my death, above all doubts, I will abandon myself … The faith confused in a One and infallible world, I will abandon myself, wherever it may lead me” (Comment je vois, 1934, quoted in “Catolicismo”, São Paulo, Brazil, December 1962). 

This individual was supposed to have been “misunderstood” by Pope Francis, some nuns and writers of the National Catholic Reporter who wanted Rome to make him a Doctor of the Church… I repeat: Teilhard de Chardin was not a mere heretic, like Luther or Calvin: He was an apostate, who abandoned the Christian faith, and misled many on the road to perdition. 

The Holy See left no doubt about the evil contents of his doctrines: 

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” 

References: 

1. “L’Apparition de PHomme“, Teilhard de Chardin, Les Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1956. 
2. “La Pensée Catholique“, Les Editions du Cèdre, Paris. 
3. “Le Phénomène Humain“, Teilhard de Chardin, Les Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1955. 
4. Teilhard de Chardin o la Religión de la Evolución“, Pe. Julio Meinvielle, Ediciones Theoria, Buenos Aires, 1965.
5. “La Vision du Passé“, Teilhard de Chardin, Les Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1957
6. (From Paleontology to Metaphysics, by Giocondo Mario Vita in the monthly paper Catolicismo n. 183 – March 1966. 
7. The Revolution, human phylogenesis and Father Teilhard de Chardin“, by Athanasius Aubertin, in “Catolicismo“, nos. 149, 151, 153, of May, July and September 1963).