Legacy of Teilhard?, The
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Recently Pope John Paul II authorized publication of a statement that explicitly declared that the "prayer" taught by the New Age spirituality is "not really prayer" in the Christian sense. Rather, this "prayer" stems from an "anti-Christian" spirituality.
"Many of the movements which have fed the New Age are explicitly anti-Christian," we read in the document Jesus Christ the Bearer of the Water of Life: A Christian Reflection on the "New Age," made public on February 3 in Rome. In New Age thought, the document continues, "there is no place for true Christianity."
The condemnation issues the same fundamental criticism, tantamount to an excommunication, that Pius XI pronounced upon Hitler in his anti-Nazi encyclical of March 14, 1937. (Pius XI insisted that by "faith" the Nazi leaders never meant faith as the Church understands the word. As the "God" sometimes invoked in the Nazi propaganda was certainly not the God who is proclaimed and served by the Church, and as from start to finish in its use of religious language the Nazi government violently opposed the very idea of God taught in the Church, Pope Pius XI insisted that Catholics could not possibly accept this language or those who used it.)
The recent condemnation is explicit. It notes, among the aberrations of the "New Age" teachers, their "pantheism" and "Pelagianism."
But it is the document's footnote 15 which is especially remarkable. In this note, the Vatican suggests that the pantheism and Pelagianism rebuked in the text as "New Age" errors were in part products of the thought of a leading 20th century French Jesuit thinker, Father Teilhard de Chardin.
The footnote cites a poll of prominent "New Age" luminaries conducted several years ago who were asked which thinker had most influenced them on their "New Age" path.
These luminaries identified Teilhard more often than any other person as the thinker who had launched them on the road to the "New Age." (He is almost the only Catholic among the 37 figures they mentioned as opening the way to the New Age. Among the others identified as forerunners of the movement, we find primarily non-Christians, such as Carl Jung, Carl Rogers, Aldous Huxley and Krishnamurt. Considering themselves lovers of the highest kind of spirituality while disbelieving every Christian doctrine, these people prefer the language of mysticism to the concepts of dogma and liked to talk about "leaving religion to find God." They venerate the most obscure Christian mystics but ignore every statement found in the catechism.)
The new document warns us that Catholics who read New Age books or go to New Age meetings should be taught that they are in serious danger of being lured into "a form of false worship." The "New Age" teacher may be disingenuous, irrational and "mystical," attacking Christian beliefs while avoiding serious discussion about the issues.
It thus seems clear that the Jesuits and others who defied Blessed John XXIII in the 1950s and 1960s by promoting Teilhard de Chardin in the teeth of that Pope's 1962 condemnation of him, helped create the context for the acceptance of some of these "New Age" ideas.
When Catholics accept Teilhard, two ancient heresies move suddenly back to center stage.
Pantheism holds that God is not different from the world, is mixed up with the world, is the soul of the world. Pelagianism, in its Teilhardian form, asserts that there was no Adam, no Eve, no original sin. There is, naturally, no need for redemption from that original sin. There is no supernatural destiny to the vision of God, lost by original sin, which Christ has restored to us. Thus there was no atonement for original sin by the death of Jesus, no supreme sacrifice on Calvary, no Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and in fact no Christian hope of Heaven.
The popularity of this teaching has been phenomenal.
Teilhard's thought revived opinions condemned by St. Pius X in the decree Lamentabili and the encyclical Pascendi and condemned ex cathedra as heresy or intimately linked to heresies. His ideas and influence were condemned in the encyclical Humani Generis of Pius XII in 1950, and again in the Creed of Paul VI in 1968.
The recent "New Age" text was prepared by staff members of different dicasteries of the Holy See (especially the Pontifical Council for Culture and the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue). Priests and scholars labored on it for more than five years.
While it was in preparation, the prefect of the Council for Interreligious Dialogue was Cardinal Francis Arinze (who within the last year became the prefect supervising Divine Worship).
As this document treats of questions of faith — it has as its object settling difficulties affecting the faith, and explaining what Catholics must shun as attacks on their faith — it was undoubtedly studied with care by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), and probably scrutinized several times. That must have taken place, in virtue of the general regulations of the Curia.
Thus, the footnote so damning to Teilhard, documenting his importance as a source for many of the leading "New Age" thinkers, could not have been accidental. Among other things, then, this document is warning Catholics to be cautious about the theological legacy of Teilhard de Chardin.
© 2003 Robert Moynihan
This item 5832 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org
