"You can't get any benefit or enlightenment from thinking about Teilhard. The ravages that he has wrought that I have witnessed are horrifying. I do everything I can to avoid having to talk about him. People are not content with just teaching him, they preach him. They use him like a siege engine to undermine the Church from within (I am not kidding) and I, for one, want no part of this destructive scheme." -- Etienne GilsonTuesday, August 11, 2009
French Catholic Philosopher Etienne Gilson On The French Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin
"You can't get any benefit or enlightenment from thinking about Teilhard. The ravages that he has wrought that I have witnessed are horrifying. I do everything I can to avoid having to talk about him. People are not content with just teaching him, they preach him. They use him like a siege engine to undermine the Church from within (I am not kidding) and I, for one, want no part of this destructive scheme." -- Etienne Gilson
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4 comments:
Despite 'America's' confidence in a Theilhardian revival, he is very rarely mentioned these days. The clack he received in the 1960s is well and truly dissipated on a wide level. I also question whether Pope Benedict would actually commend his work. It seems truly stuck in the mud for him to do so seriously.
I wonder what the Jesuit world would look like with out the word Teilhard in its vocabulary?
Both Maritain and Gilson, in different perspectives, have been very critical about Teilhard. It is interesting to read the correspondance between Gilson and cardinal de Lubac (who were friends) on this matter since de Lubac always tried to save what could be saved in Teilhard's writings (he is the one who added hundeds of corrections to the " Phenome humain".
Before entering the Society of Jesus in 1981, I did my PhD in philosophy at La Sorbonne on ... Teilhard de Chardin, but I am not a so called teilhardian. I noticed that, already then, the "teilhardians" were a kind of chapel, excommunicating anyone attempting to look at Teilhard's writings with a critical point of view. Their ranks are now very much empty, except in the modernist aisles of the Society of Jesus and the Church. Teilhard had a deep spiritual life but very little philosophical and theological roots, unlike de Lubac, Danielou, de Montcheuil, Fessard... It explains why there are so many mistakes and heresies in his writings.
Joseph is right : what remains today is a word ; it is part of Jesuitic vocabulary but it does not cover much matter and depth.
It's good to hear that Teihardism is on the wain. Let's hope that de Melloism follows suit. I notice that he no longer has the profile he once had in Jesuit retreat houses, although he is not yet as extinct as Teihard.
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