Newsletter #102
Dear Friends and Benefactors,
The True Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, founded on Pentecost Sunday, will have throughout the ages, unfortunately, both “heroes” and “villains” among her clergy. To help us understand the tremendous battle we are facing in these current times of the Great Apostacy, let us look at an example of both in this newsletter, namely: (1) Saint Anthony Mary Claret and (2) the famous modernist ‘Father’ Teilhard de Chardin.
- SAINT ANTHONY MARY CLARET: Apostolic Missionary, Ultramontane Champion and Crusher of Communism
Saint Anthony Mary Claret was one of the greatest saints the world has ever seen. He was, as Kevin Roman describes, an apostle par excellence, preaching and prophesying everywhere he went. He zealously defended Papal rights and fought against the errors of his time, especially liberalism and communism.
Much can be said of this extraordinary saint. He was a visionary, a slave of Our Lady, an apostle, a counter-revolutionary, an ultramontane, a prophet, a miracle worker and the crusher of Communism.
DEVOTION TO OUR LADY
Saint Anthony was born in Sallent, Diocese of Vich, in Barcelona Province, Spain, on December 23, 1807.
From a very young age, he had a great devotion to Our Lady. He later said he never tired of praying to her, knowing she always listened to her faithful sons. This great devotion would be his salvation.
CONVERSION AND VOCATION TO THE PRIESTHOOD
Growing up, Saint Anthony was very involved in his father’s weaving business. He decided to go to Barcelona to study and master the craft since he was very talented in it.
Once in Barcelona, Saint Anthony focused on weaving. He would go to Mass on Sundays and feast days but spent the rest of his time and energy on weaving. Thus, he neglected his priestly vocation, which he perceived at a young age.
One day while wading in the sea, Saint Anthony was dragged by a huge wave that pulled him out into the deep. Since he could not swim, he called upon the Blessed Virgin Mary to save him.
He soon found himself on the shore, shocked and semi-conscious. When recovering, he realized that he had almost died and then contemplated the state of his life and vocation. He decided to change his ways and end his mediocre life by entering the Vich diocesan seminary to pursue his priestly vocation.
At the seminary, he came upon the book, “True Devotion to Mary” by Saint Louis de Montfort and consecrated himself as a slave to Our Lady.
APOSTOLIC MISSIONARY
After being ordained a priest, he felt called to missionary work. He profited from Saint Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises and adopted the Jesuit missionary spirit.
In 1849, he founded the Congregation of the Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which sought to “imitate Jesus Christ in working, suffering and always seeking only the greater glory of God and the salvation of souls.” Pope Pius IX approved the congregation in 1865.
Shortly after the founding of his congregation, he was appointed Archbishop of Santiago de Cuba at the request of Queen Isabella II of Spain.
During his time in office, he reorganized the Santiago seminary and restored clerical discipline. In his first two years alone, he validated over 9,000 irregular marriages. He visited his entire diocese three times, preaching and distributing the sacraments while erecting a hospital and many vocational schools for young people.
His exceptionally powerful voice attracted multitudes. Churches and sometimes even city squares could not contain those who came to see him. Captivated by his holiness, many people would follow the saint to the next city, where its inhabitants would often go out upon the road to meet and welcome the man of God.
The saint immediately set to work, barely eating and only sleeping two hours a day.
PROPHET AND EXORCIST
Saint Anthony was also well known for his prophecies and exorcisms.
He predicted an earthquake or a plague that threatened the city. Announcing it as a chastisement from God, he would admonish the people to convert from their perverted ways.
He also predicted the deaths of people. Once, for example, he addressed some women, saying, “You, women, you think that you still have a long time to live, but you are mistaken. You will die in six months.”
He would exorcise demons from the crowd saying, “I will expel the Devil that hovers over this audience.” Following these statements, the multitude would see and hear many strange noises and phenomena.
At one point, a devil wounded his side so badly that his ribs were exposed. He prayed to Our Lady and was cured.
MIRACLE WORKER AND VISIONARY
The saint also worked many miracles and had numerous visions.
Witnesses saw his body become transfigured while praying or preaching. He would levitate off the ground, stop earthquakes and storms by praying and was even seen walking on water. While celebrating Mass, a supernatural light would radiate from his body. Queen Isabella wrote a statement declaring that she had personally witnessed the miracle.
Saint Anthony also had visions of both Our Lord and Our Lady. The most important vision was when Our Lord told Saint Anthony of three great evils then falling upon mankind:
- A series of enormous, horrifying wars.
- The four powerful demons of pleasure, love of money, false reasoning and a will separated from God.
- Communism.
Our Lord told the saint that Communism would be the great foe of humanity and that devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and the Holy Rosary were the means to fight it.
ATTEMPTS ON HIS LIFE
Saint Anthony also fought against Freemasonry. His opposition to the sect led to at least fifteen assassination attempts on his life. To prevent potential assassins from attacking him when pressed by crowds, the people devised a wooden frame in which he walked to keep anyone from getting close.
One time, someone associated with Freemasonry stabbed his cheek. The person was captured and sentenced to prison. Another time, a person hired by Freemasonry was sent to kill Saint Anthony. The assassin entered the church where Saint Anthony was preaching. Upon getting close to the saint, the assassin heard Saint Anthony state that people would be sent to kill him. The words awakened sentiments of guilt, and he converted. After the sermon, the would-be assassin told the saint of the plot and asked for pardon. Saint Anthony then pardoned the man and helped him escape the Masons, who were plotting to kill him for his failure.
Because of the many assassination attempts, Saint Anthony was transferred to Spain to be the confessor of the Queen.
ROYAL CONFESSOR TO THE SPANISH CROWN
When Saint Anthony arrived in 1857, he found that the Queen was a liberal. However, through his intercession and counseling, the Queen became very anti-liberal and was eventually overthrown.
For nine years, he was the rector of the Escorial monastic school, and whenever the opportunity arose, he would go out and preach to the people.
ULTRAMONTANE CHAMPION
In 1869, he went to Rome to prepare for the First Vatican Council. He was an enthusiastic supporter of the Ultramontane movement and always fought for the rights of the Papacy, including Papal Infallibility and Primacy.
Thus, he said:
“The dogmatic declaration of the Infallibility of the Supreme Pontiff is extremely necessary in the Church. It is a matter that is feared very much by evil men; for this they have done all the efforts possible so that it is not declared.
“Hopefully, in the confession of this truth I could shed all my blood. Hopefully, I could consummate my career confessing and saying from the abundance of my heart this great truth: I believe that the Supreme Pontiff is infallible!”
Saint Anthony loved these principles so much that, during the Council, upon hearing anti-Papal arguments, he became full of indignation and suffered a stroke. He never recovered from its effects and died some months later.
DEATH AND CANONIZATION
Saint Anthony died on October 24, 1870, at age 62. He was canonized on May 7, 1950, by Pope Pius XII.
In 1897 his relics were transferred to Vic, Spain, where his heart was found incorrupt.
Let the intercession of this great saint obtain for us the grace to fight against Communism and all modern errors.
- FR. TEILHARD DE CHARDIN (JESUIT PRIEST AND MODERNIST)
(A) BRIEF OVERVIEW OF HIS NEW RELIGION
In his work “The Death of Evolution” Wallace Johnson explains that the general theory of Evolution is diametrically opposed to Christian revelation and creed. It opened a chasm between modern thinking and traditional Christianity. Ostensibly to bridge this chasm, and professedly to clothe Christianity in a garb acceptable to science, there came a Jesuit priest, “Father” Teilhard de Chardin. Whatever his personal motives may have been, his ideas have done more damage to orthodox Catholicism than those of probably any other person in history. His “evolution-theology” has raised a new religion.
Teilhard gained a reputation in scientific circles, as we have already seen, for his part in the setting up of the phony Piltdown Man as well as Peking Man, the real story of which is tainted with equally discreditable procedures.
Teilhard’s mind was firmly locked into evolutionism on a grand scale. He proclaimed: “Evolution is not just a hypothesis or theory… 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.” To Teilhard, evolution and polygenism were the essential realities which Christianity must perforce satisfy (i.e. faith must be the slave of science).
In 1922, he wrote an essay which treated Original Sin in a way contrary to Church teaching. By mistake it went to the Vatican, and Teilhard was nearly excommunicated. He was forbidden to teach or preach; but he wrote secretly, and his pamphlets were passed from hand to hand. He wrote several books formulating a Christianity which bowed to total evolutionism. His books were refused a Church Imprimatur and remained unpublished.
BRIDGES
(a) His followers claim that Teilhard built a bridge between religion and science. As regards the religious end of the bridge, even some modern theologians have described Teilhard’s work as “disastrous.” As regards the scientific end, it is hard to imagine any scientist using Teilhard’s bridge to approach religion. England’s famous man of medicine, Nobel Prize winner, Sir Peter Medawar, stated that Teilhard’s works lack scientific structure and that his competence in the field of science is modest. In “The Art of the Soluble” (1967), Sir Peter dismissed Teilhard’s works as a bag of tricks for gullible people-for people whose education has outstripped their capacity for analysis.
(b) Teilhard’s work is also claimed to be a bridge between Christians and Marxists. Dietrich von Hildebrand (in ‘Trojan Horse in the City of God’) quotes Teilhard’s own words: “As I love to say, the synthesis of the Christian God (of the above) and of the Marxist god (of the forward)-behold! that is the only god whom henceforth we can adore in spirit and in truth.” Von Hildebrand comments: “In this sentence the abyss separating Teilhard from Christianity is manifest in every word.”
The non-Catholic biologist, Bolton Davidheiser, Ph.D. (in ‘Evolution and Christian Faith’) tells us: “The delegates of the Twentieth Annual Convention of the American Scientific Affiliation were told that ‘in Europe, both Christians and Marxists find his thought the most helpful bridge this century offers between what once seemed their irreducibly opposing views.'” It is noteworthy that Pope Pius XII in ‘Humani Generis’ drew attention to extreme evolutionists whose monistic or pantheistic speculations are eagerly welcomed by the Communists as being powerful weapons for popularizing dialectical materialism. Unfortunately, Chardin was not condemned by name.
PANTHEISM
In a letter dated January 26, 1936, Teilhard wrote: “What increasingly dominates my interest… is the effort to establish within myself, and to diffuse around me, a new religion (let’s call it an improved Christianity if you like) whose personal god is no longer the great neolithic landowner of times gone by, but the soul of the world.
MATTER AND SPIRIT
Essential to Teilhard’s whole system is the assertion that matter and spirit are one. He uses the Spinozan idea that matter has a “within” and a “without.” From the outside it is matter; but, looked at from within, this matter has consciousness and thought. Also, the “within” and the “without” are developing in complexity.
Teilhard taught that primitive particles of matter assembled into more complex arrangements until some of the most complex arrangements burst into life. Lifeless matter had become alive, and it continued to complexify until it reached a “boiling point,” whereupon the living matter became conscious. The animal stage had been reached. The complexifying continued. The brains of some higher animals attained such complexity that, in one type of animal, thought was generated and the animal became man. Matter, in the shape of man, had begun to think.
From that point, Teilhard proposes that evolution is sweeping man’s thinking-consciousness upwards toward the climax when all humanity will merge into a “super-consciousness” with common thought and common will. He calls this the Omega Point where, he says, all creation will be united with christ (the cosmic christ, evolutor of the world) and absorbed in god. (Much like Oprah describes Obama-man.)
To claim that matter and spirit are the same leads to a denial of the spirit world followed by rejection of the supernatural character of Christianity. I detect an element of cheating in the proposition that the material and the spiritual are one. It is as if Teilhard saw that he faced a problem in getting mind to evolve from matter, and he got over the problem by pronouncing in advance that mind and matter are the same substance. His disciples gravely nod in agreement, not because Teilhard produces evidence, or even a good argument, but simply because Teilhard says so.
THE ‘COSMIC CHRIST’
“Christ saves. But must we not hasten to add that Christ, too, is saved by evolution?” Chardin’s “christ” is no longer the God-Man, the Redeemer; he is the initiator of a purely natural evolutionary process, and also its end—the christ-omega. Any unprejudiced mind must ask: Why should this cosmic force be called “christ?” Teilhard has dreamed up an alleged cosmogenic force and has then tied onto it the label “christ.” But Teilhard, the obsessed evolutionist, has a basic conception of the world which cannot admit traditional Original Sin. Consequently, his world has no place for the Jesus Christ of the Gospels, because, without Original Sin, the redemption of man through Christ loses its inner meaning.
TEILHARDISM INVADES
Teilhard de Chardin died in 1955. Thereupon, a group of people who were extreme evolutionists, many of whom were atheists, had his works published without the authority of his Jesuit superiors. From that moment, Teilhardism invaded the Catholic Church on a large scale. Teilhard’s ideas entered modern catechetics and many priests and nuns espoused them. Children whose parents had never even heard of Chardin were subjected to his ideas.
It has been said that the real danger to the Church is Modernism and that evolutionism is only a minor academic exercise. Such a view misses the point that Modernism and Teilhardism have their source and lifeblood in the General Theory of Evolution. Logic, theology, and sweet reason usually will bounce off the Modernist. However, if you discredit evolution, you collapse the foundation of it all and the Modernist is left without support. While this might not cause a change of heart in a dedicated Modernist, it should fortify the ordinary person against the intellectual seduction of Modernism. Above all, if we can get through to our young people that evolution is unscientific nonsense in the extreme, they will be spared the religious doubts and compromises which propel them into the pseudo-sanctuary of Modernism and Teilhardism.
(B) DETAILED REVIEW OF CHARDIN’S LIFE AND MODERNISM
The French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is one of the most audacious, prolific and influential of all the disciples of the heresy of Modernism. His copious writings, executed in disobedience to his Superiors and in defiance of Church Authority, were eagerly devoured by multitudes of priests and religious prior to the Second Vatican Council, and were possibly the most potent contribution to the raging epidemic of Modernism which ensued. By heretics he is hailed and revered as a prophet who labored “to reconcile the language of science with the language of religion,” and as a mystic, “afire with a vision of the divine mystery at the heart of the cosmos.” But to true Catholics, he is the very personification of that virulent heresy so evil that it was described by St. Pius X as the “synthesis of all heresies.” Indeed, the Holy Father’s description of the classic Modernist heretic can be applied to Teilhard de Chardin perhaps more than any disciple of this baneful doctrine:
“We allude, Venerable Brethren, to many who belong to the Catholic laity, and, what is much more sad, to the ranks of the priesthood itself, who, animated by a false zeal for the Church, lacking the solid safeguards of philosophy and theology, nay more, thoroughly imbued with the poisonous doctrines taught by the enemies of the Church, and lost to all sense of modesty, put themselves forward as reformers of the Church; and, forming more boldly into line of attack, assail all that is most sacred in the work of Christ, not sparing even the Person of the Divine Redeemer, Whom, with sacrilegious audacity, they degrade to the condition of a simple and ordinary man.” (Pascendi Dominici Gregis, Encyclical of Pope St. Pius X on Modernism, 1907)
A ‘NEW AND IMPROVED’ CHRISTIANITY
Understandably, at a time when Rome was yet Catholic, Chardin enjoyed little such approval. Throughout his career he was repeatedly denied permission by Rome and his religious superiors to publish any of his theological or philosophical writings, to lecture publicly, or even to accept any significant academic appointments. He gave vent to severe frustration at this “persecution,” and didn’t hesitate to complain of it to his worldly friends. Yet he submitted in mock obedience, convinced that he could best accomplish his purpose within the fold of the Church:
“According to my own principles, I cannot fight against Christianity; I can only work inside it by trying to transform and convert it. A revolutionary attitude would be much easier, and much more pleasant, but it would be suicidal. So, I must go step by step, tenaciously.” (Letter, Mar. 21, 1941)
Do we understand him correctly? A transformation of Christianity?! In his private correspondence, Chardin freely stated his goal — the establishment of a new religion:
“What increasingly dominates my interest is the effort to establish within myself, and to diffuse around me, a new religion (let’s call it an improved Christianity if you like) whose personal God is no longer the great Neolithic landowner of times gone by, but the Soul of the world…” (Letter to Leontine Zanta, Jan. 26, 1936)
“The more the years pass, the more I begin to think that my function is probably simply that… of John the Baptist, that is, of one who presages what is to come. Or perhaps what I am called on to do is simply to help in the birth of a new soul in that which already is.” (ibid)
He apparently even amazed himself at the depth of his opposition to orthodox Christianity, writing to a friend, “Sometimes I am a bit afraid, when I think of the transposition to which I must submit my mind concerning the common notions of creation, inspiration, miracle, original sin, resurrection, etc., in order to be able to accept them.” (Letter of Dec. 17, 1922)
Little explanation is needed to recognize in Chardin the classic Modernist agent, who attacks the Church by putting “into operation their designs for Her undoing, not from without, but from within. Hence, the danger is present almost in the very veins and heart of the Church, whose injury is the more certain from the very fact that their knowledge of Her is more intimate.” (Pascendi Dominici Gregis, Encyclical of Pope St. Pius X on Modernism, 1907)
Where did such a brazen “reformer” come from?
HERETICAL JESUITS BEGET HERETICAL JESUITS
This formidable enemy of Catholic orthodoxy was born on May 1, 1881, at Sarcenat, near Orcines, Puy-de-Dôme, in south-central Francie. His father was a “gentleman farmer” who dabbled in geology, and his mother was a descendant of the infamous freethinker, Voltaire. At the age of fourteen, he came under the influence of Henri Bremond, a Jesuit who taught at the College of Mongré, Chardin’s high school. Bremond was a popular Skeptic and Rationalist who propagated Modernism throughout the entire French province of the Jesuit order through his position as editor of ‘Etudes’, their official magazine. Impressed by his prestige, at the age of eighteen Chardin decided to become a Jesuit. Bremond subsequently was asked to leave the Order and wandered off to spread his errors as a secular priest.
In 1901, however, the students at the Jesuit Seminary were obliged by civil edict to leave France, and to pursue their studies elsewhere. The French government was highly anti-clerical, and laws were passed against all religious orders. The seminarians moved to the Jesuit community on the Isle of Jersey, of the coast of England. At the time the English Province of the Society of Jesus was under the spell of an yet another Rationalist guru, an Irish Jesuit named George Tyrell, one of the chief architects of the heresy of Modernism. Thoroughly intractable in his errors, the brash Tyrell was later expelled from the Jesuits for heresy and disobedience, and finally died outside the Church in 1909. The Jesuit seminarians at Jersey were also subjected to indoctrination by Leonce de Grandmaison, who succeeded Bremond as editor of “Etudes”, and whose heretical tendencies were identical, although his style more discreet.
For the next thirty years, Chardin was almost always able to find in “Etudes” a public forum in which to advance his heretical ideas. The first and most complete converts he made were his fellow Jesuits, even some of his incredibly liberal Superiors, who gave him life-long support and sympathy. By 1935, he boasts in his letters that he had “pretty much won over” the French Province of Jesuits. At first, he was cautious of detection by vigilant Church authorities, frequently inventing new words with which to camouflage his theological deviations, such as: “noosphere,” “hominization,” “Meta Christianity,” “psychic planetization,” and “Omega Point.” These terms, literally, had no orthodox meaning whatsoever, and were merely intended to disguise his heretical ideas.
PRIEST, PALEONTOLGIST, AND EVOLUTIONIST
Since his childhood, Chardin had been fascinated by the volcanic hills that surrounded his home in the Auvergne region, and had acquired an obsession with rocks and fossils. He cultivated this secular interest after entering the Jesuits, especially when sent to Egypt (1905-1908), supposedly to teach physics and chemistry in Cairo. After his ordination in 1911, he returned to Paris and devoted himself to the study of paleontology at the Museum of Paris, under the direction of Dr. Marcellin Boule, a noted authority of the time (who later denounced Chardin by name as a fraud). Thereafter, his theological studies took a backseat to his “research” in geology and paleontology.
His devout followers insist that Teilhard went on to become a “scientist of the first rank.” This evaluation is based on the endless list of “scholarly” articles he penned, and the part he took in archeological excavations on three continents, a peculiar feat for a priest, supposedly dedicated to the salvation of souls. He was part of the team that allegedly discovered the remains of the “Peking Man,” claimed at that time to be the oldest human ancestor on record. But all the while he was working on his own “profound theological synthesis,: integrating the heresy of Evolution with his new cosmic vision of Christianity.
CHRISTOGENESIS: A UNIVERSE AT ONE WITH CHRIST
According to Teilhard, the history of the earth reflected a gradual “unfolding of the potentialities of matter and energy.” Inanimate matter gave way to life; simple life forms gave way to ever more complex organisms. All this culminated in human consciousness. But for Chardin, this was NOT the end of the procedure. Teilhard believed the process must continue, though now across the threshold of human consciousness. Where would it lead? This is what he called the “Omega Point” — “the horizon in which spirit and matter must eventually converge.” He declared that Christ is really this “Omega Point,” the beginning and end of history. In Christ, he taught, we have a guarantee of our OWN ultimate destiny. Here the spirit of God and the principle of matter were definitively joined. In his own blasphemous words:
“Christ saves. But must we not hasten to add that Christ, too, is saved by Evolution?” (Le Christique, 1955)
To Chardin, Our Divine Lord was merely “the God of Evolution.” He taught that the Life of Christ is at the forefront of the cycle of Evolution, making Him the supreme summit of the evolutionary process. As “God the Evolver,” Teilhard regarded Him as the director, the leader, the cause, and the mover of Evolution. But he also believed that Christ Himself is subject to the laws of Evolution, and is thus evolving into a “Super-Christ.” Chardin beheld our own humanity as the highest phase thus far in the common Evolution of our universe, but we are now approaching our transformation into a “Super-Humanity,” as we approach the “Omega Point” previously occupied by Christ. This highest phase of Evolution, in which man evolves into the superhuman, Chardin called “Christogenesis” — the universe becoming fully “Christ.”
One sees the depth of his heretical conviction in his “Hymn to Matter,” which pays homage to the “sacredness” of the forces of Evolution:
“Blessed be you, harsh matter, barren soil, stubborn rock: you who yield only to violence, you would force us to work if we would eat. Blessed be you, mortal matter! Without you, without your onslaughts, without your uprooting of us, we should remain ignorant of ourselves and of God.”
A similar inspiration inclined him to write his “Mass on the World”:
“Since once again, Lord, I have neither bread nor wine nor altar, I will raise myself beyond these symbols, up to the pure majesty of the real itself; I, your priest, will make the whole earth my altar, and on it will offer you all the labors and suffering of the world.”
Devout Catholics recoil with horror from such sacrilegious assertions. But Chardin’s incredible heresies were being swiftly and quietly disseminated by passing copies of his writings from hand to hand among a select audience of friends and fellow Jesuits. Denied permission to publish his errors, this clandestine poison might have been stamped out, had he not taken the unspeakably disobedient “precaution” of naming a laywoman friend as his literary executor. To this damnable initiative was due the fame and influence Teilhard enjoyed after his death.
ONE ERROR LEADS TO ANOTHER
Teilhard had broken down the distinction between the natural and supernatural orders, between Creator and creature, between matter and spirit. This concept, hardly a new one, is called in philosophy the error of Monism, and is opposed to the dictates of right reason.
A practical application of Chardin’s errors can be demonstrated in one critical consequence of his doctrine. Accepting Evolution as a fact — which is absurd in itself — would mean that there never really was an Adam and Eve. This is a crucial point, not to be passed over lightly. Indeed, the Modernists of Teilhard’s ilk are the evil source of modern-day ridicule of the Scriptural account of Genesis. According to infallible Catholic teaching, Adam is not merely a symbol of man, he is a real man, and St. Paul described Our Divine Lord Jesus Christ as the “Second Adam.” Why is that so important? Because if there is no Adam, then there is no Original Sin. And if there is no Original Sin, then there is no need for man to be redeemed from Original Sin.
Now, if there is no need for Redemption from sin, then what exactly happened on Calvary? Chardin really doesn’t know, but he will not call it a Sacrifice: he will not speak of the Sacrifice of Calvary. Teilhard may speak of the “Significant Act” of Calvary but, as with everything else, the “significance” remains safely camouflaged behind the Chardinian verbiage. What is clear is this: Chardin did not believe what the Holy Catholic Church teaches about Our Blessed Redeemer; he did not believe that Christ is the New Adam. If there was no need for a first Adam (on account of Evolution), there can be no New Adam. Without Adam, there is no Original Sin, there is no fall from grace, and consequently no need to be restored into grace.
Thus, if there is no Redemptive Sacrifice on Calvary, there is no Sacrifice of the Mass, which is Its Unbloody renewal. Whatever the Mass is in the view of heretics like Chardin, it cannot be the stupendous Sacrifice of the Only-begotten Son of God for the Redemption of mankind! The true Catholic Faith has always professed, unequivocally, that Christ did in fact die for our sins — but you will look in vain for this truth in the works of Teilhard de Chardin! In his hands, as well as those of all the Modernist pseudo-theologians, a true belief in the unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary, the Mass, has vanished. This is the real rationale behind the promulgation of the “New Order of the Mass” by the Modernist sect of Vatican II, which eliminates the concept of sacrifice entirely, replacing it with a commemorative meal, a mere “assembly of the people.”
THE CORRUPTION OF SACRAMENTAL INTENTION
The widespread acceptance of Chardin’s perverse teachings throughout the 1950’s by thousands of Religious, seminarians, and priests, when applied to their administration of the Sacraments, has appalling consequences. The positive rejection of the Catholic doctrines of Creation, Original Sin, and Redemption pose an impediment, on the part of the minister of Baptism, to the necessary INTENTION for the Sacrament. It makes no difference that the traditional ceremonies are employed in such a case, even with great solemnity, since the Chardinian system distorts the proper intention of the Sacrament. Unquestionably, the popularity of Chardin’s writings among the clergy, especially in America, raises a serious doubt as to the validity of the Baptisms administered by priests thus affected, even before Vatican II.
It is in this way that errors like those of Teilhard de Chardin finally lead to the collapse of the entire Christian structure of belief. This is not well understood by countless numbers of Catholics today caught up in the counterfeit church of Vatican II.
THE PILTDOWN AFFAIR
In his fervor for the cause of Evolution, Teilhard de Chardin is credited with making not one, but two, tremendously “significant discoveries,” and participation in a third “discovery,” an unbelievable feat even among the credulous band of evolutionists. Shortly after he was ordained, Teilhard was allowed to go off all by himself for a “retreat” at a little house in Hastings, England, in the Piltdown area. Shortly after he arrived, an enormous number of “fossils” made their appearance in a convenient location near his little cottage, which were duly presented as “proof” that the earth is 100,000 years old. The crowning glory of this bogus “find” was a monstrous thing that appeared to be a human skull with the jaw of a chimpanzee. Chardin proudly declared that this skull undoubtedly belonged to an early ancestor of man.
In the late 19th century, all the scientists who scoffed at God’s existence were proclaiming that Evolution was a fact — despite the complete lack of scientific evidence — but even among them no one dared to assert that man’s origin went back more than 50,000 years, which is absurd enough. The imaginative Teilhard offered “Piltdown Man” to the world, and boldly claimed he dwelt on earth “100,000 years ago.” His fellow evolutionists were thrilled. Sir Arthur Keats, in his book on Evolution (1928), remarked that “we certainly have been fortunate to make a great step forward. Now that we have the glorious Piltdown Man, we know that man is much older than we ever suspected before.” We don’t know whether to attribute this statement to inebriation or gullibility, but clearly Chardin knew how to make a name for himself among such a willing panel of “experts.”
Among orthodox Catholic scholars, however, it is commonly known that Adam and Eve existed somewhere in the vicinity of 6,000 years ago. Evolutionists, around the 1920’s, were impatient to push the origins of man as far back as possible, mainly to cover up the gaping hole in their “theory,” which is that the existing fossil record completely disproves Evolution. If such mutations as Evolution presupposes really took place, the earth’s fossil record would certainly give evidence of it. But it does NOT show any such gradual evolution in a single species, let alone a universal cycle of evolution. The only way the crestfallen Evolutionists could get around that fact was to claim that “it all happened so long ago” that the fossil record barely exists, except in the precise places where geniuses like Chardin knew to look.
Occurring at a time prior to the universal surrender of the scientific community to the unproven myth of Evolution, Chardin’s jubilant Piltdown discovery was not very well received by independent critics. Scientists in other fields could not corroborate his claims of authenticity. Leading physicians in Europe, and especially dentists, called it “nonsense.” That jaw (of a chimpanzee) they said, could never fit into that skull. This Piltdown Man would have needed teeth, but the jaw was so anatomically different than the skull that it would have been impossible to grow and sustain teeth. Nonetheless, the British Museum bravely assembled a complete — but imaginary — Piltdown Man, and displayed this ignominious creature as the “Missing Link.” They even invented teeth for Piltdown Man, strong, bright, and gleaming. The entire project, however, turned out to be an immense fabrication produced by an energetic little band of co-conspirators, vainly trying to “speed up the process of Evolution” with their collective creative genius.
By this time, Teilhard had left Hastings and was back in France. But in England, and all over Europe, for that matter, the newspapers carried sensational stories about his “discovery.” Consequently, a curious public swarmed over Piltdown throughout the pleasant summer of 1913. Strangely, the famous excavation site was not cordoned off or guarded, and countless people snooped, and poked, and sifted gravel. Yet nothing, not even a trace of anything significant was turned up. But on August 30, 1913, Teilhard came back from France, returned to Piltdown, and on the very day of his arrival he bent over the gravel and — lo and behold! — he picked up a tooth; one that looked exactly like one of the teeth in the head of the statue in the British Museum!
This “discovery” is rightly hailed as the basis of Teilhard’s reputation as a scientist. But his reputation is that of a fake, for the tooth turned out to be a forgery, pure and simple. In fact, it had belonged to a modern day chimpanzee, and had been filed down, dyed, and fixed up to look like the same kind of tooth speculated at the British Museum. Today Piltdown “Man” is universally recognized by anthropologists as an elaborate fraud. Chardin, though not alone in the hoax, was a conscious collaborator in a “Big Lie.” Hence, in 1923, Chardin went off to China to make a real name for himself as a paleontologist.
‘EXILED’ TO CHINA
The outbreak of World War I in 1914 interrupted Teilhard’s pursuit of paleontological interests in Paris. Although an ordained priest, he absolutely refused to minister to dying soldiers as an army chaplain. Instead, he joined the army as a stretcher bearer! (One is appalled at the incredible irregularities manifested by these French Jesuits.) After the war, he enthusiastically returned to the study of his fossils, and took a doctorate from the Sorbonne in 1922. For a very brief period he taught geology at the Catholic Institute of Paris, but his heterodox opinions, especially with reference to Original Sin, precipitated his termination.
About this time Teilhard’s position papers attacking the doctrine of Original Sin were reported to the Holy Office in Rome. The reaction from the Vatican censors was predictable, and even his sympathetic Jesuit superiors could not ignore Rome’s firm demand that they bring Chardin into line with Catholic orthodoxy. Instead of reforming their heretical subject, however, they simply sent him away from the theological limelight of Europe, hoping that he would thus escape the attention of higher ecclesiastical authorities and keep “out of trouble.” Thus, in 1923, he came to Tientsin, where he immediately took up research as a research assistant to yet another Jesuit mentor, the paleontologist Émile Licent. Although his appointment was supposed to be temporary, by 1926 the Vatican was fully alerted to the dangerous young priest, and he was forbidden to hold any teaching position whatsoever. This resulted in his permanent assignment to do mission work in China.
Although this apostolate was his formally assigned religious duty for the next twenty years, Teilhard refused to even learn the language! He was bored by China, and he harbored a strong dislike for the Chinese people and their way of life. We know this because he made no effort to conceal his bitter feelings concerning his “exile” in his copious correspondence. To one of his admirers he pouted sarcastically:
“Rome does not want me to return to my professorship. They do not seem to have taken a dislike to me, far from it; but they want to save Religion … I would take enormous delight in breaking all ties.” (Letter, Feb. 14, 1927)
During Teilhard’s stay in and around Peking he was a frequent guest at the numerous dinner parties given by the upper crust social stratum. Peking harbored a large number of European and American businessmen — younger sons of wealthy families who made lots of money from the poorer Chinese. But one must look very hard to find evidence of any priestly mission work done by Chardin in all those years.
PAYDIRT IN PEKING?
When Chardin went to China the first time, he was aware of excavations, sponsored by a wealthy American family (Rockefeller Foundation) near Peking. Teilhard had thought it absurd that early human traces might be found there. However, a few years later, after he was ordered to go back to China for good, he changed his opinion, and decided there was something for him to excavate there after all. Then, on December 1, 1929, Teilhard dramatically announced the discovery of “Peking Man,” or Sinanthropus, in a place called “Dragon Bone Hill” near Choukoutien. Actually, it was more accurate to describe his find as the “Peking Family,” on account of the dozens of skeletons and skulls unearthed.
Unfortunately, these “discoveries” were lost. Just lost — pure and simple. Piles and piles of them; tons of them; enormous boxes filled with teeth and bones. Undaunted, Teilhard and his co-scientists, Dr. Davidson Black and Dr. Weng Chang Pei, published papers officiously documenting their phantom “discoveries.” Over a period of a decade a few people went over to China to study them, but generally remained unimpressed. Some scientists were eventually interested enough to test the fossils for authenticity, wishing to determine, through the use of clinical criteria, if Peking man was a hoax. But there was nothing to examine at Peking, either with the newly discovered Carbon-14 test (of dubious worth), or the older Flourine test, or with any other tests. Incredibly, every fossil discovered at Peking was lost. How? They were mistakenly put on a train (so Chardin’s story goes), and no one is sure where the trainload of artifacts went!
But Teilhard did not mind in the least. According to his own notion of spirituality, he should’ve been furious: “Do not be resigned. Away with detachment from worldly possessions! Away with resignation! Assert yourself. Demand your rights. Make your contribution to the world.” And yet, when these discoveries at Peking, which could have established his renown internationally, vanished into thin air, he bore it with completely uncharacteristic resignation. He did virtually nothing to locate his paleontological payload; he just went on preaching his perverse vision of spirituality from the popular platform in the academic media to which his “discoveries” had raised him.
Teilhard even invited Dr. Marcellin Boule, his old professor from Paris, to visit China and congratulate him on his discovery of the newest “missing link.” But when Dr. Boule saw the only evidence that could be produced was a battered monkey skull from which the brain case had been removed, he was angry and disappointed. Returning to France he published an article in L’Anthropologie in which he rejected the claims of authenticity, and denounced Chardin, his former student, by name.
“HAVE HERESY, WILL TRAVEL”
Uninterested in any genuine priestly work for souls, Chardin frequently left his “mission post” to make side trips to Tibet, Eastern Mongolia, Somaliland, the Harras, and Yemen. He also crossed Asia with the Citroen Croisiere Jaune in 1931-32, and again went across Asia through Siberia to France, then to London, and to the United States.
In his preface to Chardin’s book, “The Appearance of Man”, Robert T. Francoeur reports that Teilhard managed to sandwich-in countless shorter expeditions all over the world. In 1934, Teilhard was in Southern China, but managed to travel as far south as the frontiers of Malaya, Burma, and Java, where the newly discovered “Java Manz” had made its appearance (another fallacious attempt to provide Evolution’s “missing link”). In 1935, he visited India. In 1936, it was back to Java again. In 1937 he was in Philadelphia and gave a lecture at Villanova University. In 1937 he returned to Java for yet another splash in its publicity, and then was off again to France and Japan as well. World War II put a damper on Chardin’s constant expeditions, and Teilhard remained in China for its duration (1939-1946), but afterwards he returned to Europe. He made trips to Africa in 1951 and again in 1953.
Church authorities vainly tried to keep up with the fast-moving Chardin. In 1933 the Vatican ordered him to give up the teaching post he had retained in Paris, where he had hopes of being exonerated. In 1939, the Vatican condemned his proposed book “L’Energie Humaine.” Yet the man who couldn’t find time to work with souls continued to spew forth his writings. In 1944 Chardin was forbidden by Rome to publish his most cherished work, “Le Phenomene Humain.” None of these condemnations would ultimately matter, as Chardin had already planned the posthumous publication of his works by his secular patrons and disciples.
DROPPING THE VEIL
After World War II, a new Jesuit Superior General, Fr. Janssens, brought in a new trend of Liberalism to the entire Society of Jesus. Chardin was recalled to France by Fr. Rene D’Quince, one of his avid disciples, to accept a journalistic position at ‘Etudes’. In one of his letters he gloated, “It is very obvious that I have been given this assignment in order to say very publicly what they threw me out of France for saying twenty years ago.” The heretical Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Suhard, even declared that “intellectual work (such as Chardin’s) remains independent… The Church recognizes the legitimate autonomy of competent authorities.”
Thus encouraged, Chardin well-nigh threw caution to the winds. By 1947, he was going around saying, very publicly, things such as “I do not think God should be worshiped” and “Very definitely there was no Adam and Eve and no Original Sin.” He was a man past sixty years of age now, and very brazen about his approach to religion. In one of his letters to a friend he wrote: “I have so many friends now, in good strategic positions, that I have no fear of the future. I have won the game.” Unfortunately, the unflappable Chardin was right. There was no doubt about it. He had wanted to corrupt the seminaries, and he had succeeded in doing precisely that, thus planting the seeds of Modernism and Skepticism everywhere the new clergy would infiltrate.
But Rome was still Catholic at the time, and the reaction from the Holy Office was swift. In 1947 the Vatican again forbade Chardin to write or teach on philosophical subjects, and in 1948 he was forbidden to take the teaching post he was offered at the College de France. Finally, with the publication of the encyclical ‘Humani Generis’ in 1950, Pope Pius XII reprimanded those who “imprudently and indiscreetly hold that evolution, which has not been fully proved even in the domain of natural sciences, explains the origin of all this, and audaciously support the monistic and pantheistic opinion that the world is in continual evolution.”
Rebuffed but obstinate, Teilhard took refuge in the United States. Accepting a position in 1952 with the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research in New York, he steadily circulated his unpublished writings amongst an ever-widening circle of admiring disciples, which included high-placed members of the clergy. In 1955, Chardin was forbidden to attend the International Congress on Paleontology. That Easter Sunday, he suddenly collapsed and died in a friend’s apartment.
In 1941, he had stated, “There is only one foe I should fully like to give my life against: Immobility.” Notice that it is not sin that is his enemy, not moral evil, not even physical evils, only immobility, the great obstacle to Evolution! When reflecting that the Catholic Church in the U.S.A. was too stagnant, Teilhard had written to a friend that “a good dip into Marxism might start things moving again.”
CHARDIN’S POSTHUMOUS INFLUENCE
Despite condemnations and warnings from ecclesiastical authorities, Teilhard de Chardin did not ever really conform to the commands of the Church. He merely gave “lip service,” similar to the little, quietly rebellious boy in school who externally seems to obey, while inside his heart throbs a determined rebel. He continued, without openly renouncing the Authority of the Church, to preach and write those erroneous and dangerous tenets which had been condemned by that Divine Authority. Through lectures and mimeographed copies he never ceased to disseminate what was condemned by the infallible Magisterium of the Church. Teilhard submissively signed every proposition Rome demanded of him, but all the while, as E. LeRoy testified, “He had not changed his ideas or his sense of mission in the slightest.”
The Supreme Authority of the Holy Office, in a decree dated November 15, 1957, forbade the works of Chardin to be retained in Catholic libraries, including those of Religious Institutes. His books were not to be sold in Catholic bookshops and were not to be translated into other languages. Due to his own disobedient “precautions” however, in 1958 the works of Chardin were published in Spanish without previous ecclesiastical examination, and in direct defiance of the decrees of the Holy See. Within a relatively short time, his works had been translated into English and were being widely disseminated by his avid disciples, with horrendous consequences for the Church.
TEILHARD TRIUMPHANT
The rapid growth and widespread acceptance of Chardin’s radical, evolutionary Humanism was almost incredible to behold. That Catholic priests and religious could even consider such blasphemous doctrines is a sobering reflection upon their diseased spiritual condition. Yet nothing could have prepared faithful Catholics for the appearance of the Chardinian specter in the place they would have least expected it: in the sacred Chair of Peter at Rome.
The frontal assault which the heresies of Chardin mounted upon the supernatural order were taken up with a calculated vengeance by Paul VI, from the very outset of his election. His brazen Humanism is couched almost exclusively in the language of Teilhard. To the Council assembly on December 7, 1965, he proclaimed:
“The whole phenomenon of man, i.e., with the trapping of his innumerable appearances, is clothed standing before the council fathers… Humanism… has finally appeared in its terrible stature… The religion of God-made-Man (for such it is) meets the religion of man-made-God. What has happened? A clash? A fight? An anathema? That could have happened, but it did not… we too have, more than anyone else, the cult of man.”
In his infamous address before the United Nations on October 4, 1965, Paul VI boldly attempted to lay the Spotless Bride of Christ before the feet of this sinister embodiment of man’s revolution against God:
“The people turn towards the United Nations as to their last hope of concord and peace. We dare to bring here their tribute of honor and hope, together with our own…. What you proclaim here are the rights of man… We feel that you are interpreters of what is excellent in human wisdom, we would almost say its sacred character. For we are dealing, before all else, with the life of man, and this life is sacred.”
There is no mention whatsoever in Paul VI’s address of the rights of God or of His Church, which can ALONE give to men their true dignity and rights.
John Paul II, for his part, ceaselessly declared his ardent devotion to the banal Humanism of Paul VI, acknowledging him to be his “true father”! At the Rome headquarters of the FAO on November 12, 1979, he declared:
“All of us, whatever our beliefs, subscribe fully to the idea that development is the new name of peace, and that all nations must be able to become, themselves, the artisans of their destiny. This Humanist vision you have proclaimed before the world is ours also.”
It is almost incredible that Vatican II popes have gone so far in identifying their Humanist vision with those of the world organizations which vehemently reject the rights of God and the rule of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King. This Humanist vision, condemned by all of the pre- Vatican II Popes of the last two centuries, is a grave and profound attack upon the supernatural order, against the Catholic Faith, and against the saving Gospel of Our Divine Lord. It is from this pernicious core of Naturalism and Humanism that John Paul’s heretical Ecumenism emanated, seeking to discover the “divine” in the blasphemous mutterings of every diabolical sect known to man.
FOLLOWING IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF DISOBEDIENCE
Chardin’s deliberate subversion of the legitimate hierarchy of the Church is positive proof — decades too late — of the wisdom and clear vision of the great Pope St. Pius X, who recognized the impending spiritual catastrophe posed by Modernism, and courageously condemned this foul heresy. In so doing, he vigorously inveighed against the vice of pride manifested by priests such as Teilhard de Chardin, who were lacking in the most fundamental Christian virtue of all — the humility to submit their proud intellects and wills to the infallible teaching and governing Authority of the Church. Strip away all of the noxious rhetoric surrounding the Chardinian doctrine, and you find an independent, disobedient little priest, hopelessly convinced through his incurable pride that he, and he alone, knows BETTER than the Church, even Her Divinely appointed Hierarchy, and strives to propagate his fallacious opinions under the guise of an advanced scientific and theological learning.
In contrast, it was precisely to the vigilance of the hierarchical Apostolic teaching and governing Authority of true Catholic Bishops that Pope St. Pius X appealed to stem the rising tide of heresy. The stern words of the Supreme Pontiff serve as a fitting epitaph to the infamous career of that unfortunate priest, Teilhard de Chardin; and as a warning to — or condemnation of — all those who would follow in his path:
“We have already mentioned congresses and public gatherings as among the means used by the Modernists to propagate and defend their opinions. In the future, Bishops shall not permit congresses of priests except on very rare occasions. When they do permit them, it shall only be on condition that matters appertaining to the Bishops or the Apostolic See be not treated in them, and that no resolutions or petitions be allowed that would imply a usurpation of sacred authority, and that absolutely nothing be said in them which savors of Modernism, Presbyterianism, or Laicism. At congresses of this kind, which can only be held after permission in writing has been obtained in due time and for each case, it shall not be lawful for priests of other dioceses to be present without the written permission of their Ordinary. Further, no priest must lose sight of the solemn recommendation of Leo XIII: ‘Let priests hold as sacred the authority of their pastors; let them take it for certain that the sacerdotal ministry, if not exercised under the guidance of the Bishops, can never be either holy, or very fruitful, or worthy of respect’.” (Pope St. Pius X, Encyclical, Pascendi Dominici Gregis)
AVE MARIA!
Father Joseph Poisson
Featured Sermon
Given By His Excellency Bishop Pfeiffer
Consecration of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel to Immaculate Heart of Mary
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