Q:Can someone at On Being recommend a good book to start reading the works of Teilhard de Chardin? I was transfixed by this show! Thank you!
Anonymous
Most definitely! There are two books I’d definitely recommend reading.
The first is Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: Writings Selected. It’s edited by the religious scholar Ursula King, who is a guest voice in our podcast on “Teilhard de Chardin’s ‘Planetary Mind’ and Our Spiritual Evolution.”
This book is a good introduction to Teilhard’s spiritual thinking and biographical notes. Ms. King writes a beautiful summary at the beginning that gets at the heart of Teilhard de Chardin’s spirituality, which “creatively welds together science, religion, and mysticism in one unifying synthesis.”
Ms. King doesn’t just write about him and selectively quote from his writings. This is a good thing. She pulls healthy sections from some of his most notable works — including Writings in a Time of War, The Divine Milieu, Heart of Matter, and The Phenomenon of Man — which allow you to imbibe the sensibility of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in his own words. The translations are passionate and very readable, thank goodness, because we’ve come across other translations will make you feel like you’re eating week-old bread with nothing to wash it down.
I’d also recommend reading Amir Aczel’s The Jesuit and the Skull. Mr. Aczel is a superb storyteller and popularizer of great scientific minds and finds. For devotees of Teilhard, Mr. Aczel may not do enough, but his focus on the French Jesuit’s role in the discovery of Peking Man in 1929 gives the reader a sense of Teilhard as scientist who is trying to reconcile his religious beliefs with those of the Catholic Church.
Teilhard de Chardin’s struggle is at the heart of Aczel’s book. It’s an adventure story too, trotting the reader all over the globe, introducing us to countries and cultures of the day that speak to our own ongoing wrestling match about evolution.
Whereas, Ms. King’s compilation will force you to read slowly, think deeply, and savor Teilhard’s passionate langue and ideas, The Jesuit and the Skull lets you buzz through with a liveliness and vitality of a good summer vacation exploration.
Hope this helps!
Trent Gilliss, senior editor
Will Teilhard de Chardin Be Fully Embraced by the Catholic Church?
From our senior editor Trent Gilliss’ Tumblr:
I moderate the comments for the weekly shows at On Being for many reasons: staying in touch with our listeners’ responses and a lack of human resources for online work, to name two. In response to our one-hour production on French Jesuit theologian and paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin, we received this comment from “Father Robert I…”this past Sunday.
I first read Teilhard as a senior in college back in 1960, and continued to read him during my years in the seminary — in Rome!
I’ve taught an advanced undergraduate course over the years on “The Classics of Spirituality,” and have used “The Divine Milieu” as the final reading of the course.
I appreciate the program dedicated to Teilhard and welcome the continuing interest in his thinking. But I think that the heart of the matter was slighted in the presentations.
For Teilhard at the heart of his vision is Jesus Christ who is both the center and the goal of the Divine Milieu. This is why Teilhard’s great friend and advocate Henri de Lubac holds that part of Teilhard’s achievement was to recover the “cosmic Christology” of the Pauline Epistles.
So thank you for what you have done in the program; but it’s like a glass only half full. You only offered some of the good wine.
Christmas wishes!
Which prompted this response from Gregory Lynch:
Dear Father Robert:
Thank you for your insightful comments. I agree with you that the Cosmic Christ is at the very heart of Teilhard’s worldview and any attempt to separate his philosophy from his Christian faith does a disservice to both Teilhard and the Church. I share your view that Teilhard does a wonderful job of taking the core of the Christian faith, all the way from its earliest writings, and show how modern science and philosophy reaffirm these ancient truths.
However, as a faithful and practicing Catholic, I am also frustrated that the Catholic Church is has yet to fully embrace Teilhard. Interestingly, I first came across Teilhard by reading a wonderful book “Introduction to Christianity”, first published in 1968 and written by a brilliant young theologian at the University of Tübingen, Joseph Ratzinger. I was hopeful that as Father Ratzinger moved up the ranks to Bishop, to Cardinal, to head of CDF, to the Chair of St. Peter, he would lead a rehabilitation of Teilhard, or at a minimum, expunge the cryptic 1962 warning. Despite continuing positive references to Teilhard by Pope Benedict, the 1962 warning still remains and Teilhard remains at the periphery of Catholic theology.
Father, I pray that you and others will continue to carry out the work of the Kingdom, including sharing the message of Teilhard’s evolutionary Christianity.
Peace and Merry Christmas!
In many ways Teilhard remains a bit of a mystery because his writings were suppressed — or, more mildly, not allowed to be published by the Roman Catholic hierarchy — during his lifetime. It was a deep source of frustration to him, and yet he remained obedient. I think many Catholic adherents revere this aspect of the man; he serves as a role model for the many people who love the Church and yet they struggle with many of its teachings as doctrines. He is an example of how to stay true to one’s faith and move forward as thinking, authentic beings.
We nodded to this history in script, but it deserves a fuller treatment and discussion. I’d love to hear thoughts from members of the Catholic Church who find promise and a practical way forward in Teilhard’s example.
Muslim Mason Turned to Stone in Lyon
by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
Dieu est grand, الله أكبر (“Allahu akbar”)
These words in French and Arabic are inscribed in the stone scroll beneath a gargoyle gracing the exterior of Saint-Jean Cathedral in Lyon, France. Ahmed Benzizine, a Muslim mason who has been working on the church for nearly four decades, is now immortalized in stone with his own winged gargoyle bearing his likeness.
A lone group protests this tribute, but I choose to highlight this AP story on NPR for the age-old gesture honoring a dedicated worker, no matter what his faith, and a story coming out of France showing that human civility and interfaith efforts are taking place:
“For the archdiocese, the gargoyle symbolizes two traditions: honoring artisans in a cathedral’s stone work and embodying the Christian-Islamic dialogue that is part of Lyon’s recent religious history.
In France’s third-largest city, an archdiocese official is devoted to relations with Islam. In 2007, Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, the archbishop of Lyon, and a local Muslim leader, Azzedine Gaci, led a pilgrimage to Tibhirine, an Algerian village where seven Trappist monks were executed in 1996 by radical Islamic insurgents.”
Ahmed Benzizine stands in front of his gargoyle on Saint-Jean Cathedral in Lyon, France. (photos: Philippe Desmazes/AFP/Getty Images)
(hat tip: almas88)
A Nun's Excommunication
Colleen Scheck,
senior producer
This NPR report by Barbara Bradley Hagerty explores the Catholic Church’s excommunicating of a nun who approved an abortion to the disciplining of priests accused of sexual abuse.
What are your thoughts about this latest news?
The silence of the Vatican is contempt. Its failure to fully examine its central place in Rwandan genocide can only mean that it is fully aware that it will not be threatened if it buries its head in the sand. While it knows if it ignores the sexual abuse of European parishioners it will not survive the next few years, it can let those African bodies remain buried, dehumanised and unexamined.
—Martin Kimani, from his scathing critique of the Catholic Church in today’s Cif section of The Guardian titled “For Rwandans, the Pope’s Apology Must Be Unbearable.”
Trent Gilliss, online editor
How Great Thou Art
Maria Montello, guest author
Editor’s note: Our parent organization, American Public Media (APM), is a large and diverse organization. Maria is the manager of software development for the company. She’s a fan of SOF who travels extensively and is planning an introspective journey to myriad spiritual sites around the world. We invited her to contribute to SOF Observed on occasion and reflect as she listens to Krista’s interviews and works with us on upcoming projects.
As SOF staff pore over hundreds of responses to the audience query about Catholic identity and we IT folks try to envision a way to capture that diversity in an online space, I thought about my own relationship with the Catholic Church. How would I answer that query? Has the archdiocese’s cracking down on my small community (The Archdiocese of Minneapolis-St. Paul recently issued letters to area parishes forbidding practices such as communal penance as a sacrament and allowing lay people to preach during Mass. My parish, St. Frances Cabrini Church, was among them.) tainted my relationship with the Church? Why do I still show up?
A few weeks ago I returned from gallivanting around that splendid place of my ancestry — Italy. My Italian companions and I toured through Tuscany and quickly came to understand the three essential components of a Tuscan village: hill, wall, church. Just as my pores exude of garlic after some crostini con pancetta, so too does Italy’s rich art, architecture, and traditions of the Catholic Church.
(photo: Maria Montello)
Despite my friends’ vitriolic commentaries about the Church as an institution, it was in the churches that we spent hours — our necks craned back to witness salvation history played out in frescoes dating from the fifteenth century.
In The Spirituality of Parenting, last week’s SOF guest, Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, spoke of religion as a container for spiritual experience. What better place, for me, than a church — the physical manifestation of this container — to hearken back to that original experience in one of the best ways we know how: through art.
(photo: Maria Montello)
As we stood together marveling at the vaulted ceilings, Corinthian pillars and walls of light, I’d like to think we shared a similar sentiment: “I’m glad to have shown up.”
