The Second Vatican Council was a true revolution — a revolt against the Catholic Church and the Catholic Faith. Who were its originators? Let us look at one of the chief architects of Vaticanum II, who, although he was not directly involved in its proceedings, nevertheless became the source of inspiration for many of the changes of that shameful assembly through his thoughts and teachings. Yet today, few Catholics know who he was or what he taught.

In order to understand the altered thinking of the conciliar clergy, it is truly necessary to understand the doctrine and influence of Teilhard de Chardin. From the 1920s until the present day, his heretical views and works — such as the denial of original sin and of the existence of Adam and Eve — have been widely spread among clergy and laity. Just as Martin Luther lit the flame of the Protestant revolt and poisoned the masses, so too the false ideas of Teilhard infected many “clergymen” who took part in the Second Vatican Council. As a result, a new liturgy and the Vatican II sect were formed.

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The Works of the Heretic Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) was a French “Jesuit” who taught a doctrine that combined Darwinian evolution with revolutionary “Catholic” theology. In the evolutionary theology professed by the modernists, the concept of the immutable Deposit of Faith is rejected, because nothing is free from substantial change.

Henri Rambaud summarized Teilhard’s modernist beliefs, stating:

“His faith was not the faith of the Catholic Church, and he knew it. He had studied long enough to know that the Faith of the Church is faith in the words of Jesus Christ and that, consequently, this faith cannot substantially change” (The Strange Faith of Teilhard de Chardin, p. 23)

In 1907 Pope Saint Pius X described the insidious character of modernists such as Teilhard, who

boldly thrust themselves forward as reformers of the Church and, drawn up in close array, audaciously assail all that is holiest in the work of Christ, not sparing even the Person of the Divine Redeemer, whom, with sacrilegious daring, they reduce to a simple, mere man.

Elsewhere in his encyclical Pope Saint Pius X quotes Pope Gregory XVI, who in 1834 also condemned modernism in Singulari Nos:

Blind indeed, and leaders of the blind, puffed up with the proud name of knowledge, in their folly they go so far as to overturn the eternal meaning of truth and the only true concept of religion, inventing a new system, “in which, because of an impious and unbridled lust for novelty, they do not seek truth where it certainly is, but, despising the holy and apostolic traditions, embrace other vain, futile, uncertain, and unapproved doctrines, by which men most devoted to vanity think they can uphold and sustain truth itself” (ibid., n. 13).

Teilhard’s ideas are wholly opposed to the Catholic Faith.

Most of his writings, including a vast collection of correspondence, were not published during his lifetime, because it was obvious to Rome and to various Church authorities that his teachings were erroneous. As far as they could, they therefore tried to silence him and prevent the spread of his works.

In 1927 Rome refused to grant an imprimatur to [Teilhard’s] book Le Milieu Divin. In 1933 he was forbidden to lecture in Paris. In 1933 Rome refused him permission to publish L’Energie Humaine. In 1944 his book Phenomene Humain was banned. In 1948, summoned to Rome by his Superior General, [Teilhard] once again sought permission to publish Phenomene Humain — and did not receive it. In 1949 and 1955 his books and activity were again obstructed. In December 1957 a decree of the Holy Office ordered his works to be removed from Catholic libraries, seminaries, religious institutions, and bookshops (Fr. Charles Coughlin, Bishops Versus Pope, pp. 215-216).

Most of his works appeared in print only after his death, because many of the views he held were regarded by various Church authorities as too far removed from orthodoxy… His frankness in expressing opinions on many traditionally formulated doctrines of the Church, such as original sin, sincerely alarmed his superiors, and so, in 1925, he was “kindly” instructed to concentrate on scientific work and return to China” (R. Wayne Kraft, The Relevance of Teilhard, p. 20).

In reality, Teilhard was silenced by actual exile from Europe (Hugh McElwain OSM, Introduction to Teilhard de Chardin, p. 8).

He died suddenly in New York on Easter Sunday in 1955. His last words were:

“This time I feel that it is terrible” (Leroy, Teilhard de Chardin: The Man, p. 33).

“He was not allowed to publish his most important works during his lifetime, and in fact they were never issued with Nihil obstat and Imprimatur” (Leroy, op. cit., p. 29). Shortly before the opening of the Second Vatican Council, on June 30, 1962, the Holy Office issued a monitum (warning) “against ambiguities and even grave errors opposed to Catholic doctrine” (T. Lincoln Bouscaren SJ, Canon Law Digest, vol. 5, pp. 621-622) contained in his writings.

“In 1963 the Roman Vicariate decreed that the Catholic bookshops of Rome were to remove from circulation the works of de Chardin, as well as books favoring his erroneous teachings” (J. W. Johnson, Evolution?, p. 120).

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Teilhard laid the foundations of the new ecumenical religion of the Vatican II sect.

Speaking of his new faith, Henri Rambaud writes:

In no way is it the faith of the Catholic Church, and it is no wonder that, through the Holy Office — the organ authorized to speak in her name — the Church judged it necessary to declare that she does not acknowledge Teilhard’s writings” (op. cit., p. 11).

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Comparison with the Works of Saint Thomas Aquinas

In the thirteenth century, Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) reconciled the reasoning of Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) — one of the greatest Western philosophers — with Catholic doctrine. Since then, the work of this Dominican theologian and philosopher has influenced generations of scholars. His title of Angelic Doctor was confirmed by Pope Saint Pius V. His theological proofs, including the demonstration of the existence of God, are regarded as irrefutable because they are based on deduction.

The writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas and of Teilhard de Chardin stand at two opposite poles.

Thomistic philosophy is clear, precise, ordered, and logical. Teilhard’s teachings are obscure, twisted, disordered, and illogical; this is easily seen in reading his various works. Increasing the confusion still further, Teilhard fabricated a great number of words (e.g. Christogenesis, noosphere, lithosphere, radial energy, totalization, Omega Point, pleromization, and many others) to describe the various stages in his theory of evolution.

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Teilhard de Chardin — A Modern False Prophet

Dietrich von Hildebrand refers to Teilhard and other modernists in his book Trojan Horse in the City of God:

It is sad enough that men lose the faith and leave the Church; but something far worse happens when those who have in fact lost the faith remain within the Church and seek — like termites — to undermine the Christian faith, declaring that they are interpreting Christian revelation so as to make it correspond to modern man” (p. 265).

Our Lord foretold in Holy Scripture that crafty men, inspired by the devil, would lead the people astray. Jesus Christ repeatedly warned His flock against their deceitful attacks:

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. By their fruits you shall know them (Matt. 7:15-16).

Take heed that no man seduce you (Matt. 24:4).

And many false prophets shall rise, and shall seduce many (Matt. 24:11).

Teilhard de Chardin is unquestionably a false prophet:

Let us recall the marks of those false prophets. A false prophet is one who denies original sin and the need of the redemption of mankind, and thereby undermines the meaning of Christ’s death on the Cross. He is no true Christian who does not see that the redemption of the world by Christ is the source of true happiness and that nothing can compare with this momentous fact (p. 265).

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The Total Rejection of the Catholic Faith by Teilhard de Chardin

Teilhard’s evolutionary theology is nothing other than a rejection of the most essential traditional Catholic doctrines, striking at the very foundation of the Church. In the essay Stuff of the Universe, written in 1953, Teilhard did not conceal the range of Christian teaching he was prepared to discard; the very core of dogma had to be modified. He wrote:

In exchange for a revaluation and transformation of the stuff of things, a whole series of adjustments must be made — as I fully realize (if we sincerely wish to Christianize evolution) — in the field of many ideas or attitudes that seem to us to be definitively fixed in Christian dogma. As a result and by actual necessity, one might say that a form of religion hitherto unknown — one which no one until now could have imagined or described, for lack of a universe large enough and sufficiently integrated to contain it — is growing in the heart of modern man from the seed sown by the idea of evolution (Activation of Energy, pp. 382-383).

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One can see how his evolutionary theology paved the way for the Great Apostasy — the falling away from the faith of most Catholics — described by Saint Paul in the second epistle to the Thessalonians (2:3-4).

Teilhard clearly held that evolution surpasses the Deposit of Faith:

Is evolution a theory, a system, or a hypothesis? It is much more: it is a general condition, before which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow and which they must henceforth satisfy if they are to be thinkable and true. Evolution is the light illuminating all facts, the curve that all lines must follow (The Phenomenon of Man, p. 218).

Dietrich von Hildebrand comments on Teilhard’s appeal based upon his new convictions and “scientific” claims:

Many Catholics regard Teilhard de Chardin as a great scientist who reconciled science and Christian faith by introducing a wonderful new theology and metaphysics taking into account modern scientific achievements and thus answering the needs of our scientific age. Although I am not a competent judge of Teilhard as a scientist, this opinion can be questioned without specialized knowledge. First of all, every honest thinker knows that a reconciliation of science and Christian faith was never needed, since true science (as distinguished from false philosophies disguised in scientific dress) can never contradict the Christian faith (Dietrich von Hildebrand, Teilhard de Chardin: A False Prophet, p. 10).

The following discussion gives us a remarkable insight into Teilhard’s mentality:

[Dietrich von Hildebrand once spoke with him about Saint Augustine. Teilhard] violently exclaimed:

Do not mention that unfortunate man; he spoiled everything by introducing the supernatural order.

This remark confirmed my earlier impression of the crude materialism of his views; but something else struck me even more: the criticism of Saint Augustine — the greatest of the Fathers of the Church — revealed in Teilhard a lack of any real sense of intellectual and spiritual greatness” (Von Hildebrand, Teilhard de Chardin…, p. 9).

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The Heretical Teaching of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin on Original Sin

At the beginning of the 1920s, “some ideas that [Teilhard] put forward in lectures on original sin and its relation to evolution were regarded by his religious superiors as unorthodox, and he was forbidden to continue lecturing” (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, introduction by Sir Julian Huxley, p. 23).

In 1922 an article on original sin written by Teilhard “fell into the hands of Cardinal Merry del Val, who was as alert to suspicions of heresy as a hound is to scents. He lodged a sharp complaint with the General of the Jesuits, Father Ledóchowski, who had already received warnings from other sources… Teilhard was asked to promise that he would say or write nothing ‘contrary to the traditional position of the Church on the question of original sin’… Rome was relentless. He was finally required to sign six propositions…

On the advice of friends — and not without obvious reluctance — he signed them.”

Unfortunately, Teilhard did not keep his promise and continued to spread his heretical views on original sin, both in speech and in writing.

In Teilhard’s new evolutionary theology there is no room for sanctifying grace or for the supernatural order. The doctrines of the Catholic Church regarding Redemption and original sin have no real meaning in his new religion. Teilhard himself was aware of the incompatibility of Divine Revelation with the doctrine he preached when he wrote:

At times I feel a certain fear when I think of the adaptation to which I must subject my mind concerning the common, universal notions of creation, inspiration, miracle, original sin, resurrection, etc., in order to be able to accept them” (Letter of December 17, 1922, quoted in Rome et Teilhard de Chardin, p. 47, by Philippe de la Trinite).

A number of Teilhard’s works contain theories conflicting with Catholic teaching on original sin.

When dealing with original sin… he sometimes presented explanations that were rightly judged to be unsatisfactory (Henri de Lubac, The Religion of Teilhard de Chardin, p. 120).

His views on original sin changed, and the form in which he presented them was certainly indefensible. As early as July 20, 1920, in the unpublished essay Fall, Redemption, and Geocentrism, Teilhard stated:

…original sin, considered in the broadest sense, is not a malady specific to the earth, nor is it bound up with human generation. It simply symbolizes the unavoidable possibility of evil (Necesse est ut veniant scandala), which accompanies the existence of all participating beings… Original sin is the constitutive reaction of finite being to the creative act. It inevitably permeates existence through the whole of creation. It is the reverse side of all creation… Strictly speaking, there is no first Adam. The term conceals the universal and inviolable law of inversion or distortion — the price that must be paid for progress (Christianity and Evolution, pp. 40-41).

Because Teilhard regarded the Catholic doctrine of original sin as intellectually restrictive, he treated baptism in an unconventional way.

In 1933 he wrote in the article Christology and Evolution:

The fullness of the mystery of baptism is no longer purification, but (as the Greek Fathers profoundly realized) immersion in the fire of the purifying struggle “for being” — no longer shadow, but the sweat and toil of the Cross… I know the solemn decrees of the Council of Trent on original sin. I am aware of the infinite web of formulas and attitudes through which the idea that we are guilt-marked children of Adam and Eve has filtered into our Christian life.
…for all sorts of reasons — scientific, moral, and religious — the classical description of the Fall has ceased for us to be anything but a tight corset and a verbal burden, the letter of which can no longer satisfy us either intellectually or emotionally. In its material representation, it no longer belongs either to our Christianity or to our universe” (pp. 85-86).

Teilhard realized that there would be difficulties in gaining favor for his false theory of original sin. In one place he wrote:

I do not think that in the history of the Church anyone has ever “succeeded” in such an adjustment of dogma as that of which I speak here, although similar attempts have been made and partially realized” (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Lettres intimes a August Valensin, Bruno de Solages, Henri de Lubac, 1919-1955, p. 84).

Teilhard also stated:

From the standpoint of the Christian scholar, to accept the existence of Adam and Eve means inevitably that history is suddenly interrupted in a wholly unreal way at the stage of the appearance of man; and furthermore, when we more directly reach the living sphere of faith, original sin, in its present representation, is a lasting obstacle to the natural development of our religion. It clips the wings of hope: we are continually eager to launch out into the wide-open field of conquest suggested to us by optimism, and each time we are inexorably dragged back into the oppressive gloom of reparation and penance. The more I study this question, the more I am compelled to accept the obvious fact that original sin, conceived in the form still attributed to it today, is an intellectual and emotional corset. What lies behind this harmful quality it possesses, and where may deliverance be sought? In my opinion, the answer is that if the dogma of original sin is constricting and exhausting, it is simply because — in its present form — it means the persistence of outdated, static views within our modern evolutionary way of thinking (Teilhard de Chardin, Christianity and Evolution, pp. 79-80).

This stands in direct contradiction to what the Catholic Church has always plainly taught:

All men are bound to do penance, because, according to the teaching of the Christian faith, our souls were disfigured through original sin by the unhappy fall of Adam. We are also subject to our passions and have been corrupted in a truly miserable manner, and thus have become worthy of eternal damnation. It is true that the proud philosophers of this world deny this truth, setting in its place the ancient heresy of Pelagius, which attributed to human nature a certain inborn goodness, by which our own efforts raise us to the highest levels of perfection; but these false theories, born of human pride, were condemned by the Apostle, who warned us that by nature we were children of wrath. In fact, from the very creation of the world, mankind recognized, in one way or another, the duty of making satisfaction, and led by natural instinct, sought to appease God by offering Him public sacrifices (Breviarium Romanum, Pars aestiva, p. 381).

It is certain that Teilhard ended his life no longer believing in original sin.

On April 8, 1955, two days before his death, he wrote thus to Fr. Andre Ravier:

In the Universe of Cosmogenesis, where evil no longer has a catastrophic character (that is, it is not accidental), but an evolutionary one (that is, it is a statistically unavoidable by-product of the Universe in the process of union in God)… (quoted in: Janus, no. 4, December 1964, p. 32).

Teilhard’s theory of evolution postulated the existence of polygenism (many first parents).

In the book Mons Univers he rejected the creation of the first biblical man, Adam, and the first woman, Eve. He taught that we are not descended from a single pair of first parents, but that there were many “first parents” who once evolved from primates. In such a hypothesis original sin is impossible. Teilhard expressed this view in The Phenomenon of Man, where he wrote: “Thus, in the eyes of science, which in the long run can only consider things on the mass scale, ‘the first man’ is and can only be a human collectivity, and his childhood extends over thousands of years” (p. 186).

Yet this concept is openly contrary to the teaching of the Church.

In 1950 Pope Pius XII directly condemned polygenism in the encyclical Humani generis:

For the Christian faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains either that after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam signifies a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the teaching authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by one Adam and which, being transmitted to all by generation, is in everyone as his own (n. 37).

In the same encyclical the Pope teaches:

…for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God” (ibid., n. 36).

Teilhard’s theories are contrary to this teaching.

Joseph Kopp, author of the book Teilhard de Chardin: A New Synthesis of Evolution, says that the doctrine of the Church and Teilhard’s theories are irreconcilable:

We must state quite unequivocally: whoever postulates a Divine “intervention” in His own work is not merely modifying de Chardin’s conception, but thereby destroys the very core of his philosophy. To speak of “the introduction of the human soul by a special act of creation” is to remove the whole meaning of de Chardin’s theory of the purposeful evolution of the biosphere toward man. Likewise his theory of the evolution of the noosphere, which, as we shall see, becomes utterly unintelligible if the concept of intervention is admitted. We must accept Teilhard’s view of gradually developing creation including man, or else reject his whole philosophy” (pp. 43-44).

It is impossible to reconcile Teilhard’s teaching on original sin with the statement that “by one man sin entered into this world” (Rom. 5:12), to which the Council of Trent referred specifically when formulating the decree on original sin:

If anyone does not confess that the first man Adam, when he transgressed the commandment of God in paradise, immediately lost the holiness and justice in which he had been constituted… let him be anathema (DB n. 788-789).

The Church offers no alternative interpretation of traditional expressions such as: our first parents, the garden of paradise, the Fall, and original sin, which would allow Teilhard’s hypothesis to be even vaguely theologically admissible.

His understanding of original sin is wholly contrary to Christian Revelation and to the teaching of the Church.

There is a radical difference between the doctrine of the Catholic Church and Teilhard’s theological fiction.

Teilhard’s ideas ultimately lead to the denial of the Divinity of Christ and prepare his followers to receive a new ecumenical religion.

Dietrich von Hildebrand states this plainly:

Teilhard’s Christ is no longer Jesus, the God-Man… the Savior. He is rather the initiator of a purely natural, evolutionary process, and at the same time its end — the Omega Christ… In his fundamental vision of the world, which does not admit original sin in the sense given to it by the Church, there is no place for the Jesus Christ of the Gospel; for if original sin does not exist, then man’s redemption by Christ loses its inner meaning (Dietrich von Hildebrand, Teilhard de Chardin: A False Prophet, p. 21).

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Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Vaticanum II, and the New Rite of Initiation (Baptism)

Although Pierre Teilhard de Chardin died many years before the introduction of the new rite of Baptism, the Second Vatican Council, the antipopes John XXIII and Paul VI, and the liturgical “reformers” were under the influence of his teachings. Toward the end of the council, Time Magazine, in an article on Teilhard, noted these tendencies and reported:

Although the faithful had twice been warned about the dangers [to the faith] contained in his writings, privately the antipopes John XXIII and Paul VI acknowledged his greatness (October 16, 1964, p. 92).

Several “archbishops” and “cardinals” used Teilhard’s terminology in their interventions at the Second Vatican Council. Many bishops and periti (conciliar advisers) also accepted his false teachings.

The idea of an ecumenical church follows directly from Teilhard’s teachings.

Teilhard had an extraordinary vision of the Church as a community of Christian love, in which men live together as individuals and yet are united in love — total, irresistible, without limits — in this world; a sign of the presence of God, ultimately and completely as LOVE” (McElwain, op. cit., p. 71).

In his view, Baptism was simply an entrance into that community.

In Teilhard’s religion there is no place for the supernatural life of grace, which is infused into the soul at Baptism. For him, union with God consists above all in assimilation into the evolutionary process.

Teilhard’s heretical teachings were widely spread through the seminaries, rectories, schools, religious houses, and libraries of the Neo-Church.

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It is no wonder that so many clergymen of the Vatican II sect preach a religion different from the Catholic religion, since in their youth they had filled themselves with and fallen under the influence of Teilhard’s works. There can be no doubt that Teilhard de Chardin helped to lay the foundations of the new Vatican II Antichurch.