"Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a French Jesuit and paleontologist who died a church outcast in New York City in 1955 at age 74. Vatican officials had suppressed his writings on sequential evolution in the universe.
A decade later after his death, Teilhard’s books were being taught in Jesuit schools. Today he has a global reputation on evolution and spirituality.
Long before the internet, Teilhard wrote of an emergent planetary consciousness as a scientific development. He also wrote of this “noosphere” in mystical terms, as mankind’s quest for closeness with the divine. And he sounded prescient notes of warning.
“There is a danger that the elements of the world should refuse to serve the world,” he wrote in The Phenomenon of Man, published in 1957. “What is forming and growing is nothing less than an organic crisis in evolution.”
Pope Francis sounded a lot like his fellow Jesuit at a May 21 general audience. “Creation is a gift,” he told 50,000 people at St. Peter’s Square, “that God has given us, so that we care for it and we use it for the benefit of all.”
“We are custodians of creation, not masters of creation,” the pope continued. His sermon
would well fit an anthology on conscious evolution, a school of thought that bridges science and faith in arguing that humanity has an urgent moral duty for care of the planet.
Francis’s remarks came two weeks after Cardinal Gerhard Müller, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued a rebuke of Leadership Conference of Women Religious, representing most of America’s 57,000 nuns, for their promotion of conscious evolution.
How did a movement of theology and nature go so terribly wrong?
“Either Muller doesn’t understand what conscious evolution means,” Margaret Susan Thompson, a Syracuse University scholar on religious life told GlobalPost,....
“For me, the most vital source of meaning of conscious evolution is the Catholic understanding of God and Christ as the source of evolution, as its driving force as well as its direction,” said Hubbard.
“Through science, research, technology communications and virtually every other area of human activity, we are weaving a delicate membrane of consciousness, what Teilhard called the ‘noosphere’ or the thinking layer of Earth that is embracing and drawing into itself the entire planet.”
Teilhard, who died before climate change became an issue, saw the noosphere in a mystical light, a reach closer to God.
Father Berry wrote with a lyrical sensibility, setting what he called deep ecology in a thematic line with Dante and early mystic saints, notably Francis of Assisi and Hildegard of Bingen.
In The Dream of the Earth (1988) Berry called for “a spiritual context to the ecological age” and bemoaned society’s “neglect of faith in favor of reason, its exaltation of technology as the instrument for the conquest of nature.”
“Theology cannot continue to develop apart from 21st-century cosmology and ecology, nor can science substitute for religion, “ Franciscan Sister Ilia Delio, a research theologian at Georgetown University wrote in a 2011 essay for America Magazine.
“Both the light of faith and the insights of science can help humanity evolve toward a more sustainable future.”
As the standoff between the Vatican doctrinal office and LCWR deepens, the sisters’ leadership has chosen a path of silence — self-muzzling —apparently to avoid the risk of more punishment.
“Müller did not give a considered response to conscious evolution,” Sister Christine Schenk of Cleveland, who is writing a book on women in the early church, told GlobalPost.
“To me, he clearly has not engaged the deep strand of theological reflection from Thomas Berry and Teilhard. It’s not lightweight stuff; there’s a lot of science involved. Why is this an issue?”
The LCWR conferences are not presented as official teachings of the Catholic Church — another source of conflict with the bishops.
“The nuns are trying to engage the world as it is,” says Schenk. “How do we live the gospel in the midst of an evolving universe? These are important questions that need to be engaged by anyone curious about the gospel.” MintPressNews
A decade later after his death, Teilhard’s books were being taught in Jesuit schools. Today he has a global reputation on evolution and spirituality.
Long before the internet, Teilhard wrote of an emergent planetary consciousness as a scientific development. He also wrote of this “noosphere” in mystical terms, as mankind’s quest for closeness with the divine. And he sounded prescient notes of warning.
“There is a danger that the elements of the world should refuse to serve the world,” he wrote in The Phenomenon of Man, published in 1957. “What is forming and growing is nothing less than an organic crisis in evolution.”
Pope Francis sounded a lot like his fellow Jesuit at a May 21 general audience. “Creation is a gift,” he told 50,000 people at St. Peter’s Square, “that God has given us, so that we care for it and we use it for the benefit of all.”
“We are custodians of creation, not masters of creation,” the pope continued. His sermon
Francis’s remarks came two weeks after Cardinal Gerhard Müller, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued a rebuke of Leadership Conference of Women Religious, representing most of America’s 57,000 nuns, for their promotion of conscious evolution.
How did a movement of theology and nature go so terribly wrong?
“Either Muller doesn’t understand what conscious evolution means,” Margaret Susan Thompson, a Syracuse University scholar on religious life told GlobalPost,....
“For me, the most vital source of meaning of conscious evolution is the Catholic understanding of God and Christ as the source of evolution, as its driving force as well as its direction,” said Hubbard.
“Through science, research, technology communications and virtually every other area of human activity, we are weaving a delicate membrane of consciousness, what Teilhard called the ‘noosphere’ or the thinking layer of Earth that is embracing and drawing into itself the entire planet.”
Teilhard, who died before climate change became an issue, saw the noosphere in a mystical light, a reach closer to God.
Father Berry wrote with a lyrical sensibility, setting what he called deep ecology in a thematic line with Dante and early mystic saints, notably Francis of Assisi and Hildegard of Bingen.
In The Dream of the Earth (1988) Berry called for “a spiritual context to the ecological age” and bemoaned society’s “neglect of faith in favor of reason, its exaltation of technology as the instrument for the conquest of nature.”
“Theology cannot continue to develop apart from 21st-century cosmology and ecology, nor can science substitute for religion, “ Franciscan Sister Ilia Delio, a research theologian at Georgetown University wrote in a 2011 essay for America Magazine.
“Both the light of faith and the insights of science can help humanity evolve toward a more sustainable future.”
As the standoff between the Vatican doctrinal office and LCWR deepens, the sisters’ leadership has chosen a path of silence — self-muzzling —apparently to avoid the risk of more punishment.
“Müller did not give a considered response to conscious evolution,” Sister Christine Schenk of Cleveland, who is writing a book on women in the early church, told GlobalPost.
“To me, he clearly has not engaged the deep strand of theological reflection from Thomas Berry and Teilhard. It’s not lightweight stuff; there’s a lot of science involved. Why is this an issue?”
The LCWR conferences are not presented as official teachings of the Catholic Church — another source of conflict with the bishops.
“The nuns are trying to engage the world as it is,” says Schenk. “How do we live the gospel in the midst of an evolving universe? These are important questions that need to be engaged by anyone curious about the gospel.” MintPressNews
But there were false prophets
also among the people,
even as there shall be
false teachers among you,
who privily shall bring in
damnable heresies,
2 Peter 2:1