Friday, November 24, 2017

Even this supporter of Teilhard de Chardin finds Massimo Faggioli's and James Martin's effort to rehabilitate him "weird"

Read especially the last parts of Mark Lambert's "I may surprise you with a defence of Teilhard de Chardin" (November 23, 2017).

... his reputation as a bit of a rebel means that an approval of a proposal asking for Pope Francis to remove the monitum has almost inevitably, drawn support from Pope Francis merry band of theological nitwits & cheering boys. The fact that such people as Fr. James Martin and Massimo Faggioli are cheering for the petition to remove the monitum (warning) against the writings of Teilhard... well... it speaks volumes, doesn't it?

Ii could easily be argued that the central error of our times is evolutionism taken as a paradigm for the whole of reality, including God, revelation, tradition, and morality. As Father Z puts it, if Teilhard's writings were ambiguous and seriously erroneous when the monitum was imposed, then surely they still are? ...

... I can't help but be disappointed by this constant desire to forego the practice and common sense of the past and re-write everything in the ink of modern secularism. Isn't this glib jostling for attention intellectually drab and dishonest?

Yes I defend Teilhard de Chardin's extravagant and audacious writings. I love them! As a scientist he wanted a free-ranging, peer review of his work. His ideas should be challenged, but not demonised. But I don't mistake them for the teaching of my Church, and I don't regret or seek to revoke the very valid monitum placed on them in 1962. Fr Teilhard de Chardin accepted the Holy See's censure, & he would have accepted the monitum as a just act by the teaching authority of the Church, just as he accepted the censure of his superior in 1925. The fact that Faggioli and Martin are seeking to rehabilitate him somehow is weird (given he is pretty much old hat these days), and strikes me as just another anti-orthodoxy bandwagon for them to jump on.
[Hat tip to J.M.]

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