Chardin’s universal vision
28
Dec
For a certain time, Chardin’s vision of a universe
formed from a divine intention, its evolution within a geosphere, then a biosphere and finally the current stage that is a noosphere (noon – spirit) was considered heretical, but at the time few were changing, many philosophers and theologians began to study him, his works were being published and acceptance by the church was being considered, to the point of even thinking about his beatification.
One can think in the current controversies, without serious doctrinal meaning in my opinion, that this is due to a certain heretical “modernization” of the church, but the most diverse theological thoughts within the church reflect on the validity of this vision that updates Christian thinking and gives a great opening to what modern man has discovered and continues to discover about human life on earth and the cosmos.
In a homily by Pope Benedict XVI, on July 24, 2009, in a homily in Aosta, Benedict XVI quotes Teilhard de Chardin, as a positive illumination: «The function of the priesthood is to consecrate the world so that it becomes a living host, so that the world becomes liturgy: that liturgy does not pass by the reality of the world, but that the world itself becomes a living host, becomes liturgy. This is the great vision that was later also that of Teilhard de Chardin: in the end, we will have a true cosmic liturgy in which the cosmos becomes a living host.”
And this is not a new doctrine, although Chardin brought it closer to Science, the Second Vatican Council in the Constitution Gaudium et Spes (nº 5), in fact, declares: «In short, the human race passes from a basically static notion of the order of things to a more dynamic and evolutionary conception: this gives rise to a huge new problem that requires new analyzes and new syntheses.”
And in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (n. 310), we read: «God freely wanted to create a world “in a state of progress” towards its ultimate perfection and Jesus will come in his glory, after wars, pestilences and other civilizational difficulties, to save him, says eschatology.
Thus, not only does original sin, the expulsion from paradise and the human future open up to a new perspective consistent with the doctrine, but it also clarifies controversial points historically, we would say due to the Copernican revolution, man and the world are neither geocentric nor heliocentric, at the center of the galaxy is a black hole, so we could say that it is noocentric,
GRONCHI, Priest Maurizio. In the thoughts of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. « J’étudie la matière et je trouve l’esprit. », L’Osservatore Romano, 29 December 2013.
