The Australian Marian Academy

of the Immaculate Conception

By

F. Albers, Ph.B.

Teilhard de Chardin and the Dutch Catechism

“These (false) evolutionary notions, with their denial of all that is absolute or fixed or abiding in human experience, have paved the way for a new philosophy of error ...”

“And so it is with these moderns: they go so far, some of them, as to raise serious doubts about our theology and its method. The demand is for their wholesale reform. This, we are told, would make for a more effective spread of Christ’s Kingdom all over the world, among men of whatever culture, of whatever religious opinions ...”

“Many, among the younger clergy especially, will be led astray by this bad example, and Church discipline will suffer. In published works some caution is still observed, but more freedom is shown in books privately circulated, in lectures, and in meetings for discussion ...”

“The same divine truth, they tell us, may be expressed on the human side in two different ways, even in two ways which in a sense contradict one another, and still. really mean the same thing ...”

“But if reason is to perform this office adequately and without fear of error, it must be trained on the right principles; it must be steeped in that sound philosophy which we have long possessed as an heirloom handed down to us by former ages of Christendom. These principles on which it is based have been made, by the teaching authority of the church, into the touchstone of Divine Revelation ...”

“The mind of man, when it is engaged in a sincere search for truths, will never light on one which contradicts the truths it has already ascertained. The Christian will weigh the latest fantasy carefully, making sure that he does not lose hold of the truth already in his possession or contaminate it in any way, with great danger and perhaps great loss to the faith itself.

In view of all this it is not surprising that the Church will have her future priests brought up on a philosophy which derives its method, its system and its basic principles from the Angelic Doctor (C.I.C. can. 1366,2). One thing is clearly established by the long experience of the ages: his teaching seems to chime in, by a kind of pre-established harmony, with Divine Revelation: no surer way to safeguard the first principles of the Faith ...”

“Philosophical tendencies too must come under the Church’s watchful care, otherwise the whole of Catholic Doctrine may be undermined by false assumptions ...”

Pope PIUS XII
Humani Generis, 12th August 1950