CHAPTER THREE

The Influence of Teilhard de Chardin on the Dutch Catechism

If the Dutch Catechism (DC) is built on a Teilhard de Chardi philosophy and "theology", then, according to Cardinal Journet, it will form the same synthesis or system, it will be built on the same contradictions and will prove to be just as "uncompromising" as Teilhardism itself. The difficulty the good Cardinals experienced in trying to "fit some thomistic theology into it" proves this point. Maybe they could have saved themselves the trouble; but it certainly appears as if the catechism must be rejected or accepted as it stands. But strong pointers as all these things are, they only amount to circumstantial evidence, as does the long list of its shortcomings. The DC stands accused by all this; gravely accused. But in order to be rejected in toto it must stand condemned. It must be proven guilty. If the DC is Teilhardism in catechetical garb, then it must yield its secret and reveal the same contradictions as were discovered to lie at the root of the "master-vision", and found at the bottom of everything inspired by it. In order to make it do this, we will turn our attention first to the DC's most vulnerable part: its ‘philosophy’ of Man.

Section A

The Dutch Catechism's concept of Man

"The life in my body comes from the beasts".

(p: 10)

The author, the Dutch Jesuit Fr. Piet Schooneberg, S.J., bases himself here on evolution. We also see him use words which we know have a special meaning in the philosophy, theology, and dogma of the Catholic Church. We may call this system "Hallowed Thomism". (Thomism as a philosophy only, remains a philosophical system; but if the Catholic Church takes up the meaning of a term, or a doctrine, in thomism for the formulation of Her Dogmas, then we can truly speak of "hallowed thomism"). In chapters one and two of this documentation I compared the philosophical system called "Thomism" with a philosophical system called "Teilhardism". In the discussion here on the DC we must accept thomism in its wider sense, and compare the doctrine of the DC with what I call here "hallowed thomism".

If one thing has not yet become fully clear: that evolutionism and thomism are absolutely incompatible, then a study of the DC will achieve this. Both are systems, using their own principles and language (jargon). One destroys the other because they are contradictory systems. Now, right throughout their DC, the authors try to explain an evolutionist religion using thomistic terms, hallowed by their use in the Catholic Church, such as life, body, God, creation, man, Christ, Resurrection, spirit, soul.... They use these thomistic terms trying to give meaning to a contrary system. But "contrary ‘truths’ cannot exist" (Pope John XXIII, 1959): evolution and thomism cannot be both true. The result, as was to be expected, is an abysmal failure to explain either system. The lip service paid to the doctrine of the Catholic Faith fails dismally to save the essence of Catholic Faith (as if it was in need of "being saved"), and fails equally to make the contrary doctrine of evolution come to life. Modernists never allow us to show how their theories contradict Dogma and Revelation, because to them neither Dogma nor Revelation ought to be expressed in thomistic terms, no matter what the Popes have said about that. Meanwhile they make full use of the liberty of expressing their ideas in thomistic terms, which by their use in the Church have received definite, all-time meanings pertaining to the salvation of souls, which meanings are hopelessly lost if used to explain a contradictory system.

Since they select to fight this battle on thomistic use of words but with evolutio-nistic meanings, we accept the challenge and show up their contradictions using the same words with their normal and hallowed meaning.

But make no mistake: there is hardly a single word in the whole of the English language which has the same meaning in evolutionism as in thomism. They intend to write a catechism of the future, where the whole of dogma (so they claim) will be retranslated in the words and meanings of evolutionary theory, as postulated by Teilhard himself as we saw, when he said:

"I have come to the conclusion that, in order to pay for a drastic valorisation and amortisation of the substance of things, a whole series of reshaping of certain representations or attitudes, which seem to us definitely fixed by Catholic Dogma, has become necessary, if we sincerely wish to Christify Evolution."

The present DC is a first attempt to break the barriers and to get us used to it. They fervently hope that, once Thomism is destroyed with its real distinction principle the formidable, ugly contradiction, on which evolution is built, will cease to exist and disappear forever. But they forget that dogma is "Verbum Dei", and no longer thomism.

And now back to our first quotation, above. It is a case in point: evolutionists mean by "life" and "body" something completely different from ordinary Christian use. So the authors will try to explain and explain, going round and round in circles, endlessly, writing a 500-page book with very little substance in it. (Sorry about that thomistic word.)

I'll start once more:

"The life in my body comes from the beasts"


(p.10).

This means two things:

  1. life and body are not the same, so a distinction is made here by the authors;

  2. at least one of them: life, comes from the beasts.

(Remember that, even if Teilhardists make a distinction, they totally reject a real distinction. Will it be the same here?).

"And richer and richer finds showed still more clearly the great drama of the spine slowly straightened up, and the skull that took on a greater volume as the beast developed into man" (p. 10).

We are told here quite clearly by the use of words such as ‘spine’ and ‘skull’, that the body of man also came from the beasts. Since soul is not to be admitted quite explicitly in this catechism as we will see, they tell us here that the whole man comes from the beasts. (Remember also that we are not allowed to show that they contradict Catholic Dogma; that is meaningless to them. This being so we will do something far more "deadly" to them: we will show how they contradict themselves.)

To reinforce their evolutionary doctrine, we are told on p. 470:

"Death is the end of the whole man as we know him".

We know him as having life and body: all that comes from the beasts, so according to this catechism, quite logically, he ends up as the beasts. All this must of course be "squared off"; with "thomism and dogma", hence the pages and pages of writing to explain away their contradiction that there is such a thing as "Resurrection". Resurrection is no difficulty in thomism and the Catholic Church: it becomes a grave contradiction in evolutionism. Before I go on to a discussion on ‘soul’, I would like to select a few more quotations on "life":

"On the contrary: it gives us life...." (p. 500).

Nowhere does the author talk about "divine life": there is no room for it since we have no soul, so life is identical with Life. There is no real distinction between the natural and the Supernatural. But that "it" here which is supposed to be giving life, is not referring to the beasts, so ‘beasts’ and ‘non-beasts’ are giving us life.

". . . as they give new life to the child" (p. 382).

The "they" here are the parents. So, apparently, my parents are beasts, since p. 10 told me: "The life in my body comes from the beasts". And if my parents are not beasts, then the life in my body comes from beasts and non-beasts at the same time: a classical contradiction. Anything at all except the truth: God created me.

As can be seen from what we have uncovered so far: just, as Cardinal Journet assured us, one cannot pick and choose from Teilhardism, neither can that be done from Catholic Dogma, or Thomism. One fundamental contradiction is enough to evoke a whole army of them. E.g., how do they see the Conception of Our Lord? Does the life in His Body ‘come from the beasts’? Did His Mother ‘give Him life’? Has He got a Soul?

Of Christ, the DC says on p. 279:

"God created a human life which in the full simplicity of service fulfilled the end of creation. It was the life of his Son, his Image".

And that is all, so help me God. Nothing about Incarnation, since that involves the creation of His Soul; nothing, about the role His Mother played in that, nothing about His Soul; nothing about the Immaculate Conception of His Mother: is any more needed to show how deep-seated the rejection of the human soul is lodged in these evolutionists ? Since there is such a lot they don't say, and since they absolutely reject any criticism about what they don't say, we turn our attention on what they do say about soul:

"It was once usual to say that God creates each soul directly each time. But this manner of speaking fails to do justice to two things: one, that creation itself is a reality which strives upwards, and two, that body and soul are not to be divided"

"Up to quite recent times, a solution (to the "problem" of after life) was often sought in the simple distinction between "body" and "soul". After death, it was thought, the soul continues to exist separately, while the body perishes. At the Last Judgement, the body is gathered from the clay. This clear picture was an effort to render faithfully the data of the Bible. But an effort must be made to express them otherwise" (p. 473).

"Sometimes Jesus uses the word ‘soul’. ‘Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul’ (Mt. 10: 28). But He does not mean to refer to a human spirit which floats free, as it were, of the body. As elsewhere in the Bible, the meaning is rather ‘life’ ‘the living kernel of a man as a whole, body and soul’. Our Lord means that there is something of man, that which is most properly himself, which can be saved after death. This ‘something’ is not the body which is left behind. But Our Lord does not say that this which is truly man is entirely disassociated from a new body. It is not biblical usage to speak of a purely disembodied soul of a man. How then are we to understand the texts (referring to resurrection: I Cor. 15: 22; ibid. v. 6; "today you will be with Me in Paradise"; 2 Cor. 5: 8)? They speak of a ‘today’ with reference to something which is not entirely without a body. And at the same time they speak of those who shall live after death. What message is to be read here? It seems to be that we are to think of the ‘today’ as something that has already begun, and that it is not without the body. In other words, existence after death is already something like the resurrection of the new body. This body of the resurrection is not molecules which are buried and scattered in the earth. Man begins to awake to a new man" (p. 473).

I have quoted these passages at length, so that the many contradictions can be clearly brought to light. I am mainly concerned with the last quote.

1. This passage contradicts Christ's teaching. Christ knew the difference between "life" and "soul" and told us so. This passage is private interpretation of Scripture. No evidence is brought out.

2. This passage also contradicts what was stated on p. 470 where the authors stated:

"(In death) Man returns to earth like an autumn leaf or an animal. Death is radical. Here the deniers of immortality are right. Death is the end of the whole man as we have known him."

In this passage nothing but a memory remains, in the one on p. 473 a kernel survives. At least the authors of the DC "know man to have a kernel", so how can they say on p. 470: Death is the end of the whole man as we know him; stating on p. 473: as far as they know man, not the whole man dies....

3. p. 470, just quoted, contradicts p. 472: "man is not made to vanish like the beasts".

4. If soul means life as its true biblical meaning, then we must read the statement on p. 10: "the soul of my body comes from the beasts . . ."

5. If, however, soul means: surviving kernel as is also stated here, then the authors simply shifted the problem: what is the difference between a surviving kernel and a surviving soul ?

6. If, according to the long passage above, Christ means by soul: life or surviving kernel, and this is biblical, then according to the Bible life in man and surviving kernel are the same. Since the whole man, according to the DC consists of life and body, and since the whole man dies in death, then life and body die, but life as synonymous with kernel, survives. So life dies and life remains.... And this most confusing and contradictory concoction is the "biblical doctrine on soul" . . According to the DC both the Bible and Christ are confused about soul. If it is not biblical to speak of a soul which survives after death, and if Christ teaches us about a soul which cannot be killed after the body is killed, then either Christ and his teaching are no longer in the Bible, or if Christ's teaching is biblical, then it is "biblical usage" to talk about a surviving soul. Or else Christ did not know what He was talking about and did not know His Bible....

7. If this innermost kernel (which is "man most properly himself" even without body and soul and life) cannot be without a body and immediately on death takes on another body not of molecules, so that now a new man (not as we know him) exists already risen today, then all this is nothing but a pure contradiction of the Gospel which explicitly states that Christ rose on the third day. It is even in the Creed. All of a sudden it has become of the utmost significance that the DC never states that the Risen Christ had reunited with His Body that lay in the grave. Now we know why they need more than nine pages to explain away the truth of the Resurrection. Christ, according to this teaching here, had already immediately resumed another, un-earthly body not of molecules. But then what happened to His Sacred Body in the grave? In testifying briefly to the empty tomb the authors then must believe the lie that some one else took His Body.... It is now also of the utmost significance that the DC is completely silent on the fact that Christ showed His wounds. That He asked His disciples to touch Him, to feel His bones. And finally, to show that he was still made up of molecules, He asked for something to eat, and He ate before their eyes. St. Paul clearly teaches that this corruptible must take on incorruptibility……

Due to its faulty philosophy of man the DC has got itself completely tangled up in a minefield of contradictions, against which Reason and Faith have guarded them-selves for over 2000 years. Exactly as the Popes warned us would happen. As far as I am concerned it can stay there until it blows itself up.

Section B

The Dutch Catechism's concept of "faith".

Lastly, I must draw attention to a passage in the DC where everything I have stated previously in this documentation is wound up in an easy to remember example. Here it is, taken from p. 125:

"There is a level of our being which is deeper than the intellect, more personal than feelings, more human than the subconscious. It is the level on which the unity of the two great aspects of our being, knowledge and love, exist. There man's effort to lay hold of truth is inseparable from his striving after goodness. In this primal unity, knowledge is not a cold light and love is not a blind urge. Knowledge is full of love and love itself has vision".

Of this "level of our being" it is stated here:

  1. that it isdeeper than our intellect, so intellect is absent there.

  2. It is the level where knowledge and love exist in unity, so intellect is present there.

  3. It is the level where love has vision, so intellect extends further than this level; in extending "vision to love" it must extend further than love. If love has vision at that level and there knows what it is doing, and this level is more human than the subconscious, then below the subconscious and deeper than the intellect, love knows what it is doing. This makes this mysterious level totally contradic-tory and totally unintelligible.

The catechism then goes on:

"It is the level of our being on which we love, where conscience resides".

Here the authors seem to stick to their original assertion that this level is "deeper than the intellect", because it is the level where we love. But conscience has a lot to do with the intellectual act of judgement. Why this unintelligible level is "invented" here, comes finally out in the next sentence:

"To this core of our being Jesus addresses himself when demanding faith.... This does not mean that the intellect is excluded or ignored.... And so we come back to describe this central unity with the biblical term belief, that is faith. The word belief is etymologically connected with love.

All this is necessary to "explain away" the supernatural nature of the freely infused Gift of Divine Faith, the "Fides Divina et Catholica" of Trent and Vatican I. It has now become a human act on the human level. And what is more, faith is no longer an act of the intellect, but the name given to this unity, "which is a unity on the level where we love, deeper than the intellect, but it does not mean that the intellect is excluded or ignored". In other words, it is the most crude attempt to introduce into this catechism Teilhard's most fundamental contradiction: the identity between the natural and the Supernatural in order to have only one level: this mysterious unity, to which now is given the name faith. The word Supernatural does not even rate a mention in the Topics Index of the DC.

It is this passage where, more than anywhere else, the naked Teilhard doctrine comes to the fore. This description destroys man as he was created by God: as he came from God; Teilhard wanted absolute identity between the natural and the supernatural, or better still: he wanted neither natural nor Supernatural: just one level, one plane, evolution. Here he got that taught in a catechism. But the penalty for getting it is, that the level results in contradictory verbiage and so proves its non-existence. And so his unity between intellect and will in the absence of the real distinction, and his identity of the natural and the Supernatural, again in the absence of the real distinction, become figments of the imagination. And the dearest, most precious casualty, the one we can least afford to lose, is the most treasured gift of Almighty God to man here on earth: the gift of Supernatural, Divine, Infused and Catholic Faith. Because this non-existing sameness of the natural order and the Supernatural Order to the one human order, makes every act of faith a natural act of the natural intellect, resulting in a natural faith on the human level, which completely destroys Catholic teaching in the gravest of all matters: that of Faith being the Initium (beginning), Radix (root) and Fundamentum (foundation) of all Supernatural Life, Sanctification, Sanctifying Grace, Justification and God's inhabitation in the human soul (Trent and Vatican I).

The Popes were right: tamper with thomism, then tamper with dogma (thinking it is still thomism), and you end up with the loss of the priceless Gift of Catholic Faith.