The Soft Voice of the Serpent

This new biography, Teilhard, by two sisters, Mary and Ellen Lukas, provides a little fresh information about the ambiguous Jesuit. Repeatedly condemned by the Church, he aggressively exhorted priests to “give a new meaning” to the central Christian mysteries: Creation, original sin, Incarnation, Redemption. He called himself a “pure Force.” He demanded to be accepted as the founder of “the religion of the Future.”

His blood had produced the chief literary opponents of the Pope and the French religious orders; his father’s family was that of Pascal; his mother’s, that of Voltaire. As a boy he was repelled by catechism; he did well in most of his subjects, but never in religion. Man and boy, he disliked the fundamental ideas and moral attitudes usually associated with elementary Christian doctrine. “I have always found it impossible to be sincerely moved to pity by a crucifix,” he proclaimed to friends when he was 52, explaining his aversion to “the idea of sacrifice,” “the interpretation of baptism” accepted in the Church, and “the point of view of the Bible and the Epistle to the Romans.”

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Farley Clinton

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This new biography, Teilhard, by two sisters, Mary and Ellen Lukas, provides a little fresh information about the ambiguous Jesuit. Repeatedly condemned by the Church, he aggressively exhorted priests to “give a new meaning” to the central Christian mysteries: Creation, original sin, Incarnation, Redemption. He called himself a “pure Force.” He demanded to be accepted as the founder of “the religion of the Future.”

His blood had produced the chief literary opponents of the Pope and the French religious orders; his father’s family was that of Pascal; his mother’s, that of Voltaire. As a boy he was repelled by catechism; he did well in most of his subjects, but never in religion. Man and boy, he disliked the fundamental ideas and moral attitudes usually associated with elementary Christian doctrine. “I have always found it impossible to be sincerely moved to pity by a crucifix,” he proclaimed to friends when he was 52, explaining his aversion to “the idea of sacrifice,” “the interpretation of baptism” accepted in the Church, and “the point of view of the Bible and the Epistle to the Romans.”