I NOTE that Cardinal Casaroli's recent letter to the Teilhard De Chardin celebrations in Paris remarks that there is required a "critical and serene study" of Teilhard's works. this owing to "difficulties of conception and the deficiencies of expression", In rescanning Teilhard's definitive work, The Phenomenon of Man, (Collins paperback edition) I find on Page 73 in the chapter. "The Juvenile Earth", the following passage: Some thousands of millions of years ago, nor it would appear by regular process of astral evolution, but as the result of some unbelievable accident (a brush with another star? an internal upheaval?) a fragment of matter composed of particularly stable atoms was despatched from the surface of the sun ... containing within its globe and orbit the future of Man, another heavenly body — a planet this time — had been born.
The same explanation he gives a few pages later, page SO: The earth was probably horn by accident: but in accordance with one of the most general laws of evolution, scarcely had this accident happened than it was made use of and recast into something naturally directed. Would any follower of Teilhard please explain how this idea of the world coming into being through "accident" can be reconciled with our old belief. that the world. and everything in it. was purposely. designedly. created by God the creator. John Campbell As rshire.