Early years

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was born in the château of Sarcenat at Orcines, close to Clermont-Ferrand, France on May 1, 1881. On the Teilhard side he is descended from an ancient family of magistrates from Auvergne originating in Murat, Cantal, and on the de Chardin side he is descended from a family which was ennobled under Louis XVIII. He was the fourth of eleven children. His father, Emmanuel Teilhard (1844—1932), an amateur naturalist, collected stones, insects and plants, and promoted the observation of nature in the household. Pierre Teilhard's spirituality was awakened by his mother, Berthe de Dompiere. When he was 12, he went to the Jesuit college of Mongré, in Villefranche-sur-Saône, where he completed baccalaureates of philosophy and mathematics. Then, in 1899, he entered the Jesuit novitiate at Aix-en-Provence where he began a philosophical, theological and spiritual career.

As of the summer 1901, the Waldeck-Rousseau laws, which submitted congregational associations' properties to state control, prompted some of the Jesuits to exile themselves in the United Kingdom. Young Jesuit students continued their studies in Jersey. In the meantime, Teilhard earned a licentiate in literature in Caen in 1902.

Jesus training

From 1905 to 1908, he taught physics and chemistry in Cairo, Egypt, at the Jesuit College of the Holy Family. He wrote "...it is the dazzling of the East foreseen and drunk greedily... in its lights, its vegetation, its fauna and its deserts." (Letters from Egypt (1905—1908) ... Éditions Aubier)

Teilhard studied theology in Hastings, in Sussex (United Kingdom), from 1908 to 1912. There he synthesized his scientific, philosophical and theological knowledge in the light of evolution. His reading of L'Évolution Créatrice (The Creative Evolution) by Henri Bergson was, he said, the "catalyst of a fire which devoured already its heart and its spirit." His views on evolution and religion particularly inspired the evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky. Teilhard was ordained a priest on August 24, 1911, aged 30.

Paleontology

From 1912 to 1914, Teilhard worked in the paleontology laboratory of the Musée National d'Histoire Naturelle, in Paris, studying the mammals of the middle Tertiary period. Later he studied elsewhere in Europe. In June 1912 he formed part of the original digging team, with Arthur Smith Woodward and Charles Dawson, to perform follow-up investigations at the Piltdown site, after the discovery of the first fragments of the (fraudulent) "Piltdown Man". Professor Marcellin Boule (specialist in Neanderthal studies), who so early as 1915 astutely recognised the non-hominid origins of the Piltdown finds, gradually guided Teilhard towards human paleontology. At the museum's Institute of Human Paleontology, he became a friend of Henri Breuil and took part with him, in 1913, in excavations in the prehistoric painted caves in the northwest of Spain, at the Cave of Castillo.

Service in World War I

Mobilised in December 1914, Teilhard served in World War I as a stretcher-bearer in the 8th Moroccan Rifles. For his valour, he received several citations including the Médaille militaire and the Legion of Honour.

Throughout these years of war he developed his reflections in his diaries and in letters to his cousin, Marguerite Teillard-Chambon, who later edited them into a book: Genèse d'une pensée (Genesis of a thought). He confessed later: "...the war was a meeting ... with the Absolute." In 1916, he wrote his first essay: La Vie Cosmique (Cosmic life), where his scientific and philosophical thought was revealed just as his mystical life. He pronounced his solemn vows as a Jesuit in Sainte-Foy-lès-Lyon, on May 26, 1918, during a leave. In August 1919, in Jersey, he would write Puissance spirituelle de la Matière (the spiritual Power of Matter). The complete essays written between 1916 and 1919 are published under the following titles:

• Ecrits du temps de la Guerre (Written in time of the War) (TXII of complete Works) — Editions du Seuil
• Genèse d'une pensée (letters of 1914 to 1918) — Editions Grasset

Teilhard followed at the Sorbonne three unit degrees of natural science: geology, botany and zoology. His thesis treated of the mammals of the French lower Eocene and their stratigraphy. After 1920, he lectured in geology at the Catholic Institute of Paris, then became an assistant professor after being granted a science Doctorate in 1922.

Research in China

In 1923 he traveled to China with Father Emile Licent, who was in charge in Tianjin for a significant laboratory collaborating with the Natural History Museum in Paris and Marcellin Boule's laboratory. Licent carried out considerable basic work in connection with missionaries who accumulated observations of a scientific nature in their spare time. He was known as ??? (pinyin: Dérìjìn) in China.

Teilhard wrote several essays, including La Messe sur le Monde (the Mass on the World), in the Ordos Desert. In the following year he continued lecturing at the Catholic Institute and participated in a cycle of conferences for the students of the Engineers' Schools. Two theological essays on Original Sin" sent to a theologian, on his request, on a purely personal basis, were wrongly understood.

• July 1920: Chute, Rédemption et Géocentrie (Fall, Redemption and Geocentry)
• Spring 1922: Notes sur quelques représentations historiques possibles du Péché originel (Notes on few possible historical representations of original sin) (Works, Tome X)

The Church required him to give up his lecturing at the Catholic Institute and to continue his geological research in China.

Teilhard travelled again to China in April 1926. He would remain there more or less twenty years, with many voyages throughout the world. He settled until 1932 in Tientsin with Emile Licent then in Beijing. From 1926 to 1935, Teilhard made five geological research expeditions in China. They enabled him to establish a first general geological map of China.

In 1926—1927 after a missed campaign in Gansu he travelled in the Sang-Kan-Ho valley near Kalgan (Zhangjiakou) and made a tour in Eastern Mongolia. He wrote Le Milieu Divin (the divine Medium). Teilhard prepared the first pages of his main work Le Phénomène humain (The Human Phenomenon).

He joined the ongoing excavations of the Peking Man Site at Zhoukoudian as an advisor in 1926 and continued in the role for the Cenozoic Research Laboratory of the Geological Survey of China following its founding in 1928.

He resided in Manchuria with Emile Licent, then stayed in Western Shansi (Shanxi) and northern Shensi (Shaanxi) with the Chinese paleontologist C. C. Young and with Davidson Black, Chairman of the Geological Survey of China.

After a tour in Manchuria in the area of Great Khingan with Chinese geologists, Teilhard joined the team of American Expedition Center-Asia in the Gobi organised in June and July, by the American Museum of Natural History with Roy Chapman Andrews.

Henri Breuil and Teilhard discovered that the Peking Man, the nearest relative of Pithecanthropus from Java, was a "faber" (worker of stones and controller of fire). Teilhard wrote L'Esprit de la Terre (the Spirit of the Earth).

Teilhard took part as a scientist in the famous "Croisiere Jaune" or "Yellow Cruise" financed by Andre Citroen in Central Asia. Northwest of Beijing in Kalgan he joined the China group who joined the second part of the team, the Pamir group, in Aksu. He remained with his colleagues for several months in Urumqi, capital of Sinkiang. The following year the Sino-Japanese War began.

Teilhard undertook several explorations in the south of China. He traveled in the valleys of Yangtze River and Szechuan (Sichuan) in 1934, then, the following year, in Kwang-If and Guangdong. The relationship with Marcellin Boule was disrupted; the Museum cut its financing on the grounds that Teilhard worked more for the Chinese Geological Service than for the Museum.

During all these years, Teilhard strongly contributed to the constitution of an international network of research in human paleontology related to the whole Eastern and south Eastern zone of the Asian continent. He would be particularly associated in this task with two friends, the English/Canadian Davidson Black and the Scot George B. Barbour. Many times he would visit France or the United States, only to leave these countries to go on further expeditions.

World travels

From 1927—1928 Teilhard stayed in France, based in Paris. He journeyed to Leuven, Belgium, to Cantal, and to Ariège, France. Between several articles in reviews, he met new people such as Paul Valéry and Bruno de Solages, who were to help him in issues with the Catholic Church.

Answering an invitation from Henry de Monfreid, Teilhard undertook a journey of two months in Obock in Harrar and in Somalia with his colleague Pierre Lamarre, geologist, before embarking in Djibouti to return to Tianjin. While in China, Teilhard developed a deep and personal friendship with Lucile Swan.

From 1930—1931 Teilhard stayed in France and in the United States. During a conference in Paris, Teilhard stated: "For the observers of the Future, the greatest event will be the sudden appearance of a collective humane conscience and a human work to make."

From 1932—1933 he began to meet people to clarify issues with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, regarding Le Milieu Divin and L'Esprit de la Terre. He met Helmut von Terra, a German geologist in the International Geology Congress in Washington, DC. A few months later Davidson Black died.

Teilhard participated in the 1935 Yale—Cambridge expedition in northern and central India with the geologist Helmut von Terra and Patterson, who verified their assumptions on Indian Paleolithic civilisations in Kashmir and the Salt Range Valley.

He then made a short stay in Java, on the invitation of Professor Ralph van Koningsveld to the site of Java man. A second cranium, more complete, was discovered. This Dutch paleontologist had found (in 1933) a tooth in a Chinese apothecary shop in 1934 that he believed belonged to a giant tall ape that lived around half a million years ago.

In 1937 Teilhard wrote Le Phénomène spirituel (The Phenomenon of the Spirit) on board the boat the Empress of Japan, where he met the Raja of Sarawak. The ship conveyed him to the United States. He received the Mendel medal granted by Villanova University during the Congress of Philadelphia in recognition of his works on human paleontology. He made a speech about evolution, origins and the destiny of Man. The New York Times dated March 19, 1937 presented Teilhard as the Jesuit who held that man descended from monkeys. Some days later, he was to be granted the Doctor Honoris Causa distinction from Boston College. Upon arrival in that city, he was told that the award had been cancelled.

He then stayed in France, where he was immobilized by malaria. During his return voyage to Beijing he wrote L'Energie spirituelle de la Souffrance (Spiritual Energy of Suffering) (Complete Works, tome VII).

Death

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin died in New York City, where he was in residence at the Jesuit church of St Ignatius of Loyola, Park Avenue. On March 15, 1955, at the house of his diplomat cousin Jean de Lagarde, Teilhard told friends he hoped he would die on Easter Sunday. In the Easter Sunday evening of April 10, 1955, during an animated discussion at the house of friends, the 73-year-old priest was felled by a heart seizure; regaining consciousness for a moment, he died a few minutes later, on the day of the resurrection of the Lord whom he had served his whole life long. He was buried in the cemetery for the New York Province of the Jesuits at the Jesuit novitiate, St. Andrew's-on-the-Hudson in Poughkeepsie, upstate New York. In 1970, the novitiate was moved to Syracuse, New York (on the grounds of LeMoyne College), and the Culinary Institute of America bought the old property, opening its school there a few years later. However, the cemetery remains on the grounds and visitors are allowed to pay their respects.

In 1925, Teilhard was ordered by the Jesuit Superior General Vladimir Ledochowski to leave his teaching position in France and to sign a statement withdrawing his controversial statements regarding the doctrine of original sin. Rather than leave the Jesuit order, Teilhard signed the statement and left for China.

This was the first of a series of condemnations by certain ecclesiastical officials that would continue until long after Teilhard's death. The climax of these condemnations was a 1962 monitum (reprimand) of the Holy Office denouncing his works. From the monitum:

Teilhard's writings, though, continued to circulate ... not publicly, as he and the Jesuits observed their commitments to obedience, but in mimeographs that were circulated only privately, within the Jesuits, among theologians and scholars for discussion, debate and criticism.

As time passed, it seemed that the works of Teilhard were gradually becoming viewed more favourably within the Church. For example, on June 10, 1981, Cardinal Agostino Casaroli wrote on the front page of the Vatican newspaper, l'Osservatore Romano:

However, shortly thereafter the Holy See clarified that recent statements by members of the Church, in particular those made on the hundredth anniversary of Teilhard's birth, were not to be interpreted as a revision of previous stands taken by the Church officials. Thus the 1962 statement remains official Church policy to this day.

Although some Catholic intellectuals defended Teilhard and his doctrine (including Henri de Lubac), others condemned his teaching as a perversion of the Christian faith. These include Jacques Maritain, Étienne Gilson and Dietrich von Hildebrand.

Evolution

In his posthumously published book, The Phenomenon of Man, Teilhard writes of the unfolding of the material cosmos, from primordial particles to the development of life, human beings and the noosphere, and finally to his vision of the Omega Point in the future, which is "pulling" all creation towards it. He was a leading proponent of orthogenesis, the idea that evolution occurs in a directional, goal driven way, argued in terms that today go under the banner of convergent evolution. Teilhard argued in Darwin terms with respect to biology, and supported the synthetic model of evolution, but argued in Lamarckian terms for the development of culture, primarily through the vehicle of education.

Teilhard makes sense of the universe by its evolutionary process. He interprets complexity as the axis of evolution of matter into a geosphere, a biosphere, into consciousness (in man,) and then to supreme consciousness (the Omega Point.)

Teilhard's life work was predicated on the conviction that human spiritual development is moved by the same universal laws as material development. He wrote, "...everything is the sum of the past" and "...nothing is comprehensible except through its history. 'Nature' is the equivalent of 'becoming', self-creation: this is the view to which experience irresistibly leads us. ... There is nothing, not even the human soul, the highest spiritual manifestation we know of, that does not come within this universal law." There is no doubt that The Phenomenon of Man represents Teilhard's attempt at reconciling his religious faith with his academic interests as a paleontologist. One particularly poignant observation in Teilhard's book entails the notion that evolution is becoming an increasingly optional process. Teilhard points to the societal problems of isolation and marginalization as huge inhibitors of evolution, especially since evolution requires a unification of consciousness. He states that "no evolutionary future awaits anyone except in association with everyone else." Teilhard argued that the human condition necessarily leads to the psychic unity of humankind, though he stressed that this unity can only be voluntary; this voluntary psychic unity he termed "unanimization." Teilhard also states that "evolution is an ascent toward consciousness", giving encephalization as an example of early stages, and therefore, signifies a continuous upsurge toward the Omega Point, which for all intents and purposes, is God.

Our century is probably more religious than any other. How could it fail to be, with such problems to be solved? The only trouble is that it has not yet found a God it can adore.

Christogenesis

Teilhard visualizes the universe as a galaxy-like gravitational flux (a flux of "love-energy"), whose spiral motion has two components...the radial and the tangential. To reflect the ascent to higher quality, Teilhard makes the evolutionary spiral funnel-shaped:

Hence forward we can and must break away from this view which lacks depth. We have no longer the crawling 'sine curve', but the spiral which springs upward as it turns.

—Chardin, Pierre Teilhard de The Phenomenon of Man

In accordance with the minimum total potential energy principle, the "spiral galaxy" converts its particles' gravitational potential energy into their kinetic energy and their gravitational binding energy. The product of the kinetic and binding energies is maximal at the gravitational centre of the "galaxy."

Thus, the narrow top of the funnel-shaped spiral is the point of the minimum gravitational potential energy (the point of the "Great Stability") and, simultaneously, the point at which the organized complexity...the seemingly paradoxical and fragile product of the particles' kinetic energy (temperature, disorganized complexity) and gravitational binding energy (organizedness)...is maximal:

In Omega we have in the first place the principle we needed to explain both the persistent march of things towards greater consciousness, and the paradoxical solidity of what is most fragile. Contrary to the appearances still admitted by physics, the Great Stability is not at the bottom in the infra-elementary sphere, but at the top in the ultra-synthetic sphere. It is thus entirely by its tangential envelope that the world goes on dissipating itself in a chance way into matter. By its radial nucleus it finds its shape and its natural consistency in gravitating against the tide of probability towards a divine focus of mind which draws it onward. Thus something in the cosmos escapes from entropy, and does so more and more.

—Chardin, Pierre Teilhard de The Phenomenon of Man

Self-reflection (consciousness) is, literally, the turning in of a flux of love-energy upon itself:

reflection (Anatomy) the bending back of a structure or part upon itself. ( Reflection Collins English Dictionary)

From our experimental point of view, reflection is, as the word indicates, the power acquired by a consciousness to turn in upon itself, to take possession of itself as of an object endowed with its own particular consistence and value: no longer merely to know oneself; no longer merely to know, but to know that one knows.And we are happy to admit that the birth of intelligence corresponds to a turning in upon itself, not only of the nervous system, but of the whole being.

—Chardin, Pierre Teilhard de The Phenomenon of Man

The closer to the evolutionary spiral's centre, the steeper the curve's turning in upon itself (i.e., the higher the love-energy flux's self-reflection, consciousness).

Being the centre of the cosmic spiral flux of love-energy, mankind orchestrates the universe, functioning as a collective Christ:

One might say that, by virtue of human reflection (both individual and collective), evolution, overflowing the physico-chemical organisation of bodies, turns back upon itself and thereby reinforces itself (see note following) with a new organising power vastly concentric to the first...the cognitive organisation of the universe. To think the world (as physics is beginning to realise) is not merely to register it but to confer upon it a form of unity it would otherwise (i.e. without being thought) be without.

—Chardin, Pierre Teilhard de The Phenomenon of Man

Having reached the limit of its complexity, the collective Christ...mankind...will undergo a demographic collapse; all of mankind's universe-orchestrating power will become concentrated in the single survivor, who will be automatically promoted to the rank of Christ personal:

Are we to foresee man seeking to fulfil himself collectively upon himself, or personally on a greater than himself? Refusal or acceptance of Omega? Universal love would only vivify and detach finally a fraction of the noosphere so as to consummate it...the part which decided to ‘cross the threshold’, to get outside itself into the other.The death of the materially exhausted planet; the split of the noosphere, divided on the form to be given to its unity; and simultaneously (endowing the event with all its significance and with all its value) the liberation of that percentage of the universe which, across time, space and evil, will have succeeded in laboriously synthesising itself to the very end. Not an indefinite progress, which is an hypothesis contradicted by the convergent nature of noogenesis, but an ecstasy transcending the dimensions and the framework of the visible universe.However convergent it be, evolution cannot attain to fulfilment on earth except through a point of dissociation. With this we are introduced to a fantastic and inevitable event which now begins to take shape in our perspective, the event which comes nearer with every day that passes: the end of all life on our globe, the death of the planet, the ultimate phase of the phenomenon of man.The end of the world: the wholesale internal introversion upon itself of the noosphere, which has simultaneously reached the uttermost limit of its complexity and its centrality.The end of the world: the overthrow of equilibrium, detaching the mind, fulfilled at last, from its material matrix, so that it will henceforth rest with all its weight on God-Omega.

—Chardin, Pierre Teilhard de The Phenomenon of Man

An orchestra with multiple conductors cannot produce anything but an incoherent cacophony. When the number of the conductors becomes reduced to a single man, the orchestra shifts from cacophony to symphony, turning into the conductor's "extended body." Analogously, when the universe is quantum-mechanically orchestrated by billions of human observers, it is incoherent (objective)...every part exists by itself, obeying the principle of locality.Having become orchestrated by a single human observer (Christ personal), the universe will shed its incoherence (objectivity) and turn into the observer's "cosmic body":

Christ has a cosmic body that extends throughout the universe.

—Chardin, Pierre Teilhard deCosmic Life ? 1916

Through the incarnation, God descended into nature in order to super-animate and take it back to him.

—Chardin, Pierre Teilhard deMysticism of Science ? 1939

Teilhard and his work have a continuing presence in the arts and culture. He inspired a number of characters in literary works. References range from occasional quotations...an auto mechanic quotes Teilhard in Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly -- to serving as the philosophical underpinning of the plot, as Teilhard's work does in Julian May's 1987—94 Galactic Milieu Series. Teilhard also plays a major role in Annie Dillard's 1999 For the Time Being. Characters based on Teilhard appear in several novels, including Jean Telemond in Morris West's The Shoes of the Fisherman (mentioned by name and quoted by Oskar Werner playing Fr. Telemond in the movie version of the novel) and Father Lankester Merrin in William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist. In Dan Simmons' 1989—97 Hyperion Cantos, Teilhard de Chardin has been canonized a saint in the far future. His work inspires the anthropologist priest character, Paul Duré. When Duré becomes Pope, he takes Teilhard I as his regnal name.

Teilhard appears as a minor character in the play "Fake" by Eric Simonson, staged by Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company in 2009, involving a fictional solution to the infamous Piltdown Man hoax.

Teilhard's work has also inspired artworks such as French painter Alfred Manessier's L'Offrande de la terre ou Hommage à Teilhard de Chardin and American sculptor Frederick Hart's acrylic sculpture The Divine Milieu: Homage to Teilhard de Chardin. A sculpture of the Omega Point by Henry Setter, with a quote from Teilhard de Chardin, can be found at the entrance to the Roesch Library at the University of Dayton. Edmund Rubbra's 1968 Symphony No. 8 is titled Hommage a Teilhard de Chardin.

Teilhard's influence is commemorated on numerous collegiate campuses. A building at the University of Manchester is named after him, as are residence dormitories at Gonzaga University and Seattle University. His stature as a biologist was honored by George Gaylord Simpson in naming the most primitive and ancient genus of true primate, the Eocene genus Teilhardina.

The title of the short-story collection Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor is a reference to Teilhard's work.

The American novelist Don DeLillo's 2010 novel Point Omega borrows its title and some of its ideas from Teilhard de Chardin.

Teilhard de Chardin is honored with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church on April 10.

Robert Wright, in his book The Logic of Human Destiny, compares his own naturalistic thesis that biological and cultural evolution are directional and, possibly, purposeful, with Teilhard's ideas.

The dates in parentheses are the dates of first publication in French and English. Most of these works were written years earlier, but Teilhard's ecclesiastical order forbade him to publish them because of their controversial nature. The essay collections are organized by subject rather than date, thus each one typically spans many years.

• Le Phénomène Humain (1955), written 1938—40, scientific exposition of Teilhard's theory of evolution
• The Phenomenon of Man (1959), Harper Perennial 1976: ISBN 0-06-090495-X. Reprint 2008: ISBN 978-0061632655.
• The Human Phenomenon (1999), Brighton: Sussex Academic, 2003: ISBN 1-902210-30-1
• Letters From a Traveler (1956; English translation 1962), written 1923—55
• Le Groupe Zoologique Humain (1956), written 1949, more detailed presentation of Teilhard's theories
• Man's Place in Nature (English translation 1966)
• Le Milieu Divin (1957), spiritual book written 1926—27, in which the author seeks to offer a way for everyday life, or the secular, to be divinised.
• The Divine Milieu (1960) Harper Perennial 2001: ISBN 0-06-093725-4
• L'Avenir de l'Homme (1959) essays written 1920—52, on the evolution of consciousness (noosphere)
• The Future of Man (1964) Image 2004: ISBN 0-385-51072-1
• Hymn of the Universe (1961; English translation 1965) Harper and Row: ISBN 0-06-131910-4, mystical/spiritual essays and thoughts written 1916—55
• L'Energie Humaine (1962), essays written 1931—39, on morality and love
• Human Energy (1969) Harcort Brace Jovanovich ISBN 0-15-642300-6
• L'Activation de l'Energie (1963), sequel to Human Energy, essays written 1939—55 but not planned for publication, about the universality and irreversibility of human action
• Activation of Energy (1970), Harvest/HBJ 2002: ISBN 0-15-602817-4
• Je M'Explique (1966) Jean-Pierre Demoulin, editor ISBN 0-685-36593-X, "The Essential Teilhard" ... selected passages from his works
• Let Me Explain (1970) Harper and Row ISBN 0-06-061800-0, Collins/Fontana 1973: ISBN 0-00-623379-1
• Christianity and Evolution, Harvest/HBJ 2002: ISBN 0-15-602818-2
• The Heart of the Matter, Harvest/HBJ 2002: ISBN 0-15-602758-5
• Toward the Future, Harvest/HBJ 2002: ISBN 0-15-602819-0
• The Making of a Mind: Letters from a Soldier-Priest 1914-1919, Collins (1965), Letters written during wartime.
• Writings in Time of War, Collins (1968) composed of spiritual essays written during wartime. One of the few books of Teilhard to receive an imprimatur.
• Vision of the Past, Collins (1966) composed of mostly scientific essays published in the French science journal Etudes.
• The Appearance of Man, Collins (1965) composed of mostly scientific writings published in the French science journal Etudes.
• Letters to Two Friends 1926-1952, Fontana (1968) composed of personal letters on varied subjects including his understanding of death.
• Letters to Leontine Zanta, Collins (1969)
• Correspondence / Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Maurice Blondel, Herder and Herder (1967) This correspondence also has both the imprimatur and nihil obstat.

• Amir Aczel, The Jesuit and the Skull: Teilhard de Chardin, Evolution and the Search for Peking Man (Riverhead Hardcover, 2007)
• Claude Cuenot, Science and Faith in Teilhard de Chardin (Garstone Press, 1967)
• Andre Dupleix, 15 Days of Prayer with Teilhard de Chardin (New City Press, 2008)
• Robert Faricy, SJ, Teilhard de Chardin's Theology of Christian in the World (Sheed and Ward 1968)
• Robert Faricy, SJ, The Spirituality of Teilhard de Chardin (Collins 1981, Harper & Row 1981)
• Robert Faricy, SJ and Lucy Rooney SND, Praying with Teilhard de Chardin(Queenship 1996)
• David Grumett, Teilhard de Chardin: Theology, Humanity and Cosmos (Peeters 2005)
• Dietrich von Hildebrand, Teilhard de Chardin: A False Prophet (Franciscan Herald Press 1970).
• Dietrich von Hildebrand, Trojan Horse in the City of God
• Dietrich von Hildebrand, Devastated Vineyard
• Ursula King, The Spirit of Fire: The Life and Vision of Teilhard de Chardin (Orbis Books, 1996)
• David H. Lane, The Phenomenon of Teilhard: Prophet for a New Age (Mercer University Press)
• Lubac, Henri de, SJ, The Religion of Teilhard de Chardin (Image Books, 1968)
• Lubac, Henri de, SJ, The Faith of Teilhard de Chardin (Burnes and Oates, 1965)
• Lubac, Henri de, SJ, The Eternal Feminine: A Study of the Text of Teilhard de Chardin (Collins, 1971)
• Lubac, Henri de, SJ, Teilhard Explained (Paulist Press, 1968)
• Mary and Ellen Lukas, Teilhard (Doubleday, 1977)
• George A. Maloney, SJ, The Cosmic Christ: From Paul to Teilhard (Sheed and Ward, 1968)
• Mooney, Christopher, SJ, Teilhard de Chardin and the Mystery of Christ (Image Books, 1968)
• Murray, Michael H. The Thought of Teilhard de Chardin (Seabury Press, N.Y., 1966)
• Robert J. O'Connell, SJ, Teilhard's Vision of the Past: The Making of a Method, (Fordham University Press, 1982)
• Noel Keith Roberts, From Piltdown Man to Point Omega: the evolutionary theory of Teilhard de Chardin (New York, Peter Lang, 2000)
• Robert Speaight, The Life of Teilhard de Chardin (Harper and Row, 1967)

Pro

• Chardin, Pierre Teilhard de ? The Phenomenon of Man Scanned book in the Internet Archive
• Chardin, Pierre Teilhard de ? The Phenomenon of Man An HTML version of the book (without illustrations)
• The Teilhard de Chardin Foundation
• The American Teilhard Association
• Teilhard de Chardin Donald Wachtel's website

Contra

• Warning Regarding the Writings of Father Teilhard de Chardin The Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, 1962
• Medawar, Peter ? A review of The Phenomenon of Man Mind, N.S., 70 (1961) p.p. 99—106
• McCarthy, John F. ? A review of Teilhardism and the New Religion by Wolfgang Smith 1989

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