Rating: Not rated
Tags: History of Ideas, Self-Organization / Compelxity, Lang:en
Summary
“Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the
tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of
love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world,
man will have discovered fire.”
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was born into minor French
nobility in the Château of Sarcenat at Orcines, close to
Clermont-Ferrand in the Auvergne Region, in South Central
France on May 15th 1881. He was the fourth of eleven children.
His father was an avid amateur scientist and collected
geological specimens and encouraged observation of the natural
world in his son. From his mother Pierre inherited an intense,
religious, even pious, nature. From his father he inherited a
questioning inquisitive scientific mind that was to lead to
trouble with his beloved Church. It is my intention in this series of books to do no more
than introduce the reader to some Catholic thinkers, Catholic
doers, those whose Catholic faith was a work in progress and
mystics; both converts and cradle Catholics. Very little of
this work is original; it is mostly a distillation of the work
of others who have devoted years of their lives to the lives of
these women and men. It is not meant to be hagiography or the
last word on the subject. Rather its simple goal is to make you
want to delve further. Over the past six decades, ever since a Salesian priest told
me that in order to make sense of history read about the
actors, I have read the biographies of a large number of men
and women, both secular and religious. The five potted
biographies in this first volume are of people I consider to be
somewhat overlooked in the annals of Catholic writings, and all
of whom are compelling in different ways – as I hope you
will see. **
~ Pierre Teilhard de ChardinAbout the Handful of Catholics series: