Teilhard's Cosmic Christ: Not the Christ of Catholic Faith

"Christ saves. But must we not hasten to add that Christ, too, is saved by Evolution?" (Pere Teilhard de Chardin, Le Christique, 1955)

The Cosmic Christ of Teilhard de Chardin is an evolving being. He is currently advancing to the status of a super-Christ in whom all souls, all creatures, and all matter will be united in a single organism. This is called Point Omega. The cosmic Christ is not concerned with sin, redemption, or salvation as the church understands these things. He is concerned with the consciousness of mankind.

Allegedly (so the theory purports) man is now consciously aware of his stage of development in the evolutionary process, and is uniquely postured to manipulate the evolutionary process through social and political reform and “progressivism” in religion, philosophy, and ethical norms. The consciousness desired is that all men obtain the awareness that they are already formally, ontologically (simply by their being and existing) united to the Cosmic Christ whether they know it or not or want it.

Pope John Paul II taught that each man was united to Christ forever by the Incarnation. When the Incarnation of the God-man is viewed as a stage in evolutionary development, we see the choicest human being ever in the person of Jesus Christ - and His incarnation effects a change in the nature of all mankind. All that is lacking is the consciousness of this formal union with the God-man. Therefore missionary evangelism is abolished and ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue is ordered. This is intended to arouse within each man the consciousness of his union with the cosmic Christ.

Pope Francis appears to echo not only the universalism of John Paul II but the Teilhardian theory of Omega Point:

83. ...all creatures are moving forward with us and through us towards a common point of arrival, which is God, in that transcendent fullness where the risen Christ embraces and illumines all things. Human beings, endowed with intelligence and love, and drawn by the fullness of Christ, are called to lead all creatures back to their Creator."
Pope Francis, Laudato si

These ideas have been long condemned, particularly during the period when modern philosophy first infiltrated the Catholic Church during the turn of the last century:

Therefore the religious sentiment, which through the agency of vital immanence emerges from the lurking places of the subconsciousness, is the germ of all religion, and the explanation of everything that has been or ever will be in any religion. The sentiment, which was at first only rudimentary and almost formless, gradually matured, under the influence of that mysterious principle from which it originated, with the progress of human life, of which, as has been said, it is a form. This, then, is the origin of all religion, even supernatural religion; it is only a development of this religious sentiment. Nor is the Catholic religion an exception; it is quite on a level with the rest; for it was engendered, by the process of vital immanence, in the consciousness of Christ, who was a man of the choicest nature, whose like has never been, nor will be. - Those who hear these audacious, these sacrilegious assertions, are simply shocked! And yet, Venerable Brethren, these are not merely the foolish babblings of infidels. There are many Catholics, yea, and priests too, who say these things openly; and they boast that they are going to reform the Church by these ravings! There is no question now of the old error, by which a sort of right to the supernatural order was claimed for the human nature. We have gone far beyond that: we have reached the point when it is affirmed that our most holy religion, in the man Christ as in us, emanated from nature spontaneously and entirely. Than this there is surely nothing more destructive of the whole supernatural order.

Pope St. Pius X, ON THE DOCTRINES OF THE MODERNISTS 

This brings us to Fr. Henri de Lubac’s definition of “living Tradition” invoked by John Paul II in the excommunication of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1988:

The advocates of the new theology follow the same current when, with Blondel, they define the truth as the mind's correspondence with infinitely variable and progressive life. And since truth is life and Tradition should transmit the truth, de Lubac concludes at the existence of a living Tradition. According to him, then, the ulterior beliefs of the Church need not necessarily be logically bound to what she has always explicitly believed from the earliest centuries."
Father Dominic Bourmaud, One Hundred Years of Modernism, Angelus Press, 2006, pages 248-249

The tree of Modernism grew up in the following way: Fr. George Tyrell, S.J. had for a pupil in England young Teilhard de Chardin. Tyrell was excommunicated by St. Pius X for the heresy of Modernism condemned in Pascendi gregis. Teilhard was also ordained a Jesuit and was suppressed by his order to avoid the censorship of Rome. He was not allowed to teach or publish until his death in 1955. Fr. Henri de Lubac, S.J. defended Teilhard's theories very publicly until he too was suppressed by the Jesuits. His book Surnaturel was suppressed by his Superior General because of its heterodox teaching on the relationship between the natural and supernatural orders. De Lubac's (and by way of association, Teilhard's) theories are condemned in Pope Pius XII's encyclical Humani generis. When Pius XII died, John XXIII made de Lubac a peritus or theological expert at the Second Vatican Council. The theological coup de etat was completed when John Paul II made Henri de Lubac a Cardinal. It is believed that the theory of the "mystery of man" as mentioned in Gaudium et spes #22 is de Lubac's. It forms the foundation of John Paul II's doctrine of a Christ united to every man forever by the Incarnation.

The theory of Evolution as championed by Tyrell, Teilhard, de Lubac, Pope Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and now Pope Francis is incompatible with Catholic dogma.

We’ll give Saint Pius X the last word on Teilhard’s 'theology-fiction’and de Lubac's 'living Tradition':

"To finish with this whole question of faith and its shoots, it remains to be seen, Venerable Brethren, what the Modernists have to say about their development. First of all they lay down the general principle that in a living religion everything is subject to change, and must change, and in this way they pass to what may be said to be, among the chief of their doctrines, that of Evolution. To the laws of evolution everything is subject - dogma, Church, worship, the Books we revere as sacred, even faith itself, and the penalty of disobedience is death.
... Consequently, the formulae too, which we call dogmas, must be subject to these vicissitudes, and are, therefore, liable to change. Thus the way is open to the intrinsic evolution of dogma. An immense collection of sophisms this, that ruins and destroys all religion. Dogma is not only able, but ought to evolve and to be changed. This is strongly affirmed by the Modernists, and as clearly flows from their principles."
Pope St. Pius X, ON THE DOCTRINES OF THE MODERNISTS