in love with the church

I’ve now finished André Dupleix’s 15 Days of Prayer with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. As I said two weeks ago, it’s helped me to rediscover why I like him. For a man who was so misunderstood and criticized by church authorities, Teilhard displayed immense amounts of love in return.

Dupleix shows how desperately in love with the church he was. Speaking of it, Teilhard says, “It seems that it gives me a great deal of peace…I hope, with God’s help, to never do anything against the Church, apart from which I discern no course of life with a chance to succeed.” (p. 81) On another occasion, he proclaimed, “Happy are we with the authority of the Church! Left to ourselves, just how far would we drift away?” (p. 83)

It would be easy to dismiss as ludicrous someone who describes the church as “the portion of the world which is reflexively Christified, the principal focus point of interhuman affinities through super-charged charity.” (p. 82) But that requires taking the time to figure out what such a person is actually saying!

In love with the church? Imagine such a thing!