(reflective music).

TEILHARD DE CHARDIN: Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love.

And then for the second time in the history of the world, we will have discovered fire.

(whoosh sound).

(music changes to driving dramatic music).

ILIA DELIO, OSF: He is a Jesuit priest.... And yet he's a scientist.

NARRATOR: He was a paleontologist, dedicated with equal passion to God and to the Earth.

His new insights into evolution, create conflict with religious authorities.

JOHN F. HAUGHT: Teilhard de Chardin said, "We need a new God."

NARRATOR: His life is rich with human drama.

JOHN: From the time he was a very young child he became frightened to death of perishability.

He spent almost all the rest of his life trying to tie himself to something that does not perish.

(sounds of gunfire).

NARRATOR: Teilhard de Chardin establishes close relationships with several women over the course of his life.

TEILHARD: I have experienced no form of self-development without some feminine eye turned on me, some feminine influence at work.

NARRATOR: Teilhard leaves a profound legacy in a world starving for hope and love, recognizing the primacy of spirit amidst a rapidly transforming technology.

MOST REVEREND MICHAEL CURRY: This man has given us a vision of hope that really is hope and not pipe dreams.

That is the stuff of prophets.

(music sting over title).

ANNOUNCER: Major funding for this program was provided by... Anthony J. Tambasco, Mary McGahey Dwan, M.C.

Conroy.

With additional funding provided by: The Raskob Foundation, The Cushman Foundation, Allerd Stikker, Dennis and Pamela Lucey, Monica McGinley, Brennan and Marie Hill, Benevolentia Foundation, Jesuit Conference of the U.S. & Canada, and Jo-Ann Frank.

A full list of funders can be found at teilhardproject.com.

(water running in fountain).

♪ (pensive music) ♪ NARRATOR: In a little park, in the town of Clermont-Ferrand, France, across the street from where his family once lived, there stands a sculpture erected by the city in Teilhard's honor after his death.

It is the image of Jacob wrestling with the Angel, also called "Wrestling with God", inspired by the 32nd chapter of Genesis.

And on the pedestal of the statue are inscribed the words "Spirit and Matter."

Words which characterize Teilhard's interior struggle to reconcile his love of nature, and his love of the divine spirit.

And this inner struggle began early in his precocious life, before he could even begin to understand or articulate it.

(fire crackling).

He was sitting by the fireplace, as he remembers... TEILHARD: I was five or six.

My mother had snipped off a few of my curls.

I picked one up and held it close to the fire.

The hair was burnt up in a fraction of a second.

A terrible grief assailed me; I had learned that I was perishable.

(sound of log crashing down).

♪ (mysterious music) NARRATOR: What does he do in reaction?

He starts a search... (door latch opens, door creaks).

...lifelong as it turns out, for things that are lasting and indestructible.

TEILHARD: So, what did I used to love?

My genie of iron!

Always in secrecy and silence...

I withdrew into the contemplation, the possession, into the sole relished existence, of my "Iron God."

And then it turned out that what I possessed was just a bit of iron that rusted.

(rumble of thunder).

At this discovery, I shed the bitterest tears of my existence.

(river running).

NARRATOR: Still searching for the permanence he craves, young Pierre turns next to stones, often on the shore of the River Allier, running alongside his family's property.

He learns to name them, and carefully label them.

The mountainous Auvergne region of France is perfect for this new passion.

♪ (lilting guitar music).

TEILHARD: Auvergne molded me.

Auvergne served me both as a museum of natural history and as a wildlife preserve.

NARRATOR: Daily walks with his father, and later alone, teach him to see, to really see the contours and shape of the land, its stones, flowers, insects.

TEILHARD: To Auvergne, I owe my delight in nature.

NARRATOR: His "Cathedral" of trees merges with the deep Catholic piety he has learned at the feet of his mother.

NARRATOR: Every day, Teilhard's mother walks up the long hill to the little church in the town of Orcines.

This is where her son Pierre is baptized.

Teilhard will be true to his mother's faith over the years, although he will transform it according to his own insights and his understanding of evolution.

(nature sounds).

This depiction of Adam and Eve and the serpent is one that young Teilhard would have seen on winter Sundays if he were to look up from his pew in the church of Notre Dame du Port.

Who knows how it affected this young boy, unaware that Adam and Eve would impact the rest of his life.

Teilhard is home-schooled until the age of 12, when he is sent to a boarding school run by Jesuit priests.

There he excels as a student and is so impressed by his Jesuit teachers he seeks permission from his father to become a Jesuit himself.

TEILHARD: It does seem to me as though God is offering me a vocation to leave the world.

NARRATOR: His first two years of Jesuit training are dedicated to shaping the spiritual formation of this conscientious and eager future Jesuit.

But Teilhard is brought up short by the required daily reading of the spiritual classic "The Imitation of Christ" which instructs the reader that, to become close to God, one must shun the world.

BRIAN MCDERMOTT, SJ: The dominant spirituality in the Catholic Church was as flight from the world, uh, in order to preserve oneself, uh, from the world and to see the world as a place of testing.

And if you've passed the test, well, then you move to the real world, which is heaven.

VOICE: This is the greatest wisdom, to seek the kingdom of heaven through contempt of the world.

NARRATOR: An intense lad, Pierre Teilhard does his best to embrace this instruction.

But it results in an inner tension that will take years to resolve.

How can he forego his attraction to the earth he loves so deeply?

JOHN: He felt as a seminarian and as a young priest the tension between, uh, belonging to God and belonging to the Earth.

He thought that he did not, at this point in his life, see how to synthesize the two.

TEILHARD: I remember my pathetic attempts to reconcile the narrow path to God found in "The Imitation" with the attraction I found in nature.

I seriously considered the possibility of completely giving up the "science of rocks" in order to devote myself entirely to so-called "supernatural" activities.

NARRATOR: In March of 1901, at the age of 19... TEILHARD: I vow perpetual poverty, chastity... NARRATOR: Pierre Teilhard kneels in the novitiate chapel and pronounces life-long vows to be a Jesuit.

TEILHARD: I promise that I will enter the Society of Jesus to spend my life in it forever.

NARRATOR: Still, Teilhard's struggle between the material and the divine will not be easily resolved.

(Muezzin chants Muslim call to prayer).

Jesuit training requires future priests to have a three-year break from studies to test their skills in the real world.

When this time comes for Teilhard, he is assigned to Cairo, Egypt.

URSULA: NARRATOR: Egypt opens a whole new world for Teilhard.

TEILHARD: The East flowed over me in a first wave of exoticism: I gazed at it and drank it in eagerly, its light, its vegetation, its fauna and its deserts.

H. JAMES BIRX: That must have impressed upon him this concept of the vastness of time, the desert, the pyramids, the hills.

NARRATOR: And Egypt provides yet another opportunity to pursue his ever-growing interest in stones and fossils.

TEILHARD: I remember going to the Mokattam Hills a long way west of the pyramids, in search of fossils.

H. JAMES: It must've been an enriching experience to walk with Africans, with Muslims, with Orthodox Christians, with Catholic Christians.

NARRATOR: There will come a time when his experiences with Muslims will be especially valuable to him.

♪ (lilting music).

From Cairo, Teilhard goes to Hastings, England to continue his dream of becoming a priest.

French Jesuits had moved their theology school to England after French law banned religious orders from teaching.

Teilhard will study there for four years.

(sheep bleating).

It's another perfect place for him.

He immediately begins to explore and writes home... TEILHARD: Naturally one of my first preoccupations was to see what the countryside had to offer.

(waves crashing).

Geologically speaking, this is a lower cretaceous area, approximately 120 million years old, marked by chalky soil, the extinction of dinosaurs, the development of early mammals and flowering plants.

(hammer hits stone).

NARRATOR: On his few days off, when the tide is out, he is able to hunt for fossils at the cliffs nearby, as amateur geologists still do today.

(waves crash).

By the time he is ready to leave Hastings, he has accrued quite a collection of specimens, which he gives to the local Hastings Museum, including one group of fossils stored in a cigar box decorated with an American flag, and lined with one of his final theology exam papers.

But for Teilhard, the search for fossils in Hastings is still only a hobby.

Teilhard's main reason for being there is to become a priest.

This has been his dream since the time he first studied under the Jesuits.

(mysterious music).

But he has yet to fully resolve the strong tension he has long felt between his passion for the earth and his dedication to God.

(waves crash).

TEILHARD: I was in a somewhat muddled spiritual complex within which my passionate love of the universe was smoldering, without as yet, the power to burst into open flame.

URSULA: (swoosh sound).

(electronic throbbing music).

TEILHARD: At first, I was far from understanding and appreciating the importance of the change I was undergoing.

All that I can remember of those days, apart from that magic word "evolution," which haunted my thoughts like a tune; all that I can remember is the extraordinary solidity and intensity I found in the English countryside, particularly at sunset, when the Sussex woods were charged with all that "fossil" life, which I was then hunting for.

NARRATOR: For Teilhard, God is totally present in the physical world around him, throbbing with divine energy.

But this is not the world, or the God, that he is being taught.

JOHN: Teilhard was immersed in traditional medieval theological vision of the universe, where the universe is pictured as a ladder of levels, starting with lowly matter at the bottom.

Then plant life, then animal life.

Then, human consciousness.

And then all superintended by God, perhaps there were angelic spheres inserted in there too what I call the static, vertical, hierarchical understanding of the cosmos.

H. JAMES: What Teilhard did is to take an evolutionary interpretation of the Great Chain of Being.

Instead of the Great Chain of Being being eternally fixed.

It's an ongoing process.

(dramatic music).

(waves crashing).

(wind blowing).

(lava spews out of volcano).

NARRATOR: The world suddenly acquires a new dimension for Teilhard.

MARY EVELYN TUCKER: I think he was trying to say we've lived in a world that we thought was static, unmoving.... And all of a sudden, he realized, this is changing.

This is moving.

This is dynamic.

NARRATOR: In his never-ending search for the permanent, the imperishable, Teilhard reaches beyond the evolution of species described by Darwin, and beyond the theories of the great French evolutionist, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, and of philosopher Henri Bergson.

JOHN: So, his notion of evolution was different from that of other evolutionists.

JOHN ALLEN GRIM: Teilhard saw the larger emergence of the cosmos.

(driving, dramatic music).

NARRATOR: Teilhard's vision gives primacy to the evolution of consciousness, which reaches its highest stage in human self-reflective consciousness, with its capacity for love and free choice, and ultimately bends toward a point in the deep future, Teilhard calls "Omega."

This is the defining nature of evolution as understood by Teilhard.

TEILHARD: Until that time, my education, and my religion, had always led me obediently to accept, without much reflection, a fundamental difference between Spirit and Matter, between Soul and Body, between Unconscious and Conscious.

JAMES: The idea of soul and body has plagued philosophy since its inception.

Teilhard, I think, saw a solution to this problem in two ways.

Number one, he claimed that matter is essentially energy.

Thank you, Albert Einstein.

But that energy was quintessentially spirit.

And so, he claimed that the universe is ultimately a spiritual universe.

Ultimately, the stuff of reality is spirit.

JOHN ALLEN: And from a very early age, he was searching, as he described it, for something enduring.

NARRATOR: Teilhard has found at last the God he had sought in vain as a child.

TEILHARD: I no longer doubted but that the supreme happiness I had formerly looked for in 'Iron' was to be found only in Spirit.

You can well imagine, accordingly, how strong was my inner feeling of release and expansion when I took my first still hesitant steps into an "evolutionary" Universe, and saw that the dualism in which I had hitherto been enclosed was disappearing like the mist before the rising sun.

Spirit and Matter: these were no longer two separate things, but two states or two aspects of one and the same cosmic stuff... MARY EVELYN: This is one of the most intriguing things about Teilhard, Spirit-Matter, the psychic dimension of the material world.

That matter is not dead.

It's not inanimate.

Evolution is not purposeless or random, but it is infused with Spirit.

MOST REVEREND MICHAEL CURRY: Teilhard is somebody who bridges worlds of theology and science and somehow grasps what the mystic, um, and what the, the astrophysicist, um, are talking about, and, and sees a convergence.

(mysterious music).

H. JAMES: Evolution is creation, an unfinished creation.

The process of creation continues even now.

(mysterious music) (church bells).

NARRATOR: With these thoughts swirling in his head, Teilhard is aware that the day of his ordination to the priesthood is drawing close.

His dream is about to be realized.

(organ music).

NARRATOR: But there is another dimension to his ordination which requires Teilhard's attention.

TEILHARD: Today we take the oath which Pope Pius X requested.

NARRATOR: Taking an oath of fidelity to the Church is a pre-condition for Teilhard's ordination.

To what extent might his radical new insights about evolution have given him pause?

The official Church at this time is very concerned with "modernism."

It condemns theologians who are seen as seeking to adapt Church teachings to new developments in science and culture.

Teilhard considers himself a totally loyal Catholic, yet, he does not resist making a pledge that will take on great significance for him a decade later.

TEILHARD: I firmly embrace and accept each and every definition that has been set forth and declared by the unerring teaching authority of the Church.

(male voice vocalizing Gregorian chant).

NARRATOR: Just months after his great "a-ha" when evolution changed his life, Teilhard prostrates himself before the altar of St. Mary, Star of the Sea Church, and arises a priest, later describing what this means to him.

TEILHARD: Because I am a priest, I am determined in the future to be the first to realize what the world loves, what it seeks for, what it suffers; the first to join in the search, to feel with the world, to know suffering; more widely human and more nobly of this earth than any man who serves the world.

NARRATOR: Is he resolving his inner struggle between Spirit and Matter, whether the only way to find God is through rejection of this world?

(bright, whimsical music).

A year after he's ordained a priest, Teilhard finds himself in Paris.

TEILHARD: I'm writing you from my new residence.

My window lets in all the hustle and bustle of the city.

There's a subway station right at our door.

On the whole, it's pretty exciting to be perched above such a vibrant spot.

NARRATOR: Teilhard wastes no time in diving into his scientific studies.

He is registered to study biology at the Institut Catholique, but his main focus is geology.

He hopes to study at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris under its director Marcellin Boule.

Boule is a giant in paleontology in France at this time.

He is known for his gruff demeanor and firm hand.

He's also an outspoken agnostic and anti-cleric, and so Teilhard is naturally concerned about how he will be treated.

However, perhaps because they both hail from Auvergne, the interview goes well.

TEILHARD: I arrived Saturday, and went to the Museum this morning.

I began to work in the library, where I will be spending a good deal of time.

NARRATOR: Boule adopts Teilhard as his protégé, turning over his large unsorted collection of mammalian fossils collected in the Quercy region of France, for Teilhard to analyze and catalog.

NARRATOR: This will become the basis of Teilhard's Master's thesis and doctoral dissertation.

In coming years Boule's trust in his protégé will be repaid by his receiving large shipments of fossils, excavated by Teilhard in China.

Teilhard's potential for success as a geologist appears unlimited.

(strumming guitar music).

But Paris offers Teilhard more than just academic studies.

His cousin Marguerite Teillard-Chambon, who had been his childhood playmate in Auvergne two decades earlier, is also in Paris, and they are delighted to become reacquainted.

Marguerite becomes the first woman, after his mother, to play a major role in Teilhard's life.

Marguerite had moved to Paris to pursue higher education at the Sorbonne, a rare accomplishment for a woman in those days.

There she studied under philosopher Henri Bergson.

By the time Pierre comes to Paris she has served as a headmistress in an elite girl's school for more than 10 years, and is well established in Paris society.

TEILHARD: It was inevitable that sooner or later I should come up against the feminine.

The only curious thing is that it was not until my 30th birthday that this happened.

URSULA: MARY EVELYN: Clearly his cousin Marguerite was a great inspiration.

And that's what he got from many, many women who were themselves seeking a more robust spiritual form.

JOHN ALLEN: I think he found in women, or in relationships with women, he found something deeply satisfying that was part of his whole articulation of a future direction.

TEILHARD: From the critical moment when I rejected many of the old molds in which my family life and my religion had formed me and began to wake up and express myself in terms that were really my own, I have experienced no form of self-development without some feminine eye turned on me, some feminine influence at work.

NARRATOR: Back at the Museum of Natural History, Teilhard excels as a student.

His studies take him on frequent field trips that give him first-hand experience in uncovering, identifying, and interpreting fossils.

(pensive music).

He is especially captivated by the prehistoric art found in ancient caverns in the Pyrenees.

For him, this art marks the magic moment when consciousness becomes self-reflective.

It signifies the birth of our humanity.

TEILHARD: I found a marvelous sight in one section where the roof is covered with magnificent bison, painted red, yellow, and black, and with an extraordinary degree of clarity and expression.

URSULA: TEILHARD: I especially liked the one which was pictured in the midst of a charge and whose eyes were livid with rage.

Very good meditation material can be found by looking at these vestiges of pre-historic man.

I like to look at it alone, in an absolute silence, disturbed only by the drops falling off the stalactites.

(sounds of water drops).

(gunshot).

(driving, dramatic orchestral music).

(sounds of heavy guns, explosions).

NARRATOR: Within a month, all of Europe is at war, with Germany invading France.

(French patriotic war song).

NARRATOR: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, classified under "auxiliary military service," as a cleric, is called up.

So are all of his brothers.

NARRATOR: As a priest, Pierre Teilhard is eligible to serve as a chaplain with an officer's rank, but chooses instead to serve as a stretcher bearer with rank-and-file soldiers.

His Cairo experience now serves him well.

He is placed with a Muslim regiment of Moroccan Zouaves.

KATHLEEN DUFFY, SSJ: They admired him so much that they called him "Sidi Marabout," which means a person who is protected by God.

(mysterious music).

NARRATOR: This war will open him up to experience a world much wider than he had ever known before.

TEILHARD: More than ever, perhaps, during those days, I felt that I was living in another world.

When one enters the battle zone.

one is no longer the same person one was before.

(music changes to a more reflective tone).

The relative proportions of things, the normal scale of their values cease to apply.

All the time I felt, very strongly, that my own turn to die might come.

NARRATOR: Marguerite and Teilhard provide mutual support during the war, writing hundreds of letters to one another.

TEILHARD: I promised you some details about my life at Verdun.

...During the assault, there was a pretty nasty barrage to get through, in a ravine.

To reach the group of dug-outs protected by the sand-bags of the frontline, you had to go through 1,800 meters of communication trenches dug in ground that was flooded by the least fall of rain, and too often invaded by the fetid stench of corpses, half buried or concealed.

And one had to make one's way, with a casualty on one's back, along a muddy winding communication trench, in which we could move only in single file.

A dozen times I thought we'd never reach the end and would have to give up.

Finally, however, plastered with mud, we managed to get our man out.

(gunfire in background).

NARRATOR: Whatever the dangers and stress of the battlefield, Teilhard still ceaselessly seeks to unravel the mystery of Spirit and Matter that has obsessed him since his youth.

(reflective guitar music).

TEILHARD: I want to be able to love Christ passionately, and at the same time, love the Universe a great deal.

...Some reasonable reconciliation must be made, I am sure, between God and the world.

NARRATOR: Teilhard now feels driven to put this into words for others.

He wants this insight to survive, even if he doesn't.

KATHLEEN: He really felt that what he was saying was so important that he um, he felt compelled to do that, to write what he could.

(voices yelling & faint gunfire).

(uplifting, reflective music).

NARRATOR: Here, deep in the crucible of desolation and death, surrounded by armies determined to destroy one another, he begins an essay he calls "Cosmic Life."

TEILHARD: What follows springs from an exuberance of life and a yearning to live: it is written to express an impassioned vision of the earth, because I love the universe, its energies, its secrets, and its hopes, and because at the same time I am dedicated to God.

That, above all, is the message I wish to communicate: the reconciliation of God and the world.

NARRATOR: This insight, he believes, can enrich his Church, and the lives of searchers everywhere.

(pensive music).

What he offers arises out of his insight into evolution, which he calls "cosmogenesis."

This first essay elaborates a vision that he will continually revisit over his lifetime, and which will find final expression 25 years later in his most famous book "The Human Phenomenon".

When he is finished with the essay, he sends it to Marguerite for safekeeping, and to ask her to seek reactions from others.

URSULA: NARRATOR: He will write 17 more essays over the next three years, exploring ideas that will eventually find their way into his most famous works, such as "The Divine Milieu," "The Mass on the World," and "The Human Phenomenon."

TEILHARD: In a few days' time we shall be sent in to recapture Douaumont.

And if I do not come back from up there, I would like my body to remain, molded into the clay of the redoubts, like a living mortar laid by God between the stones of the new city.

NARRATOR: Teilhard continually seeks to understand the bigger picture, the meaning of what he is experiencing.

This always leads him back to his key insight of evolution.

TEILHARD: As I looked at this scene of bitter toil, I felt completely overcome by the thought that I had the honor of standing at one of the two or three spots on which, at this very moment, the whole life of the universe surges and ebbs, places of pain, but it is there that a great future is taking shape.

I think that one could show that the front isn't simply the firing line, the exposed area corroded by the conflict of nations, but the "front of the wave", carrying the world of man towards its new destiny.

H. JAMES: He saw his buddies dying in the trenches as a stretcher bearer.

He saw death, he saw destruction, but he believed that out of this, that his positive view of things, would emerge a better world.

That this was part and parcel of the evolution process.

(pensive music).

NARRATOR: Verdun today honors the struggle in which nearly a million lives were lost, including 130,000 unidentified soldiers, from both sides, whose grave is but a pile of bones beneath a massive ossuary.

(music turns somber) (up tempo, bright music).

At war's end, Teilhard is physically unscathed after nearly four years on the front.

After a visit home to Sarcenat and a brief visit to Paris, he spends two months on the Isle of Jersey recovering from the trauma of war.

Then it is back to the Sorbonne, where within six months he passes certificate exams in geology, botany, and zoology.

And then he returns to the Museum of Natural History to continue studies with Marcellin Boule and to work on his dissertation.

He is a rising star in the field of geology.

Even before he defends his dissertation to great acclaim, he is hired to teach geology at the Institut Catholique.

The classes he teaches are popular.

He feels he has a great gift to offer his Catholic Church by opening it up to the world of science.

He is also delighted to be again enjoying the company of Marguerite, who introduces her cousin Pierre to Paris society, including a prominent feminist pioneer, Leontine Zanta, who is known for the intellectual salons she hosts.

Teilhard becomes a favored guest.

(chatter of conversation).

TEILHARD: I believe the universe is evolving and this evolution moves toward Spirit.

I believe that Spirit, in man, leads to the personal and that the supreme personal is Christ.

TEILHARD: Strictly speaking, God does not make the world.

He makes the world make itself.

NARRATOR: The sky is the limit for Teilhard.

Or so it seems.

URSULA: NARRATOR: A further sign of his success is an invitation he receives from a fellow Jesuit, Émile Licent, to join him on an expedition to the Ordos Desert in Inner Mongolia, China.

This is a first-rate opportunity for Teilhard to engage in new research beyond the European horizon that will enhance his teaching career.

But Teilhard thinks it might be good for him for another reason as well.

He is beginning to feel heat from some established and less sympathetic Jesuit theologians.

One day after Teilhard delivers a lecture to young Jesuits studying theology in Belgium, a faculty member has a question for him.

FR.

RIEDINGER: If what you say about evolution is true, Father, then it would seem there was never an Adam and Eve or a Garden of Eden.

And if that's true, what happens to the Church's doctrine of Original Sin?

NARRATOR: The question does not surprise Teilhard.

Two years earlier he had written a personal reflection on this dilemma.

So Teilhard is able to respond, but also offers to give it further thought and to write a paper about it.

GEORGE COYNE SJ: The Church, it did not have a firm grasp of the difference between a literal interpretation of scripture and understanding the story-telling nature.

God did not just, 13.8 billion years ago, create the universe.

God is continuously creating without interfering.

JOHN: Now, the typical Christian, even to this day, will say, unless Adam and Eve lived, there was no sin, no Original Sin.

And if there was no Original Sin, then what purpose for a savior?

What happens when evolutionary biology comes along is that smart people like Teilhard become aware that the story, the narrative of Adam and Eve in Genesis can no longer be taken literally.

(sound of typewriter keys).

NARRATOR: Teilhard writes the essay he promised.

In doing so, he comes up with three alternative ways of thinking about Original Sin, which he plans to send to a couple of trusted Jesuit friends for their reaction.

TEILHARD: Experience convinces me more and more each day that our catechetical representation of ‘The Fall' bars the way to Christianity for many religiously inclined people who might otherwise embrace it.

NARRATOR: Before embarking for China, and his paleontological expedition with Father Licent, he finishes his essay and sends a copy to his challenger, Fr.

Riedinger.

He will come to regret this.

(ship horn blaring and clanging of bell).

NARRATOR: On April 6, 1923, Teilhard boards a ship in Marseilles bound for China.

He eagerly looks forward to joining Licent on their expedition to the Ordos Desert.

Disembarking at Shanghai, Teilhard heads north to the port city of Tientsin, where Licent awaits him at his museum.

The objective of their expedition is: Shara Osso Gol in a corner of the Ordos.

Under normal conditions, an expedition to the Ordos plateau requires a trek of only two weeks.

But since the fall of the Qing Dynasty a decade earlier, China is falling into chaos.

(cock of shotgun).

(steam hissing from train).

Bandits now block their route.

(horse neighing).

This forces them to take a long northerly detour to circle around and then approach the Ordos from the west.

They take a rickety train as far north as it goes, to the Blue City, where they assemble what they need for their long trek.

TEILHARD: Our caravan comprises ten mules, three donkeys, five donkey-boys, as well as Licent and myself and two servants, not counting two soldiers to act as escort.

(guitar music).

NARRATOR: Their trip is alternately monotonous, demanding and beautiful.

(guitar music).

Teilhard has plenty of time to reflect along the way, and writes frequent letters.

(sound of hooves).

They have been on the road for six weeks, with at least two weeks still to travel, when they unexpectedly come upon a solitary building offering shelter to travelers on this distant and lonely road.

They are pleased to have a place to rest that is not a tent or the open air.

(reflective music).

TEILHARD: I am writing to you from a marvelous place, an inn, at a river bend, beside The Great Wall.

NARRATOR: This marvelous place is called "Shui-Dong-Gou," where today a museum immortalizes their arrival with life-size wax figures.

Before settling in, Teilhard and Licent take a moonlight stroll.

At nearby cliffs, they are astounded to find pale mammal fossils exposed on the bare cliffs.

This leads to a change of plans.

and with the help of local workers, they spend more than a week digging, with unanticipated success.

These first fruits of the Licent-Teilhard expedition become historic.

In addition to the mammalian fossils they excavate, wild donkey, horse, oxen, rhinoceros, hyena, among others, they discover Paleolithic remains.

The stone tools they uncover offer firm evidence that prehistoric humans had lived in China.

Their discoveries effectively launch paleontology in China, and Teilhard and Licent are considered its co-founders.

NARRATOR: Ten days after their discovery, Teilhard and Licent set out again with their 12 crates now filled with fossils on their donkeys and continue on to their original destination, Shara Osso Gol.

TEILHARD: Once again we pitched our tent in the middle of the desert, within a circle of earth cliffs... NARRATOR: Under this very tree, historians tell us.

TEILHARD: We are camped at the bottom of the canyon in a dried-up riverbed near a Mongol "house" scooped out of a little promontory cut off from the cliffs.

The Mongol is our friend, and his large family helps with the digging while his goats provide us with milk.

(goats bleating).

NARRATOR: Their excavations yield spectacular results that are still on display today.

Visible in the Museum of Natural History in Paris: a complete woolly rhinoceros, a full skeleton of a horse, and large numbers of individual bones and fossils.

TEILHARD: This period in Mongolia, like the war, is rather like a "retreat" for me, in that it leads me to the heart of the unique greatness of God.

NARRATOR: During this time Teilhard finishes a long mystical essay he actually began during the war, when he lacked the items he needed to say Mass.

He calls it his "Mass on the World."

TEILHARD: Over there, on the horizon, the sun has just touched with light the outermost fringe of the eastern sky.

Once again, beneath this moving sheet of fire, the living surface of the earth wakes and trembles, and once again begins its fearful travail.

Since once again, Lord I have neither bread nor wine, nor altar, I, your priest, will make the whole earth my altar and on it will offer you all the labors and sufferings of the world.

I will place on my paten, O God, the harvest to be won by this renewal of labor.

Into my chalice, I shall pour all the sap which is to be pressed out this day from the earth's fruits.

Grant me, Lord, the remembrance and the mystic presence of all those whom the light is now awakening to this new day.

NARRATOR: After six weeks of excavating Shara Osso Gol, it is time for Teilhard and Licent to return to Tientsin.

TEILHARD: We find ourselves now the masters of 60 cases of spoils.

NARRATOR: With a fine caravan, now expanded to 30 donkeys and mules, they set out to board a barge down the Yellow River, back to Licent's museum.

TEILHARD: It seems to me that Our Lord really has led me by the hand these last three months.

I can see in this a sign that He really did want me to come here, and a proof that He expects a renewed activity in my special apostolate in Europe.

NARRATOR: Feeling immensely rewarded by the success of his expedition, Teilhard is nevertheless eager to get back to France.

This Chinese experience, in his mind, is only meant to be an interlude.

He can hardly wait to put his new knowledge and experience to use in his teaching in Paris.

He cannot foresee the problems that await him.

(female cabaret singer singing in French).

Back in Paris, Teilhard resumes teaching geology at the Institut Catholique.

He is unaware that the essay he had written on Original Sin, as seen through the perspective of modern science, had set some things in motion at Jesuit headquarters in Rome.

He is surprised to be summoned by Fr.

Costa de Beauregard, his Provincial Superior based in Lyon and he is stunned to learn that his speculations on rethinking Original Sin that he had written before he departed for China, have somehow become a serious issue.

Fr.

de Beauregard confronts Teilhard with the letter he has received from the head of the Jesuits, Fr.

General Ledochowski, in Rome.

WLADIMIR LEDOCHOWSKI: I am writing to you about a very serious issue regarding Father Teilhard de Chardin.

NARRATOR: Ledochowski has received a paper from an unnamed source that explains Original Sin in the light of modern science.

The paper is unsigned but is attributed to Father Teilhard.

Ledochowski has had the paper reviewed by theologians at the Gregorian University who condemn it as not conforming to accepted Church doctrine.

His letter gives specific directions to Costa de Beauregard.

LEDOCHOWSKI: Number one: Father Teilhard is to be given the chance to deny he wrote the paper.

It would be a real relief to learn that the memoir on Original Sin was not written by one of us.

Number two: if he did write it, he must promise in writing to never write anything against Church teaching again.

Number three: if Teilhard's explanations are not satisfactory, the General will be obliged to take the necessary measures to avoid such regrettable deviations in the future.

This could include expulsion from the Society of Jesus.

NARRATOR: Teilhard is devastated.

He cannot, in good conscience, deny what he knows from science about evolution.

He had written his Original Sin essay in good faith, not to reject Church doctrine, but rather to preserve it by looking at it with the fresh eyes of evolutionary awareness.

He thought he had useful and important insights that would help theologians find continuity with established doctrine, while consistent with scientific findings.

(street noise).

(reflective music).

Arriving in Lyon, Teilhard turns to his closest Jesuit friend, Auguste Valensin.

TEILHARD: One of my papers has been sent, I don't know how, to Rome.

I come off being labeled a heretic or a troublemaker.

They want me to promise in writing that I will never say or write anything against the traditional position of the Church on Original Sin.

This is both too vague and too absolute.

I feel I should in conscience reserve for myself the right to carry on research with professional men.

I am hoping to be able to get the formula they are asking me to sign reduced to something like this: "I bind myself not to spread (not to proselytize for).

the particular explanations contained in my note."

I'll have to act with prudence to avoid being faced with an ultimatum with which I cannot comply.

NARRATOR: Teilhard makes his case to his Provincial.

He had never intended his paper for publication, he says.

He had intended only to demonstrate that Original Sin could be reconciled with the data of modern science.

Henceforth he proposes he would limit such speculations to conversations with professional theologians.

Father de Beauregard is skeptical that this will make a difference, but agrees to make Teilhard's case to the General in Rome.

KATHLEEN: And he meets with his Provincial, who is an understanding man, and eventually came around to, to, to try to defend Teilhard against what was ever going to happen.

NARRATOR: Within a few weeks, the General responds to Father de Beauregard in another letter.

LEDOCHOWSKI: I see that Father Provincial, guided by his good heart, completely wants to defend Father Teilhard.

But really, that cannot be done.

I absolutely cannot be satisfied with what he proposes.

NARRATOR: Teilhard is now being asked to sign a document with six specific statements.

All but one of these are statements from the Church's Council of Trent 350 years before.

Three of them state the understanding that Original Sin is an inherited sin.

One states that faith is superior to reason, and one says that dogma can never change.

All of these are things Teilhard believes he can rationalize enough to sign, since they are Church doctrine; but number four is a real obstacle in his mind.

It states that the whole human race takes its origin from one proto-parent, Adam.

Teilhard knows this is impossible in the eyes of science; and to sign it would be dishonest; and he also believes it stands outside the competence of theologians.

What is he to do?

In his agony, Teilhard turns to his friends, both Jesuit and non-Jesuit for advice.

To his Jesuit friend, Valensin, he writes.

TEILHARD: My friend, help me.

If I show defiance, I'll compromise the religious value of my ideas, but I must hold tight to my principles.

Which is the more sacred of my vocations, the one I followed as a boy of 18 or my real vocation, which I discovered when I was a man?

(up tempo music).

NARRATOR: The advice that comes back to Teilhard from his friends runs the gamut.

His mentor at the Museum of Natural History, Marcellin Boule, says, "This only proves that no one can be both a believer and a scientist."

His good friend and fellow priest geologist, Abbé Breuil, advises, "You are in a bad marriage.

Get a divorce!"

Others suggest "Leave the Jesuits.

You can become a diocesan priest."

Some Jesuits counsel "Just sign the document!"

Valensin advises him, "Sign the document with mental reservation that this is an act of obedience, but not an act of intellectual assent."

Father General, for his part, offers to listen but remains firm.

He writes to the Provincial.

LEDOCHOWSKI: Let Father Teilhard weigh the terms, and if he has anything to object, he may write to me with complete freedom and sincerity.

I would then submit his explanations to theologians.

I ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten Father Teilhard and make him understand and confess his error in loyalty and humility.

TEILHARD: Father de Beauregard has advised me to contact you directly.

I am doing this voluntarily and in the spirit of a son.

I wish to accept in this matter the solutions of the Church, but while we are given them, we often deny the problem itself.

How are faith and experience to be reconciled, given that today they manifest grave opposition?

You see, Reverend Father, I believe there is today an immense, almost desperate, need to bring together science and Christianity.

NARRATOR: Teilhard's hesitance in signing further escalates his peril.

Ledochowski now withdraws him from teaching at the independent Institut Catholique over the strenuous objections of its rector, Bishop Alfred Baudrillart, who makes a strong case for Teilhard's integrity as a priest and a teacher.

Nevertheless, Bishop Baudrillart reluctantly accedes to the Jesuit demands to remove Teilhard from the classroom.

Teilhard must now recognize that his choice is now clear.

He must decide whether to agree to Father General's demands or to leave the Society of Jesus.

NARRATOR: In the privacy of his heart, Teilhard is bereft.

He writes to Valensin.

TEILHARD: Dear friend, help me out a bit.

I've put a good face on it outwardly, but what I feel inside is like an agony or a storm.

I think I see that if I separate myself off, or kick over the traces in any way whatsoever, people would see it as turning my back on the Church.

As pride, as who knows what?

It is essential that I should show by my example that if my ideas seem to be innovations, I am nevertheless as faithful as anyone to tradition.

That's what I think I see, but even here, there are shadows.

NARRATOR: On July 1st, 1925, eight months after he was summoned to Lyon, Teilhard submits.

He writes a letter of complete loyalty to Father General.

TEILHARD: I freely disavow, explicitly and sincerely, all aspects of my work that go against the dogmatic points on which my reviser opposes me.

NARRATOR: He reports to Valensin.

TEILHARD: Father General wrote me a nice letter, but it was filled with the deepest misunderstanding.

He said there is an infallible rule that will spare the Catholic intellectual all kinds of useless work.

We should discard a priori anything that contradicts Catholic dogma.

According to that rule, we should still believe in the eight days of creation and Joshua and Jonah.

NARRATOR: Regarding the one scientific principle of evolution that Teilhard simply cannot agree to, he sees himself in the same plight that faced Galileo more than three centuries before.

As he explains to Valensin.

TEILHARD: I can only honestly sign this with the implicit or explicit reservation that I regard the proposition as being subject to future revisions.

Everything I know about science and all experience of the last three centuries make me suppose that this last proposition will someday be modified, like geocentrism, for example.

NARRATOR: Geocentrism was the cosmology theory that the Italian scientist Galileo declared was no longer valid.

At that time, the Catholic Church officially held the common belief that the sun moved around the Earth.

But Galileo scientifically proved that the opposite was true.

The Earth moved around the sun.

For this, he was condemned by the Inquisition.

He accepted house arrest until his death, after recanting his position, but at that point, he is said to have muttered "Eppur se muove" It still moves.

GEORGE COYNE, SJ: Eppur se Muove, it still moves.

He has sworn the Earth does not move.

It's at the center and the sun moves around.

So he's sworn to that.

And then under his breath, he says, it still moves, Eppur se muove, it still moves.

It's a nice little phrase that says, a scientist, a true believer does not have to give up on his science.

Okay.

Because some people think it conflicts with religious belief.

(sound of gavel pounding).

(somber music).

NARRATOR: The decision is now set.

Teilhard will be exiled indefinitely to China, safely silenced.

He's given six months to wrap up his affairs and say his goodbyes.

(ship horn blares).

On April 5th, 1926, he again sets sail for China.

(waves crashing).

His letters aboard ship to Marguerite, his family and friends indicate that he seeks to see the hand of God at work, despite the trauma of his trial and sentencing that strip him of the life he loved and all he aspired to.

The long sea voyage to China provides Teilhard with a chance to come to terms with his deep disappointment.

TEILHARD: I feel the need to begin again, to reorient myself.

I must return from this second voyage stronger in body and in soul.

With the help of God and my friends, I hope I have weathered this last year's storm.

It unquestionably marked a turning point in my intellectual and emotional life.

NARRATOR: Teilhard feels he has learned from his Original Sin experience and hopes that he can get back into the good graces of his Order.

(pensive music).

(sound of faint waves).

TEILHARD: I have finally decided to write my book on the spiritual life.

I seem to have, deep inside myself, something that needs to emerge and to be disseminated.

Something to make myself heard, if only for one brief moment, before I die.

I mean to put down as simply as possible the sort of ascetical or mystical teaching that I have been living and preaching so long.

I call it "The Divine Milieu."

NARRATOR: He dedicates his book "For Those Who Love the World."

TEILHARD: This book is not specifically addressed to Christians who are firmly established in their faith.

It is written for the waverers, both inside and outside, who either hesitate on its threshold or turn away in the hope of going beyond it.

It does no more than state the eternal lesson of the Church in the words of a man, who because he believes himself to feel deeply in tune with his own times, has sought to teach how to see God everywhere.

NARRATOR: But in writing "The Divine Milieu", Teilhard also has his eye on those who have exiled him to China.

TEILHARD: I think that if I could manage to get it printed, it would do good in two ways: it would spread ideas which I believe might open new frontiers for many minds, and at the same time, my efforts might be rewarded by some sort of approval from the Church.

URSULA: BRIAN: "The Divine Milieu" was inviting people to realize that in the very engagement with the world we're growing in union with God.

ILIA DELIO, OSF: It's the environment within me, around me, and beyond me.

So the "milieu" is God you know, in a sense, already immersed in this material unfolding world.

NARRATOR: A matter of months after he finishes writing the book, Teilhard receives permission to visit Paris in order to report to Boule.

He takes along his manuscript and presents it personally to a Jesuit publisher.

It is at first enthusiastically received, but then the problems set in, superiors fear that it will be judged by a general public to be too "pagan."

And Teilhard is again warned emphatically by the top Jesuit in France that he is to limit himself to strictly scientific subjects.

He can now see that his hope of working again in Paris is vanishing.

(street noise).

(somber music).

And although he has become increasingly comfortable as a scientist in China, he continues to be torn.

TEILHARD: My gradual attachment to China does not make me lose sight of this obvious particularity: that my roots are in Paris, and that, with these cut-off, I would lose the best of my strength.

(dramatic music).

NARRATOR: Nevertheless, Teilhard throws himself into the scientific work that he loves.

MARGUERITE TEILLARD-CHAMBON: Teilhard the naturalist, a geologist and paleontologist had to become an expert in topography, geography, zoology, botany, and ethnography.

Fieldwork always had an enormous attraction for him.

Although he had to spend so much time in the laboratory, he was essentially a scientist of the open air, and to touch Mother Earth made him feel younger.

NARRATOR: On his first trip to China, he and Licent had made other expeditions after the Ordos, which helped establish paleontology in China.

(music swells).

(chatter of conversation).

NARRATOR: Dr. Sun Li is responsible for the Nihewan Conservation Area in Hebei Province, which continues as an international focus for ongoing research into early humans in China.

(man playing Chinese flute).

NARRATOR: From his base in Tientsin, Teilhard visits Peking on a regular basis where he feels welcomed by a circle of international scientists who become warm friends.

TEILHARD: There were ten of us, all friends, and almost all close friends.

TEILHARD: There was more or less a conscious feeling of achievement in meeting on the level of common humanity, transcending all national, racial or even "confessional" boundaries.

NARRATOR: Teilhard soon finds himself working as a geologist for the newly founded Chinese Geological Survey and its Cenozoic Research Laboratory.

He loves his work.

TEILHARD: I now find myself, with several colleagues of course, in charge of geological work in China.

NARRATOR: The Cenozoic Research Laboratory had been exploring a site, "Chou-kou-tien," known locally as Dragon Bone Hill, near Peking.

Teilhard is asked to supervise the excavation.

(dramatic music swells).

NARRATOR: Chinese geologist, W.C. Pei, still at work a few days after excavations had ceased for the winter, uncovers in a cave what appears to be a human skull.

TEILHARD: The greater part of a skull has just been discovered near Peking in some big excavations in which I've been closely involved; it seems exactly to mark the transition between Pithecanthropus and Neanderthal Man.

You're bound to hear of it through the newspapers and magazines.

That'll make a big splash in the still waters of the theologians.

NARRATOR: It becomes Teilhard's task to date the skull based on the geological layer in which it is found.

NARRATOR: The find creates an international sensation in paleontology and evolutionary anthropology.

The hominid is labeled Sinanthropus Pekinensis, informally known as Peking Man.

H. JAMES: Here was evidence supporting human evolution in particular.

Teilhard was placed consequently and ironically, at the perfect place for him to be at as an evolutionist, working as a geologist and paleontologist.

Yes, that made him famous.

He also popularized the discoveries.

(jazz, 1920's music).

NARRATOR: One of the first places Teilhard is invited to speak about Peking Man and evolution, is the American Museum of Natural History in New York City in 1931.

The Museum and Teilhard had already been in correspondence for almost a decade, based on his dissertation.

But this lecture will be Teilhard's introduction to America itself, and will lead to much closer ties in future years.

TEILHARD: I was made a tremendous fuss of at the American Museum, where I gave two lectures, one to the staff of the Museum, the other, at Columbia University, to the geological students.

NARRATOR: Teilhard is exhilarated.

He concludes his first trip to America by taking a cross-country tour to California.

TEILHARD: Leaving then for Chicago, I had 24 hours experience of travel by Pullman.

I had the pleasure of visiting the rather new but enormous Field Museum in the company of the founder's grandson, Henry Field, with whom I had dined in Paris in November.

NARRATOR: Teilhard then continues his journey west, routed to show him some of the great geological wonders of America.

(sound of waves).

Once embarked from California for China aboard the USS Garfield, Teilhard judges his first trip to the U.S. to be a success.

TEILHARD: Yes, I liked America: doubtless, of course, because I was made a fuss of.

I should only have to turn up in New York, or Chicago, or San Francisco, this very moment, and I'd immediately find work or an appointment.

However, my future seems to be tied to China.

(whimsical music).

NARRATOR: For Teilhard, 1929 is notable not only for the discovery of "Peking Man," but also for his rediscovery of the feminine.

He is seated at a dinner party of his international friends in Peking next to an attractive woman who cheekily asks him, "What kind of an '-ologist' are you?"

Lucile Swan, an accomplished American artist on a post-divorce world tour, will later report... LUCILE SWAN: I was immediately impressed by this tall ascetic priest, so alive, so joyful.

I was delighted to be placed next to him at table.

Almost at once we were engaged in serious conversation, speaking as a scientist he said that the deeper he went in science the more sure he was there was a God.

This may seem a very simple and self-evident statement?

but it was a light to me.

He believed so definitely in Man and his ability to evolve and love.

NARRATOR: Lucile was so taken by his words that she begins to reconsider beliefs from her Episcopal childhood in Iowa that she thought she had put aside.

LUCILE: Though I never returned to any church, I too began to feel a confidence in what he called "the primacy of the spiritual."

NARRATOR: She settles into a former Buddhist temple, establishing an artist's studio, taking on work modeling portraits in clay of prominent Chinese and Westerners.

This leads to a commission to sculpt the likeness of "Peking Man."

As their friendship grows, Teilhard makes a habit of visiting her each afternoon when he finishes work, for tea and conversation, before dashing off in time to be at his religious residence before the doors lock at 6:00.

In addition to his extraordinary output of scientific papers, Teilhard is always working on a philosophical essay.

Lucile becomes his sounding board.

He brings her drafts of what he has written and then further elaborates on them for her.

She is unafraid to ask for clarification or to challenge him.

LUCILE: I was deeply interested and sympathetic, and my very questions made him clarify his thought.

I am not a Roman Catholic and so brought a different point of view.

So I would argue with him for my views, all of which was most helpful to him.

And, after a certain amount of talk and reflection, he would write another essay.

(chuckles).

He was amused to say he had produced another "egg."

And he always said it was my work, too.

This, of course, made me very proud and happy.

(reflective music).

NARRATOR: Lucile asks Teilhard to sit for her in her sculpture studio.

She creates several busts of him before she is satisfied.

Teilhard will travel frequently in the next 10 years and the letters he and Lucile exchange demonstrate growing trust and affection.

They also reflect different perspectives on what their love means.

Teilhard also expresses caution.

TEILHARD: I ask you to do your best to not build too much your material, or external life, on me.

You and I, we are two wild birds on Mother Earth.

Maybe, for years, our paths are going to run close to each other.

Maybe, also, the wind is going to separate our external ways.

NARRATOR: Lucile believes that complete love demands physical expression, and cannot understand why Pierre cannot agree.

She wants him to leave the Jesuits, so he can speak out and write freely, and be able to give himself to her totally.

His response, however, while reaffirming his love for her, also restates his identity as a Jesuit.

TEILHARD: I do not belong to myself, and consequently I cannot give me entirely and exclusively to anybody.

What you feel for me, is really God who seeks you.

MARY EVELYN: This was a creative tension.

And I think, again, it helped Teilhard to work out what he was truly committed to and it was difficult for Lucile.

LUCILE: As time went on he grew to mean more and more and more to me, this glorious love, not physical, so much deeper and more lasting.

He's given me so much, so rich, that is a long and beautiful story, but with difficulties too.

NARRATOR: While he is living in China, Teilhard is invited to go on other paleontological expeditions.

One is with Roy Chapman Andrews of the American Museum of Natural History.

Another is on Citroën's famous Yellow Crossing.

He also joins Helmut de Terra and his wife Rhoda, who will play an important part in Teilhard's later life.

Despite all the expeditions, speeches, travel, and honors that occupy him, Teilhard never ceases thinking through his understanding of evolution and what it could mean for religious believers.

Now, in 1938, at the age of 57, he is finally ready to tackle writing his life's comprehensive work, a book which, in shorthand, he calls "Man."

His goal is to bring together his grand vision that embraces the poles of his life, science, and God.

He has been trying for years, in vain, to convince his Church that this insight can prove transformational for it.

Now he will write a book to make his case to both scientists and religious authorities.

It will ultimately take the title of, "The Phenomenon of Man", later translated in English as "The Human Phenomenon".

TEILHARD: If this book is to be properly understood, it must be read not as a work of metaphysics, still less as a sort of theological essay, but purely and simply as a scientific treatise.

This work may be summed up as an attempt to see, and to make others see.

NARRATOR: And what Teilhard sees is the story of evolution.

He sees the basic stuff of Spirit-Matter, emerging in ever-greater complexity, from primal elements to massive galaxies, to the birth of consciousness in the self-reflective human being, and continuing on in the evolution of societies, and of a global mind he calls the "Noosphere."

And evolution is not finished.

(thunder).

What Teilhard sees is how deeply personal is the cosmos itself.

In Teilhard's vision, the cosmic energy that unites all elements, at every level, is nothing less than love.

TEILHARD: Love is the most universal, most mysterious, and most awesome of all cosmic energies.

Considered in its full biological reality, love, that is to say, the attraction of being to being, is not peculiar to humans.

It is a general property of all life.

Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other, so that the world may come into being.

This is no metaphor, and it is much more than poetry.

(Haiyan speaking Chinese to child).

NARRATOR: Wang Haiyan is a professor of French in China.

She translated "The Divine Milieu" into Mandarin.

NARRATOR: Allerd Stikker has written several books on how the matching visions of Daoism and of Teilhard de Chardin provide a guide for an ecological movement.

ALLERD STIKKER: What attracted me to Daoism was actually the same that attracted me to Teilhard, which is they look at the cosmos as one complete unity.

A lot of what I was hearing and a lot of what I was feeling was exactly the same as I had been hearing and feeling when reading Teilhard's "The Phenomenon of Man", his view on evolution.

What attracted me also in both Daoism and Daoists and Teilhard is their emphasis on the value of nature, and how to conserve nature.

NARRATOR: Teilhard's book on "Man" will prove to be his best effort to express what has consumed him for a lifetime in his search for the imperishable, for understanding, for meaning, and he desperately wants his Church to see what a gift he is offering them.

Teilhard and Lucile meet frequently in her garden to talk about his book on "Man."

She acts as his sounding board and assistant, typing the final manuscript.

It will take him two years to complete and finally, he is finished.

TEILHARD: Now that the thing is over, I begin to wonder what it is really worth.

Anyhow, it is over, and I will not change it anymore.

NARRATOR: "The Human Phenomenon" is of immense importance to Teilhard.

Not only does it sum up his life's thinking, it represents his best case to his Church to embrace the insights of science in its theology and spiritual practices.

He hopes the book's acceptance will validate his life's struggle with his Order.

TEILHARD: Now I must go through the censorship.

I do not forecast any special difficulties in this line.

(dramatic ominous music).

NARRATOR: But he underestimates the difficulties he will face with publication.

It is now 1940.

The world is at war again.

Peking comes under Japanese occupation.

Most expatriates have left.

Teilhard will spend the rest of the war under house arrest and is limited to the work he can do at home.

Lucile sees that she must leave China while it is still possible.

(train whistle).

Teilhard and other friends of Lucile see her off at the Peking train station for a long trip home.

Teilhard, with his Jesuit colleague and close friend, Pierre Leroy, establishes a new geobiological institute in Peking, to allow them to keep working on their paleontology while under house arrest.

While he continues to write scientific and philosophical papers, Teilhard struggles with depression.

(sound of explosion).

The detonation of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, finally brings an end to Japanese occupation of Peking.

With the war over, Teilhard conscientiously awaits the permission he needs from Jesuit superiors to return to France.

He leaves Peking by air on March 15, 1946, transferring to the English steamship The Strathmore in Shanghai.

He can hardly wait to get home.

Aboard ship, he writes to his cousin Marguerite: TEILHARD: I need to see you again, to talk to you, to tell you everything!

(female cabaret singer singing in French).

NARRATOR: He arrives in Paris six weeks later at the residence of the Jesuit magazine Études.

TEILHARD: Paris is quite alive and pleasing, everybody being surprisingly quiet and smiling, and polite, in the streets, in the Metro, etc.

If, however, you could manage to send me a few cigarettes, I would appreciate them very much.

(lilting music).

NARRATOR: Teilhard is greeted warmly by his fellow Jesuits, and by the scientific establishment in France.

He is elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences.

He is asked to give lectures.

He is invited to apply for the Chair of Prehistory at the Collège de France.

TEILHARD: Since my return here, three weeks ago, I am already caught up in the whirl.

I am still submerged: people calling, telephone, letters piling up on my table.

Rather exciting, but also bewildering.

And...

I am surprised; and just a little scared, to discover how widely my small papers have spread, and impressed people of every kind, during the past seven years.

I am asked to give lectures in Belgium, Switzerland, and Italy; but I will probably not go, except to Brussels.

A first step should be to push to get the ecclesiastical permission for publishing my book on "Man."

NARRATOR: Teilhard is riding a wave of optimism.

The top Jesuit administration in Rome has changed.

The new Father General, Father Jean-Baptiste Janssens, is a Belgian, which Teilhard finds promising.

TEILHARD: I am much more in sympathy with the new government than with the previous one.

I may even hope that the question of the publication of my book on "Man" will be favorably decided within a few months.

NARRATOR: But still, the warm reception Teilhard is receiving in Paris disturbs his Jesuit superiors.

TEILHARD: I am once more in trouble with Rome.

Apparently, I have offended more people than I realized by my old papers.

NARRATOR: To counter the pressure he is feeling from superiors, Teilhard looks for a way to get back in the field and to focus on science.

Teilhard has kept abreast of the shift in paleontological research from China to South Africa, and he is excited to be invited by the lead paleontologists there to study their fossils.

Teilhard is 66 years old.

(siren sounds).

PIERRE LEROY, SJ: The night of May 31, 1947, he was stricken with a serious heart attack.

The other Fathers of the house had him transported immediately to the hospital.

When I visited him, he made no attempt to hide his pain.

Would he still be able to continue his anthropological studies?

Wouldn't the restrictions now imposed on him by his illness force him to forego work in the field?

NARRATOR: Teilhard, back from the brink, is placed in a rest home to recover his strength.

The new limitations on his life imposed by his doctors weigh heavily on him.

Three days after his heart attack, Teilhard writes to Lucile, telling her he is safe, and urging her not to think of coming to Paris.

Rhoda de Terra, who Teilhard met years before when she was still married to his colleague Helmut de Terra, learns of Teilhard's heart attack and comes to Paris uninvited, hoping to take care of him.

Inactivity proves difficult for Teilhard, and so he is pleased when he receives an invitation from the Wenner-Gren Foundation to lecture in New York.

Happily, permission is granted.

(ship horn blares).

He embarks on the SS America for New York City on February 25, 1948.

He finds the voyage rejuvenating.

(cars honking).

While in New York, Teilhard stays at the editorial offices of America Magazine, where he is warmly greeted by John LaFarge, a Jesuit friend of many years; while other Jesuits living there remain distant.

TEILHARD: My welcome to the house was cordial and gruff, as is the custom here.

To tell the truth, though, I still do not really feel spiritually at ease in this setting.

I have the impression that for both the American priests and laity, Christianity means hiding the world, rather than revealing it.

NARRATOR: An opportunity arises for him to give a series of six lectures at American universities the following year, and he seeks approval from Rome.

The request will remain unresolved for some time.

Once he has delivered his lecture at the Wenner-Gren Foundation, Teilhard has little to do in New York except to seek out old friends from China days, especially at the Museum of Natural History.

But he feels unmoored.

He writes to his friend Pierre Leroy.

TEILHARD: Here in New York, I follow the same uncertain existence with no precise work to do, still undecided about my future.

At this moment I am undergoing one of those periods of nervous depression such as you witnessed two or three times in Peking.

Everything seems mountainous to me.

I hope my distress will serve for something.

In any case, I'm leaving here.

I don't feel I am achieving anything.

NARRATOR: Teilhard returns to Paris earlier than he had planned, asking Leroy to meet him.

LEROY: I was waiting for him when he arrived at the Gare Saint-Lazare in the afternoon.

I had expected to find the same old friend of happier days.

But instead, I saw, climbing down from the train, a broken man who threw himself into my arms and burst into tears, powerless to put two syllables together.

I accompanied him back to Études.

But when the dinner hour came, he refused to leave his room.

He begged me not to leave him, and I tried, without success, to comfort him.

Finally, I took him into my arms, if only to give him a little human warmth.

NARRATOR: Teilhard is at loose ends, waiting for decisions that will allow him to see a direction in his life.

(up tempo music).

Finally, he gets a lift.

He hears from Rome.

TEILHARD: Yesterday I got a letter from Rome: very good, essentially, but at the same time, quite troublesome.

In a word, Father General thinks that everything will probably be OK, including perhaps publication of my book.

But beforehand, he wants me to come to Rome, for conversations, at the beginning of October, for "one or two months."

Objectively, this invitation for me to go to Rome is perhaps the chance of my life, and the turning point for a broader and more direct type of activity.

Everybody agrees here that the thing sounds like a success for me and the tone of Father General is distinctly pleasing.

(sound of train rocking on the rails).

You ask me what I think will happen in Rome.

Well, the idea of Father General is apparently to have a personal "contact" with me, and to leave me relatively free to publish and talk under certain conditions.

But how far this meeting will bring us to a true understanding, or merely to a "compromise" I have no idea.

(mysterious music).

I have arrived easily and safely here, last Sunday, at midnight!

I am located a few hundred meters from St. Peter's Square, at the very fringe of the Vatican!

In spite of the fact that I knew very few people here I was quite nicely welcomed; and I must say that the Great Chief is particularly pleasing: I don't think that we see the world exactly the same way, he and I.

But he is extremely open-minded, frank, and he wants me to speak frankly, but everything takes time here.

First, I have to wait for the last reviewers of my manuscript; they are expected this coming week, I hope and then we shall see.

NARRATOR: As Teilhard waits for the critiques of his book, he uses the time to write a "summing up or postscript" to "The Human Phenomenon" to pre-empt certain objections and also an appendix on his understanding of evil in an evolutionary world.

By this time, the Vatican itself has taken an interest in Teilhard.

Lucile Swan, who has spent two months visiting friends in Switzerland, journeys to Rome to visit Teilhard, although his time to spend with her is limited.

In the end, Teilhard will wait nearly a month before having a substantive talk with Father General, who expresses sympathy, but takes all matters under advisement.

So, Teilhard will return home without any answers.

(sound of train rocking on the rails).

His nephew Henri du Passage picks him up at the train station.

(reflective music).

NARRATOR: Returning to Paris, Teilhard re-immerses himself in his writing.

He watches Christmas come and go, and the start of a new year.

He waits impatiently for the answers he is promised from Fr.

Janssens.

As he repeatedly writes to his friends.

TEILHARD: Nothing yet from Rome.

I am going to write tomorrow to my friend, Father de Gorostarzu, the number two man to the General, asking for an answer.

(sound of clock ticking).

NARRATOR: The opportunity to apply for the Chair of Prehistory at the Collège de France is now lost.

What about the six lectures he is asked to give in America?

Will publication of "The Divine Milieu" and "The Human Phenomenon" finally be approved?

TEILHARD: Nothing from Rome.

(clock ticking continues).

I received an entirely uninteresting letter from Rome, written; in order to be nice, obviously, by the General himself, but with no mention of the pending questions.

The General was only anxious to have some explanations concerning an address of mine to a meeting of priests in Versailles, last September.

I sent back a very respectful, but just a little terse, answer, pointing out incidentally that everything I thought was in a certain manuscript now in Rome, and that the shortest way to cut any misinterpretations of my world view might be to have my book published.

(clock ticking continues).

Still nothing from Rome.

Still nothing from Rome!

My rector wrote to the General some ten days ago insisting upon the printing of my book; and I myself sent a word asking for explanations.

(clock ticking gets louder) (clock chiming).

I have finally gotten a letter from Rome, and as was to be expected the letter is not good.

Lectures in America?

No.

No printing of "The Divine Milieu."

Only a shadow of a chance is still left for "The Human Phenomenon."

It is still under a further examination, but there is not much hope left.

And, to finish, I am once more asked to keep to purely scientific subjects, which of course is psychologically impossible.

I feel the moment has come for me to disappear for a time from Paris, where things are getting "too hot" for me personally.

It would be better to give Rome the impression that I am delving back into "pure science."

NARRATOR: Teilhard manages to do this at the beginning of 1951, by renewing his contact with the Archeological Survey of South Africa.

He receives an invitation to join them, along with his good friend and geology colleague from China, George Barbour.

His plan is backed and financed by the Wenner-Gren Foundation in New York City.

But his preparations to leave for South Africa, trigger great concern among his close Jesuit friends.

The acting rector of Études, where he is residing, takes him aside.

He is concerned that Teilhard may not survive such a rigorous expedition.

He urges him to take action before he leaves Paris, to bequeath his extensive collection of writings to a layperson, beyond Jesuit control, so as to prevent their destruction should Teilhard die.

Since the early 1930s, Teilhard had arranged to have his essays mimeographed and circulated among a small group of friends.

Since 1938, this task was managed by a volunteer secretary, a professional woman, Mademoiselle Jeanne Mortier.

Teilhard writes a brief handwritten will, entrusting it all to her.

(bright up tempo music).

Arriving in South Africa, Teilhard gets a new burst of energy and life as he immerses himself once again in the analysis of strata, of river gravels uncovered, of early Stone Age tools.

At the end of three months, Teilhard sails back not to France, but to New York City.

(street noise).

He is now destined to be a permanent resident of New York at the wish of his Jesuit superiors in Rome.

He accepts a position as research associate at the Wenner-Gren Foundation.

Resigning himself to his new fate, he is reminded of his first exile, to China.

TEILHARD: It will be 1925 all over again, except with New York instead of China.

The only thing is, I'm now 70!

(pensive music).

TEILHARD: My chief concern, for a long time now, has not been to know what sort of beginning I have made, but to consider how to end well.

My sole ambition now is to leave behind me the mark of a logical life, directed wholly toward the grand hopes of the world.

My interior life is dominated by these twin peaks: an unbounded faith in Our Lord, and a clear-eyed faith in the world, particularly in the world of man.

NARRATOR: Teilhard's impulse to end well, in witness to the value of his vision has been building for some time.

This vision that sprang from his great "a-ha" of evolution and the experience of the divine in the world, this vision tested in the Great War, challenged by superiors, bringing him exile and rejection, attacked by critics and bishops, re-examined in his own mind ceaselessly, has this vision been a mirage?

Part of ending well for Teilhard means to seek closure on certain troubling tensions in his life, and perhaps the most important of these is reflected in a letter he writes to Father Janssens in Rome, when he sails to New York after a visit to South Africa.

TEILHARD: Very Reverend Father, Pax Christi.

I feel that this is a good moment to let you know briefly what I am thinking and where I stand.

Above all, I feel that you must resign yourself to taking me as I am.

What might have been taken in my attitude during the last 30 years for obstinacy or disrespect, is simply the result of my absolute inability to contain my own feeling of wonderment.

Everything stems from that basic psychological condition, and I can no more change it than I can change my age or the color of my eyes.

Obviously, I cannot abandon my own personal search, that would involve me in an interior catastrophe, in disloyalty to my most cherished vocation.

As I see it, this letter calls for no answer from you.

Look on it simply as a proof that you can count on me unreservedly to work for the Kingdom of God, which is the one thing I keep before my eyes and the one goal to which science leads me.

(emotional piano music).

NARRATOR: Teilhard has now made peace with himself and with his Order.

His New York life falls into a simple pattern.

Daily walks to the Foundation where his research and writing is respected.

Frequently saying Mass at nearby St. Vincent Ferrer Church.

He often retires at the end of the day to have tea with Rhoda de Terra in her nearby apartment, as he had done two decades earlier with Lucile Swan.

He continually writes new essays.

In the summer of 1954, he seeks and receives permission to return to France for three months to visit family.

He is joined in France by his friend Pierre Leroy.

PIERRE: Sitting on the terrace in that lovely afternoon in June, he seemed borne away by memory.

Suddenly he rose, and without a word, entered the house.

(dramatic music).

On the second floor, Teilhard stopped before a lady's room and stared inside.

It was his mother's bedroom.

A pastel portrait of him, done when he was three, hung on the wall.

And it was in this room that Teilhard spoke the only phrase that he uttered that afternoon.

TEILHARD: This is the room where I was born.

PIERRE: Although his trip to France had given him some happiness, clearly it did not turn out the way he hoped.

Because new restrictions were imposed on him by his religious superiors, he was forced to return to New York six weeks earlier than he'd intended, broken by emotion he could hardly contain.

(emotional music).

NARRATOR: In New York, he finds himself sunk in deep depression.

But never sinking into inaction, he goes back to work in his little New York office and into this dark place in his life comes an unexpected spike of joy.

(traffic noise).

(bright, up tempo music).

JEAN HOUSTON: I was running down Park Avenue, and I ran into this old gentleman and I knocked him down.

I mean, I was this great big five-foot-eleven girl, 140 pounds of muscles.

And he started laughing and I pick him up and he said to me, with his rather thick French accent, "Are you planning to run like that for the rest of your life?"

I said, "Yes, sir, it looks that way."

And he said, "Well, bon voyage."

I said, "Bon voyage."

And I ran on to school.

It was about a week later that I was in same place.

And I had my fox terrier, Champy.

And he said, "Oh, my friend, the runner, and you have a fox terrier.

I knew one like that.

Looked so much like that many years ago in France.

Where are you going?"

I said, "Well, sir, I'm, I'm going to Central Park to think about things."

He said, looked at me, he said, "Well, I will go with you sometime.

Okay?"

And that began the friendship.

He told me his full name, but I couldn't quite get it, so I called him "Mr.

Tayer."

So, Mr. Tayer and I began these talks and these walks in Central Park.

(music continues).

Mr. Tayer was very different from anyone I had ever met.

He had almost no self-consciousness.

He was always being carried away by the wonder and astonishment of the simplest of things.

Mr. Tayer was so full of vital sap and the juice of life.

He seemed to flow with everything and he said, "Jean, we have to go only, only a little bit beyond the frontier of everyday appearances in order to see the divine welling up and showing through."

NARRATOR: While Teilhard goes about his work at the Wenner-Gren Foundation, he decides to write one more essay looking back on what his life is about.

He calls it "The Christic."

TEILHARD: It is already a long time since I tried, in "The Mass on the World" and "The Divine Milieu," to give distinct expression to my sense of wonder and amazement.

How is it, then, that as I look around me, still dazzled by what I have seen, I find that I am almost the only person of my kind, the only one to have seen?

Is there, in fact, a Universal Christ, is there a Divine Milieu?

Or am I, after all, simply the dupe of a mirage in my own mind?

I often ask myself that question.

But today, after 40 years of continuous thought, it is still exactly the same fundamental vision that I feel I must present, and enable others to share, in its matured form, for the last time.

JEAN: The last time I ever saw him was, I believe, it was the Thursday before Easter Sunday.

He looked at me, raised his head, and he said to me quietly, "Au revoir, Jean."

I said, "Au revoir, Mr. Tayer.

I'll meet you at the same time next Tuesday."

On the following Tuesday, he didn't come.

I waited.

He didn't come.

(sound of water in fountain).

(church bells).

NARRATOR: The second Sunday of April in 1955 is a sunny Easter Sunday in New York.

Together with his friend Rhoda and her daughter Noel, Teilhard attends Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral.

From there, they walk to Central Park to enjoy the weather.

In the early evening, they go to Rhoda's apartment for an aperitif and dinner.

In Chicago, Pierre Leroy gets an unexpected phone call.

He is told that Teilhard has suddenly collapsed.

Rhoda reports that, while in her kitchen, she hears Teilhard fall, and rushes into her living room to find him on the floor unconscious.

After a few agonizing moments, he opens his eyes and asks, "What happened?

Where am I?"

Recognizing Rhoda, he then says, "This time, I feel it's terrible" and closes his eyes for the last time.

It is 6:00 in the evening.

Teilhard's friend and house mate Father de Breuvery is out of town, and so another priest is called to administer last rites.

Pierre Leroy immediately catches a plane to New York for Teilhard's funeral at St. Ignatius Loyola Church.

(sound of thunder and rain falling).

PRIEST: Réquiem aetérnam dona eis, Dómine.

PIERRE: The funeral was on the Tuesday after Easter, a gray, rainy day...

PRIEST: Fámuli tui Pierre Teilhard de Chardin quam hódie... PIERRE: Only ten friends were present, including Lucile and Rhoda.

(male voice vocalizing, Gregorian chanting).

PIERRE: I accompanied him in the hearse on the 90-mile journey from New York to Saint Andrew-on-Hudson, the novitiate for the New York Jesuits.

(Gregorian chanting).

NARRATOR: The ground in their little cemetery is too frozen for a grave to be dug.

So he is received at the crypt in the basement of the chapel, until some weeks later he can be interred, never to return to his beloved France.

His name on the tombstone is initially misspelled.

(dramatic music swells).

Within a matter of months, "The Human Phenomenon" is in print, thanks to Jeanne Mortier.

In just a few more years, additional volumes of his works are in publication and in translation in multiple languages.

His fame bursts into flame.

BRIAN: The Society of Jesus has done a 180-degree turn on Teilhard.

In terms of his overall vision, he's profoundly accepted in the Society of Jesus now.

NARRATOR: What Teilhard dies without achieving, he gains after his death.

His Church hears him, recognized by four Popes.

JOHN: And if you read some of the documents, of the Second Vatican Council, you'll find sprinkled throughout them little phrases from Teilhard.

NARRATOR: Teilhard leaves a profound legacy in a world starving for hope and love.

A robust ecological movement.

(dramatic music swells).

Faith embracing science.

Hope in a future ever emerging, helping us recognize that Spirit must not be lost in our pursuit of rapidly transforming technology.

MOST REVEREND CURRY: This man has given us a vision of hope.

That really is hope, and not pipe dreams, and that is the stuff of prophets.

That is the stuff of people who change the world.

(music ends on sting).

(reflective piano music).

ILIA: He was way ahead of his time.

He anticipated where we are today and where we might go into the future.

JOHN: Teilhard felt that our vocation is not so much to extricate ourselves from the Earth, from the Universe, but to align ourselves with a Universe that's heading toward a new future.

MARY EVELYN: Laudato Si, the Pope's encyclical on the environment, is, as one leading environmentalist says, "the most important document of the 21st century."

(music plays through credits).

ANNOUNCER: Major funding for this program was provided by Anthony J. Tambasco, Mary McGahey Dwan, M.C.

Conroy.

With additional funding provided by The Raskob Foundation, The Cushman Foundation, Allerd Stikker, Dennis and Pamela Lucey, Monica McGinley, Brennan and Marie Hill, Benevolentia Foundation, Jesuit Conference of the U.S. & Canada, and Jo-Ann Frank.

A full list of funders can be found at teilhardproject.com.

A DVD of Teilhard: Visionary Scientist is available online at MPT.ORG/SHOP or call the phone number on the screen.

For more information about Teilhard and his vision, visit teilhardproject.com.