Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S. J. was a Jesuit paleontologist who attempted to interpret the findings of modern science in the light of the Christian message. The world has been baffled and amazed by the developments of nuclear energy, space travel, and many other inventions of modern science. People read in Teilhard a message of hope and optimism and his work was perhaps even more influential outside the Catholic Church than within it.

　　Teilhard’s influence and the exceptional response his work has called forth from all quarters, as well as the controversy that it has engendered, are explained principally by his inquiry into the human phenomenon. In Teilhard’s eyes the human species constitutes the thrust of cosmic evolution and is the key for understanding the universe. This fact leads him to understand the Christian phenomenon in an evolutionary context, as the ultimate source in God’s plan of that human energy needed for evolution’s success.

　　Teilhard has been characterized by Claude Cuot, in Teilhard de Chardin as one of the great minds of the modern world. Eminent churchmen have invited scholars to elaborate his marvelous and seductive “global vision of the universe wherein matter and spirit, body and soul, nature and super-nature, science and faith find their unity in Christ.” Most of his works appeared only after his death. Since the publication of The Phenomenon of Man in 1955 and The Divine Milieu in 1957 he has been the most widely read and discussed Jesuit thinker of the twentieth century.

　　Teilhard insists that only by cultivating our moral sense of obligation to life can we overcome our present fear and anxiety for the human future. For him the fundamental law of morality is thus to liberate that conscious energy that seeks further to unify the world. This is the energy of human love, an impulse toward unity, an impulse of mind and heart that manifests itself particularly in the relish a person has for creative tasks undertaken from a sense of duty.

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　　Angelo Secchi, S.J. was born in Reggio, Italy and died in Rome. He was a physicist and mathematician with remarkable ability and passion for astronomy. Angelo worked in stellar spectroscopy, made the first systematic spectroscopic survey of the heavens, pioneered in classifying stars by their four spectral types, studied sunspots, solar prominences, photographed solar corona during the eclipse in 1860, invented the heliospectroscope, star spectroscope, telespectroscope and meteorograph. He also studied double stars, weather forecasting and terrestrial magnetism. He became director of the Vatican Observatory at the age of 32 and dedicated himself energetically to the task. Sabino Maffeo S.J. tells the story of his tenure at the Vatican Observatory. (See Maffeo S.J. Sabino, In the Service of the Popes Translation by George V. Coyne, S.J. Pg. 13-15).

　　He acquired an equatorial telescope of Merz with an aperture of 24 cm and a focal length of 435 cm, an excellent instrument for those times. Angelo decided to transfer the observatory to the top of the Church of St. Ignatius, a perfect foundation for an observatory, because the Church had been originally designed to support a dome 80 meters high and 17 meters wide. This Pontifical Observatory, famous for the discoveries of Father Secchi, was certainly more known to many generations of Romans for the simple, practical, daily service it offered them. It gave them the exact time of day.

　　Angelo Secchi was particularly attracted to astrophysics, a courageous choice in a time when this field was little developed. Nevertheless, he did not neglect other areas of astronomy. He also had regular teaching assignments in astronomy and physics at the Gregorian University, and had many other chores t keep him busy. He observed double stars, nebulae, planets and comets. He discovered three comets in the years 1852-1853. He studied terrestrial magnetism and meteorology; he was in charge of setting up a new triangulation base on the Via Appia; he went to various cities to repair or install new water systems; he established lighthouses in the ports of the Papal States; and he even had to look after the positioning of solar clocks. In addition to his great works on the sun, on the fixed stars, and on the unity of physical forces, he published about 730 small papers in various scientific journals. Angelo had a particular interest in the sun: its innumerable facets attracted his attention right up to the time of his death. He kept a daily record of the number of sunspots, and of their appearance and movement; at the eyepiece of his telescope, he drew pictures of the most interesting spots. Using a new technique for observing solar prominences outside of eclipse, Angelo found the connection between prominences and sunspots. His magnificent drawings of the huge red hydrogen jets extending from the solar surface in stupendous and ever changing shapes, have become classics of astronomical literature.

　　After that he pointed his spectroscope to the stars. Following the example of Fraunhofer and Respighi, he was the first to use a round prism in front of the lens of the Cauchoix refractor. In this way he observed more than 4,000 stars and came to a discovery whose importance not even he could understand. Although there were many differences among the spectra of the individual stars, he also found many similarities, and, using these as a criterion, he identified four classes of spectra. Because of this discovery Angelo is considered the father of the spectral classification of stars, a tool which has proven to be very powerful for research on the origins and structure of stellar systems.

　　After the occupation of Rome in 1870, the Roman College was declared state property. When the Italian Government threatened to occupy also the observatory, Angelo Secchi made a serious protest threatening to accept one of the positions which had been offered to him in England, France and the United States. But this world-renowned astronomer was left in peace and for the moment the Observatory and its staff remained under the Holy See. The great bronze inscription over the entrance still remained in place: Osservatorio Rontificio. The reprieve did not last long. After a long and painful sickness Angelo Secchi died on 26 February 1878 and his successor, was removed from the Observatory in the following year. So this last of the papal observatories, which had weathered so many difficult times without receiving the recognition due to it, came to an end. Its name was changed to: Regio Osservatorio al Collegio Romano (Royal Observatory at the Roman College). In 1923 even this last bit was terminated.

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　　Gerard Hopkins was born July 28, 1844, to Manley and Catherine (Smith) Hopkins, the first of their nine children. His parents were High Church Anglicans (variously described as “earnest” and “moderate”), and his father, a marine insurance adjuster, had just published a volume of poetry the year before.

　　At grammar school in Highgate (1854-63), he won the poetry prize for “The Escorial” and a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford (1863-67), where his tutors included Walter Pater and Benjamin Jowett. At one time he wanted to be a painter-poet like D. G. Rossetti (two of his brothers became professional painters), and he was strongly influenced by the aesthetic theories of Pater and John Ruskin and by the poetry of the devout Anglicans George Herbert and Christina Rossetti. Even more insistent, however, was his search for a religion which could speak with true authority; at Oxford, he came under the influence of John Henry Newman. (See Tractarianism.) Newman, who had converted from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism in 1845, provided him with the example he was seeking, and in 1866 he was received by Newman into the Catholic Church. In 1867 he won First-Class degrees in Classics and “Greats” (a rare “double-first”) and was considered by Jowett to be the star of Balliol.

　　The following year he entered the Society of Jesus; and feeling that the practice of poetry was too individualistic and self-indulgent for a Jesuit priest committed to the deliberate sacrifice of personal ambition, he burned his early poems. Not until he studied the writings of Duns Scotus in 1872 did he decide that his poetry might not necessarily conflict with Jesuit principles. Scotus (1265-1308), a medieval Catholic thinker, argued (contrary to the teachings of the official Jesuit theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas) that individual and particular objects in this world were the only things that man could know directly, and only through the haecceitas (“thisness”) of each object. With his independently-arrived at idea of “inscape” thus bolstered, Hopkins could begin writing again.

　　In 1874, studying theology in North Wales, he learned Welsh, and was later to adapt the rhythms of Welsh poetry to his own verse, inventing what he called ” sprung rhythm.” The event that startled him into speech was the sinking of the Deutschland, whose passengers included five Catholic nuns exiled from Germany. The Wreck of the Deutschland is a tour de force containing most of the devices he had been working out in theory for the past few years, but was too radical in style to be printed.

　　From his ordination as a priest in 1877 until 1879, Hopkins served not too successfully as preacher or assistant to the parish priest in Sheffield, Oxford, and London; during the next three years he found stimulating but exhausting work as parish priest in the slums of three manufacturing cities, Manchester, Liverpool, and Glasgow. Late in 1881 he began ten months of spiritual study in London, and then for three years taught Latin and Greek at Stonyhurst College, Lancashire. His appointment in 1884 as Professor of Greek and Latin at University College, Dublin, which might be expected to be his happiest work, instead found him in prolonged depression. This resulted partly from the examination papers he had to read as Fellow in Classics for the Royal University of Ireland. The exams occured five or six times a year, might produce 500 papers, each one several pages of mostly uninspired student translations (in 1885 there were 631 failures to 1213 passes). More important, however, was his sense that his prayers no longer reached God; and this doubt produced the “terrible” sonnets. He refused to give way to his depression, however, and his last words as he lay dying of typhoid fever on June 8, 1889, were, “I am happy, so happy.”

　　Apart from a few uncharacteristic poems scattered in periodicals, Hopkins was not published during his own lifetime. His good friend Robert Bridges (1844-1930), whom he met at Oxford and who became Poet Laureate in 1913, served as his literary caretaker: Hopkins sent him copies of his poems, and Bridges arranged for their publication in 1918.

　　Even after he started writing again in 1875, Hopkins put his responsibilities as a priest before his poetry, and consequently his output is rather slim and somewhat limited in range, especially in comparison to such major figures as Tennyson or Browning. Over the past few decades critics have awarded the third place in the Victorian Triumvirate first to Arnold and then to Hopkins; now his stock seems to be falling and D.G. Rossetti’s rising. Putting Hopkins up with the other two great Victorian poets implies that his concern with the ” inscape” of natural objects is centrally important to the period; and since that way of looking at the world is essentially Romantic, it further implies that the similarities between Romantic and Victorian poetry are much more significant than their differences. Whatever we decide Hopkins’ poetic rank to be, his poetry will always be among the greatest.

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　　Three centuries ago the Jesuit mission to China realized a special charism of the Society of Jesus. Its influence was spectacular, including projects like determining the Russo-Chinese border, and its success was even more dramatic than that of the Paraguay Reductions. Sent to Christianize many millions of people, a handful of men were trained in the language and culture of China and skilled in what the Chinese admired most, mathematics and science. Their story is told in tapistries and paintings found in the art world and references to them are read in world histories. It is ironic that the Chinese were taught the heliocentric theory by the Jesuits long before it was allowed in Europe. (Perhaps due to a substantial lag in communications, Galileo’s plight had not caught up to the Jesuits in China.)

　　The China mission has been spoken of with awe and admiration by historians such as Joseph Needham and John Baddeley. Europe was thrilled with the work of the mission. Leibniz, an ecuminist far ahead of his time, suggested to his Jesuit friends on the China mission how to clarify the mystery of the trinity by using the newly discovered imaginary numbers as an analogue of the Holy Spirit. It is not clear whether the Jesuits took Leibniz’s advice.

　　Although the mission had frightful dangers, savage martyrdoms and terrible disappointments there were times when the Jesuits enjoyed great prestige, independence and authority. One such time, during the reign of Emperor K’ang Hsi, was the tenure of the Flemish Jesuit Ferdinand Verbiest as President of the Board of Mathematics. Verbiest died 300 years ago on the 27th of January in 1688, was buried with imperial honors.

　　Their experience was not always triumphant and the Jesuits sometimes endured great sufferings. Shortly after Verbiest arrived in Peking the Jesuits were accused of teaching a false religion and so were chained and cast into a filthy prison where they were bound to wooden pegs in such a way that they could neither stand nor sit. There they remained for almost two months until their sentence of strangulation was imposed. A high court found the sentence too light and ordered them to be cut up into bits while still alive. Because an earthquake destroyed the part of the palace chosen for the execution, the sentence was not carried out and the Jesuits were released.

　　Soon after in a dramatic turn of events the Jesuits moved from disgrace to honor. The Emperor ordered a public debate concerning the relative merits of Chinese and European astronomy. It was to have three parts: to determine the shadow of a fixed gnomon, to predict the position of the planets at a fixed time and to predict the exact time of a lunar eclipse which had been expected about that time. It was decided that the two astronomers, the Chinese Moslem Yang, and the Christian Verbiest should each use their mathematical skills and then the Heavens would be the judge. The contest was held at the Bureau of Astronomy where were gathered the privy council, the ministers of state, the officials of the observatory, and a host of other mandarins. Yang was not up to the tasks, while Verbiest, with his precise data, triumphed in all three and was immediately installed as President of the Board of Mathematics.

　　Verbiest then audaciously suggested that the mistakes in the Chinese calendar be corrected. His predecessors had inserted an extra month to cover previous errors and Verbiest insisted that it be eliminated. Alarmed that such a public document as the nation’s calendar used by millions, which had been approved and promulgated by the Emperor, should be altered, the officials begged Verbiest to withdraw the suggestion. He replied, “It is not within my power to make the heavens agree with your calendar. The extra month must be taken out.” It was, and Verbiest had won an astonishing victory.

　　After this Verbiest had a real friend in the Emperor K’ang Hsi who was eager to share his knowledge. Verbiest taught him geometry, and in doing so translated the first six books of Euclid into Manchu. He instructed him also in philosophy and music. In doing this he took advantage of every opportunity to introduce Christianity. The Emperor elevated him to the highest grade of the mandarinate and gave him permission to preach Christianity anywhere in the empire.

　　After his initial successes Verbiest was entrusted with very many projects of the empire among which was the casting of 132 cannons for the imperial army, instruments far superior to any previous Chinese weapons. For this he was commended by Pope Innocent XI for “using profane science for the safety of the people”. It is unlikely such a commendation would have been made today. Among his many inventions is found a steam engine to propel ships, thus anticipating Watts and Fulton. It seemed that little went on in the empire during the next few decades without Verbiest. He was frequently invited to the palace and it was not unusual for the Emperor to take Verbiest along on his expeditions throughout the empire. Having restructured of the calendar, one of the empire’s most crucial documents, he composed a table of all solar and lunar eclipses for the next 2000 years. Delighted with this the Emperor gave him complete charge of the imperial astronomy observatory which had been built in 1279. Since the ancient equipment was by now obsolete, Verbiest designed new instruments and completely rebuilt the observatory in 1673. Sensitive to history of the empire,however, he preserved the old equipment. He then constructed the great bronze astronomical instruments which have become a Peking tourist attraction even today. A century later when the Jesuits were forced out of China, the observatory fell into disrepair. During the Boxer rebellion instruments were stolen and brought to Prussia and the Jesuit scientific library was given to the Czar. In 1981, however, the Chinese government restored the observatory.

　　The Jesuits long had an interest in find an overland route from Europe through Christian Russia. The Tsar’s ambassador to China at the time was able to speak Latin and so could converse with the Jesuits. This involved Verbiest in negotiations over the border between the two countries and later it was partly under his direction that the Russo-Chinese borders were determined and his surveyers were sent out to mark them.

　　Besides his numerous maps of China, and also of the then known world, Verbiest wrote no less than 30 books. Among these may be found a 32 volume handbook on astronomy, a manchu grammar, a Chinese missal and a work entitled Kiao-li-siang-kiai which is a statement of the fundamental teachings of Christianity and which became the basis for later Chinese Chrisitian literature.

　　His scientific achievements occasioned several princes and many mandarins and scholars to become Catholics, so that by the time Verbiest died there were about 800,000 Catholics living in 1,200 communities. Verbiest is listed as one of 108 Chinese heroes of the popular novel Shui Hu Chuan , and his portrait is shown with Chinese features in a famous Japanese print. After he died he was buried next to the other two giants of the Jesuit mission: Matteo Ricciand Adam Schall. Their tomb is difficult to visit since it is on the campus of a College of Political Science, but it is immaculately preserved.

　　Verbiest died a century after the Jesuit mission had begun, and a century before the tragic decision of Pope Clement XI regarding the Chinese rites, which pratically ended this vibrant, promising mission. The work in China had to be started over again in a later century and with much less success. It is not difficult to imagine the consequences for the Church and its missionary endeavors if such a decision were made in the fifth century when St Patrick was trying to cope with the rites of the Gaels.

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