(3 of 3)
Shadow of Wagner. There is a growing tendency to evaluate Teilhard's significance in terms of his broad approach rather than the specifics of his complex theory of evolution. Catholic philosophers today generally credit Teilhard with being instrumental in loosening the long, tight grip on church thinking of the ideas of Thomas Aquinas, with their rigid distinctions between spirit and matter, essence and existence, act and potency. Teilhard was particularly popular in the 1960s, notes Catholic Lay Theologian Michael Novak, because he fitted the "surge of optimism" in the world and in the church of that period. But his concept of the integration of man and nature is also reflected in the ecological concerns of the 1970s.
University of Chicago Theologian David Tracy describes Teilhard as "a poet of science—a rare cultural type." Perhaps that is how Teilhard himself understood his own role. Tellingly, he once reached for a musical allusion when talking about his philosophical goals. He did not seek to propagate a "system," he wrote to a friend in 1927. Rather, he wanted to promote "a certain taste, a certain perception of the beauty, the pathos, and the unity of being ... It would be more to my purpose to be a shadow of Wagner than a shadow of Darwin."