Forbidden fruit.

Talk about sticker shock. But it's not the price of a new car nor even a bill for a three-day stay in the hospital. It's the evolution "disclaimers" that some people would like stuck on the front of science textbooks.

For some, the very question of evolution is definitely godless and perhaps even an instrument of the devil. They are on a mission to set the world straight about how people got here, and their answer is simple: direct creation by God, proven without a doubt in the first book in the Bible. For others, evolution is a complex scientific fact, the cornerstone of biological sciences, offering an explanation about how living things work and get reworked.

I wonder what Pierre Teilhard de Chardin would think about this effort to reject evolutionary theory that is gaining ground in various precincts across the United States. Teilhard, a Jesuit priest from France who died 50 years ago on April 10, not only believed in biological evolution but also saw it as an essential and central dynamic of divine activity.

Teilhard combined his expertise of geology and paleontology with his theological learnings and arrived at an understanding of evolutionary consciousness. Such advanced thinking in the restrictive ecclesiastical culture of the early 20th century rattled church authorities, so in 1925 he was asked to sign a statement repudiating his theories and to leave his teaching position at the Institute Catholique in Paris. He did so, not because he stopped believing in evolutionary theory, but primarily in fidelity to Jesuit obedience.

Attempts to repress Teilhard's thought backfired. He went off to China where he became a major player in the discovery and interpretation of Peking Man, a significant find that further bolstered evolutionary theory. He participated in other important expeditions in China and traveled to the U.S. in the late 1930s, delivering impressive lectures and winning awards.

His life in exile demanded by church authorities became the occasion for further development and advancement of his evolutionary theory and theology. He wrote several theologically oriented texts, including The Phenomenon of man, completed in 1940, but church authorities did not allow any of them to be published.

In 1948 he was called to Rome to discuss his work. He went, as he put it, "to stroke the tiger's whiskers." After these meetings Teilhard realized he would never be allowed to publish his works nor ever to teach in France again, so he took a research position in New York, spending his final years at St. Ignatius Church on Park Avenue. He gave his theological manuscripts to his secretary and friend, Rhoda de Terra, assuring their eventual publication after his death. And so it happened.

His books became famous, and today, on the 50th anniversary of his death, myriad celebrations are planned from the United Nations to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, from St. Ignatius Church in Manhattan to Teilhard's gravesite in St. Andrews-on-Hudson.

I suspect Pierre Teilhard de Chardin would be mildly amused by stickers on science texts warning students about evolution. Such stickers might well have the same effect as the attempts to silence Teilhard ultimately had--none whatsoever.

PETER GILMOUR ([e-mail]) teaches at the Institute of Pastoral Studies of Loyola University Chicago.