Comment: I agree that epithets such as "conservative" and "progressive" can be inaccurate or reductive or misleading, but I don't agree that they're always useless. In the cases of e.g. Joseph Ratzinger and even more perhaps Henri de Lubac, we find an early, challenging pattern of innovation led to a ready acceptance of the way things have always been. We see that the Lubac-inspired "Lumen gentium" might have looked radical with its talk of the "people of God" and the dignity of the laity, but it's hardly a manifesto of revolution; and in fact it seems easily to have supported JPII's empowerment of the conservatives, including the hierarchalism and arch-sacerdotalism of Benedict XVI and even Raymond Burke (mein Gott!).

I was only suggesting something, but don't claim to know. For my part, I don't find Teilhard interesting, and see him through the eyes of disappointed biologists, e.g. Stephen Jay Gould, who accused Teilhard as being the nefarious evil genius behind the Piltdown Conspiracy.