Ecological Mutation and Christian Cosmology (a Lecture)

Since I am unable to speak as a theologian at this conference, I am addressing you as someone who has tried to grasp what the ecological mutation is doing to philosophy; and also as someone who has always been inspired by Catholicism, and has been frustrated at being unable to transmit its message to my loved ones. So in this lecture I shall try to link these two crises: that of ecology and that of transmission. I want to see if a different understanding of the mutation currently under way would make it possible to revisit the message in a different way. I will proceed in three stages: in the first part I will define the contrast between cosmological projection and preaching; in the second part I will list some points where, in my view, the change of cosmology provides a new opening for certain traditional questions of transmission and preaching; finally, I would like to summarise the present situation, as I see it, by presenting a riddle that will, I hope, open up the discussion.