The most recent survey in Malta showed that only a minority of young people attend Sunday Mass and one in every four babies does not have a married couple as parents. Yet this is still a much higher level of religious practice than almost anywhere else in Europe. Yet you do not agree with the rather bleak assessment of society put forward by conservative and fundamentalist religious believers, and you agree with the opinion of Teilhard de Chardin and others that if Jesus Christ really rose from the dead then the effects of this triumph of love should be visible in the actual history of the world. Are not the terrible tragedies affecting the world, from Darfur to Pakistan, proof that Teilhard's evolutionary optimism is not well grounded?
Right-wing politicians are right in observing that human beings, both as individuals and in groups, still tend to make choices that are not wise if the long term and common good are taken into due account. Nevertheless there can be no doubt that the revolutionary advances that keep occurring, from information and communication technologies to genetics, make the potentialities of human conviviality even richer.
Teilhard never denied the stalking presence of evil in the world. In fact, the history of human wars has taught us that forces that had suffered a decisive defeat, as for example the Axis forces after El Alamein, redouble their efforts in the time left before they actually concede. Teilhard put forward a theory of evolution that set outs the pattern according to which biological development has occurred and which allows us to predict how it will continue, not so much on the level of the individual human being as on that of the human species as a whole.
It is now just over 50 years since Teilhard died. The 'globalisation' that seemed so improbable at the time of the Cold War when Teilhard wrote, as well as scientific breakthroughs such as the mapping of the human genome, have provided even unexpected support for Teilhard's theories. The continued manifestations of human shortsightedness and narrow-mindedness with regard to climate change and nuclear armament could equally be anticipated in Teilhard's perspective, which is both realist and Christian.
Is it not strange that in Malta the only really powerful and persevering exponent of Teilhard's world vision has not been a scientist or philosopher with enthusiasm about technology and media like yourself, but a musician - our national composer Charles Camilleri?
Indeed Missa Mundi, an almost incredibly brilliant translation into the language of the organ of Teilhard's most beautiful prose-poem, La Messe Sur Le Monde, has been listed by the most authoritative journal, The Organ, in its millennium special issue among the 100 greatest organ works of all time.
When it first appeared, many organists said that it was too difficult to play, but after a few years young organists all over the world began to include it in their repertoire as a mark not so much of their technical prowess as of their philosophy of life. Soon it will be played at St John's Co-Cathedral accompanied by the choreography of one of Bejart's chosen pupils, Françoise Dupriez-Flamand. When it was first performed in Malta, the choreography was by Mario Vella - yes, even though you may not believe it - the man who went on to become president of the Labour Party.
I myself still think that it was one of Vella's greatest feats, even though among other unlikely achievements, he has also written a philosophy book about yours truly. He criticises me heavily for being more of a follower of St Thomas than of Teilhard.
In fact, I believe that Teilhard is for the 21st century comparable to what St Thomas was for the 13th. Teilhard has actually written most interestingly about the role that creativity in the arts has in the continuing process of evolution as parallel to that in science. An exceptionally gifted French lecturer is to speak to the Philosophy Society this week about beauty in Teilhard's world vision.
Yet there has been a lot of criticism of Teilhard from Church quarters, including his "feminist" inclinations.
Actually my own favourite text of Teilhard's after The Mass over the World is another prose poem called L'Eternel Feminin. Very curiously for me, Teilhard's view of the feminine corresponds to that of Elisabeth Mann-Borgese in her book The Ascent of Woman, which is one of the early foundation stones of modern feminism.
The feminine is taken to be the name of the communitarian drive found in every human being. It complements the individually self assertive drive. Teilhard, no less than Mrs Borgese, believed that no great human work had ever been achieved without male-female collaboration.
It would be very interesting to examine the relationship between Teilhard's account of human sexuality and that implied in Pope Benedict XVI's recent encyclical. Just as it will be no doubt most interesting to hear Prof. Edward Farrugia, of the Oriental Institute in Rome, relating Teilhard's account of gender with that of the Eastern tradition.
Fr Peter Serracino Inglott was talking to Miriam Vincenti.