De‑Domesticating Sustainability: Renewing the Transformative Imagination through Science–Church Collaboration

The paper argues that humanity’s failure to address the socio‑ecological crisis stems less from inadequate data or technology than from a narrowing of socio‑political discourse that has domesticated sustainability and neutralized its transformative potential. Sustainability now largely reinforces business‑as‑usual assumptions—particularly “green growth”—while masking structural drivers such as metabolic resource limits and additive energy transitions. This problem becomes especially urgent in a historical moment marked by the erosion of global governance, as multilateral institutions lose effectiveness amidst escalating great‑power rivalry, geopolitical fragmentation, and the destabilizing implications of runaway AI. Re‑reading Laudato Si’, the paper highlights its critique of the technocratic paradigm and its call for integral ecology as a crucial normative compass. It proposes a post‑secular collaboration between science and the Church, where empirical insight and moral‑cultural authority combine to cultivate sufficiency‑oriented practices and trigger social tipping points capable of reopening the transformative imagination needed for genuine socio‑ecological change.