The first number of Veritatis Splendor reads: "Called to salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, ‘the true light that enlightens everyone’ (Jn 1:9), people become ‘light in the Lord’ and ‘children of light’ (Eph 5:8), and are made holy by ‘obedience to the truth’ (1 Pet 1:22)".

By placing Christ at the center of moral life, Veritatis Splendor offers to the other Christian Churches a reflection on the reality of our Savior and on the reality of man. In Christ God not only reveals himself to man, but also reveals man to man himself. The more we learn about Christ, and the more we learn from Christ, the more human we become. "Following Christ is thus the essential and primordial foundation of Christian morality" (VS 19). Part of our humanity is the call to perfection, to which we are invited to freely respond; "perfection demands that maturity in self-giving to which human freedom is called" (VS 17). Christ is the perfect man whom we are called to imitate, within our human limitations. Christological and anthropological reflections in the context of ecumenism, done in a sincere dialogue of faith, will ultimately have repercussions on the dialogue of life.

I would now like to focus on a concrete example: the fact that all Churches experience the impact of a certain confusion in moral life today. This problem is brought about by factors that know no bounds of creed: human weakness, selfishness leading to injustice and exploitation especially of the weak in society, misuse of instruments such as the mass media, the subtle attacks against family and life propagated by the "anticulture" of death, other "structures of sin", and so on. Some are tempted to ask whether man in his actual condition is truly capable of overcoming these challenges to the Gospel message we encounter today. Or are Christ’s teachings rather simply ideals that we are not really expected to fulfill?

To answer this question, Veritatis Splendor 103 analyzes the reality of man from a soteriological perspective. "Only in the mystery of Christ’s Redemption do we discover the ‘concrete’ possibilities of man… But what are the ‘concrete possibilities of man’? And of which man are we speaking?" An important distinction is made between "man dominated by lust" and "man redeemed by Christ": while the former is not capable of living the Gospel message, the latter is. "This is what is at stake: the reality of Christ’s redemption… (H)e has set our freedom free from the domination of concupiscence. And if redeemed man still sins, this is not due to an imperfection of Christ’s redemptive act, but to man’s will not to avail himself of the grace which flows from that act."

The Holy Father puts forward the idea that "God’s command is of course proportioned to man’s capabilities; but to the capabilities of the man to whom the Holy Spirit has been given; of the man who, though he has fallen into sin, can always obtain pardon and enjoy the presence of the Holy Spirit" (emphasis added).

We conclude by stating that the effort of every Christian to unite himself or herself more closely to Christ (which cannot but include the moral life), in itself contributes to the unity among Churches. This is so because the more united we are with Christ, the head, the more united we also become with the members of his body.

REFERENCES:

• Dionigio Tettamanzi, Verità e libertà. Temi e prospettive di morale cristiana. Piemme, Casalle Monferrato (AL) 1993
• J. A. Di Noia, OP, and Romanus Cessario, OP (editors), Veritatis Splendor and the Renewal of Moral Theology, Midwest Theological Forum, Chicago 1999.