The dialogic leitmotif in Christian morality : an approach and perspective : focusing on Bernard Häring's presentation of Christian morality in "The law of Christ" and "Free and faithful in Christ"

Abstract

Fr. Häring wrote that ‘The objective of the Church is to make the person good in the hope that his fruit will also be good.’ To understand this statement in the light of the dialogic leitmotif he is presenting, we need to elaborate the notion of the good so as to understand: 1. What it is 2. How do we as Church grow in it and 3. What the result of this growth is. This essay is structured to meet these three considerations. It starts with a preface giving clarifications and the details of the research. It is then divided into three chapters dealing with each issue, not individualistically but in perspective. Neglecting the freedom that the Church presents and merely justifying the free conscience does not make people free [and faithful in Christ] for to be free is to be faithful in Christ. The situation is not overcome by an extrinsic knowledge of the freedom which the Church is presenting. Faith is not extrintisic to the person but something personal that involves the conscience, his very ego, which changes if he is partaking of the ob-audire of faith. Ob-audire is the original meaning of obedience which understands a harkening to a listening — never taking away our freedom, necessitating a dialogue. This dialogue flows from the new Law in Jesus Christ which is essentially law of life, inner impulse of the Holy Spirit, who is presented as the essence of the “New Law”. Love is the uniting energy needed in the engagement of this dialogue because to love is to know. “Only the eyes of love have a clear insight into the nature of things.” Through love we can be free and faithful. I think I am not too far off the mark if I conlcude with the observation that St. Theresa of Lisieux who is one of the three female doctors of the Church and who died at the age of only 24 made love the reason of progress in relationship with God and the basis of her morality. The choice of a dialogic leitmotif in morality underlines the on-going process of a loving dialogue carried out between the person and Jesus, starting only when he meets Jesus Christ. We are not presenting a fictional characther when we present Jesus Christ as alive. Jesus is a historical figure who was here and who is still here even if we do not physically see him.