Sharing in Christ's Virtues

The encyclical ""Veritatis splendor"" (The Splendor of Truth) represents the first document of the magisterium devoted to the foundations of the Catholic moral life. Though it was intended to confront a genuine crisis of moral disintegration and to offer positive directions for carrying out the work of renewing moral theology, it was fiercely criticized by theologians who regarded it as a simplistic and ""repressive"" document. Now, several years after the publication of the encyclical, Livio Melina offers an original contribution not only to the study of ""Veritatis splendor"" and the controversy surrounding it, but also to the field of moral theology as a whole. In ""Sharing in Christ's Virtues"", Melina proposes a blueprint for organizing moral theology, one that is in harmony with the directions given in ""Veritatis splendor"" and one that likewise respects the requirements of both the ""theological"" and the ""scientific"" character of the discipline. He describes it as a ""Christocentricism of the virtues,"" which understands the moral life of Christians as a participation in the virtues of Christ by means of the grace of one's ecclesial incorporation in Christ. Melina argues that the renewal of moral theology should result in, first, a search for a more integral and dynamic understanding of human action, and second, a theological ""re-dimensioning"" of morality to better comprehend the synergy between human action and God's action.