The idea of natural law comes from ancient Greek philosophy where it was understood as predominantly static. Transferred into the Christian theology, it was also understood as something stable, immovable, and unchangeable. Many examples of this can be shown, including those from the Czech tradition of moral theology from the period prior to the Second Vatican Council. The present document represents a completely different approach: Natural moral law is something dynamic, connected with the human conscience, ways of self-realization and of discerning good and evil. It does not represent heteronomous control of the conscience from outside but is a principal orientation in which a person makes decisions based on his or her own responsibility. The document is proof of the ability of the Church to react to changes in society, to develop its teaching and self-understanding.
The verbalisation of music involves many perils. Musicologists have surmounted those perils by creating suitable concepts and metaphors and by adopting specialised terminology from other scholarly disciplines. The development of scholarly terminology in musicology goes together with the attempt to find the most adequate means for description and characterisation of musical language. One way of doing so is to regard the current of musical sound, flowing in time, as a means of expressing changes of force, tension, quiet or disquiet. This quality of music may be compared to the idea of a dynamised current of sound, in which the listener is able directly to perceive changes of forces, tensions, kinesis and stasis. These changes are conveyed by relationships: harmonic, melodic-formal structural relationships, and also relationships of sound, metre and rhythm, texture, and register.
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