St. Joseph of the Lakes

By Elise Ann Allen  Apr 8, 2024   Senior Correspondent, Crux

Monday’s new Declaration Dignitas Infinita on Human Dignity from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) presented the consistent life ethic of this seamless garment, offering a clear definition of human dignity as the Church sees it and stressing the need to uphold it from conception to natural death.

It touches on issues such as war, poverty, migration, and the abuse crisis, stressing the need to protect and uphold human dignity in all of these circumstances, and it also takes a critical edge on topics such as abortion, surrogacy, gender theory and sex change, saying they disregard humanity’s natural God-given dignity.

The document, which has been in the works for five years and the final version of which was approved by Pope Francis last month, quotes not only the current pope, but also his predecessors Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI at length, weaving together their social and moral agendas.

Divided into four sections, with the final section dedicated to an array of problematic situations in which the Declaration says human dignity is not being recognized, the document outlines developments the Church’s anthropological view of human dignity and repeatedly praises the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights.

It stressed the ontological nature of human dignity, saying this dignity “belongs to the person as such simply because he or she exists and is willed, created, and loved by God,” and does not depend on external factors, meaning it can never be taken away.

“Dignity is not something granted to the person by others based on their gifts or qualities, such that it could be withdrawn…it is prior to any recognition, and it cannot be lost. All human beings possess this same intrinsic dignity, regardless of whether or not they can express it in a suitable manner,” the DDF Declaration said.

It highlighted the belief that human beings are created in the image of God as the foundation of the “inseparable unity of body and soul” in the church’s view of human dignity.

However, the document also noted that human beings enjoy full freedom, saying “the choice to express that dignity and manifest it to the full or to obscure it depends on each person’s free and responsible decision.”

Quoting Pope Benedict XVI, the Declaration warned that without religion, human dignity risks falling prey “to distortions” or being “manipulated by ideology, or applied in a partial way that fails to take full account of the dignity of the human person.” Such misuse of reason, after all, was what gave rise to the slave trade in the first place and to many other social evils, not least the totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century,” it said.

Highlighting what it said were “misunderstandings” of the concept of human dignity and its meaning, the Declaration pointed to the push for “personal dignity” over “human dignity,” in which the rights of the person are prioritized over the rights of humanity as a whole, putting some, such as unborn children and the terminally ill, at risk.

“Only by recognizing an intrinsic and inalienable dignity in every human being can we guarantee a secure and inviolable foundation for that quality. Without any ontological grounding, the recognition of human dignity would vacillate at the mercy of varying and arbitrary judgments.”