In a document that covers an enormous amount of ground, the Church risks upsetting and assuaging critics on both sides of the societal divide as it addresses the fundamental issue of human dignity in the latest Declaration from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Dignitas Infinita.
What is the meaning of human dignity? It is such an elusive concept that it is impossible to nail down in a single sentence, yet it underpins the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the foundational document of the United Nations and the basis for perhaps the best attempt at a shared global understanding of humanity.
Dignitas Infinita, in its lengthy introduction, provides the background to the prolonged development of the Catholic Church’s interjection into the area, emphasising that this has not been a rash or reactionary response to disturbing changes in the political understanding of human dignity since the UDHR’s elaboration in 1948.
Instead, the Dicastery attempts to elaborate a more nuanced understanding of human dignity than the increasingly prevalent interpretation promulgated by many human rights advocates that is better described as ‘personal dignity’—recognising dignity only in its relationship with personhood—and only applying to a person capable of reasoning.
The Dicastery understands human dignity as constituting four different types: ontological dignity, moral dignity, social dignity, and existential dignity, with the most important among them being the ontological dignity that belongs to a person as such simply because he or she exists and is willed, created, and loved by God. Each human person has dignity irrespective of his or her capacity for reasoning, encompassing all humans at the margins of the life cycle and society.
Moral dignity refers to how people exercise the freedom given by God, acting for or against a properly formed conscience. When acting against moral dignity, this may be considered ‘undignified,’ losing moral dignity but, irrespective of the evil carried out, they can never lose their ontological dignity.
Social dignity refers to the quality of a person’s living conditions, often due to situations forced upon them that contradicts their inalienable dignity—such as extreme poverty. Existential dignity provides the distinction for situations frequently cited under the rubric of a ‘dignified’ life—often used to frame discussions that seek to erode or undermine the ontological dignity of everyone—such as discussions about the right to assisted suicide.
Why this framing and why now? Moving from an essentially doctrinal understanding of human dignity founded in ‘the image and likeness of God,’ it is evident that the Dicastery is attempting to respond to the increasingly prevalent social or secular misrepresentation of dignity as “something granted to the person by others based on their gifts or qualities, such that it could be withdrawn.”
This has seen human dignity denied to those at the periphery of life to the extent that infanticide has been logically argued to be a legitimate action by some, with only those that are the paradigm of an acting person falling under the protection of human rights. Additionally, the flawed secular understanding of human rights that removes ontological dignity from our understanding sees, as the document states, “an arbitrary proliferation of new rights, many of which are at odds with those originally defined and often are set in opposition to the fundamental right to life.”
Undoubtedly the focus of the document will fall on the later sections under the sub-heading ‘Some grave violations of human dignity,’ where the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith responds to the more recent challenges to human dignity. These cover the drama of poverty, war, the travail of migrants, human trafficking, sexual abuse, violence against women, abortion, surrogacy, euthanasia or assisted suicide, marginalisation of people with disabilities, digital violence, and the most recent arenas of cultural divide, namely gender theory and ‘sex change.’
Surrogacy, ‘sex change,’ and gender theory are the issues that have gained most headlines, but the most significant part of the document is the elaboration of the Church’s understanding of human dignity. For some, the issues identified and the apparent deeper understanding of human dignity offer a ‘seamless garment’ on the Church’s position on social issues.
This may be both a good and a bad thing. Despite articulating four typologies of human dignity, a closer inspection reveals that the latter three are contingent on the first typology of ontological dignity—that people are made in the image and likeness of God. All other dignities depend on this understanding.
The equivalent secular understanding was that human rights were universal, inalienable, and indivisible by virtue of each person’s humanity—as a human being. This understanding has been eroded in recent years to narrow that understanding to the ability to reason and form a life-plan—removing human rights protections from those at the margins of life, whether near death or at the start of life, whether with reduced mental capacity or destroyed by addiction.
Dignitas Infinita attempts to demonstrate that human dignity is not a singular concept. It is not a theory to be manipulated to promote an ideological approach to contested issues in the political and cultural sphere. It encompasses all of human life—from being known in the womb, through Christ’s affinity with “the poor, the humble, the despised, and those who suffer in body and spirit,” to those “who find themselves in disadvantaged conditions, such as abandoned infants, orphans, the elderly who are left without assistance, the mentally ill, people with incurable diseases or severe deformities, and those living on the streets.”
The challenge provided by the Dicastery is to the Church—clergy and laity—to uphold human dignity in all its guises and wherever it is threatened. This means responding to all grave threats. While some on one side of the debate might bemoan the focus on the travail of migrants as the debate around immigration is reductively framed as a contest between open and closed borders, others will be made uncomfortable by the restatement of the Church’s position on abortion.
The much-needed clarity provided by the Dicastery on surrogacy, gender theory, and so-called ‘sex change’ offers a doctrinal explanation grounded in human dignity that will allow followers to articulate to themselves and to others why these are such grave violations of human dignity.
In many ways, the Declaration tries to cover too much ground. Each grave violation deserves a Declaration of its own to fully convey the Church’s position, but by bringing both the ontological, moral, social, and existential issues of dignity together, it demonstrates that the Church is not bunkered in a merely individualistic understanding of dignity but also one that requires a social responsibility of each and every one of us.
On the other hand, creating the impression of equivalence between ontological dignity and the other three contingent dignities risks playing one against another in the competing spheres of rights when they clash. Creating equivalence between contingent issues such as migration, poverty, and war which require a response based on context, resources, and ability, and outright prohibitions such as those on abortion and surrogacy, risks placing Catholics in the unenviable position of responding to accusations of being pre-occupied by ‘pro-life’ issues rather than demanding socialist solutions to social problems.
