Dignitas Infinita. The Latin for “Infinite Dignity”. The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s new Declaration on Human Dignity arrives at a time in history where the idea of human rights is starting to eat itself.
One of the core messages of the Declaration is that the Church sees that human rights are being co-opted by forces antagonistic to a full understanding of human dignity and in particular to what it describes as “ontological dignity”.
The Dicastery highlights how a truncated understanding of human dignity – often reframed as personal dignity – is being used to deny human rights to those at the periphery and margins of society and life. It also highlights how a failure to appreciate human dignity as being made by, and in the image and likeness of, God has resulted in a flawed understanding that sees “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”.
The Church sees this and it wants its followers to see this – and so the Vatican has spoken with Dignitas Infinita.
But what else in the Declaration is important? It offers a deeper and more authentic vision of human dignity than the reductivist version taken forward by a secular human rights agenda far from the original intent of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, whose 75th anniversary last year the declaration references a number of times.
The Dicastery understands human dignity as constituting four different types: ontological dignity, moral dignity, social dignity and existential dignity with the most important among being ontological dignity that belongs to the 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 reason, 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”, whereby a person loses moral dignity but, irrespective of the evil carried out, that individual 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 in everyone – such as discussions about the right to assisted suicide.
The Declaration understands that human dignity, even in its expanded version, is dependent on ontological dignity. We lose moral dignity by failing to act as we should based formed by God, we deserve existential and social dignity because we have ontological dignity – made in the image and likeness of God.
The Declaration says this – but it does so implicitly more than explicitly. So the risk is that it will be misrepresented by antagonists seeking to give the impression that all dignities are equal, or seeking to ignore the fundamental nature of our ontological dignity.
The latter part of the document addresses the grave violations of dignity that afflict the modern world, giving a depresingly long tally: 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, such as gender theory and sex change. And this is where the declaration’s good and noble intentions may result in some unintended consequences.
No doubt, given the culture wars that attack the fundamental values of the faith, certain of these will be given more attention than others. Poverty, war, human trafficking, sex abuse, violence against women – there are no culture wars about these. There may be disagreements but neither perpetrators of these violations, nor those who protect them, have any credibility nor a place in human rights discourse. No right-minded person is for these though they may differ on how to eliminate them.
But abortion, surrogacy, assisted suicide, gender theory and sex-change – these are the where the battle lines are drawn between Left and Right, between Progressive and Conservative. The abolition of the death sentence sits somewhere among them as well. Migration flips the chess pieces across the battle lines.
The Dicastery puts human dignity at the centre of these debates – placing ontological dignity against personal dignity and the proliferation of modern human rights. Like many secular interpretations of human rights, the rights against surrogacy, abortion, assisted suicide rights are absolutes, they are clear on what can and cannot be done. They are prohibited. Ontological dignity requires that one does not undertake a sex-change.
It is less clear what the Declaration requires in relation to gender theory except that as it is commonly understand – envisages a society without sexual differences – it is to be rejected.
Another grave violation referenced is the travail of migrants – bringing some confusion – more heat than light – as it offers no clear requirement of the Believer or of any human person beyond a general exhortation to treat them as you would any human being. In a brief passage, the Dicastery fails to recognise that migrants come in all shapes and sizes – but the inference is that a migrant is singularly poor, vulnerable, escaping hardship or fleeing persecution. This narrow view perpetuates the conflation with asylum seekers and refugees that clouds a clear discussion while ignoring that many migrants are just optimising employment opportunities. It does little to take the heat out of a polarised debate to avoid addressing context and difference.
The policy implications of prohibitions on absolutes are clear. Those rights are trumps (in rights’ theory speak). In response to social questions, the risk is that the Dicastery places contingent dignities on the same level as ontological dignity, despite context being relevant to the former, while irrelevant to the latter.
In forming social policy, caveats are frequently inserted into human rights treaties and conventions to accommodate context and contingencies. Social rights are contingent on the common good, resources available, social stability and a host of other competing issues that determine what is the appropriate response to protecting the existential and social rights of all people, including migrants.
The risk in Dignitas Infinita is that contingent dignities and rights derived from them get treated as the equal of the rights (and prohibitions) deriving from ontological dignity. Catholics who protest and reject policy and legislation that attack ontological dignity will be met with the tired accusation that they do not give equal energy to policy that is asserted as undermining contingent dignity. An example of this is the line trotted out against the pro-life lobby that “you only care about babies before they are born”.
Notwithstanding the dishonesty of this accusation, Dignitas Infinita may blur the distinction between violations that are clearcut and intrinsically wrong versus social policy positions that are contestable and dependent on context. The declaration urges all to be welcoming and respectful of the dignity of both neighbour and stranger, but it does not clearly differentiate between individual action and social policy or the role of the State.
That said, the declaration comes at a time when the Church should be righting various misperceptions that dominate modern discourse. It is regularly and deliberately omitted that committed believers are more generous than non-believers when it comes to charitable giving, and that Catholic and other faith-based agencies have been leading providers of health, education and other social services across the world in places where government is weak or absent.
When it comes to taking tangible action in defending human dignity, the Church has usually not been found wanting, while rarely getting any credit. Now, with Dignitas Infinita the Vatican has set out to address the theoretical domain and the expanded understanding of human dignity that has emerged since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and which underpins the secular human rights discourse that so often ends up going against the Church’s teachings and actually harming the most vulnerable and weak in society.
(Photo credit Cunaplus_M.Faba; iStock at Getty Images.)
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