“Every human person possesses an infinite dignity, inalienably grounded in his or her very being, which prevails in and beyond every circumstance, state, or situation the person may encounter.”¹

With its very first statement, the new declaration by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith already seems to spell trouble, and many—particularly traditionalists online—were as quick as they were eager to spell it out for the rest of us. The problem is not just with the first line, of course, as the problem can be spotted there in the title of the document: what in the world does the Vatican mean when it tosses about the term “infinite dignity”?

Some, such as philosopher Ed Feser on Twitter, made the remark that ascribing ‘infinite dignity’ to man marks an “eclipse of God”, as “the Catholic faith has always taught, only a single human person possesses that—Christ, and only because he is God, not because he is human.” He’s right, of course, so long as we charitably brush over his error in referring to this dignity according to a human personage of Christ rather than His nature. We all have temporary lapses in diction.

Feser goes further in subsequent tweets on the subject, and of particular note is one in which he cites Allan Bloom and Jacques Barzun on the historical use of the term ‘human dignity’. It inverts man’s relation to God, they insist, as “modern people … have gotten progressively more drunk on the idea of their own dignity.” Again, neither he nor they are wrong.

Others on the platform have gone quite a bit further in their rhetoric than the good professor. “Satanic,” “heretical.” Et cetera. Feser specifically is cited here for a couple of reasons: one, owing to his notoriety as a Catholic philosopher and one that I’ve not only read but also respect a great deal, and two, because he recognizes the distinctions between a document issued by the Diacastery and a statement issued ex cathedra by a Pope.

With criticisms of the document such as these, one might then expect the document to be something of a humanist ode that packages up the Faith into a smaller and more convenient box to set aside than modern life has already managed. One would expect, as such, that the document bends toward the rainbow-colored arc of history that the liberal wing insists is the future: the progressive cults of homosexuality and transgender among them. And yet, the document does precisely the opposite, and in no uncertain or unclear terms.

Where the first quarter of the document is dedicated to defining its terms, the majority of it extrapolates that out into repeating most of the Church’s traditional teachings on sexual behavior and the sanctity of life with regard to abortion, surrogacy and euthanasia.

On ‘Infinite Dignity’

First, we must address what, exactly, the document means with ‘infinite dignity’. “This brings us to recognize,” the document reads, a “fourfold distinction”: that for every human person, there is an ontological dignity, a moral dignity, a social dignity, and an existential dignity that applies to him. The most important of these is the ontological sort, which will be expounded on in a moment. Moral dignity refers to “how people exercise their freedom,” or the application of one’s will with relation to one’s conscience, and how, “when exercising their freedom against the law of love revealed by the Gospel,” can debase themselves in “inestimably profound acts of evil against others.”²

The use of the term “freedom” here would perhaps better be replaced with “will,” as the simplest understanding of Catholic doctrines regarding the Fall, sin, grace, and operations of the soul all reveal that one’s freedom is perfected—fully realized, fulfilled, and in fact, operable—only when it is operating in accord with God’s laws and His graces, rather than against them. One does have the ‘freedom’, colloquially speaking, to rebel against God, but this is similar to saying how a man has the freedom, at least initially, to shackle himself to a master who will abuse and mistreat him. To say a man has the freedom to not be free is true, but any further word on his freedom is moot, as such a man loses his freedom in rejecting it. Here the document again reveals the frustrating vaguities of present day magisterial methodology. More will be said on that particular issue later.

With regard to moral dignity, however, the document is pretty clear that a man can, of himself alone, exhaust it. This is true, too, of his social and existential dignities. His social dignity refers to his living conditions, dealing with things varying from extreme poverty to calumnious attacks on his reputation, while his existential dignity is determined by the states of his interior and internal dispositions, such as mental and physical health. Each of these, like one’s moral dignity, can be debased, attacked and exhausted and, therefore, cannot be what the authors are referring to with ‘infinite dignity.’

That then leaves the first and foremost distinction: a man’s ontological dignity. Dignitas Infinita defines this as the dignity

that belongs to the person as such simply because he or she exists and is willed, created, and loved by God. Ontological dignity is indelible and remains valid beyond any circumstances in which the person may find themselves.³

It continues:

As an “individual substance,” the person possesses ontological dignity (that is, at the metaphysical level of being itself). Having received existence from God, humans are subjects who “subsist”—that is, they exercise their existence autonomously. […] Even if a person is unable to exercise these capabilities [of nurturing, developing and enhancing his abilities] due to various limitations or conditions, nevertheless the person always subsists as an “individual substance” with a complete and inalienable dignity. This applies, for instance, to an unborn child, an unconscious person, or an older person in distress.⁴

In other words, a man’s ontological dignity is defined according to his status as a unique, rational human being created in the image of God and personally adopted by Him. This, the authors of the document claim, is man’s ‘infinite dignity’, as nothing, no deed he does in life, no conditions he suffers through it, and no illnesses that assuage him, can exhaust the dignity associated with having been made in God’s image and born within His witness.

Critical Notes

While the humble writer of this piece is hardly a theologian or philosopher, some points of note on the clarity of the document are worth mentioning. Specifically, that this entire exercise of defining a man’s ‘dignity’, particular his so-called ontological dignity, seems like a convoluted exercise that obscures more than it clarifies. As pointed out above by Feser, defining a coherent dignity of man is a backwards mode of thinking for the devoted Catholic. Christians are supposed to put God at the center of all worship, and as worship should lay at the heart of Christian action, all of man’s designs should be made with God as their starting point. A dignity owed to man by other men may, then, be possible to find, but only in a sort of tangential manner: man owes his fellow man dignity according to their commonality as adopted children of God, made in His image.

Still, however, the sense that man holds a value beyond the grasp of his own understanding, which the document refers to as his ‘ontological dignity’, seems right, if poorly worded. A man’s place in the providential scope of history, the witness of his being and his life by God, the uniqueness of his identity and the intimate relationship he is allowed to have with Our Lord, all of these known only by the revealed dogmas and Scripture of the Faith, coincide with what Dignitas Infinita refers to as this “indelible dignity.”

While each man’s uniqueness is important here, it is not his uniqueness alone that determines this feature, but that he is both unique and given custody of his free will. Any given particular tree or stone too bears a certain uniqueness, or haecceity, to borrow as term from the Subtle Doctor, but this uniqueness doesn’t imply that it is of some special attention or regard in the same manner as Our Lord demonstrated that man is to Him. He did not come to save creation, per se, so much as He came to save us, and not just as a collective species, like some far off leader who hasn’t the memory to recall the (hopefully) billions of names in the Book of Life. He came to save each one of us, by name, by face, as a father who would never neglect his own son—adopted as we may be. It was He, after all, who inscribed every name to be found in that very Book of Life. That is because, out of all creation, man alone was made with the freedom of will.

There seem to be better ways of phrasing this idea than obscuring it behind a term like “ontological dignity.” Indeed, the Scholastics of old all seemed to have little difficulty discussing man as-such without resorting to a word as slippery as “dignity.” A man’s dignity carries with it baggage that makes it easier to inflate than a child’s balloon, which turns quickly to a self-defeating encumbrance.

Appropriateness of the Document’s Timing

It’s relevant to refer to last year’s Feducia Supplicans for comparison. Although the substance of these two documents is different—this an attempt to define and communicate an anthropology of dignity to the modern world, while Feducia presented the terms and conditions under which blessings can and should be administered—the broader political implications are of similar species.

Feducia was unleashed upon a Church still embroiled in a crisis of asserting its real position on homosexuality, and still reeling from crises of homosexual actors at work in the priesthood. Meanwhile, although Feducia claims that “couples in irregular situations and couples of the same sex” should not receive marital blessings, it nonetheless presents the “possibility of blessings” for such couples so long as these couples “do not claim a legitimation of their own status.”⁵ While it’s true that sinners can (and in some cases, obviously should) receive certain blessings in order to aid them in their eventual repentance, the wording of Feducia leaves quite a bit to be desired. And this is no small aspect of that document, either. Indeed, rather than a clarification of the Church’s position on matrimony, Feducia’s language goes further than mere charitable assumptions regarding the status of two men who approach a priest for a mutual blessing. Its moderate supporters wanted to point out how it wasn’t advocating for the blessing of same sex couples, even if it uses such terminology in the body of its own text, but rather only those persons within the couples. But its more vocal and radical supporters, as well as its critics, both asked the same question, albeit only the radicals wore smiles when they did so: “what’s the difference?”

Feducia Supplicans, then, came a time when the Church needed a united front against homosexuality and, not unlike the fruit of its liturgical revolution in the sixties, it offered instead a muddied and ignorable document that resulted in less transparency and more headaches. And to make matters worse, it offered this on practical matters that affect not just how the Church’s position on homosexuality is perceived, but on how prelates within it conduct affairs. Not to blow things out of proportion here, but the salvation of souls really is at stake, and the soft stance taken on homosexual behavior—as well as the apparent lack of any correction given to priests who simply ignore Church instruction on the subject—is causing immense harm to the body of the faithful.

In some sense, Dignitas Infinita can be interpreted in a similar light, though with several obvious and crucial differences. Dignitas, for instance, reiterates the Church’s positions on abortion, surrogacy, gender ideology, sex changes and other self-mutilatory surgeries, and it does so with little to no room for confusion.

On the topic of infancy and human life at conception, Paragraph 47 denounces abortion, upholding and reaffirming the position the Church has maintained since antiquity. Paragraphs 48 through 50 attack surrogacy, again reaffirming the Church’s traditional teaching and phrasing it within the language of the document, proclaiming “the child has the right to have a fully human (and not artificially induced) origin,” and that “acknowledging the dignity of the human person also entails recognizing … the dignity of the conjugal union and of human procreation.”⁶ The importance of the conjugal union and procreation reestablishes the entity of man within the providential scope of salvation history, reiterating the uniqueness man, as a free agent, holds within the sight of God. And this reaffirmation comes before the more typical arguments used against surrogacy, which appears in the following paragraph: that “the woman is detached from the child growing in her and becomes a mere means subservient to the arbitrary gain or desire of others.”⁷

Another point in the document’s favor is its explicit condemnation of gender theory:

Desiring a personal self-determination, as gender theory prescribes, apart from this fundamental truth that human life is a gift, amounts to a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God, entering into competition with the true God of love revealed to us in the Gospel.⁸

Stating the obvious is indeed the purpose of documents such as these. In this case, the obvious point being made is again one that refers back to God’s providential interest in history and creation. Here, man is made specifically in a given body with a given sex according to a particular form. These specific aspects prohibit entertaining transgender ideology as anything other than an error; man cannot reshape the parameters of his sex, and the document is quite clear on explaining that. Not only can he not do so, he should not try to do so, as entertaining such a belief not only marks a rebellion against the intent with which he was made, but also undermines the providential purposes for which he was made, as it “eliminates the anthropological basis of the family.”⁹ This logic is explained in more detail in paragraph 60, which condemns sex change surgeries.

On the topic of death, end of life care, and physical disability, Dignitas Infinita dedicates paragraphs 51 through 54 on the subjects. Euthanasia and assisted suicide are condemned with special attention given to the folly of invoking the term dignity as an excuse to end someone’s life, including one’s own.

It must be strongly reiterated that suffering does not cause the sick to lose their dignity, which is intrinsically and inalienably their own. Instead, suffering can become an opportunity to strengthen the bonds of mutual belonging and gain greater awareness of the precious value of each person to the whole human family.¹⁰

Positioning dignity with reference to God does establish a means of (mostly) succinctly arguing that suffering the purgation of the fallen world is itself a gift made and given to each individual man, tailored especially with his ultimate salvation in mind. However, the focus on dignity strays on this topic even as it emphasizes the connection between the gift of life and God’s love. In paragraph 52, we read that “even in its sorrowful state, human life carries a dignity that must always be upheld,” and that “there are no circumstances under which human life would cease from being dignified and could, as a result, be put to an end.”¹¹ This is effectively the same argument used by the document to condemn the use of the death penalty in paragraph 34, a topic that Pope Francis made of special interest earlier in his pontificate with the revisions to the Catechism.

Without spending too much time on the subject, the document’s presentation of a ‘fourfold distinction of dignity’ earlier on indicate that only a man’s ‘ontological’ dignity is inexhaustible. By man’s actions, his moral dignity, to say nothing of his social or existential dignity, can certainly be exhausted, often by some form of self-inflicted debasement against the character of his soul or by active blasphemy and rebellion against God. What preserves this ontological aspect in spite of these possible abuses is only the relationship he has with God and, presumably, by the nature and manner of his creation. However, this does not seem relevant in the carrying out of justice against hardened criminals that have committed grave crimes against society.

One may argue that the state of the justice system across most of the west prohibits the effective carrying out of proper sentences in cases of extreme matters, and as a result, these nations should suspend use of the death penalty. This is not what Dignitas Infinita argues, nor is it what the Holy See has argued over the course of this pontificate (except, I think, in passing once or twice). The argument here is wholly against the death penalty even as used in abstract, which does mark a clear deviation from traditional Church teaching on the matter.

It seems possible to argue too that in order to respect a man’s ontological dignity, and perhaps even his moral dignity, the use of the death penalty might even be necessary. The sentence may (and not infrequently, does) lead him to repent of his crimes and even of his sins, spur reconciliation with his Creator and lead him eventually to the pearly gates. The sentence itself also indicates a society’s clear definition on abhorrent behavior, which upholds the social order and social dignity of those who live within it. So here, Dignitas Infinita’s own definitions of dignity are used against the claim of the faith’s incompatibility with justly carried out death sentences.

Conclusion

One wonders why a term as slippery as ‘dignity’ was used in order to reaffirm the Church’s teachings on the current errors that plague man. Surely, there could have been a far more precise and more philosophically and theologically rigorous or pleasing way of going about doing so. Chances are, there were, but provided we’re speaking as charitably as possible about our prelates, someone decided not to go that route.

On the other hand, the purpose of the magisterium is to speak first to the Church in order to illuminate, reiterate, and otherwise communicate doctrine and dogma to the Faithful. But its second audience remains the world at large. Sometimes this communication to the world is to offer an assessment of secular matters that gravely threaten the souls of men, usually in the form of condemnation. Humane Vitae is perhaps the best illustration of this that remains in living memory. Other times it is to attempt to bridge the gap between the Church’s anthropology, understood both metaphysically and theologically, and that of the modern secular world’s materialism, in order that some beyond the gates might find that the Church’s teaching is, if not at the very least true, then certainly a respectable and logically coherent position to hold.

With this in mind, the motivation behind framing the Church’s teaching on man and his relationship with both God and other men within the terminology of ‘dignity’ makes a little more sense. The contemporary audience outside of the faithful (and at times, even including its ranks) ranges from academics to politicians to scientists to journalists. Making assertions about individual substances or rights owed to obligations is like speaking another language to most secular and liberal moderns. Policy makers, trend setters, and the social elite who determine society’s trajectory do not frame an individual’s place in the world according to such a praxis; moreover, communicating an anthropology framed in terms like providence or salvation history is often met with similar looks of bewilderment.

This is particularly visible now, four years after the international events of 2020 and about a decade deep into the popularization and normalization of transgender ideology; a term like ‘dignity’ is vastly preferable as an on ramp to sorting out the secular nonsense than attempting to do so under co-opted terms like ‘identity’. Any effort of the Church to come out and assert real definitions on the topic of identity, without any preamble, will be met with “well, you guys are religious. You can’t possibly know what it’s like. It’s a matter of identity, after all.” Prefacing such a talk in terms of human dignity, however, excludes such a retort.

Will these interpretations placate those, such as Feser, who find the document so deeply erroneous? No, probably not. Feser is looking for a level of intellectual rigor and consistency out of documents promulgated by the Vatican that, for the last decade, hasn’t seemed possible. And on this, he’d of course be right to be express concern, if not outright disgust. There isn’t a good reason why documents that are commissioned by and then produced by what are, by administration, the highest committees of the Catholic faith, and which take years to see to completion, can reach public eyes with sloppy verbiage or imprecise wording. There are understandable reasons why this would happen, such as the possible incompetence of those drawing the documents up, or perhaps maliciousness at work in the offices of Rome, but merely plausible reasons do not make morally good justifications.

Critics are correct, too, in pointing out that imprecision leaves cracks in arguments that can always be leveraged by enemies later, if not immediately. However, some optimism is merited given the direction certain prelates have moved on the subject of the sexual revolution. This document does put some stronger guardrails in place that prevent certain groups from easily going forward with their antics. But on the question of whether someone will end up barreling right through those guardrails and forcing the Church to make much harder statements on the subject, particularly due to the document’s inconsistency, the answer seems obvious: it’s only a matter of time.

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1Dignitas Infinita, para 1.

27.

3Ibid.

49.

5Feducia Supplicans, 31.

6DI, 49.

750.

857.

959.

1051.

1152.

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