✨ If you enjoy reading the following essay, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to Recovering Catholic for the cost of one hardcover book per year ($30). Paid subscribers support independent thinking and writing, making it possible for authors like me to share our work with you ad-free. ✨
The Dicastery Formerly Known as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (a.k.a. the DDF) typically releases a number of documents every year, each one aimed either at answering specific questions of doctrinal importance or at clarifying the pastoral implications of Catholic doctrine. Often when one sees pronouncements of “Vatican statements” on hot-button cultural issues from the media, the DDF is the party in question. Though the Pope always signs off on official DDF documents and thereby endorses anything said in them, strictly speaking it is the theologians who sit on the dicastery whose interpretations and opinions are expressed—for better or worse.
You may have noticed that the DDF published one such document last week: Dignitas infinita (“On Human Dignity”). While some prelates and commentators are celebrating Dignitas as “the most comprehensive study” of Catholic teaching on human dignity “that could be issued at this time,” and some more traditional Catholics consider its apparent rejection of gender ideology and so-called “gender affirming care” to be a refreshing moment of clarity from a pope that can at times speak obscurely on important moral issues, others have argued that the document is rife with lingering questions and ambiguities—loose threads that should have been tied up, but weren’t, despite the fact that, according to Víctor Manuel Cardinal Fernández, prefect of the DDF, the roughly 11,500-word Dignitas took five years to write.
In defense of the DDF, the opportunity (and therefore, the challenge) inherent in penning an official summary of the Catholic doctrine on human dignity must have loomed large. Dignity is a charged and multivalent concept in Western culture today—think of the assisted suicide lobbyists advocating for “death with dignity”—a concept which is thrown around by so many parties in so many contexts that the word itself is at risk of losing its meaning altogether. The Church rightly saw an evangelical opportunity to proclaim the Gospel in light of this central cultural question of human dignity, to live its mission to become the heart of the world, as was so beautifully put in Gaudium et spes:
The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ. Indeed, nothing genuinely human fails to raise an echo in their hearts (no. 1).
Most people today would agree that upholding human dignity is one of the most important issues of our time. But there is massive disagreement, if not deep confusion, about what human dignity actually is, from where it is derived, and how we, as a society, are called to defend it.
Unfortunately, I think Dignitas demonstrates that this confusion exists within the Church as well as outside of it.
To cite the clearest example, take a look at this excerpt from Dignitas on the significance of Jesus Christ and how it is that he reveals human dignity:
… the dignity of the human person was revealed in its fullness when the Father sent his Son, who assumed human existence to the full: “In the mystery of the Incarnation, the Son of God confirmed the dignity of the body and soul which constitute the human being.” By uniting himself with every human being through his Incarnation, Jesus Christ confirmed that each person possesses an immeasurable dignity simply by belonging to the human community; moreover, he affirmed that this dignity can never be lost.
For now, I want to pause and point out that ☝️ these two sentences are the DDF’s paraphrase of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council in its Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes. To be honest, I think it’s a sloppy paraphrase. And from what follows, one gets the obvious impression that the writers were basically just giving lip service to Gaudium et spes anyway so they could move on to another point:
By proclaiming that the Kingdom of God belongs to the poor, the humble, the despised, and those who suffer in body and spirit; by healing all sorts of illnesses and infirmities, even the most dramatic ones, such as leprosy; by affirming that whatever is done to these individuals is also done to him because he is present in them: in all these ways, Jesus brought the great novelty of recognizing the dignity of every person, especially those who were considered “unworthy.” This new principle in human history—which emphasizes that individuals are even more “worthy” of our respect and love when they are weak, scorned, or suffering, even to the point of losing the human “figure”—has changed the face of the world. It has given life to institutions that take care of 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.
Look. None of the above is incorrect. But is it a “comprehensive summary” of the Church’s doctrine on human dignity as revealed in the person of Christ? Decidedly not. This is a moralistic interpretation of the life of Jesus: “Jesus treated X Y and Z in this way, therefore we need to treat X Y and Z in the same way.” WWJD. Jesus-as-moral-and-social-exemplar. That may be a nice sentiment—it may even be true—but it nibbles at the edges of all that the Church has to say about the Incarnation and what it means for the life and dignity of the human person.
Consider, on the other hand, the text of Gaudium et spes 22, which is in truth the clearest and strongest articulation of the Church’s teaching on human dignity. It is worth quoting at some length:
… Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear. …
He Who is "the image of the invisible God" (Col. 1:15), is Himself the perfect man. To the sons of Adam He restores the divine likeness which had been disfigured from the first sin onward. Since human nature as He assumed it was not annulled, by that very fact it has been raised up to a divine dignity in our respect too. For by His incarnation the Son of God has united Himself in some fashion with every man. He worked with human hands, He thought with a human mind, acted by human choice and loved with a human heart. Born of the Virgin Mary, He has truly been made one of us, like us in all things except sin.
As an innocent lamb He merited for us life by the free shedding of His own blood. In Him God reconciled us to Himself and among ourselves; from bondage to the devil and sin He delivered us, so that each one of us can say with the Apostle: The Son of God "loved me and gave Himself up for me" (Gal. 2:20). By suffering for us He not only provided us with an example for our imitation, He blazed a trail, and if we follow it, life and death are made holy and take on a new meaning.
…
All this holds true not only for Christians, but for all men of good will in whose hearts grace works in an unseen way. For, since Christ died for all men, and since the ultimate vocation of man is in fact one, and divine, we ought to believe that the Holy Spirit in a manner known only to God offers to every man the possibility of being associated with this paschal mystery.
Such is the mystery of man, and it is a great one, as seen by believers in the light of Christian revelation. Through Christ and in Christ, the riddles of sorrow and death grow meaningful. Apart from His Gospel, they overwhelm us. Christ has risen, destroying death by His death; He has lavished life upon us so that, as sons in the Son, we can cry out in the Spirit; Abba, Father.
This speaks for itself in its beauty, depth, and boldness. But note how this text grounds human dignity, not in Jesus’ preaching and teaching, not even in his public ministry, but in the Cross. Dignitas makes virtually no mention of the Passion, the Cross, or the paschal mystery as the foundation for our understanding of the human person, and therefore we never get the doctrine’s great crescendo: that human dignity is most clearly glimpsed when we look upon the Crucified Jesus and see with our own eyes a God who considered human beings worthy of rescue at the cost of his own Son, who now invites all men and women into the inner dynamic of salvation, calling them to live not just a “good life” but a cruciform life—that is, a life marked by the willingness to suffer and die for others’ sake. That is what the Church means by human dignity; all the rest is derivative.
The DDF, in my opinion, failed badly in its articulation of the Church’s rich tradition on human dignity because it failed to articulate the identity and mission of Jesus Christ, particularly as it’s expressed here at Vatican II, treating him instead primarily as a social actor and moral example. Unfortunately, because the document does not properly ground the teaching on dignity in the Christian mystery, the mystery of man is also lost, and instead what we get is a litany of social and political conclusions written by committee, a series of disjointed assertions about disjointed issues, a well-intentioned but clumsy attempt to unify them.
I hate to be this person right now and come off like a total theology snob, but there are moments when theological snobbery is warranted. If you are going to claim that your document is the most comprehensive study on the Church’s teaching on this issue, then might I suggest that it should actually be?
The claims that Dignitas makes about the Incarnation and the person of Christ—the central mystery of the Christian faith—are true only in the most superficial and bland sense. They do not speak to the deepest longings of the human heart, but only to its activist tendencies. And so we get another forgettable document out of the Vatican that stirred up all the predictable reactions from all the predictable parties. And we move right along.
I think that your point about the moral interpretation not being sufficient is an important point to make. And the passage you cite from GE 22 is so wonderful. However, to push back a little on your criticism of DI, I thought that paragraphs 20 and 21 grounded the reflection in the Paschal Mystery and Theosis. I'm curious what your assessment of these two paragraphs is and how you think they are inadequate?
Here they are for reference:
A Vocation to the Fullness of Dignity
20. The third conviction concerns the ultimate destiny of human beings. After the Creation and the Incarnation, Christ’s Resurrection reveals a further aspect of human dignity. Indeed, “the dignity of man rests above all on the fact that he is called to communion with God,”[32] destined to last forever. Thus, “the dignity of this life is linked not only to its beginning, to the fact that it comes from God, but also to its final end, to its destiny of fellowship with God in knowledge and love of him. In the light of this truth, Saint Irenaeus qualifies and completes his praise of man: ‘the glory of God’ is indeed, ‘man, living man,’ but ‘the life of man consists in the vision of God.’”[33]
21. Consequently, the Church believes and affirms that all human beings—created in the image and likeness of God and recreated[34] in the Son, who became man, was crucified, and rose again—are called to grow under the action of the Holy Spirit to reflect the glory of the Father in that same image and to share in eternal life (cf. Jn. 10:15-16, 17:22-24; 2 Cor. 3:18; Eph. 1:3-14). Indeed, “Revelation […] shows forth the dignity of the human person in all its fullness.”[35]