The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s new document Dignitas infinita, published last Monday, builds on the papal magisterium of the last decade. Some quotes follow:

Human dignity

Human dignity “belongs to the person 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 “Dignity is not something granted to the person by others based on their gifts or qualities, such that it could be withdrawn… it is prior to any recognition, and it cannot be lost.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 humans possess this same intrinsic dignity, regardless of whether or not they can express it.”

List of violations

The list of “some grave violations of human dignity” includes “all offences against life itself, such as murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, and wilful suicide” but also “all violations of the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, physical and mental torture, undue psychological pressures”. It includes “all offences against human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children, degrading working conditions where individuals are treated as mere tools for profit rather than free and responsible persons”… poverty, “one of the greatest injustices in the contemporary world” together with the death penalty and human trafficking.

Abortion and gender theory

“Among all the crimes which can be committed against life, procured abortion has characteristics making it particularly serious and deplorable… the defence of unborn life is closely linked to the defence of each and every other human right”. The Declaration rejects surrogacy, by means of which “the child becomes a mere object”. It criticises gender theory as “extremely dangerous since it cancels differences in its claim to make everyone equal” and “intends to deny the greatest possible difference that exists between living beings: sexual difference”.

(Compiled by Fr Joe Borg)