Human Dignity and the Church's Tradition

Dignitas Infinita Against the Traditionalists

Athanasius Schneider, O.R.C is the Auxiliary Bishop of Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan in Central Asia. Bishop Schneider is a leading figure in traditionalist Catholic circles, and he has been a frequent critic of Pope Francis, for example challenging Amoris Laetitia’s teaching on communion for the divorced and remarried, Francis’s revision of the Catechism’s teaching on capital punishment, and the prohibition of most celebrations of the Traditional Latin Mass with Traditionis Custodes.

Last year, Schneider authored and published Credo: Compendium of the Catholic Faith, a catechism that claims to offer clarity on Catholic doctrine in confusing times but that, in reality, obfuscates the developments in Catholic doctrine from Vatican II onward on issues like interreligious dialogue and human dignity. For example, here is what Credo says about the latter:

224. Is the dignity of the human person rooted in his creation in God’s image and likeness?

This was true for Adam, but with original sin the human person lost this resemblance and dignity in the eyes of God. He recovers this dignity through baptism, and keeps it as long as he does not sin mortally.

225. Then human dignity is not the same in all persons?

No. The human person loses his dignity in proportion to his free choice of error or evil; e.g., the dignity of Adolph Hitler and St. Francis of Assisi are not the same.

Of course, Schneider’s teaching here contradicts that found in the Second Vatican Council’s Dignitatis Humanae, which insists that the human person’s dignity (which is the foundation for religious freedom) is grounded “in his very nature” and belongs to “all men [sic]” (2). This teaching has been further elaborated by all the post-conciliar popes and most recently expounded in the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s declaration Dignitas Infinita.

Although Schneider’s catechism departs from the teaching of Vatican II and the post-conciliar popes, it is strikingly similar to that of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who rejected the teachings of the council and founded the Society of St. Pius X in response. In his short book Religious Liberty Questioned, Lefebvre has this to say about dignity:

It can be said that [the] ontological dignity of man consists mainly in a transcendental orientation to God and is thus a “divine call” which is the foundation in man of the duty to search for the True God and the true religion to which, once found, man must adhere.

Finally, since all men have the same nature, which cannot be had without being fully human, it must be said that the ontological dignity of the human person is the same in everyone and can never be lost.

However, it is important to remember that original sin profoundly wounded human nature in its faculties, most especially in its capacity to know God. The natural dignity of man has suffered, as a consequence, a universal degradation that not even the grace of baptism can heal completely in Christians.

Moreover, all races and all people, already provided with different natural gifts by the Creator, have not been wounded exactly the same way by original sin: some are affected more deeply by the blinding of their intelligence, others by the weakness of their will, others by a hatred rooted in a dissolute concupiscence, others, finally, by fear rooted in a disordered irascibility, etc. The result is radical inequalities among different people in the concrete natural dignity of persons, inequalities which require unequal treatment from both divine and human authority.

Lefebvre goes on to distinguish between this ontological dignity and what he calls operative dignity:

The operative dignity of man is the result of the exercise of his faculties, essentially intelligence and will.

In other words, to the perfection of nature is added to man a supplementary perfection which will depend on his actions. Faculties are by nature oriented towards their actions, and the perfection of these actions will be to attain their end: the end of the intelligence is truth, the end of the will is goodness.

Hence the operative dignity of man will consist in adhering in his actions to truth and goodness, thus ultimately acquiring the virtues which make good actions “prompt, easy, and pleasurable,” as Aristotle said, not to mention infused supernatural virtues. It follows that if man fails to be good or if he adheres to error or evil he loses his dignity, the good action being replaced by an act that even if not necessarily a formal sin is nonetheless objectively evil. Virtue will rapidly be replaced by bad habits—that is to say, by vice.

Lefebvre’s account of dignity is therefore somewhat more nuanced than Schneider’s, recognizing, for example, that the human person’s ontological dignity is wounded even if not entirely lost, and distinguishing between ontological and operative dignity. Nevertheless, both are agreed that the dignity that determines our deserved “treatment from both divine and human authority,” in Lefebvre’s words, is not innate but rather depends on our moral virtue. Both would seemingly disagree, too, with Dignitatis Humanae’s teaching that to live out our calling to adhere to truth and goodness “in a manner proper to the dignity of the human person and his social nature" (3), we must do in freedom, without external coercion.

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In earlier articles, I’ve explored how Dignitas Infinita (DI), the recent Vatican declaration, proposes dignity as a principle that could unite Catholics divided over cultural and political differences, and likewise offers a defense of human dignity against secular skeptics. I also think that DI needs to be read as an apologetic against traditionalists like Lefebvre and Schneider, a defense and explication of the Church’s teaching on human dignity (Mike Lewis has made a similar point at Where Peter Is).

As I noted when the pending publication of DI was first announced, although figures like Lefebvre and Schneider have been explicit in their rejection of the post-Vatican II Catholic understanding of dignity, more frequently traditionalists have focused their criticisms on practical teachings that have themselves developed in light of the Church’s deepened understanding of human dignity, especially those on religious freedom, democratic participation, and capital punishment. At the time, I expressed the hope that the forthcoming document would respond to these challenges by offering a clear definition of the Church’s doctrine on human dignity and an account of how that doctrine has authentically developed. DI does indeed offer such a response, in some respects a robust one, although in other ways it falls short.

Interestingly, like Lefebvre, DI makes a distinction between the human person’s ontological dignity and their moral dignity (which is quite similar to what Lefebvre means by operative dignity). Ontological dignity, which is the basis for the rights of persons, “belongs to the person as such simply because he or she exists and is willed, created, and loved by God” and “is indelible and remains valid beyond any circumstances in which the person may find themselves” (7). Moral dignity, on the other hand, refers to “how people exercise their freedom” (7); we can diminish, and even lose, our moral dignity when we freely act against the law of love, although this does not destroy our ontological dignity. DI goes on to distinguish two further senses of dignity, social and existential, which I discuss here.

Contrary to Lefebvre and Schneider, however, DI teaches that our ontological dignity has not been diminished or destroyed by sin. The declaration links our ontological dignity to humankind’s creation in God’s image and likeness:

The first conviction [of the Church regarding the equal dignity of all people], drawn from Revelation, holds that the dignity of the human person comes from the love of the Creator, who has imprinted the indelible features of his image on every person (cf. Gen. 1:26). The Creator calls each person to know him, to love him, and to live in a covenantal relationship with him, while calling the person also to live in fraternity, justice, and peace with all others. (18)

As this passage suggests, the image of God placed upon us, and thus our ontological dignity, cannot be lost. The connection DI draws between our creation in the image of God, and therefore our ontological dignity, and our calling to know, love, and serve God is also theologically significant. DI goes on to say that “as one who is created in the image of God, the human person never loses his or her dignity and never ceases to be called to embrace the good freely” (22, emphasis in original). Lefebvre himself recognizes that this calling is fundamental to our nature and is never lost; he argues, however, that it is our capacity to heed the calling that is diminished by sin, therefore diminishing our (ontological) dignity. But DI, particularly in paragraphs 18 and 22, argues on the contrary that it is our calling to know and love God itself, which can never be taken away or diminished, that is the foundation of our ontological dignity. Indeed, this closely parallels Dignitatis Humanae’s teaching that it is precisely because we are called to know the truth about God that we should be free from external coercion in pursuing that call, even when we fall short in pursuing that calling (2).

This doesn’t mean that DI ignores the profound impact of sin on the human person or on society. The document draws on Church Fathers like the second-century bishop St. Irenaeus of Lyon and the eighth-century theologian St. John Damascene in distinguishing between the image of God, the indelible calling given to us by God, and our likeness to God, which grows as we faithfully respond to that calling. It goes on to say that “sin can wound and obscure human dignity,” since it diminishes our capacity to manifest our likeness to God. On the other hand, “sin can never cancel the fact that the human being is created in the image and likeness of God” (22). Our calling to know and love God, the basis of our dignity and rights, can never be destroyed or diminished, even if our capacity to fulfill that calling has been wounded by sin and can only be restored through grace. Of course, DI also notes the ways that sin leads to the diminishment of what it calls social dignity through the creation of undignified living conditions (8) and through violations of human dignity like human trafficking or euthanasia (34).

“The Creation of Adam,” Mosaic, Monreale Cathedral, Sicily, 12th-13th Century

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In addition to insisting that ontological dignity is rooted in our calling to know and love God rather than in our (now wounded) capacity to respond to that call, DI also responds to the traditionalist position by pointing to the seeds of recent magisterial teaching on dignity in the Church’s Tradition. The document begins by referring to the ways the biblical witness reflects a concern for human dignity. In addition to Genesis’s account of humankind’s creation in the image and likeness of God, DI demonstrates how in the Old Testament, God’s identity is defined by a concern for the poor, the weak, and the oppressed, most notably in the Exodus story in which God hears the cry of the oppressed Israelites, the Deuteronomic Code with its protection of the orphan, the widow, and the stranger, and in the words of the prophets (11).

This same concern is shown in Jesus’ ministry to the vulnerable and marginalized, in which he “affirms the value and dignity of all who bear the image of God, regardless of their social status and external circumstances” (12). God’s confirmation of the dignity of all isn’t just reflected in Jesus’ actions, but in the Incarnation itself: “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” (19). Likewise, Jesus’ Resurrection reveals the fullness of our dignity, reflected in our destiny of eternal communion with God (20).

DI goes on to show how the biblical witness of human dignity was given theoretical elaboration by later theologians. I’ve already mentioned it’s account of the Church Fathers’ treatment of our creation in the image and likeness of God. DI devotes particular attention to the development of the notion of a person as a “subsistent individual of a rational nature” by the Roman Christian philosopher Boethius and later by the medieval theologian St. Thomas Aquinas. It notes that this definition of personhood captures the distinctive integration of autonomy, knowing, willing, and the capacity to act, while also recognizing that our nature as persons is not something we have created, but rather a gift we receive (9, 13). It adds that this understanding of the person provides the foundation for human dignity, although it carefully avoids claiming that Christian thinkers in earlier centuries made this link between personhood and dignity, as the latter is understood in the declaration (a point to which I’ll return).

DI recognizes that the understanding of dignity it presents is a relatively recent development in the Catholic Church’s history, nurtured in dialogue with modern philosophical and legal currents, including the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (13, 14). Nevertheless, it also shows how the building blocks for this doctrine were already present in the Church’s Tradition, or one might say that the Church’s recent teaching is more the elaboration and clarification of teachings already part of the Tradition—indeed, core elements of the Tradition—rather than the imposition of an alien and incompatible teaching. Similarly, developments in the Church’s teaching on religious freedom, democracy, and capital punishment, for example, need to be interpreted in light of this ongoing elaboration of the Church’s understanding of dignity.

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I think DI’s attempt to demonstrate how the Church’s understanding of dignity has developed over time is helpful, but I don’t think it’s sufficient, both considered in itself and as an apologetic against traditionalists. I think a more adequate account of the development of this doctrine would explore why those theologians who helped establish the building blocks of the Church’s current teaching on dignity, such as St. Thomas Aquinas, nevertheless did not share DI’s understanding of human dignity. Relatedly, such an account would need to admit that for many centuries the Church not only tolerated, but in some cases even endorsed, some of the practices that DI puts forward as grave violations of human dignity, such as slavery, the inequality of women, and capital punishment, and likewise provide an explanation for how the Church could have gotten these issues wrong. In an earlier article I promised to elaborate on these criticisms, but that will have to wait until later.

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Of Interest…

• Because I’ve been occupied with other things, I missed the boat on one of the more sensational stories in the Catholic world over the past couple of months: the creation by the organization Catholic Answers of an artificial intelligence apologist named “Fr. Justin,” who, after public outcry, was “laicized” and renamed merely “Justin.” In many ways, Justin is very similar to Magisterium AI, which I’ve written about here and here, in that it is meant to provide accurate summaries of Catholic teaching. One significant difference is that Justin was designed to interact with users from a first-person perspective; in other words, it communicates with users as if it was a person and speaks in terms of “I” and “me.” Magisterium AI, on the other hand, produces more objective-sounding reports and seems to deliberately avoid self-referential language (which I discovered in the second article cited above). Also, users can only interact with Justin by voice, which is a bit odd. Delaney Coyne, writing at America, has an excellent summary of the whole controversy. I don’t have much to add to the conversation at this point, although if I have time, I may experiment with Justin like I did with Magisterium AI and write up the results.

• Speaking of AI, back in February, AC Wimmer of the Catholic News Agency interviewed the German theologian Thomas Marschler about what Thomas Aquinas might have thought about artificial intelligence. It’s an interesting read.

• Last week, I wrote about the recent Department of Justice Inspector General report that concluded that a controversial FBI memo that critics had claimed demonstrated anti-Catholic bias was not written with malicious intent and did not in fact reflect such bias, even though its analysis did not live up to the professional standards of the DOJ and the FBI. I also explored what the controversy over the memo says about the state of the Catholic Church in the U.S., including the willingness of many Catholic leaders to accept at face value politically-motivated (and ultimately false) claims of bias or persecution against Catholics. At Commonweal, Paul Moses has offered some similar thoughts on the memo, although giving a more detailed account of the criminal investigation involving a violent extremist affiliated with the Society of St. Pius X that led to the production of the memo.

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Coming Soon…

• At the end of this week coming up, the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith is set to release a new set of guidelines for assessing the credibility of apparitions, miracles, and other supernatural events. The last set of guidelines were published in 1978. Despite the important role they play in popular religiosity, apparitions and miracles aren’t a common subject of theological reflection. When the guidelines are published, I’d like to give them a read and offer some thoughts on them in the newsletter. In the meantime, Fr. James Martin, S.J. has provided some reflections on Marian apparitions, drawing on his own experiences.

• Also, I’m excited to announce the first Window Light interview in several months: In a few days, if all goes according to plan, I’ll be interviewing theologian Karen Guth, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts and the author of The Ethics of Tainted Legacies: Human Flourishing after Traumatic Pasts (Cambridge, 2022), which explores how we deal with complicated cases in which individuals or institutions that have contributed to human flourishing are nevertheless exposed as having committed or contributed to great evils. Her work on this issue arose out of the impact the scandal revolving around the influential Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder, who had sexually abused several women, had on her own development as a theologian, but she explores other cases such as the erection and demolition of historical monuments and the complicity of institutions of higher education in American slavery. In the interview, we’ll be discussing this book and how her work could be relevant for Catholics. The interview will be published here at Window Light as soon as we conducted the interview and I can complete the transcript!