Moral beliefs linger on after the reasons for them have been forgotten. We need only look at our own Western secular culture for an example of this.
Morals without moorings
In our culture, those who are “the lowest”—those who are suffering the most—are those who we see as most deserving of attention and care. The victims of oppression have a sacredness in our age. The poor, colonized, and under-represented are our primary concern. We take this for granted, but as thinkers as different as Friedrich Nietzsche and Tom Holland have argued, such ideas betray our utter dependence on Christianity. In contrast to the Christian world and its descendants, the special moral status of the oppressed was never a given in Greek or Roman moral culture, much less Northern European paganism. The secular West holds moral beliefs while forgetting what the rationale for these beliefs is.
At first glance, this situation isn’t that troubling. Yes, our culture has forgotten why we hold moral precepts like “the last are first”, but despite this we still hold them. So, it’s not a big deal, right? Wrong. While beliefs survive for a while after the reasons for these beliefs are forgotten, it’s only for a while.
For example, Christian reasons for moral stances on sexuality and gender, once held in the secular West just as strongly as we hold respect for the downtrodden today, were also forgotten and those beliefs crumbled in the 20th century. The idea of the last as first did too, at least for a while. In fascism, it was rejected in favor of a neo-paganism, and in communism, it mutated. In the USSR, oppressed people were sacrificed to the “idea” of helping oppressed people. Millions of poor people were allowed to die under Stalin in order to build a better world for poor people, not as persons, but as a depersonalized, ideological category.
The trauma of such 20th-century horrors helps explain why Christian beliefs about the oppressed have outlived Christian beliefs about sexuality. The secular West saw the horrors of what happened in the 20th century, when these beliefs were surrendered. Thus, it recoils reflexively from any suggestion that these beliefs are questionable. Like cattle avoiding an electrified fence, it doesn’t know the reason why it stings—but it know that it stings, and so it shuns it.
This, however, only represents a stay of execution for the lingering Christian moral positions the secular West holds to be self-evident. Even now, those positions are crumbling all around us. The secular left once championed the working class, but now the working class, while economically oppressed, seems to be insufficiently environmentally aware. So, too, some of them seem to vote for the wrong guy. Because of this, working-class people, seen as sacred by the secular left in the last quarter of the 20th century, get thrown into a “basket of deplorables” by the same secular left in the first quarter of the 21st.
The point is that when the reasons for a moral belief are forgotten, it is only a short time before the beliefs themselves are discarded. Thus, we need to pay attention to the reasons for beliefs, as well as to the beliefs themselves. If the reasons for the beliefs are undermined, then the beliefs, like a tree whose roots have died, can only stay alive for a short while after.
While we should celebrate the things that Dignitas Infinita gets right, if it enshrines a “forgetting” of the reasons for those beliefs, then it is participating in the collapse of those beliefs.
Some undignified incoherence
Does Dignitas Infinita in fact enshrine a “forgetting” of the reasons for our beliefs?
Partially.
There is a voice within the text that erodes its foundations, a voice whose clearest expression is: “The Church’s Magisterium progressively developed an ever-greater understanding of the meaning of human dignity… until it arrived at the recognition that the dignity of every human being prevails beyond all circumstances” (16). This expresses an idea—far from unique within recent Vatican documents—that Catholicism is only recently waking up to many essential moral truths. It is a principle based on an unnuanced reading of the tradition of Catholic moral theology and soaked through with a “presentism” that can’t see beyond the categories of the modern West.
In Dignitas Infinita, the claim is especially incoherent, not least because the text also states that it is “fully recognizable even by reason alone” that “[e]very human person possesses an infinite dignity… which prevails in and beyond every circumstance” (1). Therefore, not only did Augustine, Aquinas (and the Magisterium which drew on them) fail to recognize a fundamental truth of Christian theology (that is, the intrinsic dignity of every human life) but it was a truth fully recognizable by reason alone.
Shame on them if this were true, but, of course, it’s not true. Why, then, does Dignitas Infinita claim that it is?
One charitable answer is that the authors of Dignitas Infinita expected the concept “dignitas” to reflect for Aquinas, say, what the concept “human dignity” reflects for us. If so, then when Aquinas speaks about people having different levels of dignity, he is flouting the universality of dignity “in every circumstance”. But, for Aquinas, the word “image” (as in the image of God) already reflects that universality and establishes the prevailing value of the human person “in every circumstance”. All human beings are always in the image of God, and so—translating it into a contemporary idiom—they have an absolute dignity prevailing “beyond all circumstances.”
Within the tradition, the imago Dei provides the foundation for what Dignitas Infinita erroneously claims to have been fully understood by the Magisterium only recently. Maybe, then, the authors of Dignitas Infinita aren’t very bright when it comes to the tradition and so, missing this, see the magisterial tradition as informed by Aquinas and Co. as rejecting the notion of intrinsic and absolute human value “beyond all circumstances”?
Alas, no. Dignitas Infinita offers a discussion of image and likeness, which shows that it is aware of what the language of “image of God” did within the tradition. In paragraph 22, for example, it cites Irenaeus and John of Damascus as holding that, while the image is universal and total (and so grants to all people an inherent dignity in all circumstances), our “likeness” to God can be increased and decreased.
Furthermore, the text helpfully offers new categories that are clearly mapped onto older ones. Ontological dignity (para. 7) does the work that “image” did in the tradition, moral dignity (para. 7) functions as “likeness” did, and social and existential dignity (para. 8) are parallel to how figures such as Aquinas used “dignitas”. Ignorance of the tradition, then, doesn’t explain it. While the term “dignity” has different referents in different contexts, “the meaning of human dignity” beyond all circumstances is ever present throughout. Why then, when they know it was there (at least from Irenaeus!), do they make this strange statement that it is an awareness that took a long time to develop?
Could it be that the authors are so committed to the principle of doctrinal “improvement” that they want to establish it in this magisterial text, even if it’s clearly wrong in this case and refuted by the text itself? Or perhaps they wanted to establish the principle to guard against modern, unnuanced ideas such that Church statements about slavery imply a rejection of the principle that all human beings have inalienable value because of the imago Dei? (They do not).
The damage in Dignitas Infinita
Whatever their reasons for this mistake the mistake does damage. It encourages the idea that we have moved from seeing through a glass darkly in the patristic and medieval period to the clarity of the modern age. I do not deny that doctrine can develop and greater clarity can be arrived at. But the universal dignity (as dignity functions in Dignitas Infinita) of human beings is a core tenet of Christian thought from the beginning. To suggest that the Church was wrong about this until quite recently (the UN Declaration on Human Rights is referred to far more than the Fathers and Doctors of the Church) is both erroneous and undermines the authority of Christian tradition as a source for moral reasoning. It seems based far more on modern post-Reformation narratives about progress than in a coherent reading of the tradition.
Dignitas Infinita thus reinforces the narrative that fuels “progressive” positions on abortion, gender, euthanasia, surrogacy and more, while seeking to oppose them. It waters the roots of the ideas it opposes, while hacking at the roots of the ideas that it seeks to support.
It may even do something similar to the logic of Catholic moral theology. Ontological dignity (para. 7) mirrors the dignity inherent in the imago Dei and can never be lost. But when Dignitas Infinita speaks about categories of dignity beyond this (paras. 17-21), it buries the lede a bit. Within the text, the human being acts in harmony with God’s will, a will that is revealed more clearly in Christ. Living in harmony with God’s will moves us toward dignity “in all its fullness” (para. 21). This is good and true.
But as I’m sure the authors of the text would agree, the fullness of likeness to God is not something that we possess by nature. Our likeness to God grows not through our own nature changing but by virtue of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our souls. The difference is significant.
The secular West divorces nature and supernature, separating a wholly banal material world from a God/heaven that may or may not exist. Too many modern Christian perspectives mirror this. For them, in the moral life we act in keeping with or against God’s will/Scripture. This is fine, but for most of Christian history, the moral life is far more than that. “Likeness” to God can be attained as many acts (receipt of the sacraments, prayer, faith, charity, radical peacefulness, martyrdom etc) are only possible through the real presence of God within us. In such acts we accept union with the Holy Spirit, who conforms us to Christ.
Thus, the martyrs are not simply acting in harmony with God, they’re becoming one (to an extent) with God. Without the real presence of the Holy Spirit, a presence accepted in their willing of the act, the act of martyrdom is not possible. This capacity for union with God, more than simply acting in harmony with God’s will (or human dignity in the document) is the “dynamite” in traditional Christian moral theology.
The missing lens
A look at one area of Dignitas Infinita shows what’s at stake here. Dying with Christ, binding our suffering to His, we can accept a union with Christ that is not ours by right but only by gift. In our dying with Christ, we can come to know Him in His suffering. This knowledge is relational; it comes from our accepting likeness to Christ in our dying. This acceptance is not simply a willed mirroring, it is an acceptance of the Holy Spirit who is the source of faith, hope, and love.
When writing of the imago Dei, Aquinas often uses the analogy of the image of a king imprinted on the iron of a coin (for example, ST I, q. 93, a. 1, ad 2, or ST I, q. 42, a. 6, ad 1) but far beyond this, in likeness to God the iron takes on the heat of the furnace and glows orange. The iron is not ontologically removed from the heat that it represents. On the contrary, it represents the heat only because of its ontological union with it. Those who die with Christ represent Him through His presence, thereby they become like the iron which shares in the properties of the furnace (heat, color etc.). They become one with Him in faith, hope, and love, a union that proceeds through their dying and beyond it. Because of this, choosing euthanasia isn’t simply a contravention of human dignity. It is a rejection of union with Christ. It is a conscious choice to die without the Via Delorosa; a choice to die while establishing ourselves as Lord.
It is, in fact, something we hear about only in a single sentence of Dignitas Infinita. It is sin.
This lens is missing from Dignitas Infinita. The tradition that the text casts a shadow upon offers a far more coherent rationale for the beliefs (about the immorality of abortion, euthanasia, etc.) that Dignitas Infinita correctly champions. Instead, it offers a good model of what is and isn’t in harmony with human dignity. In this, it seeks a partner in the UN Declaration on Human Rights, which it breathlessly celebrates. But in seeking to build partnership—a vain hope—it eschews the very rationale that makes the beliefs it supports truly beautiful and coherent.
Despite my pedantic and churlish gripes, there is much good in Dignitas Infinita, which is, overall, clear and helpful and it gets the answers right. It is unfortunate that the Declaration undermines the magisterial tradition and works within a limited, naturalistic, model of the moral life. In so doing, it supports the narratives and methods that lead to the very beliefs (about abortion, gender etc.) that it critiques. While enshrining these narratives and methods, it undermines the narratives and methods on which the Catholic positions depends.
Thus, while we can be thankful for what is does right, it may ultimately fuel the ongoing decline of the very beliefs that it champions. And these beliefs will not survive when the reasons for them have been forgotten.
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David Dean makes the case that while Dignitatis Infinitas defends the dignity of the human person, it ALSO claims that this insight is a product of an evolved consciousness not available to the Church from the beginning.
That is, the Church’s FOUNDATION is shifted from the Incarnation and Resurrection to the modern world’s U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. Why this substitution?
A SYMPATHETIC answer is that the Church is trying to effectively defend the truth about the human person by appealing to a familiar logic that a disbelieving and unhinged world might still be able to grasp. St. Paul’s milk before solid food. An UNSYMPATHETIC answer would be that “the revolution” has infiltrated the DDC…
Such that the original Deposit of Faith (!)—for which the Successors of the Apostles are the witnesses and guardians (!)—is now fully subordinate to the fluidities of screened theologians, and virtually to the synodal process, now meaning the “experts” and “study groups.” That is, to the same kind of managerial elites as have colonized the modern political world? All this, while bearing false witness against anyone not part of the vanguard—the “rigid and fixistic bigots, the backwardist gossips and the special cases!”
Today, the symbiosis of pygmies and their bureaucratic machinery…
So, the sympathetic/unsympathetic QUESTION is, YES, how to stand up for the “transcendent dignity of the human person” in a way that might actually be heard by an amnesiac civilization forgetful of even the basic vocabulary? A clue from the Chinese emperor, when asked what would be his first measure to redeem his country: “I will restore the meaning of words…”
Not, for example, the epiphanous words of a synodalist about “combined opposites”: his tutorial for a confused audience, that a thing can be both black and white at the same time—that today, regarding even good and evil (?), there is no longer any such reality as the non-demonstrable first principle of non-contradiction. https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/who-is-cardinal-hollerich
So, no more of this, nor the half-way house/half-blessing of “irregular couples,” this declaration itself now coupled mechanically with the dignity of “persons” in Dignitatis Infinitas.
This pontificate refuses to correct the sexual immorality that leads to “current and problematic situations in which the immense and inalienable dignity due to every human being is not sufficiently recognized.”
The court of Pontiff Francis self-certifies its corporate virtue with this triumphant mush:
“The Church’s Magisterium progressively developed an ever-greater understanding of the meaning of human dignity…until it arrived at the recognition that the dignity of every human being prevails beyond all circumstances.”
And no one could possibly fail to recognize that the date on which “the Church’s Magisterium…arrived at the recognition” on August 18, 2018, when it was rummaging in its shoe closet, and discovered the shoe box with the white paper revealing that “Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes….”
I suggest that the self-revelation about “today’s increasing awareness” of the “infinite dignity of every person” could easily be made perfect by adorning it with the universally acknowledged “Hitler exception.”
The only thing really left to do is to ask ourselves this question: Should the Church make the day of the election of Pontiff Francis a holy day of obligation?
Chris, I completely missed the implication, the allusion of that quote. I seriously gagged.
I wonder if Fernandez ever learned that the dignity of the person endures with the person even if he is judged by God to spend eternity in hell? And that dignity lives with eternal torment, torture, unspeakable anguish and pain for having assaulted his own or another’s dignity through sin, including sins of contraception and homosexual act. When will Fernandez’ progressive magisterium learn?
Speaking of Hitler, all Fernandez needs is to add the moustache and a rug, then remove his glasses.
Yes…these dudes are simply inadmissible.
I suspect a pedophile priest may have forfeited any measure of ‘dignity’ he may have had as a child of God. Inalienable? Not if the Beloved One is Judge. In all conditions and circumstances? Again … not so much. This whole thing smells of a deChardin style elevation of man to becoming God…. just like the Serpent whispered.
Well said Chris. This papacy has run after the liberal elites, trying to get the liberal elites to say “hey, you’re not too bad”. And in doing so they’ve left behind the Catholic flock who have been leaderless and disolved on their watch. The liberal elites aren’t becoming Catholics, and the catholics the church leadership have left seeking a pat of the head from the liberal elites have been torn apart by wolves.
The older Catholic thinking that Deane references does better in this area. While the image of God can never be completely annihilated, even in Hitler. And so so tiny sliver of dignity and rights remain, likeness to God can be reduced to almost nothing. The theology of Hell actually depends on this. If there is no sliver of image of God then there is no eternal life. But only having the silver, eternal life is agony because its marked more by absence of God (good, joy happiness) and so is excruciating. The Vatican wants to use “dignity” like the declation of human rights rather than Catholic tradition. And it’s a much less subtle, much less intelligent framework.
Yes. There is an eternal feature to Man created in God’s image, an inherent dignity that nevertheless may be diminished by a life of sin. Even demons and the damned retain that initial noble feature of being created with intellect, the determining faculty that likens them to God. Although as Deane cites the great Saint Irenaeus, and Saint John Damascene that nobility is diminished by sin [the catchall fault of omission Deane grasps in Dignitatis Infinita] though never deleted. Dignitatis Infinita blankets a conflated idea of dignity over the sinful, with apparent intent to justify blessing of and accommodation of homosexual behavior. Lucifer by his preeminence among angels and men in respect to intelligence retains a form of converse recognition of dignity as the Prince of this world.
This truth of infinite dignity is brighter to the human mind as regards the martyr saints, the Apostles, who remain exalted in Christ through eternity retaining their glorious titles. As Mary retains the highest honor of dignity among God’s creatures as Theotokos.
Fr. M:
You certainly hit the nail on the head: DI is their cloak of dignity for the sodomy they sanctify. The new sanctimony.
What foolishness. Infinite dignity? In all circumstances? Ridiculous. Infinity is an idea that has conceptual value but has absolutely no reality in our physical universe. Saying that God is infinite sounds good but He is beyond even the idea of infinity. Perhaps to say that humans have a fundamental dignity or even some degree of inalienable dignity is acceptable but infinite? Ridiculous. It is a preposterous notion in our world of extraordinary evil perpetrated by these very humans. Our Vatican declaring this nonsense should be an embarrassment to all Catholics.
Sal, the question of the infinite dignity of the human person is a concept that has ancient origins, which could be traced back to Heraclitus, who speaks of the inexhaustible richness of the human soul. It is a perspective undoubtedly open to pantheism, but not necessarily, because the same biblical concept of “likeness to God” suggests that there is some infinity in our soul. Certainly not the absolute divine infinity, but an intentional infinity, in the sense that our intellect, thinking of God, somehow becomes infinite, naturally in an intentional sense and not ontological, otherwise we would truly end up in pantheism, as happened to Hegel and generally happens in Gnosticism.
The vision proposed by the Declaration is not ridiculous at all. It may suggest pantheism, which is however clearly refuted by the context, where it is repeatedly emphasized that the human spirit is created by God.
Regarding this question of the infinity of human dignity, one could mention the famous position of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who conceived it as created by God, but in the sense that God had given man the power to infinitize his nature, an idea found in the Kabbalah and which favors the practice of magic. It could be added that the anthropological assumption, which underlies certain post-humanist or trans-humanist perspectives, or an artificial intelligence capable of guiding human destiny, are in line with this esoteric Kabbalistic tradition of Florentine humanism of the 15th century.
Funny thing, paolo, my Chat GPT-4 friend said virtually the same words as you. Amazing, isn’t it!
Why not tell us what you really think?
could you give me the exact ChatGPT version?
Let me be clear on what you are saying: When your own Chat GPT-4 is not enough, you’ll ask to import MINE?
I recommend you get yourself a go/push button. Then call me.
I do not understand why documents from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith are not released in beta format for private and public comment, and then suitably revised. These documents are unlikely ever to please everyone, but being stuck with defective products is an obsolete methodology.
In DI, Fernandez says:
“This dignity of every human being can be understood as “infinite” (dignitas infinita), as Pope St. John Paul II affirmed in a meeting for people living with various limitations or disabilities.[1]
In FACT, Pope St. John Paul II nowhere in his address (published in English by EWTN) does he use the word ‘INFINITE.’ I don’t have the original address in the original language to verify, but prima facie evidence suggests Fernandez should correct his errors.
In fact, Pope St. John Paul II said: “God has shown us in an insurmountable way in Jesus Christ how much he loves each man and how immense is the dignity that he has conferred on him through him.”
NB: The dignity of man is immense (not infinite), and through Jesus Christ.
http://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/angelus-osnabruck-16-november-1980-25515
Touché
The article complains that the document makes only one mention of a certain point which could have been said, and about which the author thinks more should have been said.
At the same time, the author admits that despite his gripes there is much that is good in the document, and much that it gets right. This admission is contained in a solitary sentence, and the author does not develop it further.
To be fair to the document, and write a more balanced for his readers, I think he should have dwelt further on these extremely positive points.
The fact that he doesn’t, but simply passes over them, makes me wonder. After all, he is criticising the focument for what it doesn’t say, even though the document is very clear that it is not comprehensive, and does not pretend to cover everything.
A reader could have the impression, including from some of the comments of my fellow commentators, that some people who had expected it to be a bad document are disappointed that it is in fact a good one. So good, indeed, that it could even have been written or Benedict. I too was rather surprised by that, but it was a very good surprise. Why can’t we be happy and rejoice in such a good thing, give credit where it is due, and give thanks to God as well.
If the Lord has given us such a good surprise, I don’t think He really wants us to respond to it with fault-finding, far less with churlishness and gripes. Rejoice and be glad: give thanks. We don’t need to wallow in criticism all the time.
If we care aboit the unitu of the Church, and if we really do not want the Vhurch to become divided – something which we are surely called to pray for, because it is the Lord’s own prayer in John 17 – then this document is an encouraging sign. There is no need to reject it. To the contrary …
Bill,
Precisely because we care about Church unity is why we discern problems in this ‘teaching’. Scripture tells us that he who is faithful in small things is faithful in the large. This cardinal and this pope have a history of less-than-stellar actions in defense of, and sometimes in stunningly hurtful opposition to historical, traditional, scriptural, and prior magisterial teachings of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.
As you say, we do not want a divided church. But Jesus warned us that brother would be against brother and daughter against mother because of Him. This CWR commentariat is primarily engaged in spiritual and logical warfare FOR the UNITY of the church. It is not something we wish or relish, but war is war, battle is battle, and the Church is HIS. As we are also HIS, we do His bidding.
May God be with you in your journey.
Yours truly also says thank you. And, yet, some do hear the trickling of water coming through a narrow gash in the near-infinite hull of the Titanic… What does it mean to airbrush human dignity as “infinite”?
In our synodal “walking together” is the cadence-caller sometimes channeling Nietzsche—who discovered that God is really a projection of our ideals, and therefore that mankind, himself, is God? And, therefore, Nietzsche’s transvaluation of values, if now only some of the time and only in concrete situations? Why is it that gender-theory “ideology” is rebuked, but not James Martin for flashing his publicly-staged/spontaneous (?) blessing not on infinite (!) “persons,” but on same-sex “couples”?
Thank you Bill for your very sensible remarks given in a truly Catholic sprit. The propagandists for the anti Human ideologies being forced upon us are not confused in any way by the Holy Father’s teaching. They know that it places the Church in complete opposition to them and they unmistakably say so. Thanks again Bill.
You’re missing the point of the article JJR and Bill. While Vatican documents constantly try to appeal to those that hate the truth, they’re forgetting the truth itself. And instead of convincing those who want abortion, sex change surgeries and the like, they’re making sure Catholics forget the reasons why abortion, sex change surgery etc is wrong in the first place! The numbers don’t lie! We’re not convincing the UN people and in our efforts to convince them we’re losing more and more Catholics. So the article is right. Stop forgetting the logic that Catholic positions are based on! If you forget them then Catholics (Biden?) will be more and more likely to support abortion, trans ideology etc etc.
Bill, why do you think the article intends to be a commentary on the whole of DI? I think it’s clear that this piece tries to highlight one element that has recieved too little attention. Most people say it’s great that DI condemns abortion, sex change surgery, ethanasia etc. I don’t think this piece needed to be one more piece saying “yes, it’s good that Fernandez thinks murdering babies is bad”. It’s not an overall commentary, it’s making the point that if we keep saying that the tradition gets CORE aspects of Christianity wrong then we’re killing Catholicism. So along with all the pieces saying “horray for Fernandez” this piece saying, “ok, but any chance, Tucho, that you could pay stop chopping down the tree while talking about the fruit” is MUCH needed. Would you have every single person just sumarise the text? Or every single canalyst flag the good points while Fernandez and co forgot continued to undermine the Church?
Bill, if you are still with us and have not already done so go over to the Dignitas Infinitas :Strengths and Ambiguities thread. Father Ryan does a decent job of analysis and the latest post by Robert Fastiggi gives a good rebuttal to “ambiguity number 7”.The rest of the commentators remain confused>
Aquinas on the fixity of the damned:
‘ It must also be known that the condition of the damned will be the exact contrary to that of the blessed. Theirs is the state of eternal punishment, which has a fourfold evil condition.
The bodies of the damned will not be brilliant. “Their countenances shall be as burnt faces” – Isaiah 13:8.
Likewise they shall be passible, because while never expiring they are burning eternally in hell fire and suffering it yet forever unconsumed. “Their worm shall not die and their fire shall not be quenched” – Isaiah 66:24.
They will be weighed down and the soul of the damned will be as it were chained there: “To bind their kings will fetters and their nobles with manacles of iron” – Psalm 149:8.
They will in a certain manner be fleshy both in body and in soul. “The beasts have rotted in their dung” – Joel 1:17-18. ‘
The Catechetical Instructions (Sinag-Tala, Manila 1939 -Nihil/Imprim)
This document in no way, shape, or form, serves to enhance any previous document by The Magisterium regarding our inherent Dignity as human persons, beloved sons and daughters from the moment of conception.
In fact, it fails to mention, in regards to sexual abuse, that any sexual act that demeans the inherent Dignity of the human person as a beloved son or daughter, even if it is consensual, by virtue of the fact that such acts are physically, psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually harmful, are in essence, devoid of Love, and are a form of sexual abuse.
To Bill, to explain the reasons for criticizing the document DI.
Observers of the Pontiff Francis (and Cardinal Fernandez, and other prominent spokesmen appointed by the Pontiff Francis, e.g. Cardinal Hollerich), recognize that the Pontiff Francis (etc) have labored energetically in public discourse to promote the acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle as something to be inherently valued, and to do so have worked to subvert the divine guidance given in the 6th Commandment, from which “the Church’s Magisterium” has, that is until the reign of the Pontiff Francis, heretofore always taught that the act of sodomy is, like the act of fornication and the act of adultery, a mortal sin, a grave offense against the will of God.
Observers all recognize that, for instance, Cardinal Hollerich has done his appointed service to the Pontiff Francis by declaring that, in words to this effect: “new scientific knowledge about human nature now makes clear that the New Testament teaching against homosexual acts is wrong, and that the Church’s teaching upholding the commands against sodomy (and by extension of this manner of rationalization, the same teaching against fornication and adultery) is now known to be wrong.”
And the same observers know that Cardinal Fernández did his appointed duty in service to the Pontiff Francis by his prompt publication of FS, in December 2023, to declare that “the Church’s new Magisterium” (meaning the 2023 magistrates Pontiff- Francis-and-Cardinal-Fernandez) have contradicted all prior manifestations of “the Church’s Magisterium,” including “the Magisterium immediately prior to Francis-Fernandez,” that being “the Magisterium of Pontiff-Francis-and-Cardinal-Ladaria,” who a few short years ago (was it 2021?) contradicted “the Francis-Fernandez-Magisterium,” and published a declaration stating that “the Church cannot bless homosexual relationships,” because such are inherently sinful.
Thus we can discern that, “the progression in understanding” about “the infinite dignity of the human person…prevail[ing] beyond all circumstances” is a statement made to serve the purpose of blessing those people living out the sexual actions of what “Pontiff-Francis-and-Fernandez-and-Hollerich deem to be the “scientifically known circumstances” of (somehow) existing with the purpose to engage in sodomy.
And as coda: Robert Royale of “The Catholic Thing” has just published his summary of “the new DI declaration” emanating from the new “Pontiff-Francis-Fernandez-Magisterium,” summing it up this way:
“DI is a mixture of good and new things. What’s good in DI is not new, and what’s new in DI is not good.”
So DI, like FS (and other manifestations from the Pontiff Francis), can be treated as encouraging moral wrongs, and should be opposed.
Opposed…because they try to oppose “the mind of Christ.”
Well said Chris. This papacy has run after the liberal elites, trying to get the liberal elites to say “hey, you’re not too bad”. And in doing so they’ve left behind the Catholic flock who have been leaderless and disolved on their watch. The liberal elites aren’t becoming Catholics, and the catholics the church leadership have left seeking a pat of the head from the liberal elites have been torn apart by wolves.
To all CWR readers:
The essay by Robert Royale on the problems with DI, at The Catholic Thing:
https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2024/04/09/a-dignity-still-to-be-determined/
Sorry Paulo. I don’t buy it one bit. Infinite dignity? Grossly overstated unreal baloney. Please, come back to reality. Reality is wonderful. God created it all. Reality is wonderful and beautiful. Infinity is a term with meaning but no reality. In mathematics, think of a point, or a line, or a circle. Meaning and use but no reality. But beyond that, on what planet does a human have infinite dignity? In our regard for human beings, we don’t want to become old Lutherans, but we also don’t want to become ridiculous.
St. JPII’s 1988 apostolic letter “Mulieris Dignitatem” speaks specifically and beautifully about the dignity of women. It also touches many other aspects of human anthropology. God’s divine love for man is described as spousally masculine and feminine. God cares for us as a mother who never forgets her children, and as a father who provides good things. All men (women included) receive the gift of Jesus, so all are Christ’s bride, with the Church being the collective bride (body) of Christ.
The imbued charism of love, truth, and sacred doctrine within the words of “Mulieris Dignitatem’ will arm the reader with an arsenal with which to counter future attacks against the dignity of the faith, no matter whence (within or without) those attacks arise.
The people of God of the Church will be affirmed in knowing that Our Bridegroom Christ is not asleep or dead in some tomb but is alive and present without loss of any infinite dignity in His One Holy Church. No matter how much slush has been, is, or will be thrown on it.
Happy continuing Easter Season!
I also want to be clear, Meiron. I use ChatGPT 3.5 solely and exclusively to translate texts that the CWR moderator has access to, namely from my personal website. Artificial intelligence is an oxymoron. It is not possible to compare human intelligence, which is about connecting ideas, with the simplistic intelligence of encyclopedias like Wikipedia or ChatGPT, which are collections of disparate associations. Thank you for your attention and have a good Sunday.
Hot under the collar?
If your 3.5 GPT plagiarized the 4, paolo, there would be more going on in the AI than oxymoron and disparate; and meiron caught the teamwork in flagrante delicto.
Parolo.
The Blessed Virgin, by becoming the Mother of God, received a kind of infinite dignity because God is infinite; this dignity therefore is such a reality that a better one is not possible, just as nothing can be better than God.
St Thomas Aquinas
As several others have said, ultimately, this pronouncement is supposed to grease the skids to make legitimate homosexual and other sexual deviancies. It is typical of the current grifters in charge. Some are being fooled. Others are pretending this is more than the baloney it is.