A. Human Dignity
1. What does dignity mean?
Dignity denotes greatness, intrinsic excellence, and supreme moral worth. It is a superior quality or inherent goodness by virtue of which a person or reality commands profound esteem and reverence.
2. What is human dignity founded upon?
Man possesses an inalienable dignity rooted above all in spiritual realities (which explains why a materialistic worldview lacks ultimate bedrock grounds for human rights):
- We are endowed with a spiritual and immortal soul, created in the image and likeness of God, possessing intellect and free will.
- God Himself became man: the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity assumed human nature in the Incarnation.
- God loves every human person with an infinite, individual, personal love.
- Sanctifying grace elevates man to the sublime dignity of an adopted child of God. For this reason, mortal sin inflicts the most devastating damage upon the person and his dignity, for it forfeits the divine gift of grace and living filiation.
3. What are the consequences of this dignity for the human soul?
- First and foremost, we must shun sin; and if we fall, we must promptly seek sacramental Confession to recover grace and with it our dignity as children of God. In general, it demands reverencing the spiritual life of ourselves and others:
- Respecting human intelligence by diligently seeking, speaking, and defending the truth.
- Living genuine charity toward our neighbor, banishing malice, mockery, slander, and harsh criticism; loving the legitimate freedom of others, and rejecting fanatical imposition.
- Fostering personal spiritual life and helping others grow spiritually, through prayer, apostolate, and catechesis.
4. What are the consequences of this dignity for the human body?
- The human body shares intimately in the dignity of the person and must be treated with corresponding reverence and care:
- Respecting the property and rights of others; actively relieving people and nations in distress (solidarity). Protecting human life from conception to natural demise, rejecting abortion and euthanasia, and shunning destructive narcotics.
- Adorning and clothing the body with modesty and dignity through noble, respectful fashion.
- Honoring one's own body and that of others, maintaining sobriety in food and drink, and living sexuality uprightly.
5. What constitutes a dignified and upright exercise of sexuality?
Human dignity in the sexual sphere demands essential principles:
- The human body must never be reduced to an instrument of casual consumption or barter (with one partner today, another tomorrow). Bodily self-giving is upright only within the permanent, faithful, publicly vowed commitment of marriage.
- The generative faculties of the human person have a sublime mission: cooperating with God in bringing new human beings into the world. Utilizing sexuality exclusively to chase transient pleasures severely degrades its dignity.
6. Can you give an everyday example?
When unmarried young people engage in premature sexual gratification, each often ends up viewing the other with subtle disrespect:
- When a girl easily compromises her modesty, boys often think: she is being foolish.
- Yet girls often think the same of boys, recognizing that a few provocative gestures easily manipulate them into kissing: they are being foolish.
Why are they seen as foolish? Because each has allowed oneself to be instrumentalized merely for temporary physical pleasure.
B. Dignity and Instrumentalization
1. What does it mean to “use” something?
To use or utilize something means to employ it as an instrument to achieve a particular end. We use a hammer to drive a nail, or a guard dog to protect a property.
2. Who is capable of utilizing things?
In the strict sense, only intelligent and free beings can utilize things, because only they can deliberately assign an end or purpose. An animal grazes on grass, but it was the Creator who ordained that instinct; the animal does not consciously formulate that end.
3. Does God “use” human beings?
The Creator established an ultimate end that brings man eternal fulfillment—communion with Him in heaven—yet He endowed us with intellect and free will so that we might freely and consciously direct ourselves toward that beatitude. This personal freedom is a foundational pillar of human dignity.
4. How is dignity lost through instrumentalization?
Dignity is violated in two primary ways:
- By imposing an extrinsic end upon a person, violating his status as a free moral subject. In this case, the whole human being is reduced to a tool.
- By utilizing a human capacity in a manner far beneath the noble, God-given dignity for which it was created. Here, a human faculty is degraded through misuse.
5. What are examples of imposing extrinsic ends upon human persons?
The clearest examples involve the unjust deprivation of life, which no person desires to lose:
- In slavery, the enslaved person is stripped of inalienable rights and subjugated completely to the whims and profit of a master.
- Under totalitarian regimes (such as Nazism), millions were exterminated under the horrific pretext of ideological purification or racial superiority.
- In abortion, living human embryos and fetuses are destroyed to serve convenience, research, or societal goals entirely alien to the unborn child.
- In terrorism, innocent human lives are murdered to advance political or ideological objectives they never consented to.
6. What are examples of dignity lost through the degradation of human faculties?
These are often harder to detect because they are chosen voluntarily:
- Using the intelligence to defraud, manipulate, or harm others is a direct debasement of the intellect.
- In sexuality: reducing it solely to physical gratification drastically degrades the sacred dignity of sexuality, spurning the sublime vocation to generate new human life in love.
- Using one's time and energy almost exclusively for trivial entertainment atrophies the operative dignity of man, who ceases to perform noble, enduring works of good.
7. Do these insights align with the Ten Commandments?
It is completely natural that they align, because God desires our highest flourishing and genuine dignity. Every assault upon human dignity offends the Creator. In all sins there is a wound inflicted upon the dignity of others or of oneself, or an attempt to affront the supreme majesty of God.