The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith recently published a Declaration, 'Dignitas infinita' on human dignity. It has the looseness of terminology that committee documents often have, and there is room, I think, to say that some of the things in it could be more precisely and carefully stated, but allowing for this, I actually like it. It is a much more robust document than one has come to expect from the bishops. From the first paragraph of the Introduction:
1. (Dignitas infinita) Every human person possesses an infinite dignity, inalienably grounded in his or her very being, which prevails in and beyond every circumstance, state, or situation the person may ever encounter. This principle, which is fully recognizable even by reason alone, underlies the primacy of the human person and the protection of human rights. In the light of Revelation, the Church resolutely reiterates and confirms the ontological dignity of the human person, created in the image and likeness of God and redeemed in Jesus Christ. From this truth, the Church draws the reasons for her commitment to the weak and those less endowed with power, always insisting on “the primacy of the human person and the defense of his or her dignity beyond every circumstance.”'Infinite' seems to be the adjective (not wrong, but perhaps potentially misleading) that was chosen to capture the idea mentioned in the quotation from Pope Francis at the end of the above paragraph: that the dignity in question is "beyond every circumstance", i.e,. not limited by circumstances. Thus the point is that human dignity is infinite (i.e., not limited) relative to any circumstances in which the human person may exist. Personally, I would prefer the phrase used by the Second Vatican Council, "sublime dignity", but 'infinite', properly understood, works fine.
The Declaration distinguishes four different things that might be called 'human dignity':
(1) Ontological dignity: "belongs to the person as such simply because he or she exists and is willed, created, and loved by God" (7). It is this that is most properly characterized as "infinite dignity".
(2) Moral dignity: "how people exercise their freedom" (7), particularly with respect to conscience or the Gospel.
(3) Social dignity: "the quality of a person’s living conditions" (8).
(4) Existential dignity: while this is not precisely defined, the essential idea seems to be that it is the quality of a person's life in its actual conditions.
I'm not sure how adequate this division is, and the accounts of social dignity and existential dignity in particular do not seem entirely adequate, but I'm glad to see this attempt to distinguish different meanings. People in general, and bishops not excluded, have had a tendency to blur all of these things.
I think one of the fundamental problems that the Declaration wrestles with is that 'dignity' of the sort that the Dicastery is attempting to clarify has a paradoxical structure, one derived from the paradox of humanity. The paradox of humanity is that all of us are born human and all of us have to learn how to be human, that it is the nature of the human being to be a potential human being becoming an actual human being. This curious character of being both already human and becoming human is something we have by being very changeable living things. It is clear that we cannot already be human and not yet human in the same way and sense; but it is also clear that it is a very grave mistake to split them apart. The humanity we always have had is the formally necessary and integral framework for the humanity we must acquire; the humanity we acquire is the finally necessary completion of the humanity we always have had. As with humanity, so with human dignity. We are born with human dignity and we must live so as to acquire it; having human dignity always, we have to become the sort of people who live in a way appropriate to it. The Declaration is not particularly elegant about how it handles this paradoxical structure, but sometimes it makes a reasonable attempt, e.g., in sections 20-22. I am very glad to see it acknowledged, more or less explicitly; one of the great temptations when talking about human dignity is to flatten it out, and recognizing that human dignity is both natural to us and must be completed in us is a good preventative against doing so.
I think the primary weakness of the Declaration is in its discussion of violations of human dignity; I am not convinced that it has a unified account of what it means to violate or harm ontological dignity, and I think it needs to have one to do what it was intending to do in its discussion of practical matters. Nonetheless, the brief discussions of violations of human dignity are perfectly fine on their own, even if it's unclear how they relate to each other as 'violations of human dignity'.
