"Infinite Dignity"

Diane Montagna Interviews Edward Feser on 'Dignitas infinita' | The imprecise and extreme rhetoric about human dignity in the new Declaration, and the radical new conclusion about the death penalty that the Declaration draws from this rhetoric, are . . .https://t.co/bdSppg7kDw pic.twitter.com/tyI9c2cqGS

— The Catholic Thing (@catholicthing) May 4, 2024

Obsequium Religiosum

At this Press Conference for the Vatican’s document on Human Dignity, coming prepared with a copy of the Code of Canon law, Tucho Fernández bizarrely starts quoting Can. 752 that religious submission of the intellect and will must be given to a doctrine which the Supreme Pontiff… pic.twitter.com/Nv52hackYV

— Catholic Sat (@CatholicSat) April 8, 2024

We Can Hardly Wait

Vatican’s Doctrinal Office Preparing ‘Very Important Document on Human Dignity,’ Cardinal Fernández Says | National Catholic Register https://t.co/Ibn3bmcCSf @NCRegister

— Edward Pentin (@EdwardPentin) January 13, 2024

MacIntyre on Human Dignity

Beginning at 1:30PM ET: philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre's #humaNDignity21 keynote, "Human Dignity: A Puzzling and Possibly Dangerous Idea?" Watch live: https://t.co/Bz29wC5BRc

— de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture (@ND_EthicsCenter) November 12, 2021

DSPT Annual Aquinas Lecture 2019

Is God legalistic?

CNA: Pope Francis: Death penalty a ‘legalistic’ value, not a Christian one

More on Human Dignity

Human Dignity?

Crisis: What Version of Human Dignity Should Catholics Defend? BY JAMES KALB

Dignitatis Humanae, the Vatican II declaration on religious liberty, appeals to what it says is a growing awareness of human dignity. More recent Vatican pronouncements, including the new language in [...]

John Finnis Responds to the CCC Revision

Public Discourse (via Ed Feser)

Benedict XVI on Human Rights

Sandro Magister: Glory To God, That There May Be Peace on Earth. A Never-Before-Published Text From Pope Benedict

Latins Need to Bring Back Divine Adoption

Rorate Caeli: Guest Op-Ed: Fighting for the soul of Europe

For Francis however, these considerations are no more than semantics. “All of us together: Muslims, Hindus, Catholics, Copts, Evangelical. But [we are] brothers, children of the same God” he said on Holy Thursday.[4] There were reports that “[a] number of the migrants whose feet were washed by the pope had tears streaming down their faces.”[5] One wonders if such an emotional moment has led any of the non-Catholics who have had their feet washed in the past three years to convert. Probably not. Even if it had, based on past statements by the pope, one wonders if this is something that he would even have approved of.[6]

Arguably, Catholics, Copts, and Evangelical Christians are brothers, children of the same God because of baptism. But the claim that we are all "children" in so far as we are created by the same God? While "children of God" has been used in that sense in the West, is the same true of the East? And even if it is the case that that usage has some legitimacy because of the past, is it a good idea to continue it, since the first meaning is more important, and one does not want to create the misunderstanding that Christianity is superfluous or foster indifferentism?

This way of speaking of all of humanity as being sons or children of God is practically equivalent to statements about human dignity, which must be correctly understood as referring to human nature not just in itself but in its being ordered to friendship with God. Otherwise the affirmation of human dignity can be problematic if it is intellectually separated from God and His will for us.

This year, Pope Francis chose to celebrate Our Lord’s Supper with the traditional washing of the feet at a temporary...

Posted by Vatican Radio - English Section on Friday, March 25, 2016

Pope Francis celebrated the Missa in coena Domini on Holy Thursday evening, at the CARA Welcome and Hospitality Centre...

Posted by Vatican Radio - English Section on Friday, March 25, 2016

Russell Shaw on the Need for Vatican II

Did We Really Need Vatican II? by Russell Shaw

Ecumenical council? Or general synod of the Latin churches, with participation of some of the Eastern churches in communion with Rome?

Pope St. John XXIII put it clearly in his opening address to the council on October 11, 1962. The “greatest concern” of Vatican II, he declared, was to guard Christian doctrine and teach it “more efficaciously.” That included the truth about “the whole of man, composed as he is of body and soul” and created by God not only for life on earth but for eternal life in heaven.

The council did its best, and that was pretty good. Central to its teaching was the Christocentric affirmation that it’s Christ who “fully reveals man to himself and makes his supreme calling clear” (Gaudium et Spes 22). The Church has been developing that exalted vision of human dignity ever since, most notably via the personalism of Pope St. John Paul II.

Was personalism and human dignity the answer?

Little?

What Can a Modern Philosopher Teach Us About Natural Law? by S. Adam Seagrave

The Human Dignity Canard

Aristotelian-Thomism in the Modern World by S. Adam Seagrave

We may, nevertheless, recognize a grain of truth in the moderns’ appreciation of the moral status of the individual human being. That appreciation coheres well with Christian moral theology but not with pre-modern moral and political philosophy. The moderns’ mistaken rejection of the unchanging objective contexts within which the individual exists led, in the thought of a select few, to a more profound understanding of human dignity than is available in any of the pre-moderns—including Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas. Locke’s nuanced and complex understanding of natural rights, in particular, provides an important philosophical elaboration on the Biblical account of humankind’s creation “in the image and likeness” of God. In tomorrow's article, I will examine this concept in greater depth.

Do we need a concept of dignity in order to have a full account of human flourishing and man's ultimate end? Or to explain the basis of charity or justice? I don't think so.

From December of last year: In Defense of Human Dignity – on the 500th Anniversary of the Preaching of the Dominican Friars in Hispaniola

Related: Dominicans in the Americas
Join us in celebrating our 500th anniversary!
(Update)

Happiness and Its Discontents by Fr. Michael Sherwin, OP

(Logos)

Zenit: Archbishop Nichols: What Does Human Dignity Really Mean?
London Prelate Considers History, Present Relevance of Key Concept

Archbishop Nichols observed that the idea of human dignity has a long history, going back to Cicero, Augustine and Aquinas. It was further developed by the Salamanca school of Dominicans in Spain at the time of the colonization of America. Subsequently, during the last century or so, it has been the topic of the social encyclicals of the Church.


Human dignity also has great importance outside the Church, he added. The UN Declaration of Human Rights, in Article 1 states: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”


He also noted that Article 1 (1) of the German Basic law, also drafted in 1948, states that “human dignity is inviolable. To respect it and protect it is the duty of all state power”.

Cicero, Augustine, and Aquinas? Aquinas distinguishes between various sorts of dignity. What of Cicero and Augustine?

Recently I came across a link to an article against x because it was counter to human dignity, but I can't remember the author or the website. It may have been illustrative of the liberal turn in Catholic moral theology.

Zenit: Pope Clarifies True Nature of Justice and Peace
Remembers Christians Paying for Fidelity With Their Lives

Justice," the Holy Father explained, "is not a mere human convention. When, in the name of supposed justice, the criteria of utility, profit and material possession come to dominate, the value and dignity of human beings can be trampled underfoot. Justice is a virtue which guides the human will, prompting us to give others what is due to them by reason of their existence and their actions. Likewise, peace is not the mere absence of war, or the result of man's actions to avoid conflict; it is, above all, a gift of God which must be implored with faith, and which has the way to its fulfillment in Jesus. True peace must be constructed day after day with compassion, solidarity, fraternity and collaboration on everyone's part.

A novel understanding of the virtue of justice? One that is harmony with contemporary theories of justice rooted in human dignity and rights. A more classical or Thomistic definition would not emphasize or include this, only the latter (action or the lack of action) as giving the ratio explaining why we make a return.

Robert P. Kraynak, Justice Without Foundations (via ML)

What is so strange about our age is that demands for respecting human rights and human dignity are increasing even as the foundations for those demands are disappearing. In particular, beliefs in man as a creature made in the image of God, or an animal with a rational soul, are being replaced by a scientific materialism that undermines what is noble and special about man, and by doctrines of relativism that deny the objective morality required to undergird human dignity. How do we account for the widening gap between metaphysics and morals today? How do we explain “justice without foundations” — a virtue that seems to exist like a table without legs, suspended in mid-air? What is holding up the central moral beliefs of our times?

Steven Long responds to Christopher Tollefsen regarding capital punishment

Thomistica.net: "Goods" Without Normative Order to the Good Life, Happiness, or God: The New Natural Law Theory and the Nostrum of Incommensurability