Dignitas Infinita. The Latin for “Infinite Dignity”. The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s new Declaration on Human Dignity arrives at a time in history where the idea of human rights is starting to eat itself.
One of the core messages of the Declaration is that the Church sees that human rights are being co-opted by forces antagonistic to a full understanding of human dignity and in particular to what it describes as “ontological dignity”.
The Dicastery highlights how a truncated understanding of human dignity – often reframed as personal dignity – is being used to deny human rights to those at the periphery and margins of society and life. It also highlights how a failure to appreciate human dignity as being made by, and in the image and likeness of, God has resulted in a flawed understanding that sees “an arbitrary proliferation of new rights, many of which are at odds with those originally defined and often are set in opposition to the fundamental right to life”.
