By now, it should be clear that when the Church issues a document addressing several topics, one of which is sex, our major secular media will ignore the rest and concentrate on sex. The latest example is the coverage of the new Vatican document on human dignity as provided by the New York Times, Washington Post, and Associated Press.
The document, a “declaration” called Dignitas Infinita (Infinite Dignity), was published by the Dicastery for Doctrine of the Faith with the approval of Pope Francis. It speaks of many things, including market economics, poverty, the death penalty, war and terrorism, migrants, violence against women, euthanasia and assisted suicide, abortion, the environment, and social media.
So what did the Times, the Post, and the AP talk about—along with highlighting dissident voices, of course? Sex change, LGBTQ+ interests, and surrogate parenting. Passages concerned with these matters, the Times warns darkly, are “likely to be embraced by conservatives for their hard line against liberal ideas on gender and surrogacy.”
The Times, you see, not only knows what’s in Dignitas Infinita (although, unfortunately, it can’t be bothered sharing that information with readers, except in a very cursory way) but deems it a matter of urgency to report that people whom it doesn’t like (“conservatives”) will embrace the results.
What none of these news organs troubles to report are the first eight substantive pages of the 25-page document (two preceding pages by Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, prefect of the doctrinal dicastery, recount its development, while the last seven pages are footnotes). And those ignored eight pages are the very heart of Dignitas Infinita.
Especially that includes a passage that sets out and analyzes the four meanings or aspects of human dignity—ontological, moral, social and existential. The ontological aspect is “most important” inasmuch as dignity in this sense “belongs to the person as such simply because he or she exists and is willed, created, and loved by God.” The other three aspects are grounded in this one.
The text then turns to the specifically theological bases of human dignity as these are found in Revelation and especially in the life and teaching of Jesus Christ as presented in the New Testament. Crucial here is the affirmation in the account of the creation of human beings as it is given in the first chapter of the Old Testament’s book of Genesis: “God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness’…male and female he created them.”
To be created in God’s image, the document says, “means to possess a sacred value that transcends every distinction of a sexual, social, political, cultural, and religious nature.” The gospels show Jesus applying this in very concrete terms: “[H]e broke down cultural and cultic barriers, restoring dignity to those who were ‘rejected’ or were considered to be on the margins of society”—a category that included tax collectors for the Romans and lepers, among others.
Dignitas Infinita says this emphasis on respecting and loving outcasts and the disabled has “changed the face of the world” and inspired countless institutions and programs for persons in need. But it also warns against an “ever-growing risk” today—“reducing human dignity to the ability to determine one’s identity and future independently of others, without regard for one’s membership in the human family.”
Much in this document deserves pondering. Too bad you wouldn’t know that from the Times, the Post, and the AP. Yes, what the text says about sex deserves notice. So does a lot else.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
Instead of layering its central message with its litany of airbrushed themes, Dignitatis Infinita might have been anchored more about “follow the science.” Doesn’t the gender-ideology thing place us at a GALILEO MOMENT? That is, yes, “ontological, moral, social and existential”—but also scientific!
Considering the science today, we have such as this: https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/executive-summary-sexuality-and-gender (Lawrence S. Mayer and Paul R. McHugh, “Executive Summary,” Sexuality and Gender: Findings from the Biological, Psychological, and Social Sciences, The New Atlantis, Number 50, Fall 2016, pp. 7-9). Likewise, a video (not unlike Galileo’s telescope) on the growth of each DNA-distinct human embryo https://erf.science/video/see-baby-grow/ ; and, the earlier photo sequence from LIFE MAGAZINE from 1965—even prior to the inventive Roe v. Wade fatwa https://www.life.com/lifestyle/drama-of-life-before-birth-landmark-work-five-decades-later/
Yes, how to restore civilization from the Sexual Revolution, with a sound defense of the “transcendent dignity of the human person”? Less than convincing is retention of Fiducia Supplicans alongside Dignitatis Infinita. Why not, instead, build more coherently on the bedrock Veritatis Splendor, with at least one of its 116 footnotes on The Theology of the Body? This would be a more concise and lucid paradigm-shift (!) from our not-so-new world of Aphrodite—which encompasses the sexual abuse scandal within the Church and now the ongoing contagion of Der Synodale Weg.
Did the defeated Anglican minority, later at the 1948 Lambeth Conference, tell it more like it is?
“It is, to say the least, suspicious that the age in which contraception has won its way is not one which has been conspicuously successful in managing its sexual life. Is it possible that, by claiming the right to manipulate his physical processes in this manner, man may, without knowing it, be stepping over the boundary between the world of Christian marriage and what one might call the world of Aphrodite, the world of sterile eroticism?” (Cited in Wright, “Reflections on the Third Anniversary of a Controverted Encyclical,” St. Louis: Central Bureau Press, 1971).
Right on with this from R.Shaw. An ironic twist on his point is that mainstream media coverage seems to result in most of popular Catholic media outlets telling us what Dignitas Infinita does not say. How many Catholic diocesan weeklies or websites take the time to elaborate on the ontological basis of human dignity?
The secular press is not outdone by ‘Catholic’ DignityUSA, ‘Celebrating the wholeness and holiness of LGBTQIA+ Catholics.’
They disseminated(!) their (his/her/its) official response: “The Vatican document ‘On Human Dignity’ undermines its purpose by undermining the integrity and human rights of transgender and nonbinary people, along with those making decisions about whether and how to expand their families…” Later, “It is very disappointing and hurtful that the Vatican has, once again, treated people who are transgender and nonbinary as a moral and sociological issue, rather than respecting their experience and growing scientific evidence about the complexity of sex and gender.” And: “It is also shocking to see gender affirmation treatments classified as the same kind of threats to human dignity as war, impoverishment, human trafficking, and sexual abuse. If people suffering from congenital heart or kidney disease can get medical treatment, why not those who suffer from gender dysphoria? If untreated, this can also be life-threatening.”
DignityUSA’s executive director put out the official response. S/he attests in the official response that s/he is trans. So although God’s design and work may be un/seasonably undone, the secular press does not shine so dim a light as ‘Catholic’ DignityUSA.
If I had a birdcage the Times, the Post, and other offerings of the MSM might have some value.
But I don’t. So – they don’t.