Letter #98: Just what is human dignity anyways?

“To consent to any treatment which is calculated to defeat the end and purpose of [one’s] being is beyond his right; he cannot give up his soul to servitude, for it is not man's own rights which are here in question, but the rights of God, the most sacred and inviolable of rights.” 

- Leo XIII, 1891.

 “….I also addressed an appeal to…all the great world religions, inviting them to offer the unanimous witness of our common convictions regarding the dignity of man, created by God. In fact…the various religions, now and in the future, will have a preeminent role in preserving peace and in building a society worthy of man.” 

-  John Paul II, 1991.

 ‘In building a society worthy of man….’ What a remarkable – in a sense, revolutionary – phrase by a pontiff deemed very conservative. This phrase is not an outlier, either. In his encyclical “Centesimus Annus” of 1991, to celebrate the centennial of the issue of Leo XIII’s "Rerum Novarum", John Paul II took pains to explain why Communism had collapsed but also made himself quite clear that consumerism – gratification of the senses being confused with a sense of living fully – or exploitation hiding behind globalism were equally fruitless to an Earth literally gaunt in spirit while often flaunting the material. 

Then Cardinal Ratzinger (eventually, Benedict XVI), the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (erstwhile spearhead of the inquisition), oversaw the compilation of a new "Catechism of the Catholic Church", published six years after Pope John Paul’s commentary on Pope Leo’s classic encyclical:

“The Church’s relationship with the Muslims. ‘The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind’s judge on the last day.’” That said, the Catholic Church has amends to make for its silence during the holocaust; its complicity in the scandals mentioned in the comment below; its unwillingness to ordain women; as well as, perhaps, other and more overtly political issues.

Yet, few institutions in modern life have steadfastly stood apart from popular trends and ideologies to stake out an unmistakable stand by unfurling the banner of human dignity; of reminding us that, after all, men and women were and still are created in the image of God. That is to say: while the Church is a human institution fraught with human faults and frailties that ought properly to be addressed with courage and transparency, it still has a lot to tell us – even when such truths are neither convenient nor fashionable.

Human Justice or Human Nature?  As a conservative, I respect the traditionalism of the last two Popes, though I welcome the popular touch brought by the current pontiff; the kulturkampf is getting tiresome.  While I salute the role of the Sacraments in the spiritual lives of over a billion Christians across the world (i.e., as a physical syntax of the metaphysical), for me, these acts are simply symbolic. Yet, Christianity – Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant – remains a vast store-house of wisdom about human nature that has been accumulated by some of the better minds in the West for two millennia.

This is a short essay because its question is not one for me to answer, but one for each of us consider in an era of fear, aggression and vitriol. Just what would a “society worthy of man” look like? Of course, I do not know. But what a refreshing idea! So few are the contemporary signals that man is worthy of anything, let alone deserving of a society, ordained in natural law and tempered by Providence. Only the Roman Church steadfastly envisions a world order founded on the freedom of each individual to grow in truth ‘from image to likeness’ toward the godly (or, for humanists, the ideal) as it exists in each. 

Such a vision is neither silly nor naïve; it requires a summoning up of the courage to defy the petty and to transcend the crowd, whatever that crowd is: sect, party, school, company, class. Just imagine the possibilities of a humanity grounded in the world, reaching for Paradise and growing beyond fear and degradation. My tentative conception of the just society, taken from an earlier letter, remains: “The just society is that which enables the greatest number of people to attain their properly ordained statures in the eyes of God….”

Of course, such a vision statement, is magnificently simple. As always, the devil lurks in the details; but ideas often get choked by the weeds. In my lifetime, there were men and women who stood up for the very best in us; who made resignation look cheap and ideology crass. Some are well known to all of us, of course, but so many more still exist today, living their lives, helping where they can and leading when they must. The piety of today may not wear the garb of, or voice, the holiness for all to perceive.

But it does exist in a thousand little and forgettable deeds that, in their totality, prove man's sentience as distinct from the 'consciousness' of the animal. For this theme of a society worthy of man, what I would propose, inasmuch as people have widely divergent views, is that this vision become a criterion for judgement of leaders while it remains an end of the larger society. What I would propose is that people view each policy, law or regulation and subject it to an acid-test: Does this idea take America closer to being a just society or does it not?