A Catholic Perspective on Human Dignity

Abstract

Reference to “human dignity” and “the dignity of the human person” occurs repeatedly in recent Catholic papal and magisterial teaching, beginning roughly with the encyclical Rerum novarum of Leo XIII, continuing in the documents of the Second Vatican Council, and eventually coming to dominate the writings of Pope John Paul II. As a result of that increased emphasis, concern for the idea of human dignity has also come to characterize the scholarly work by Catholics of recent decades that has been devoted to articulating and arguing for that teaching (see, e.g., Gormally 2004; Hittinger 2006; Sulmasy 2007, 2008; Neuhaus 2008; Lee and George 2008). Human dignity, and the overshadowing of that dignity in modernity, are considered the key concepts for an adequate philosophical anthropology, for working out acceptable solutions to contemporary bioethical dilemmas, and, more broadly, for understanding the condition, and even crisis, of man in the contemporary world. It would appear, in fact, that contemporary Catholic social and moral teaching, and even its ecclesiology, is grounded, ultimately, in this very idea.