Abstract
The Catholic Church maintains that the Imago Dei is the ground for human dignity. The secular world, too, endorses human dignity as the foundation for human rights without referring to Imago Dei. The Catholic Church and the secular world both agree on the importance of human dignity, even though they differ on their views about the source of human dignity. In this paper, we shall examine if human dignity can be the basis of a fruitful dialogue between the Catholic Church and the secular world in order to make our world a better place to live. The primary resources for our study are the Church documents on human dignity, and the opinions of distinguished thinkers on the need to promote a culture of dialogue between religions and secular world.
Highlights
The United Nations (UN) in its charter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) gave a pivotal role to the concept of human dignity.[1]
The Catholic Church and the secular world both agree on the importance of human dignity, even though they differ on their views about the source of human dignity
In this paper we examined the scope of dialogue between the Catholic Church and the secular world by using the concept of human dignity
Summary
The United Nations (UN) in its charter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) gave a pivotal role to the concept of human dignity.[1]. In spite of the doctrinal differences, the Catholic Church can play a great role to initiate a fruitful dialogue with other faiths and the secular world to promote human dignity. Immigrants and refugees often become soft targets in the hands of traffickers, who trample their human dignity In such a situation, the Catholic Church needs to collaborate with all like-minded partners to safeguard the dignity of humans. A fruitful dialogue in action between the Catholic Church and the secular world has the potential to promote justice, peace and integral sustainable development in the world. Pope John Paul II noted the love of Christ as the driving force behind any genuine dialogue between the Church and the world. The Catholic Church needs to employ its perspective of human dignity as the basis of a meaningful dialogue with the secular world especially in the following key areas
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