HUMAN DIGNITY AND THE STATE

Recently I came across the question: "[W]hat can still promise today and tomorrow, to offer human dignity to life?" [1] For Christians today, this a crucial inquiry in our ever increasing secular society and world. States have eroded human dignity by legalizing and sanctioning abortion, euthanasia, the death penalty, human experimentation, cloning, manipulation of genes, genocide, human trafficking, poverty, and global conflicts. Today even our children are seen as mere liabilities, rather than gifts from God. Some states encourage people to decrease the amount of children per family through abortion and contraception.

In the United States, there seems to be a tendency to use the principle of "separation between Church and State," as a vehicle for obscuring the Church's mission to integrate faith into the public dialogue. Nonbelievers attempt to restrict the voice of religion to the private spheres, with little or no contribution in public institutions. In this mentality, the Church is subject to obedience to the Sovereign State, and its survival is made dependent upon the state. Although religion has always been the central element in the inner unity of culture, especially for its values, norms, and behavior, [2] such things are now placed in the hands of the State. Unfortunately, this is experienced in societies today, especially in regard to the identity of a human being. States now determine who is or who is not is a human being. The secular State becomes the arbiter of what is true and what is false about humanity. God is absent from the larger picture of who we are as persons.

Very much aware of this problem, Pope Benedict XVI addressed the United States Bishops in their Ad Limina visit, and he stated:

     [T]he seriousness of the challenges which the Church in   
     America, under your leadership, is called to confront in the near 
     future cannot be underestimated. The obstacles to Christian
     faith and practice raised by a secularized culture also affect the
     lives of believers, leading at times to that “quiet attrition” from
     the Church which you raised with me during my Pastoral Visit. [3]

The Holy Father has consistently reminded us that "it is only on an adequate anthropology that we can hope to construct guidelines and institutions for a healthy social order. [4] All things are created by God. Man and woman are created in the image of God, whose final goal and end is God. This is the fundamental basis of human dignity. Man and woman have the spark of God's presence within. They are temples of the Holy Spirit. Human dignity then, from the moment of conception to natural death, "transcends any social order as the basis for rights and is neither granted by society nor can it be legitimately violated by society. In this way, human dignity is the conceptual basis for human rights."[5] Furthermore, it is

     only in keeping with his true nature that the human person can
     achieve self-realization as a "unified totality": and this nature is
     at the same time corporal and spiritual. By virtue of its 
     substantial union with a spiritual soul, the human body cannot
     be considered as a mere complex of tissues, organs and 
     functions, nor can it be evaluated in the same way as the body
     of animals; rather it is a constitutive part of the person who
     manifests and expresses himself through it.[6]

Human persons are social beings. God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a suitable partner for him.... male and female he created them."[7] Man and woman are thus individuals who are relational. They are an "I" and "we" before God, in a community of love with God and each other. In Genesis, we see that theology comes first (created in God's image) and the biological follows next (genetic).[8] This theological premise places a unique goodness and value on the biological which can never be relinquished. The two are indivisible. One cannot be sacrificed for the other in all individual and social relationships. The New Testament, extends this to "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." In Jesus, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave, nor free man, there is not male and female, [but] all one in Christ Jesus."[10] This theological element must return to the pubic consensus when making decisions that have profound effects on humanity. The Church must defend the rights of all humans from they moment of conception to natural death. Endowed with dignity and worth, human life can never be used as a means to an end, and must be safeguarded and protected in every stage of development. When human dignity is in peril, we are reminded of the Gospel message to treat each other with compassion, mercy, fairness, and justice. That includes the unborn, the marginalized, the orphan, the poor, the oppressed, the stranger, the foreigner. It is a mandate for all of us, believers and non believers.

The authority and power of the State comes from God. The State has the responsibility to defend life. Indeed, "The inalienable right to life of every innocent human individual is a constitutive element of a civil society and its legislation."[11] To do the opposite places human dignity in jeopardy. Furthermore, "Scandal can be provoked by laws or institutions, by fashion or opinion....Anyone who uses the power at his disposal in such a way that leads others to do wrong becomes guilty of scandal and responsible for the evil that he has directly or indirectly encouraged." [12] This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision, legalizing abortion. Let us pray for an end to this holocaust, and may our prayers include all persons who suffer from indignity and injustice. We must, however, not only pray for these, but also practice what we pray for in our daily lives. --Brother Warren Perrotto, MSC



[1] Marcello Pera, Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI), Without Roots: the West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam. NY: Basic Books, 2006, p. 68.
[2] Cf. Joseph Cardinal Ratiinger (Benedict XVI), Truth and Tolerance. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004, p. 59.
[3] Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI to the Bishops from the United States, on Their "Ad Limina" Visit, November 26, 2011.
[4] Thomas R. Rourke, The Social and Political Thought of Benedict XVI, NY: Lexington Books, 2011, p. 11.
[5] Key Ethical Principles, Principle of Human Dignity, Ascension Health, http://www.ascensionhealth.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=ar
[6] Congregation for the Doctrine for the Faith, Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation Replies to Certain Questions of the Day, 2.
[7] Genesis 2:18; 1:27.
[8] Michael Hoell and Graham Ward, Religion and Political Thought. Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006, p. 3.
[9] Matthew 5:44.
[10] Galatians 3:28.
[11] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2273.
[12] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2286, 2287