Contemplating 'Infinite Dignity': Insights on the Declaration from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
Exploring Divergent Views: A Study of Two Contrasting Anthropologies
The recent Declaration [1] by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith addresses a contemporary need felt by many who thirst for justice, to rediscover the meaning of human dignity too often ignored, misunderstood, or trampled upon by serious sinful or criminal acts, stemming from two contrasting conceptions of man that, in two opposite forms, offend this dignity, one by excess, the other by deficiency.
The first arises from that pride, by which the human self, with unrestrained selfishness and methodical egocentrism, believing itself in possession of superior knowledge - what the Pope has denounced as Gnosticism [2] - for which man has discovered himself as an apparition of the Absolute, individually centralizing all reality on himself and his interests, treating others with tyranny and arrogance.
This conception has its roots in the Cartesian concept of man as a self-aware spirit that founds his being with the act of thinking, without needing, therefore, as the subsequent German pantheistic idealism with Fichte and Hegel will clarify, to admit a God creator of man, so from this idealistic vision will logically follow Marx's atheism, for whom "man is God to man."
In opposition to such idealistic-pantheistic or gnostic anthropology, the Declaration repeatedly reaffirms with all the desired clarity the biblical doctrine of man which teaches that it is not man who creates himself. Still, God creates man male and female in his image and likeness, therefore a personal entity made to enter into dialogue with that God whom the First Vatican Council defines as "a single singular altogether simple and unchangeable spiritual substance" (Denz.3001).
Conversely, the gnostic as an apparition of the Absolute feels exempt from respecting a human dignity that does not depend on his will, but on a transcendent God who creates human nature and therefore moral law, as well as universal and inalienable rights and duties that derive from it.
The other harmful conception contrasts with the dignity of the person not because it exalts it too much but because it degrades and brutalizes it. It is the vision of man and human sexuality that emerges from Freud's doctrines. Here human nature is not deified and brought to the stars - the flight of Icarus, which prepares for the shameful fall - but is degraded into materialistic sensuality.
The Boundless Essence: Deciphering Human Dignity
Before answering this question [3], we must answer another, preliminary one: what does the Declaration mean here about infinity? Infinite means endless, having no end, without limit, without term, indeterminate, unlimited.
Here we are not talking about mathematical, quantitative, extensive, successive, numerical infinity, which, no matter how abstract it is from the concrete sensible, always refers to material things. We are talking, as the Declaration clearly states, about an ontological and, we could add, intentional infinity, belonging to the order of thinking and willing. Here is freedom.
Bontadini says that thought is transcendent. It's like saying it's infinite. However, his mistake is to identify thought as such with divine thought. Only the divine immanentizes all being in Himself, being its creator. Similarly, Hegel denies that there is a human reason and a divine reason. Reason - he says - is inherently divine. Therefore, a man who reasons is divine or, as he prefers, it is God's reasoning in man.
However, it must be said that in reality, as we all observe, human thinking has limited power and by its nature is transcended by being external to our mind, that is, the things that surround us, including our neighbor and God, who is the rule of the truth of his thought. Our very being, our self is not placed by my being aware of it, as Fichte believed, but I find it before my thinking as something given to me and presupposed to my thinking.
So, who gave it to me? If it is true that if I am aware of thinking, it means that I exist, it is also true that to think I must exist. I am not a subsisting thought, as the Cartesian res cogitans seems to imply, as something that thinks by essence. Instead, it is not so. This only happens in God. My thinking does not coincide with the act of my being, but it is the act of being able to think distinct from my being, from my person. When I sleep, I still exist, even if I do not think.
However, Bontadini is right to speak of an infinity of thought. The man who thinks is in some way divine, draws from the infinite, turns towards the infinite, and thinks it. The act of thinking itself has something divine about it. It is in some way infinite while thinking about the infinite. This is why the Bible speaks of man as created in the image and likeness of God. Man resembles God. Here is the dignity of man! Infinite dignity?
Dual Facets: Ontological and Intentional Dignity
It is necessary to distinguish ontological dignity from intentional dignity. The former concerns being or substance; the latter, the acts of the spirit, intellect, science, reason, conscience, will, virtue, goodness, and malice. Undoubtedly, the human person under the first point of view has a finite dignity by his created being. God cannot create another God. God is one.
Instead, the human spirit is by its nature inclined to know God and to love Him. Here the spirit possesses an inalienable structural dignity, while it can lose moral dignity through sin by failing to correspond to divine grace and therefore also undergoing the eternal punishment of hell.
Infinite also means that it cannot be transcended, surpassed, exceeded, or surpassed. The infinite is the maximum of a value that is analogically found and participated in at lower levels. Divine life is infinite because it is the fullness of what is expressed in the idea of life.
The Degrees of Being: Exploring Levels of Existence
So, while the infinite is one, the finite is multiple, diversified, and hierarchized. The created world therefore presents a scale of superordinate beings, whose ontological dignity increases starting from the low of elementary particles and chemical substances, and then ascending to plants, animals, humans, and angels. The dignity of the creature is infinite only when it reaches the level of man and angel, due to the presence of the spirit.
Below the fullness and total completeness of divine infinity, there is the created entity that participates in its being and its life to varying degrees, more or less. For this reason, we call it finite. Here its dignity is finite. However, the human spirit, as well as being finite in this way, is infinite in its capacity to enter into communion with the divine Spirit.
Infinity also has to do with the totality and perfection of being. To the finite, something lacking can be added; to the infinite, nothing needs to be added. In this sense, the infinite coincides with the perfect. However, it is necessary to maintain the distinction between an ontological infinity and a moral infinity. Ontological perfection simply means that God constitutes a being in that given nature, which is spiritual and incorruptible. However, given the free will of the person, not necessarily all living human beings possess their moral dignity.
The infinity that the Declaration speaks of is the infinity of the spirit, its objects, its ends, and its powers. Here we can say that the spirit as such, both the finite human spirit and the infinite divine spirit, inherently entails an infinity, an absoluteness. The spirit is in itself something divine, therefore in a certain way infinite. However, while the divine spirit is infinite in every respect, being the absolute spirit, the human spirit is infinite in its intentionality in that it can think of what is infinite, of God, and dispose itself to obey Him, open to His grace, but it is clear that in its being it is finite, that is, caused or created by God, according to a specific, individual essence, devised by God, this and no other, so it is finite because it is surpassed by a different or another essence.
To understand the notion of ontological infinity, it must be kept in mind that one thing is to go beyond, to surpass, to transcend the human limit, to transcend the finite; and another thing is not to respect the limit, to exceed the boundary allowed by the law, to transgress (trans-gradior = I go beyond). The first act is lawful, according to nature, noble and meritorious, achievable, wanted, and pleasing to God. The second is prohibited.
The life of grace is a supernatural life by which man surpasses the limits of our human nature. If this were infinite, the transcendence of grace towards nature would be lost.
To give us the right measure of the extent of human dignity, the Declaration would not have harmed, in my opinion, to briefly show the placement of man between that of the animal below and that of the angel above, with a longer pause on the relationship in man between soul and body.
Indeed, the two extreme positions mentioned depend on not knowing exactly what the soul is and what the body is and consequently the way of their union, with the tendency to raise human dignity too much - man seen as spirit - or to degrade it to the level of animality.
After the exposition of the anthropological and moral principles, the Declaration goes on to discuss some of the most serious sins committed today against human dignity. The proposal for remedying these evils is certainly well done, but from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, primarily responsible for addressing doctrinal issues, one would have expected also a discussion about the even more serious situation of the Church today, persecuted in many parts of the world, affected by heretical tendencies, disturbed by schisms, scandalized by apostasies and defections, offering us an illuminating word of comfort and encouragement.
Fr. Giovanni Cavalcoli OP
Fontanellato, April 9, 2024
Source:
https://padrecavalcoli.blogspot.com/p/considerazioni-circa-la-dichiarazione.html
[1] Infinite Dignity: https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_ddf_doc_20240402_dignitas-infinita_it.html
Press Conference presenting the "Infinite Dignity Declaration, concerning human dignity":
[2] See Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate of March 19, 2018, nn.36-46.
[3] This adjective is already found in the teaching of St. John Paul II: "God has shown us with Jesus Christ in an unsurpassed way how he loves each man and confers on him thereby an infinite dignity" (JOHN PAUL II, ANGELUS, Osnabrück - Sunday, November 16, 1980, https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/it/angelus/1980/documents/hf_jp-ii_ang_19801116.html)