DIANE MONTAGNA (DM): Dignitas infinita opens by asserting that: “Every human person possesses an infinite dignity, inalienably grounded in his or her very being, which prevails in and beyond every circumstance, state, or situation the person may ever encounter.” Yet St. Thomas Aquinas writes: “God alone is of infinite dignity, and so he alone, in the flesh assumed by him, could adequately satisfy for man.” (Solus autem Deus est infinitae dignitatis, qui carne assumpta pro homine sufficienter satisfacere poterat.)

At the Vatican press conference to present the new Declaration, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández noted that the expression “infinite dignity” was taken from a 1980 address by Pope John Paul II in Osnabrück, Germany. JPII said: “God has shown us with Jesus Christ in an unsurpassable manner how he loves each man and thereby endows him with infinite dignity.”

The new Declaration seems to ground that dignity explicitly in nature, and not just in grace. Does the Declaration therefore collapse the distinction between the natural and supernatural?

EDWARD FESER (EF): One of the problems with Dignitas infinita, as with certain other documents issued during Pope Francis’s pontificate, is that key theological terms are not used with precision.  Much of the force of the statements derives from their rhetorical power rather than from careful reasoning.  So, one must be cautious when trying to determine what strictly follows from them.  What can be said, though, is that precisely because of this imprecision, there is a danger of seeming to license certain problematic conclusions.  The blurring of the line between the natural and the supernatural would be an example.  For instance, the realization of the beatific vision would obviously afford a human being the highest dignity of which he is capable.  Hence, if we say that human beings by nature, and not just by grace, have an “infinite dignity,” that might seem to imply that by nature they are directed toward the beatific vision.

Defenders of the Declaration would no doubt emphasize that the document itself does not draw such an extreme conclusion.  And that is true.  The problem, though, is that exactly what is and is not ruled out by attributing “infinite dignity” to human nature is not foreseen or addressed in the Declaration.  Yet at the same time, the Declaration puts great emphasis on the notion and on its radical implications.  This is a recipe for creating problems, and the document itself creates such problems in its application of the notion of “infinite dignity” to the death penalty, among other topics.

Also, the significance of Pope St John Paul II’s 1980s remark has been greatly overstated.  He referred to “infinite dignity” in passing in a minor address, of low magisterial weight, devoted to another topic.  Nor does he draw any novel or momentous conclusions from it.  It was an off-the-cuff remark rather than a precise formula, and he was not making it in the course of a carefully thought-out formal doctrinal treatment of the nature of human dignity.  But in any event, he does not ground this notion of infinite dignity in human nature itself.

DM: Historically, how did we get from St Thomas’s assertion that “God alone is of infinite dignity” to the new DDF Declaration? Is this a misuse of Pope John Paul II’s words?

EF: There are two key factors here.  One of them is the increasing reliance in the decades since Vatican II on notions like personhood, human dignity, and the like as vehicles by which to convey Catholic moral teaching to the secular world.  There is nothing inherently wrong with these concepts, but considered by themselves they are open to a wide variety of interpretations.  Secular thinkers certainly do not necessarily understand them the way the Church does, so that the appearance of common ground can be illusory.

When these notions are very tightly rooted in and expounded in light of the Catholic philosophical and theological tradition represented by Augustine, Aquinas, and the like, there is no problem.  But often the rhetoric of personhood and dignity takes on a life of its own, and gets ramped up as a way of trying to convince people who are likely to turn a deaf ear to appeals to natural law or scripture.  And it often ends up reflecting a conception of persons and their dignity that owes much to Kant, and to modern philosophical liberalism’s tendency to regard coercion of persons as the greatest evil and their self-determination as the height of their fulfilment.  Then Catholics can too easily read these modern conceptions of personal dignity back into scripture and the tradition.

This brings us to the second key factor, which is the remarkable fixation in recent decades within Catholic circles on the death penalty as somehow especially problematic.  There has always been a strain in the tradition that tended toward a more negative attitude toward the death penalty, co-existing with a strain that is more positive toward it.  They balanced one another out historically, with one tendency prevailing at some times and the other at other times.  But the right of the state in principle to inflict this penalty was never denied, as it has a clear and consistent basis in scripture and natural law.  What is unique in modern times is a tendency to look at the issue through the lens of justice rather than mercy, as if it were somehow unjust (and not merely unmerciful) to resort to capital punishment.  And that reflects the increasingly ramped up rhetoric about the dignity of persons.

So these issues are very closely connected, and actually feed off of one another.  The increasing reliance on the rhetoric of dignity has led to increasing hostility within certain Catholic circles to the very idea of capital punishment, even in principle.  Part of the motivation for that is a desire to find some common moral vision with the modern secular Western view of things.  But then, this often-over-the-top rhetoric against capital punishment has in turn fueled an even more exaggerated conception of human dignity as something so immeasurable that it would somehow be deeply wrong (and not just less than merciful) to execute even the most depraved and dangerous murderer.

That these conjoined rhetorical tendencies have now led to what appears to be a conflict with Scripture and the consistent magisterial teaching of two millennia on the topic of capital punishment should be an obvious warning sign that things have gone too far.

DM: According to Dignitas infinita, it is the “ontological dignity” of every human being that is “infinite.” The Declaration makes a fourfold distinction of the concept of dignity and asserts: “The most important among these is the ontological dignity that belongs to the person as such simply because he or she exists and is willed, created, and loved by God. Ontological dignity is indelible and remains valid beyond any circumstances in which the person may find themselves.” [7] It sounds like the Declaration is speaking about a dignity that is rooted in nature. What does “ontological dignity” mean according to the Declaration in your view?

EF: The point of saying that we have “ontological dignity” is to emphasize that there is a kind of dignity that is inseparable from our very being, rather than deriving from the acts we happen to perform, or the social status we happen to have, or the conditions in which we might find ourselves.  Those other kinds of dignity can be gained or lost, but ontological dignity cannot be.

So far so good.  That much is true and important.  The problem is with any assertion that this dignity is “infinite” in some precise or literal sense.  Specifically, there are two problems here.  The first is that this purportedly infinite dignity is something we are alleged to possess by our very nature.  As I’ve said, being oriented toward and then realizing the beatific vision would give us the highest dignity we’re capable of having.  But we don’t have this orientation by nature, but only by grace.  By grace we can thus surpass the dignity we have by nature.  So, how could we possibly already have, just by nature, a dignity that is infinite?

Second, though, even if we’re just talking about the dignity that we do have by nature rather than by grace, it simply cannot be strictly correct to characterize it as infinite.  Only God has or could have infinite ontological dignity, for reasons I have spelled out in detail in an article on the problems with Dignitas infinita.  For example, dignitas conveys “worthiness,” “excellence,” “merit,” or “honor.”  Replace the word “dignity” with any of those words in the phrase “infinite dignity” and ask yourself if the result could be applied to human beings.  Do human beings have “infinite worthiness,” “infinite excellence,” or “infinite merit”?  Are they deserving of “infinite honor”?  Obviously not, and it would be blasphemous to say so.  Those descriptions apply only to God.

Or consider the attributes that we ordinarily regard as affording a human being some special dignity, such as authority, goodness, or wisdom.  Can human beings be said to possess “infinite authority,” “infinite goodness,” or “infinite wisdom”?  Obviously not, and again, these things can in fact only be said of God.

The best way to read Dignitas infinita to make it consistent with tradition and sound theology is to take talk of our “infinite dignity” to be a rhetorical way of emphasizing that our dignity is immense or vast.  But now the problem is that this rhetoric, so understood, will not do the work the Declaration wants to do with it.  For even if we have “immense dignity” or “vast dignity,” that dignity would still have limits.  And so we would no longer have a basis for the Declaration’s conclusion that certain things are ruled out by human dignity “beyond every circumstance,” “in all circumstances,” “regardless of the circumstances,” and so on.

Hence, though it draws an important distinction when it distinguishes “ontological dignity” from other kinds of dignity, the Declaration is, unfortunately, still imprecise and poorly reasoned overall.  This distinction in no way saves it from the problems I’ve been describing.  In fact, explicitly to focus on our ontological dignity and then say that that dignity is infinite only highlights the problems.

DM: At the Vatican press conference, I asked Cardinal Fernández: “If man has infinite dignity, how can he be condemned to the eternal suffering of Hell?” He replied by saying that the possibility of man suffering eternally in Hell is grounded in human freedom, and that God respects man’s freedom even in this case. But if man’s quasi-infinite dignity is grounded in grace, it would seem that it only endures as long as we are alive in the wayfaring state or are dead and saved. Does the man who dies in the state of mortal sin have it (even potentially) any longer, since he no longer has the possibility of becoming part of Christ’s Mystical Body?

EF: This is a good example of a case where the exaggerated rhetoric about human dignity has potentially subversive implications.  A dignity we have only by grace rather than by nature is a dignity we might lose, opening the way to eternal damnation.  But if we not only have infinite dignity, but have it by nature, how could we ever be damned? Wouldn’t the natural concomitant of this infinite dignity be a will that is not capable of decisively choosing against God?

Of course, Cardinal Fernández does not say that in his answer, and I am not claiming he even thinks it.  His remark about freedom does seem to allow that damnation is at least possible.  But the point is that the high-flown but imprecise rhetoric of “infinite dignity” could very easily be taken in the opposite direction.  It opens the door to all sorts of doctrinal mischief.

The remedy here, as always in the history of the Church, is to check novel formulations against scripture, the Fathers, the Doctors of the Church, the teaching of previous popes, and tradition in general.  This is what the great theorists of doctrinal development, St. Vincent of Lérins and St. John Henry Newman, insist on, and it was what Pope Benedict XVI’s hermeneutic of continuity was about.  When confronted with novel formulations or conclusions, we need to ask, “How does this square with the tradition?”  The problem is that too many Catholics today work in the opposite direction.  In effect, they ask “How can we interpret Scripture and tradition in a way that makes them conform to such-and-such a novel formulation or conclusion?” The tail wags the dog.

DM: The British philosopher, Elizabeth Anscombe (1919-2001), once wrote: “To regard someone as deserving of death is very definitely regarding him, not just as a human being but as endued with a dignity belonging to human beings, as having free will and as answerable for his actions. . . .Capital punishment, though you may have reason against it, does not, just as such, sin against the human dignity of one who suffers it. He is at least supposed to be answering for a crime of which he has been found guilty by due process.” Doesn’t Cardinal Fernandez’s argument about damnation also make an excellent defense for the death penalty based precisely on human dignity?

EF: The view you cite from Anscombe is what every Catholic once knew about the death penalty until very recently.  That includes, by the way, even Jacques Maritain, who is cited in Dignitas infinita and is associated with personalism.  He also had a hand in the U.N. Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which the DDF’s new Declaration celebrates.  In his book Three Reformers, Maritain says that “the punishment of death, by giving the man opportunity to restore the order of reason in himself by an act of conversion to the Last End, does precisely allow him to recover his dignity as a human person.”

The idea that the death penalty can in fact be an affirmation of human dignity actually goes back to Genesis 9:6, which teaches that it is precisely because man is made in God’s image that those who take innocent life are worthy of death.  The Church has for two millennia understood the passage that way.  Yet some today, in a manner reminiscent of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, have actually suggested that the passage not only does not affirm the death penalty but in fact condemns it!  This is madness.

There is a connection between the issue of the death penalty and the doctrine of Hell.  If the abuse of our freedom could entail eternal damnation, then it could certainly entail the legitimacy of the far lesser punishment of execution.  But this reasoning could easily be reversed.  If the death penalty is against our dignity, then how could the far worse punishment of Hell not also be against our dignity?  The two doctrines ultimately stand or fall together.

This is why I have myself been warning for years about the danger of excessive abolitionist rhetoric on the topic of capital punishment.  Critics routinely accuse me of bloodthirstiness, as if my concern was to try to find a way to get people killed.  This is a preposterous calumny and entirely ignores what I have actually said.  The point is rather that to condemn the death penalty in the most extreme terms, as always and inherently immoral, has very radical doctrinal implications – for the inerrancy of Scripture, the reliability of the magisterium of the past, the doctrine of Hell, and so on.

Modernists know this well.  An extreme abolitionist position has for them always been the thin end of the wedge, a preparation for further doctrinal revisions.  And too many orthodox Catholics acquiesce, because in the West, the death penalty is, in practice, largely a dead issue (if you’ll pardon the pun) outside the United States. People go along with the foolish suggestion that it is just a matter of American politics or the like, turning a blind eye to the radical doctrinal implications.  And they know that, in any case, to say too much about it opens one up to the charge of being bloodthirsty.  The accusation is intellectually unserious, but rhetorically very powerful in silencing debate.

DM: You are an expert on the Catholic Church’s teaching on the death penalty and co-wrote the book, By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment. How is the teaching of the latest document, and indeed the allocution of Pope Francis cited in the new paragraph to the Catechism, not just heresy?

EF: One must be very careful with the word “heresy,” both because it has been used in different ways in the tradition, and because it has serious implications in canon law.  In modern canon law, “heresy” is a matter of the obstinate denial or doubt of some dogma of the faith.  But there is also a distinction to be drawn between material heresy and formal heresy.  A person might believe something that is materially heretical insofar as it conflicts with some dogma of the faith, and yet he does not realize that.  He would be a formal heretic if, say, he was warned by Church authorities that his view was heretical in content and yet he nevertheless stubbornly persisted in holding it.  It is only if someone is a formal heretic that a canonical penalty of excommunication would apply.

But there is also the complication that by no means everything the Church teaches counts as a dogma of the faith.  We are normally obligated to assent even to non-infallible teachings, but to refuse assent to such teachings does not make one a heretic, precisely because non-infallible teachings are not dogmas.

Now, even where infallible teachings are concerned, the question of whether we are dealing with a dogma in the relevant sense can be tricky.  The standard examples of dogmas are teachings that have been formally defined as such, for example by an ecumenical council of the Church.  But there are lots of things the Church teaches that are clearly infallibly taught but have not been defined in that formal way.  That capital punishment can be licit at least in principle is an example of that.  In many writings, including the book on the subject that I co-wrote with political scientist Joseph Bessette, I have set out the evidence that shows that this is an irreformable teaching, given what Scripture, the Fathers, and past popes have said about it.  But there is no statement of an ecumenical council, or ex cathedra papal statement, that says that.  It is, like so many things the Church teaches, simply a manifest logical implication of what is taught by what the Church says are infallible sources of doctrine (such as scripture).

Now, there is an older sense of the word “heresy” that is looser and refers to any error that conflicts with scripture or the consistent traditional teaching of the Church, even if it has not been formally defined. But I think that, because of the potential misunderstandings and erroneous inferences that this older usage might suggest, it is better and less misleading just to speak of whether or not some doctrinal statement is “erroneous.” And erroneous doctrinal statements, though historically extremely rare, are possible when a pope is not defining something in an ex-cathedra way.

Now, the Church in the past, including previous popes who have addressed the topic, have consistently held that it is an error to condemn the death penalty as always and intrinsically wrong.  For example, Pope St. Innocent I taught that to condemn the death penalty in an absolute way would contradict scripture.  And Pope Innocent III required of the Waldensian heretics that they repudiate their condemnation of capital punishment, as a condition of their reconciliation with the Church.  To say now that capital punishment is intrinsically wrong would be to say that these heretics were right after all, and the Church was wrong.   If we are going to say that, what other heresies should we reconsider?  As you can see, the implications of condemning capital punishment as inherently wrong are very radical.

DM: The same day Dignitas infinita was released, the French parliament voted to make abortion a constitutional right. Many people in Europe and elsewhere have welcomed the Declaration’s condemnation of abortion, gender theory, and surrogacy. What would you say particularly to Catholics who suggest we should simply welcome what is good in the new Vatican Declaration.

EF: Suppose someone took great pains to prepare for you an elegant steak dinner, but you found out that the meat he had used was tainted, without his knowledge.  Naturally, you would not want to eat it, or might at most eat just a tiny bit, or only the side dishes that went along with it.  He might be offended, complaining of your ingratitude and noting how much work he put into it and how fine were the ingredients in general.  But of course, that does not make it unreasonable for you to refuse to eat it.  For whatever the intentions of the cook, and however skillfully he made the meal, it would still make you ill if you ate it.

In the same way, there are many fine things in the new Declaration, and even some courageous and much-needed things, such as its teaching on surrogacy and gender theory.  But that does not change the fact that the imprecise and extreme rhetoric about human dignity, and the radical new conclusion about the death penalty that the Declaration draws from this rhetoric, are seriously problematic.  In the long run they will do harm, even if in the short term the material about gender theory and the like might do some good.

 

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