Brief reflections in the margins of the press presentation conference (8th April 2024) of the Declaration Dignitas Infinita, about human dignity”  (Original text in Italian here)

by Paul Freeman

I believe, honestly and serenely, despite the discontent among some so-called ‘conservatives’ and other so-called ‘progressives’, that we should be grateful for the declaration Dignitas infinita. For various reasons. I do not enter into a systematic analysis because unfortunately, in these days, I lack the material possibility. I note first of all that one reason to thank Providence is that Pope Francis - Peter - has the ability to unite (perhaps not always ideally and thoroughly, and sometimes with superficial falls) aspects related to the “non-negotiable principles” and the “values” of the Church’s Social Doctrine. A necessary et-et whose orchestration must never cease, but in the light of the Natural Moral Law. Both "principles" and "values" derived from it are all present together, like the fingers of a hand.

Clarity on the principle of dignity

Some among the 'conservative' faithful have pointed out that this declaration, in the very statement that provides the title of the document and is borrowed from an Angelus of St John Paul II  (Osnabrück - Sunday, 16 November 1980) has erroneous assumptions. Almost an 'Enlightenment' conception founding the anthropocentric delirium of the human. A delirium that denies the wound of original sin as an incipit. Yet one only has to read the Angelus of St John Paul II and understand the meaning of this ontological dignity by participation and gift:

“God has shown us with Jesus Christ in an unsurpassable manner how He loves each man and thereby bestows upon him an infinite dignity. […] For us Christians, it matters little whether one is sick or healthy; what ultimately matters is this: Are you ready to realise your God-given dignity with conscience and faith in every situation of your life and in your behaviour, as a true Christian, or do you want to lose this dignity in a superficial and irresponsible life, in sin and guilt before God?"

The infinite Dignity of man is there for two reasons intimately linked and inseparable: the Incarnation (in view of which Creation is thought) and the Redemption. As good scholastic theology reminded us (which evidently several seem not to remember), participated ontological Dignity is not corrupted by sin, but terribly and dramatically wounded. For us Catholics, the human being is not corrupt but dramatically wounded and, in some situations, terribly disordered, but always capable of Good. Classical scholastics interpreted the lyrical Jewish rhetoric of bə-ṣal-mê-nū and kiḏ-mū-ṯê-nū (Gen. 1,26) distinguishing Image and Similarity. The Image represents the participatory ontological sharing, the Similarity, instead, the volitional operation of adhesion to this Image. The Image is incorruptible, the Similarity is 'corrupted' in the very sphere of the Will, in its operational dimension. The Redeemer comes precisely to touch the terribly wounded Similarity in order to 'adjust' it as much as possible to the Image that God Himself has bestowed and that confers, by participation and gift, an infinite Dignity, from Eternity (Eph. 1,2ss), since we are thought and loved.

However, and herein lies the drama, it is precisely the incorruptible Dignity of the Image that can be the 'harbinger' of Hell because, due to a mystery that eludes us but without which we are neither realists nor capable of understanding the meaning of things (as Pascal partly used to say), we may not adhere to the Image we have received and live in the short-circuit of the 'second death' with a Similarity that is lost in a habitus of deadly behaviour, acts and choices.

“Sin is the oracle of the wicked in the depths of his heart;
there is no fear of God before his eyes.
He sees himself with too flattering an eye to detect and detest his guilt.” (Psalms 36, 2-3)

Made for God, having received Dignity from Him, we trample it without remedy and definitively. And that is precisely what Hell is: a terrible but realistic possibility. It also makes no sense to speak of 'possible Good', but rather of 'present Good' and 'possible evil' as a disordered Good or a deprivation of the Good itself.

Also the Card. Fernandez tries to explain (from min. 58 of the conference), answering the confused question of the journalist (at minute 54) concerning the Imago Dei. But the explanation evades an important central point, posed in any case in the question... the document Dignitas Infinita does not deal adequately with Original Sin, preferring not to address a decisive point of how this Dignity, however present, can be dramatically obnubilated, denied, stained.

This forgetfulness is curious and dangerous because, without the awareness of this reality, Dignity cannot be discovered, untied, and enriched, and the authentic pastoral sense of having 'the smell of the sheep', i.e. our eternal salvation, is totally lost. Here and now.

The gnoseological knowledge of this dignity does not save. It would be Gnostic intellectualism, and also Pelagianism. Rather, the dramatic reality of a Dignity and at the same time a wound due to Original Sin and personal sins is decisive existential awareness. The Redemption offers the adequate way to Salvation and the shining of the infinite Dignity received with the Incarnation.

Person with disabilities and not differently abled

A brief note. In Dignitas Infinita, 'persons with disabilities' are not referred to as 'persons with disabilities' in the sense used according to the UN Convention, but as 'differently abled'. (Dignitas Infinita, 53). It is highly dissonant to use this definition with the personalistic framework that the document has anyway and is in fact, even in the light of normative self-awareness, rather obsolete. Granted that any stichwort on the subject is in any case reductive when we speak of a 'Person', certainly the most appropriate definition is a Person 'with' a disability, precisely because the Person 'is' not his or her disability but 'has' a disability and his or her dignity is intangible; as St. John Paul II recalled in his Angelus. And, of course, a 'Person with disabilities' can also be differently abled, but defining them only as 'differently abled' opens to stigmatising drifts that short-circuit the very thought about the Person and opens to 'ghettoisation', 'categorisation', 'disinclusion'. Which, evidently, the document does not want in any way, since it rightly and providentially aims to combat the 'culture of waste'.

A revision of the Declaration here, at this point, is desirable.

Intrinsically disordered acts

Entering into the topic of the title, i.e. the "intrinsically disordered acts", it is striking how Cardinal Fernandez defines them in the lecture at 1:29:22.

“As for the expression ‘intrinsically disordered’, it is true that it is very strong and that it needs to be explained a lot. It would be nice if we could find an even clearer expression for what we mean. But what we want to say is that faced with the immense beauty of the encounter between man and woman, with that difference that is the greatest that can be found in the world. Between man and woman. That they can meet, be together and have such an intimate relationship. And that a new life can be born from this encounter. This is not something that can be compared with another. So in the face of this reality, homosexual acts have this characteristic, which cannot even remotely reflect this immense beauty. That is what we want to say. But it is true that the expression could find other, more suitable words to express this mystery."

It should be noted that the Cardinal's response was reported by Vatican News with a rather ambiguous description preceding it, an introduction later translated into all languages. We read in fact on Vatican News (https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2024-04/cardinal-fernandez-every-person-has-dignity-dignitas-infinita.html):

To those who pointed out that perhaps the Catechism of the Catholic Church should be changed, which considers homosexual acts "intrinsically disordered" (something that, in the opinion of many, would fuel violence against homosexuals), the head of the Dicastery replied that "intrinsically disordered" is indeed "a strong expression... It needs to be explained a lot, perhaps we could find a clearer expression”.

This Vatican News introduction, rather curiously, is written in such a way that it is not clear what is meant by the 'many' in quotation marks. Perhaps, the opinion of those present in the room? Or the personal opinion of the journalist writing an article? Or a guided preparation of some questions to talk about certain topics?

Listening carefully to the question from journalist Nicole Winfield (AP), one realises that it is an opinion reported by the journalist herself:

"Given the call to change laws that penalize homosexuality - in fact, you claim that the Vatican wants to decriminalize homosexuality - I wonder if you also think it is time to change the teaching of your Dicastery, namely that homosexual actions are inherently disordered: a teaching that many believe fuels this violence against gays."

Definitely Vatican News, given the serious role it plays, could have written this question better, at least in part, to put it into context. It is well known, regrettably, that for at least two decades currents of moral theology and canonists have been trying to deconstruct this uncomfortable part of the catechism. At the same time, the example given by the Cardinal, true as it may be, unfortunately captures only part of it.

What the Catechism says, recalling the declaration Persona Humana at N° 8, is that there are acts that are not only distant from the Good, even immensely, but there are acts that mess up the Good and betray it in its intimate essence, hurting the Dignity of both the Good and the Person (and the Common Good).

It is worth reporting in full this part of the magisterium:

“At the present time there are those who, basing themselves on observations in the psychological order, have begun to judge indulgently, and even to excuse completely, homosexual relations between certain people. This they do in opposition to the constant teaching of the Magisterium and to the moral sense of the Christian people.

A distinction is drawn, and it seems with some reason, between homosexuals whose tendency comes from a false education, from a lack of normal sexual development, from habit, from bad example, or from other similar causes, and is transitory or at least not incurable; and homosexuals who are definitively such because of some kind of innate instinct or a pathological constitution judged to be incurable.

In regard to this second category of subjects, some people conclude that their tendency is so natural that it justifies in their case homosexual relations within a sincere communion of life and love analogous to marriage, in so far as such homosexuals feel incapable of enduring a solitary life.

In the pastoral field, these homosexuals must certainly be treated with understanding and sustained in the hope of overcoming their personal difficulties and their inability to fit into society. Their culpability will be judged with prudence. But no pastoral method can be employed which would give moral justification to these acts on the grounds that they would be consonant with the condition of such people. For according to the objective moral order, homosexual relations are acts which lack an essential and indispensable finality. In Sacred Scripture they are condemned as a serious depravity and even presented as the sad consequence of rejecting God. This judgment of Scripture does not of course permit us to conclude that all those who suffer from this anomaly are personally responsible for it, but it does attest to the fact that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered and can in no case be approved of."

Now to state, as the Cardinal does, that there is an immense distance between homosexual acts, of two people with homosexuality, and two people, a man and a woman, is dangerously reductive because it leads, in one way or another, to 'normalise' the 'disorder' of homosexual acts.

As recalled in the Declaration of 15 March 2021:

“The presence in such relationships of positive elements, which are in themselves to be valued and appreciated, cannot justify these relationships and render them legitimate objects of an ecclesial blessing, since the positive elements exist within the context of a union not ordered to the Creator’s plan.” (From the Responsum of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to a dubium about the blessing of same-sex unions, 15.03.2021)

The definition given by the Catechism, on the other hand, is just clear, crystal clear and, unless we call good what is bad, is perfectly adequate. It is not asserted that persons with homo-affectivity, more or less entrenched, are disordered, but that the acts experienced in that way disorder the present Good and that, if exercised, they direct it to seriously compromise the Dignity of both the Person and the present Good. As far as I am concerned, a person with homo-affectivity can be much closer to God than me: a family man with three children.

What probably needed to be noted (and this would have corresponded to the catechesis on the virtue of the Fortitude made in the recent General audience of the Holy Father) is that in the Catechism other "intrinsically disordered acts" are mentioned which do not only concern Persons with homo-affectivity, but all of us. For example, masturbation (CCC 2352), but, above all, it could have been an opportunity to emphasise the beauty of chastity. In fact, chastity is a baptismal duty for all, the presence of a Good that makes the maturation of the Person possible. As the Holy Father recalled at the General Audience on Wednesday, 10 April:

"Fortitude is a fundamental virtue because it takes the challenge of evil in the world seriously. Some pretend it does not exist, that everything is going fine, that human will is not sometimes blind, that dark forces that bring death do not lurk in history. But it suffices to leaf through a history book, or unfortunately even the newspapers, to discover the nefarious deeds of which we are partly victims and partly perpetrators: wars, violence, slavery, oppression of the poor, wounds that have never healed and continue to bleed. The virtue of fortitude makes us react and cry out “no”, an emphatic “no” to all of this. In our comfortable Western world, which has watered everything down somewhat, which has transformed the pursuit of perfection into a simple organic development, which has no need for struggle because everything looks the same, we sometimes feel a healthy nostalgia for prophets. But disruptive, visionary people are very rare. There is a need for someone who can rouse us from the soft place in which we have lain down and make us resolutely repeat our “no” to evil and to everything that leads to indifference. “No” to evil and “no” to indifference; “yes” to progress, to the path that moves us forward, and for this we must fight.’’

The drift in minimizing the seriously disordered acts is the pledge that we pay for a poor training in thought and for confusing the pastoral bogging with the Incarnation which, only the latter, in its motion both descending and transcendent, and according to the principle of graduality, gives us "the smell of the sheep" and makes fruitful, according to God, our being in the world for the salvation of all, but really all. An outbound Church conveying delusions and ideologies, old or new, past or current errors, is - like Judas of Keriot - a thief of good and risks to be clerical. Wanting not to be or behave like a cleric, for every faithful, is not just a 'flatus vocis’ as  Pope Benedict XVI recalled in his abrenuntiatio:

“non solum agendo et loquendo exsequi debere, sed non minus patiendo et orando”. (https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2013/02/11/0089/00244.html)

Prayers for a conversion path

Regarding the example given by Pope Francis, some time ago, on the 'blessing' of entrepreneurs (to which no one had to object to), it should be stated - in parrhesia - that it is first of all an "illogical" example. Because being an entrepreneur is certainly not a disorder in itself. It can be such to the extent that an entrepreneur commits 'grossly disorderly acts' of exploitation, abuse, thievery, and social injustice. But this does not necessarily happen or should happen. On the contrary.
“Blessing” a person with homo-affectivity who comes with a partner in front of the priest risks being ambiguous, because it does not help Grace - the very one you do not want to mortify in the work on one's own person (“Who am I to judge”) - to transform the sense of guilt (which inevitably a person living that state has, experiencing a dissonance) into a consciousness of guilt (and therefore into a path of conversion, free and liberating), but rather sets on a path of legitimization of one's own choices and acts that are gravely disordered. And we are all, but really all, skilled in this in wanting to find a justification or “spiritualisation” for our choices and acts.

As C. S. Lewis recalls: “I do not succeed in keeping the Law of Nature very well, and the moment anyone tells me I am not keeping it, there starts up in my mind a string of excuses as long as your arm. The question at the moment is not whether they are good excuses. The point is that they are one more proof of how deeply, whether we like it or not, we believe in the Law of Nature. If we do not believe in decent behaviour, why should we be so anxious to make excuses for not having behaved decently?” (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Fount, 1997, p. 7)

We are responsible for the Good of our brothers, with a sense of belonging. Because they, each and every one of them, brothers and sisters, people with homo-affectivity, are our very flesh; they are part of us. And who on earth would help a part of himself that performs disordered acts by encouraging it in its disorder and would he not rather invoke the Grace already present to be 'unleashed' so as to bear chaste fruit for the benefit of all? What a river of holiness is present in people with homo-affectivity! And we risk to mortify it condemning them - and us - legitimizing disordered choices?

Although the laudable and understandable intention is to provide a pastoral aid that does not ratify, consecrate, or justify (as recalled by Card. Fernandez in the conference), if I love the brothers and respect the mandate I have for them before God, see also Dt. 30,14 and Rm. 8,1ss) I cannot in any way comply with the  perception they have of that “blessing”.
If, as Cardinal Fernandez says (at min. 14:53), “(these blessings) are merely a prayer of the minister to express God's help to continue living... as Francis explained to our Dicastery these blessings outside of their liturgical character do not require moral perfection to received“.
But then, wasn't it better to call them, instead, 'prayers of help, of support, of presence'?

This would have better safeguarded different episcopates, without creating unnecessary friction, and would have respected the nature of the 'blessing' which, biblically understood, is always a praise that respects the Creation - and the acts that respect the Creation - in all its moments.
This is how the Beraka were born: from the Shema (Dt. 6,4-9).
This would have respected the 'Culmen et Fons' of which the Council speaks, which reminds us that there is no such thing as “private” or “non-liturgical” acts, but that even paraliturgy or spontaneous prayers for the Good of a situation or a person are a 'conductus’ - to put it in language dear to the medievals - and that they legitimise true devotion at all times.
And, above all, and this is what is really close to my heart, would have made presbyters and communities aware that such an occasion is not a moment of 'a few seconds', at risk of 'animism' and 'devotional magic', but the incipit of a recognised belonging, authentic companionship and concrete inclusion of every person and every situation:

“Come, let us discuss this, says the Lord.”  (Is. 1,18).

Here too, one hopes for an adequate revision of the document Fiducia supplicans, not changing the valuable intentions, but better integrating its modalities and terms.

In this regard, I provide below some simple suggestions by way of example (and therefore not exhaustive) in synoptic form:

The Lord will accomplish what concerns me;
Your faithfulness, Lord, is everlasting;
Do not abandon the works of Your hands. (Psalms 138,8)


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