Infinite, Finite, and Definite Dignity: Reflections on the Catholic Church’s Dignitas Infinita

Vatican, Rome – Conciliazione street

In April 2024, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (the Holy See’s institution responsible for the religious discipline of the Catholic Church) published the declaration Dignitas Infinita. The document contributes to the theological argumentation of human dignity as an ontological feature of every human being and clarifies the teachings of the Catholic Church on dignity-related issues, including those traditionally the subject of the Holy See’s focus (such as family ethics, poverty, and war) and those that are virtually new (such as human dignity and digital technologies).

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Developing Our Understanding of Human Dignity for the Digital Age

Paolo Carozza is a professor of law at Notre Dame Law School.

While the dignity of the human person is recognized to be “the foundation of all the other principles and content of the [Catholic] Church’s social doctrine,” this is not to say that there aren’t difficult and important disagreements internal to the tradition about the exact basis and meaning of human dignity, and about the implications of recognizing and respecting it in our social relations, especially in relation to the changing and contingent conditions of the material environment in which men and women live at any given time and place.

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