Dignitas Infinita—Infinite Dignity. A Compendium of Catholic Ethics—and a Missed Chance

Ingeborg G. Gabriel is a professor emerita at the University of Vienna.

The declaration Dignitas Infinita (DI) was issued by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith with the explicit approval of the Pope on 8 April 2024. It had been in preparation for five years and was intended to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) on 10 December 2023. Its belated publication was due to an ecclesial process of discernment described in the “presentation” at the beginning of the document.

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What Does Dignitas Infinita Say about Gender?

Francisca Pérez-Madrid is Professor of Law and Religion at the University of Barcelona.

The declaration Dignitas Infinita prepared by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith seeks to consolidate the affirmations of recent Popes on human dignity. The text is a voice raised to the world on the inalienable and unconditional dignity of every human being, which corresponds to an individual’s nature beyond any cultural change. The document’s argumentation is based on faith and reason and refers to sacred scripture and on the teachings of the Catholic Church.

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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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