Three chapters offer the foundations for the fourth, which is dedicated to “some grave vio-lations of human dignity.” That’s the structure of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s new Declaration Dignitas infinita, which commemorates the 75th anniversary of the Universal De-claration of Human Rights and reaffirms “the indispensable nature of the dignity of the human person in Christian anthropology.”
The main novelty of the document, which is the fruit of five years’ work, is the inclusion of a number of key themes from the recent papal magisterium that accompany the bioethical ones. In the ‘non-exhaustive’ list that is offered, abortion, euthanasia and surrogate mo-therhood are listed as violations of human dignity alongside war, poverty and human trafficking.
The new text thus contributes to overcoming the dichotomy that exists between those who focus exclusively on beginning-and-end-of-life issues, while forgetting so many other attacks against human dignity and, conversely, those who focus only on defending the poor and migrants while forgetting that life must be defended from conception to its natural conclusion.