by James Beauregard
Human Dignity continues to be a
topic of debate, and there are a range of opinions about it, from the need to
defend it to arguments that there is no such thing. As personalists are
typically concerned with the issue of human dignity – see, for example, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
article on personalism – this is worth pausing to consider.
Recently, the
Catholic Church at the direction of Pope Francis, made an official change to
the Catechism of the Catholic Church regarding the death penalty, and human
dignity loomed large in the official change in church teaching. The Catechism has in the past acknowledged
that the state has the right, in principle to utilize in capital punishment for
the protection of public order. This is acknowledged
in the new nitration of article 2267 of the Catechism:
“Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a
fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of
certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the
common good.”[1]
This same
article acknowledges that, “the dignity of the person is not lost even after
the commission of very serious crimes.” In light of the dignity of persons, the
Church has changed its official teaching on the death penalty to state:
Consequently, the Church teaches,
in the light of the Gospel, that ‘the death penalty is inadmissible because it
is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person’, and she works
with determination for its abolition worldwide.
In a letter to the bishops of the
Catholic church in February[2],
the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith makes frequent
reference to one of the twentieth century’s most widely known personalists, Karol
Wojtyła/Pope John Paul II, who, during his papacy commented multiple times on
the death penalty, most notably in the Encyclical Evangelium vitae, where he wrote, “a growing public opposition to
the death penalty, even when such a penalty is seen as a kind of ‘legitimate defence’
on the part of society. Modern society in fact has the means of effectively
suppressing crime by rendering criminals harmless without definitively denying
them the chance to reform.”[3]
The new
teaching on the death penalty immediately has two broad implications. First, it can no longer be argued that the
church supports capital punishment, if only in the most limited
circumstances. Second, it commits the
church to working worldwide for the abolition of the death penalty.
Newspaper
accounts in the United States have been reporting on this daily for the past
week, as the United States is one of the few western democracies that still
allows the death penalty for capital crimes. The reporting has focused in
particular on Republican politicians, who as a group tend to favour the death
penalty as part of their law and order position. Democrats, on the other hand, are
traditionally opposed to capital punishment.
It will be interesting to see how this new debate plays out, because it
will place in the public consciousness once again the issue of Republican
Catholic politicians having to take a stand for or against the church’s
teaching. One American governor, himself
a Catholic, has already publicly stated that an execution scheduled in his
state will be carried out as planned. To
date, criticism of Catholic politicians taking positions contrary to church
teaching has fallen mostly on Democratic politicians favouring abortion.
The thread of
dignity runs throughout these conversations.
Dignity is fairly straightforward to assert from a religious perspective
in terms of the Imago Dei. We are created in the image of God, and
herein lies the source and guarantor of human dignity. It has a source beyond this world and cannot
be either given or retracted by any institution. When one approaches the question of dignity
from the perspective of philosophy, grounded as it is in the resources of
reason rather than faith, the task becomes more difficulty. This can be seen historically in the human
rights documents that emerged subsequent to the Second World War such as the United Nations Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, which acknowledge human dignity as foundational for human rights,
but did not seek to define what specifically dignity is.[4] This was left to subsequent generations, and
no satisfactory or universally acceptable understanding of human rights has yet
emerged.
What might a
personalist understanding of human dignity need to consider? In conclusion I
would pose some questions for personalist philosophers and any other interested
parties on what might need to be considered in order to develop an adequate
understanding of and foundation for human dignity.
What do we mean
when we say the word “dignity” (some working definition or description)
What
understanding/description of persons ought to be operative in considering the
question of dignity?
How closed or
open-ended should an understanding of dignity be, given the open-ended nature
of persons? (Neither too narrow as to rule out some persons, nor too broad so
as to be meaningless).
Is there a
transcendental basis for human dignity, and if so, what might it be? (on the
grounds of reason, can an argument for aspects of the human person that are
transcendent be made, and if so how?).
What might be
the proper relationship between an understanding of human dignity and the
various political structures of our world? (Can the state grant or deprive one
of dignity, or does the state have an essential role in pro90moting and
protecting human dignity?)
[1]
Pope Francis, Address to
Participants in the Meeting organized by the Pontifical Council for the
Promotion of the New Evangelization, 11 October 2017: L’Osservatore Romano, 13 October 2017,
5. Both this document and the letter to the bishops cited below are available
on the Vatican website, www.vatican.va.
[2]
Letter to the Bishops regarding the new revision of number 2267 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the
death penalty, from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,
02.08.2018.
[3]
John Paul II, Evangelium vitae, http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25031995_evangelium-vitae.html.
[4]
Of note in this regard, personalist philosopher Jacques Maritain, who served
for several years as the French ambassador to the Vatican, had a role in
crafting this document.
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