When you read a problematic document like Infinite Dignity, it forces you to remind yourself what the Church has already taught on the subject. You don’t want to dissent from any Magisterial teaching, but you also don’t want to dilute your faith.
You don’t want to assume the role of pope and issue a magisterial judgment against him because you aren’t the pope or the Magisterium. But at the same time you want to be clear with yourself and others on what is the clear Catholic doctrine on a subject. That is my purpose in this post.
We have human dignity because we are made in the image and likeness of God, because we possess intellect and free will, and therefore are able to acquire virtue and holiness. Baptism elevates this dignity giving it the grace to reach perfection, whereas sin, especially mortal sin, rips us of this dignity.
Our dignity is finite because we are creatures, and every attribute in a creature is finite. At the same time because we are made in God’s image, and through baptism can share in heaven in God’s own divine life, we are destined to share in His own infinite dignity, which He only possesses in His nature, but which, in the Beatific Vision, saints are able to be drawn into and be blessed by, while remaining finite creatures.
Even from within the Beatific Vision, in which we share in the inner, divine life of the Trinity, we still remain finite in our own nature, including our dignity. Yet the all-powerful God chooses to bless us with His infinite dignity without making it part of our own created nature, because creature cannot literally become Creator which is an absolute contradiction, but unlike Judaism, or Islam, or the naturalistic religion of the new age, taught by the United Nations, only in Christianity, through Christ, is man given the potential of being drawn into the divine life, and having an infinite-LIKE dignity.
We are like God. God is infinite. That qualify is REFLECTED in our own human nature without literally being or becoming a part of it. It is precisely because we are made in God’s image, destined to share in the infinite dignity of the Holy Trinity, that makes man sacred with sacred rights.
The abortion holocaust and now the LGBTQ attack on gender, sexuality, marriage, and the family are the gravest attacks on human dignity today. They are a diabolical, immeasurably violent attack on our nature as the image of God. That seeks to destroy rather than promote life. These two evils are bringing down God’s chastisement on the modern world, even more so than human sex trafficking as horrific as that is.
There are many other secondary yet grave evils the Church condemns which come from rejecting God and man as made in God’s image: euthanasia, abuse of the poor, and unjust wars. But the greatest crime against human dignity in the current contemporary period is the holocaust in the womb, murdering hundreds of millions of God’s innocents. Any nation that continues to legalize, tolerate, and minimize this most Satanic of modern evils will be first to be chastised by God, our Creator who gave to us a great, sacred dignity which we must safeguard. The most universal governmental organization, the United Nations, is the first and foremost promoter of the abortion Holocaust, the worst example of a governmental body violating human dignity.
Lord have mercy on us.