The recent Declaration of the Vatican Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, ‘Dignitas Infinita’, on Human Dignity (2 April 2024), has had a protracted gestation. An original draft was reviewed in 2019 and found to be unsatisfactory. Since then, there have been at least four further drafts. The final one had direct input from Pope Francis. He insisted that the penultimate draft be expanded to include not only the traditional bioethical issues – abortion, euthanasia, surrogacy, gender theory, sex change, etc. – but also a whole variety of specifically social contexts in which human dignity is compromised: poverty, war, the travails of migrants and the disabled, human trafficking, sexual abuse, violence against women and digital violence. It was as if he was resurrecting Cardinal Joseph Bernardin’s controversial 1983 document on ‘The Consistent Ethic of Life’(6 December 1983).
As the extensive footnotes reveal, this Declaration draws not only on the final document of the Second Vatican Council, ‘Gaudium et Spes’, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (7 December 1965), but also on Pope Francis’ recent encyclical, ‘Fratelli Tutti’(3 October 2020), and many Vatican documents on related themes over the past sixty years. It also acknowledges the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (10 December 1948), whose 75th anniversary was celebrated at the end of 2023.
The Vatican Declaration is basically a statement of Catholic principles on human dignity. It draws the line in a whole variety of contexts where human dignity may not be compromised and where consequential human rights must be maintained as inalienable. Because it is exclusively a statement of principles there are no concessions of a pastoral nature to those whose lifestyles and practices (e.g. LGBTIQA+, transgenders, surrogate motherhood) are at odds with these principles. This, however, is not only disappointing in itself but doubly so in that a more sensitive approach to some of these ‘problems’ has been evident in more recent Vatican documents. In these documents, while there has been no retreat from the basic principles, there has also been evident a willingness both to recognize that adherence to these principles is very difficult for some people and virtually impossible in some situations and that a more inclusive and inductive moral logic that respects individual circumstances must be employed if the Church is to engage effectively with these alienated ‘irregulars’.
This more expansive logic was most authoritatively outlined in Chapter 8 of the encyclical ‘Amoris Laetitia’ (19 March 2016), where Pope Francis addressed the situation of Catholics who had divorced and remarried. Instead of invoking the standard Catholic principles and excommunicating such ‘irregulars’ into outer darkness, the Pope insisted that each case must be addressed anew in its singularity to see whether personal circumstances could be discerned which might explain or even excuse this deviation from Catholic principles and practice. For the Pope engagement, rather than judgment and condemnation, should be the preferred pastoral stance in addressing these ‘irregular’ situations.
Thus, for example, most recently in the Declaration ‘Fiducia Supplicans’ (18 December 2023), priests were encouraged to respond positively to requests for blessings from members of homosexual unions. In ‘Samaritanus Bonus’(14 July 2020) hospital chaplains were instructed to accompany euthanasia-intent patients right up to the moment of ingesting the lethal potion. Further, in a response (13 December 2023) to a bishop from the Dominican Republic, the Dicastery actively encouraged single unmarried mothers not only to access the Sacraments themselves and to have their children baptized but also to participate fully in the life of the Christian community. In a similar response on 3 October, 2023, the Dicastery indicated that, at least in principle, there was no canonical restriction to transgender persons and children of homosexual couples being baptized or transgender or homosexual persons serving as godparents at baptisms or witnesses at sacramental marriages.
Granted these recent more engaging and compassionate responses, it is somewhat surprising and certainly disappointing that none of these responses and declarations are conceded either in the body of the text of ‘Dignitas Infinita’ or even cited in the extensive footnotes. Perhaps this is because the Declaration has been drafted exclusively as a statement of Catholic principle. But in the Catholic tradition pastoral applications have usually accompanied statements of principle. Not, however, in this case. Indeed, in addition to the customary anathemas on abortion and euthanasia, strong criticism is directed especially to the practice of surrogate motherhood and to gender theory. The surrogate child is characterized as ‘an object of trafficking’ and the subject of an ‘artificially induced origin’. Only the maternal womb is a fit receptacle for continuing procreation, and that even though the genetic mother may be incapable of sustaining a pregnancy. What the Vatican makes of neonatal intensive care units where premature infants are maintained ‘artificially’ for upwards of a third of their lives is not recorded. What they will make of the prospect of artificial wombs that may rescue miscarried fetuses will also be interesting to speculate. But in dismissing the practice of surrogate motherhood even in its altruistic form, there is little recognition in the Declaration that for some would-be parents this is their last resort. The individual hard case yields before the universal principle. There is no ‘right to a child’.
'There are obviously strong sentiments on both sides when the ethics of surrogacy and transgenderism are debated. There is little evidence either in the text or in the footnotes of the Vatican’s Declaration that they are aware of the debate or of views contrary to their own.'
A similar logic operates in addressing transgenderism. For the Declaration (and personally, it would seem, for Pope Francis) Gender Theory and even its application in individual cases is an abomination. Although it is not explicitly invoked in the text of the Declaration (only in the footnotes), Genesis 1:27 encapsulates the Catholic principle: ‘God created man in the image of himself, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them’. The Declaration will allow no exceptions to the binary of male and female. Sexuality and gender may be distinguished but not separated. Only where there are ambiguous genitalia is a physical resolution admissible. Psychological discomfort, however intense, where one’s subjectively perceived gender orientation is at odds with one’s biological sex, cannot be resolved by recourse to medical or surgical interventions. Once again, the general rejection of gender theory and ideology seems to take no account of individual hard cases, and this despite the more recent compassionate pastoral statements emanating from the Vatican.
The ethics of both surrogacy and gender dysphoria are currently hotly debated, especially in secular European contexts. At a recent conference in Rome, the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, characterized surrogacy as an ‘inhuman practice’, declaring it ‘a universal crime’. For others, however, it is an example of extraordinary altruism, even though for others it is also a lucrative industry. A wide ranging ‘Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People’, led by Dr Hilary Cass in England, pointed to the inadequacy and general unreliability of data on transgenderism in young people. She urged caution in addressing medical and surgical interventions. Yet in Germany recent legislation has made it possible for people aged 14 and older to change their first name and gender entry merely by making a declaration to the registry office. Similar options exist in a number of other European countries.
There are obviously strong sentiments on both sides when the ethics of surrogacy and transgenderism are debated. There is little evidence either in the text or in the footnotes of the Vatican’s Declaration that they are aware of the debate or of views contrary to their own. These are issues that will not go away. One might hope that the next time the Dicastery addresses these aspects of human dignity, its footnotes at least might indicate that a wider secular, as well as ecclesiastical, purview has been engaged, and that technology, even at its interstices with the ‘natural’ is to be discerned rather than summarily dismissed.
Bill Uren, SJ, AO, is a Scholar-in-residence at Newman College at the University of Melbourne. A former Provincial Superior of the Australian and New Zealand Jesuits, he has lectured in moral philosophy and bioethics in universities in Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth and has served on the Australian Health Ethics Committee and many clinical and human research ethics committees in universities, hospitals and research centres.
Main image: Pope Francis during the General Audience (Vatican Media)