Sonia Corrêa
In April 2024, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of Faith, the main doctrinal body of the Holy See, published the Declaration Dignitas Infinita. This new text can be read as the first guidelines on gender and related matters in which the imprimatur of Francis I is flagrant. In these novel doctrinal guidelines, “abortion”, “surrogate pregnancy”, “theory of gender” “change of sex”, “ abortion” but also “sexual abuse” and “violence against women” are grouped with other main crisis of the world today: poverty, war, migration, human trafficking, and digital violence.
In this expanded doctrinal frame abortion rights, gender theorizing, sex reassignment, and surrogacy are condemned not only as threats to the family, the Church and “nature”, as it happened in the past, but as sharp violations of ontological human dignity as defined by Vatican and equated with dramatic scourges of present time, in particular war. A through critical review of Dignitas Infinitas would require a more careful and detailed analysis than what is provided in this short note. However, due to its relevance in the current political moment, I thought it could be productive to engage in a first reading of its content.
Vatican texts are never singular, but grounded in previous doctrinal lucubrations upon which their substratum is anchored, and Dignitas Infinita is not an exception. In the context of this brief note, it is impossible to delve more fully into its deeper genealogy. While not losing sight of its many layers, a few of them will be examined in the next few pages.
The layers
In what can be considered its main layer, the Declaration diligently invest in compiling arguments to prevent “the frequent confusions” that, in the Vatican’s view, plague current uses of the term “dignity”. Recalling the relationship between dignity and reason established by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century, it grounds the concept of ontological and inalienable dignity of every woman and man. And, as expected, in this framing, dignity is transcendentally inscribed in the difference of sexed bodies. Dignitas Infinita also insists that this is the correct frame for a proper reading of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The text also distinguishes the Catholic concept of dignity from other conceptions, such as moral dignity, social dignity and existential dignity that, as we know, also infuse contemporary ethical, political and juridical debates and norms. It also vigorously states that ontological dignity is true dignity that can never be “canceled”.
Once these axioms are established, the text engages in landscaping the main crisis of our times singling out twelve situations that, in its view, imply major violations of ontological dignity: poverty, war, the travail of migrants, human trafficking, the marginalization of people with disabilities, sexual abuse, violence against women, “abortion”, “surrogacy”, “euthanasia and assisted suicide”, “gender theory”, “sex change” and digital violence. In a third layer, the text clarifies why, in the Vatican’s view, these contemporary realities violate the Catholic conception of ontological (and ahistorical) dignity.
Before detailing why each of these topics implies a violation of ontological dignity, the Declaration spells out overarching doctrinal definitions. A first core elaboration aims at clarifying, in a very convoluted way, how ontological dignity is inscribed in bodily difference even though bodily “image” does not define the soul or intellectual capacity. The text reads as follows:
“Human beings do not create their nature, which is a gift they have received. They can cultivate, develop and enrich their own capacities. By exercising the freedom to cultivate the riches of his nature, the human person builds himself up over time. Even if he or she is not able to act with all his or her capacities, the person always subsists as an “individual substance… In his image God created him, male and female. Humanity has a specific quality that makes it irreducible to pure materiality. The (bodily) ‘image’ does not define the soul or the intellectual capacities, but the dignity of man and woman.”
The Declaration then explores the implications of its various doctrinal tenets when applied to world realities, in particular to the realm of human rights epistemologies and heuristics. In that respect, it articulates the notion of ontological dignity with a vigorous critique of excessive individualism and “imposing subjectivities” as order to vigorously contest the supposed proliferation of new rights:
“(Today) the concept of human dignity is also occasionally misused to justify an arbitrary proliferation of new rights, many of which are at odds with those originally defined and are often placed in opposition to the fundamental right to life”.
This perspective identifies dignity with isolated and individualistic freedom that seeks to impose particular subjective desires and propensities as “rights” to be guaranteed and financed by the community. However, human dignity cannot be based on merely individualistic standards, nor can it be identified with the psychophysical well-being of the individual. Instead, the defense of human dignity is based on the constitutive demands of human nature, which do not depend on individual arbitrariness or social recognition”.
With respect to this particular elaboration, it is essential to keep in mind that that, in the course of the last twenty years or so, the “critique of new rights” – elaborated initially in the 2003 Vatican Lexicon on the Ambiguous Terms on the Family – has turned into one main argument brandished by anti-gender forces against rights related to gender related matters.
The subsequent step of the text is a full return to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in relation to which Dignitas Infinita states that, quite regrettably, interpretations that developed after 1948 have misused the concept of human dignity to justify the arbitrary multiplication of new rights, as if “it were due to guarantee the expression and realization of every individual preference or subjective desire”.
In this section, the text positively emphasizes the relational character of human dignity while, at the same time, attacking what it defines as: “self-referential and individualistic freedom that seeks to create its own values, disregarding objective norms of the good and the relationship with other living beings”.
Having summarized these overarching doctrinal parameters let’s briefly look into specific contents concerning abortion rights, gender theorizing and gender reassignment.
What does the Declaration define in relation to “abortion”?
The argument developed in Dignitas Infinita to condemn abortion differs from previous Vatican documents in that it does not immediately and directly resorts to the grammar of the “culture of death”, which prevailed in other Vatican texts on the matter since, at least, the 1990s. On the other hand, it staunchly criticizes the terminology “termination of pregnancy” as an euphemism whose purpose is to hide “dark realities” (of abortion) that in in its view are described as follows:
“Induced abortion is the deliberate and direct killing, by whatever means, of a human being in the initial phase of its existence, from conception to birth.” According to the Declaration, this clarification is very urgent because:
“The acceptance of abortion in the popular mind, in behavior and even in the law itself is a telling sign of an extremely dangerous crisis of the moral sense, which is becoming increasingly unable to distinguish between good and evil, even when the fundamental right to life is at stake.”
The primary focus of Dignitas Infinita seems to be, therefore, what in Latin America has been named as the ”social decriminalization of abortion”. Given the firm tone of the text, this new doctrinal guideline sounds like a strong call to arms to contain, by all means possible, the pace of this continuing socio-cultural and legal transformation regarding the perception of what abortion means.
What does the Declaration define in relation “theory of gender” and “sex change”?
With regard to these other topics, it is quite notable that the text does not use to the accusatory category “gender ideology” but rather “theory of gender”. This is not exactly new, as this same term was central at the 2013 Manif pour Tous in France. It has also appeared at random in Bergoglio’s mercurial anti gender speech acts and, most principally, it is the terminology adopted in the first doctrinal document issued by Francis papacy in 2019, to guide the responses of the Church and the faithful to the dangers of “gender theory in education”.
Its inscription in this new guideline, whose doctrinal status is higher, can eventually be read as a definitive semantic turn. If this is so, this shift — which may be read as a softening of the language used by the Vatican to refute gender– signal towards a firmer disposition on the part of the Vatican to more frontallly contest critical gender knowledge production.In a next step, the text moves to clarify why “gender theory” as a form of knowledge production is antagonistic to ontological dignity. In doing so, it begins with an argumentation, which may seem surprising to many readers:
“… each person, regardless of their sexual orientation, must be respected in their dignity and welcomed with respect, taking care to avoid ‘all forms of unjust discrimination’ and particularly all forms of aggression and violence”.
Though intriguing for those who do not follow the Vatican gender politics closely, this view is aligned with positions manifested by Francis I, expressing tolerance, and accueil towards homosexuals. Even so, subsequently and quite abruptly, the text returns the “problem of new rights” in the following terms:
“…attempts made in recent decades to introduce new rights have given way to ideological colonizations, among which gender theory plays a central role, which is extremely dangerous because it cancels out differences in the pretense of making everyone the same.”
Then, it makes a further step in making clear why, in the Vatican’s view, “gender theory” is totally incompatible with ontological dignity:
“(This incompatibility comes from the fact that this theory) tries to deny the sexual difference, which is the founding, greatest, most beautiful and potent (difference) because in the duality man-woman, the most admirable reciprocity is achieved and it is the source of that miracle, which is the arrival of new human beings into the world.”
After these overlapping convolutions, the text finally resorts to the language of ideology to explain that “gender theory is ideological” because it “proposes a society without sex differences, emptying the anthropological basis of the family,” which is “unacceptable”.Then, returning to the central argument of the 2019 document on “gender theory in education,” it adds:
“…ideologies of this kind try to impose themselves as a single thought that determines the education of children”.
Having set these general doctrinal parameters, with regard specifically to “change of sex” the Declaration reiterates that the “dignity of the body is not inferior to that of the person as such”. Consequently, continues the argument, sex reassignment interventions threaten the unique dignity that the person received from the moment of conception and which is expressed through their corporeality.
Not surprisingly, but worth noting, Dignitas Infinita does not develop any reasoning on the “problem” of compulsory surgical interventions imposed on intersex people (most often children) to adjust their bodies to the dominant norm of binary sexual difference. This blunt missing point reveals the inherent incoherence of Dignitas’ position on “change of sex,” given that changing sex is precisely what these surgeries do to intersex bodies whose sex characteristics were also determined at the moment of conception.
This incongruence also lurked beneath the bold efforts made by the Vatican, at the Human Rights Council debates to prevent the approval of Resolution A/HRC/55/L.9, which, despite these pressures, +was coincidentally adopted in April 2024. The resolution fully recognizes the human rights of intersex persons, including the right to be protected from coercive surgical interventions1.
To (preliminarly ) conclude
Dignitas Infinita places “abortion”, “gender theory” and “sex change” into an overarching frame that also includes the major crises of current times, equating these matters with the flagellum of poverty, war, and the drama of migration, digital violence. The list also includes sexual abuse and violence against women.
In relation to abortion specifically, the Declaration calls for the firm containment of what it names as the widespread and legal normalization of the violation of the right to life implied in “termination of pregnancy”. Furthermore, it incites sharp divisions in relation to “gender matters” when it equates the violations inherent to sexual abuse and violence against women with what it defines as scourging effects of “abortion”, “gender theory”, “change of sex”, and surrogacy. A similar divisive approach is blatant when Dignitas Infinitas recognizes the full dignity of persons whose sexual orientation diverge from the norm while abhorring the instability of gender identity as a violation of ontological human dignity.
These convoluted reasonings defined the contours of the final doctrinal (and political) approach adopted by late Francis I to the “troubling problems of gender”. It recaptures and adjourns– as Vatican thinkers have always done when addressing matters of gender — Thomas Aquinas’ conceptual frame to address sexual difference and procreation. It can also be read as more of the same in a new cloth, as many of its elaborations resonate with Ratzinger’s anxieties from the 1980s that would later give rise to the “gender phantasm”.
When situated in relation to the highly conflictive landscapes of anti-gender politics, Dignitas Infinita is also to be read as move to reposition the Vatican as the condottiere of these “gender wars” that, to some extent, have expanded much beyond its control.No less significantly, in articulatIng longstanding doctrinal refutations in relation to “gender theory”, “change of sex” and ” abortion” with Francis I’s progressive critiques of war, poverty and the migration crisis, Dignitas Infinita provides additional fodder to fuel anti-gender cyclones. Its more troubling feature is, however, that, despite its predominantly soft tone, it incites divisiveness and confusion.
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Footnote
1 To learn more about the resolution check the ILGA Report at https://ilga.org/news/united-nations-intersex-resolution-human-rights-council/