Meditating on the notion of dignity in human life

One of my Lenten practices this season is to meditate on the dignity of the human person.

What does dignity mean?

How do we conceive of it? How have humans acquired this dignity?

What role does it play in religious and secular discourse?

Dignity is an essential principle in the Catholic social tradition, but it is also an idea with a history.

In ancient Rome, the term dignity had different meanings from how the Church thinks about it today.

Dr. Mette Lebech, a professor of philosophy at the National University of Ireland, has written that dignity (or dignitas in Latin) in ancient Rome “was the standing of the one who commanded respect, whether because of his political, military or administrative achievements.”

This suggests that dignity was attached to “doing” or “performance.”

In other words, it was something that the person achieved by the offices they held and the success they won.

The notion of dignity plays a critical role on the international stage via documents, charters, and declarations. Think of the Preamble in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which refers to “inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family.”

But also, in political events like “Arab Spring” in 2011 when prodemocracy protestors expressed their desire for respect and dignity.

Dignity, then, has stressed the importance of human rights on an international scale, which gave rise to the United Nations, and has also been a rallying cry for people seeking political change.

The Constitution of the United States is silent on the notion of dignity. The U.S. Supreme Court refers to dignity in some rulings—in cases, for example, concerning the death penalty and same-sex relationships.

James R. May of the Washburn University School of Law states that no “federal court (or judge) has recognized a subjective right to human dignity.”

Two sub-national exceptions would be the constitutions of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and the State of Montana. Both state that the “dignity of the human being is inviolable.”

The Church has produced numerous documents highlighting the bedrock fact of human dignity.

Anna Rowlands—Professor of Catholic Social Thought and Practice at Durham University in the United Kingdom—contends that the Church’s understanding of human dignity saw major developments in the mid-20th century in response to the fascism, communism, and war. Human dignity underwent horror in these three areas.

Meditating on the notion of dignity can disclose the mysterious depths of the human person.

This dignity is the fulcrum of human nature, reason, and the very fabric of social relations.

Dr. Lebech wisely claims that what “we say when we claim that the principle of human dignity is the basis of the international order, is that this world order should be a civilization of respect and love. Perhaps we even mean that it is only as such a civilization that it can be a civilization at all.”

I encourage you to adopt the Lenten Dignity Challenge.

Spend five minutes each day of Lent reflecting on the notion of human dignity.

Research. Read. Practice.