The Dignity of the Human Person

Christ’s Gift of Renewed Humanity

The Gift of Renewed Humanity

• Christ’s death and Resurrection not only save us from sin and death but they also restored

humanity.

• The Pascal mystery (Christ’s death, Resurrection, &

Ascension) restored the image of God within man.

• The restoration of God’s image within us provided us with a renewed ontological dignity.

• Ontological = at the level of essential being; the very core of

man is changed.

The restored image of God within man due to Christ’s works also brought about a renewal of our intellect and will.

Our intellect is raised to the contemplation of Divine Wisdom; Christ calls us to think as God thinks, “”For My thoughts are not your thoughts nor are My ways are not your ways” Is. 55:8

Our will is raised to act in perfect freedom, “Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one's own responsibility. By free will one shapes one's own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.” CCC 1731

Christ’s call to exercise authentic human freedom renews our consciences. The conscience is the internal sense within man of right and wrong.

Renewal of Intellect and Will

The renewal of intellect and will involves the formation of conscience.

To make clear moral judgments every human being is responsible for continual growth in the knowledge of the moral law.

“The education of the conscience is a lifelong task. From the earliest years, it awakens the child to the knowledge and practice of the interior law recognized by conscience …The education of the conscience guarantees freedom and engenders peace of heart.” CCC1784

A life of prayer is also integral to the formation of conscience, it is only through prayer that we can discern the difference between right and wrong and what God’s will is for us.

An ignorant or ill-formed conscience restricts human freedom and fails to reflect the image of God within man.

A Well Formed Conscience

Conscience & VirtueVirtue: from the Latin “vir” (man), are those good practices and habits which make us more manly.

• But, how is conscience exercised within the context of making a moral decision?

Well-Formed

Conscience

Good Object Chosen

Virtue Exercised & Increased

A More Christ-Like

Human Being

Moral Problem

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Start

The challenge of making moral choices contain the potential of human transformation.

Though Christ has won the victory over sin and death, the power of evil still is at work in the world trying to restrict human freedom.

This is seen most clearly in the attitude of moral relativism. Moral relativism is the philosophy which denies the existence of

universal moral truth. In a morally relativistic system, the individual person is the final

judge of moral truth; “I can do what I want”. In such a system universally recognized norms of morality are

denied (ex. murder is evil) and replaced with the judgment of the individual person (ex. abortion is a personal choice).

Such a system leads to the disintegration of the common good of society and of the freedom of the individual person.

Threats to the Dignity of the Human Person

Dictatorship of Relativism• Prior to his election as Pope, Cardinal Ratzinger

gave a homily in which he described the dangers of Relativism:

• “How many winds of doctrine we have known in these last decades, how many ideological currents, how many fashions of thought? The small boat of thought of many Christians has often remained agitated by the waves, tossed from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, etc.

Every day new sects are born and we see realized what St. Paul says on the deception of men, on the cunning that tends to lead into error (cf. Ephesians 4:14). To have a clear faith, according to the creed of the Church, is often labeled as fundamentalism. While relativism, that is, allowing oneself to be carried about with every wind of "doctrine," seems to be the only attitude that is fashionable. A dictatorship of relativism is being constituted that recognizes nothing as absolute and which only leaves the "I" and its whims as the ultimate measure.”

Can you figure out why the statement, “there is no truth” is absurd? One who is a moral relativist and tells you “there is no truth” is telling

you a statement which he/she believes is true. Thus, moral relativism refutes itself. Let’s attack it from another angle – ad hominem “against the man”:

Let us take the example of a man who uses a moral relativist point of view to justify breaking his fidelity to his wife. This man believes that there is no truth but his own and he has concluded that he may cheat on his wife because it is good for him.

Now, this man’s wife turns around and does the same thing to him. What do you think the man will think of his wife?

Of course he will protest for being treated so unfairly and immorally.

How absurd! Why? Because we know that the act of cheating on a spouse is universally and absolutely wrong.

Why Relativism is Ridiculous

There are universal moral truths.

Victims of Relativism

Abortion – advocates of abortion rights proclaim, “my body, my choice”. Do you have the right to kill the living human being within your own body?

Euthanasia – so called “mercy killing”. Advocates for the right to assisted suicide proclaim “death with dignity”. Is dying like your dog or cat dignified?

Perpetrators of EvilMao Zedong = the supreme leader of China (1943-1976) justified the mass murder of between 40-50 million people.

Joseph Stalin = the supreme leader of The Soviet Union (1941-1953) justified the murder of 20 million political, religious, and social enemies.

That is between 60-70 million people murdered by regimes which had

moral relativism as their backbone.

Conclusions• In his encyclical letter Fides et

Ratio, Pope John Paul II states:

• “Nonetheless, in the light of faith which finds in Jesus Christ this ultimate meaning, I cannot but encourage philosophers—be they Christian or not—to trust in the power of human reason … It is faith which stirs reason to move beyond all isolation and willingly to run risks so that it may attain whatever is beautiful, good and true. Faith thus becomes the convinced and convincing advocate of reason.”

• Faith and reason need to act together to uphold the dignity of the human person. Faith without reason is blind and reason without faith becomes proud and self-centered.

Another threat to the dignity of the human person is the scientific control over the bringing about of human life.

This takes on two forms: artificial contraception & in-vitro fertilization.

Artificial contraception (better known as “birth control”) is contrary to the dignity of the human person and therefore contrary to the teachings of the Church.

This is so for several reasons:◦ Birth control, or the closer description birth-prevention, thwarts the possibility of a

couple procreating a brand new human life with God. ◦ Contraception also has several relational side effects which Pope Paul VI describes

in his encyclical Humanae Vitae: “Let them first consider how easily this course of action could open wide the way for marital

infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards.” HV 17 “Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of

contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.” HV 17

“Finally, careful consideration should be given to the danger of this power passing into the hands of those public authorities who care little for the precepts of the moral law. “ HV 17

Test Tubes & Tyrants

Brave New World

• In his dystopian novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley describes a

world wherein people are constructed in an assembly like

fashion.

• The characters in this “Brave New World” struggle to find their

humanity within such a mechanical and artificial world.

• The modern practice of designing human beings through the process

of in-vitro fertilization brings the story of Huxley’s world into our

modern reality.

₁ http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-18560_162-1300667.html

In Vitro-Fertilization brings several new human beings into existence outside of the sexual act through a purely scientific means.

There are several moral problems with this process:◦ It separates God’s plan for sex and marriage by separating the conception of a

child and the sexual act. ◦ The process of IVF brings about several conceptions and then the scientists

choose the most genetically superior of the embryos (unborn children) to implant.◦ What happens to the other children? They remain in cold storage in an embryo

bank – human beings are stored like cuts of beef either to be experimented on and thus destroyed or to be used later.

◦ There are 400,000+ human beings in embryo banks.₁

◦ We need to ask a question here – are we prepared as a society to treat human beings as things to be experimented on, manipulated, and disrespected? Are human beings the raw material for science? Or are we more?

In-Vitro Fertilization

We have seen the destructive results of moral relativism in our own society through the evil practices of abortion, euthanasia, contraception, and IVF.

Since these practices disrespect the dignity of the human person, what positive conclusions can we draw about the human race?◦ We are made in the “image and likeness of God” which gives us an ontological

dignity and value. ◦ We have the gifts of intellect, will, and conscience which Christ has redeemed and

elevated.◦ We are meant to be stewards of creation, that is, we are in charge of protecting

humanity and the world in which we live.◦ We are created to practice goodness through the proper exercise of our freedom.◦ We are created for immortality, we are meant for external life with God.◦ Human sexuality within marriage is meant for procreation, the conceiving and

bearing of children. Those outside of the state of marriage are called to exercise the virtue of chastity. Chastity is the virtue which recognizes the meaning of sexuality and exercises it according to one’s state in life – always focusing on respecting others as persons made “in the image and likeness of God”.

◦ We are meant to respect the sacredness of human life from the moment of conception to the last natural breath. Life is God’s domain and we ought to respect the rights which properly belong to God.

Conclusions