The Right to Be Human
The Church's Teaching on Human Dignity
Sherman Kuek, SFO
Published in Catholic Asian News
(December 2008 / January 2009 Issue)
The dignity of the human person forms the most basic premise of the Church’s social teaching. It is the key which unlocks what has come to be known as the Church’s “best kept secret” or “buried treasure”.
The Church, having a moral vision for society, has deemed it fit to begin her teaching with an affirmation of the sanctity of human life and the dignity of the human person. The human person is invariably the concentration point of the Church’s social vision.
Scriptures point to the fact that every human being is made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26), who carries something of God’s divine nature in himself. This means that a human person is the clearest reflection of God among the order of the created.
Accordingly, therefore, human persons are endowed with an inherent dignity which entails certain basic rights and responsibilities to be exercised within a social framework. Every person possesses a fundamental dignity that comes from God, not from any human quality or accomplishment, not from race or gender, age or economic status.
The “link of being” between God and humanity was rendered even more pronounced when God became flesh by entering the human race in the person of Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man. The God-Man - the Christ - challenges us to see His presence in all humanity. More than that, he confronts humanity with the need to see His presence in our neighbours, especially those who suffer or who lack the things that are crucial to their human development.
Identifying with the sufferings of our fellow neighbours and endeavouring to relieve their sufferings and to meet their needs, in Jesus’ own assessment, tantamount to serving Him (Matthew 25:34-40). For the Christian, there is no more honourable privilege and duty.
Beyond Scriptures, the Church has had a tradition - spanning more than 40 years - of social teaching in the forms of various concilliar documents, papal statements, and other forms of documentation which reflect the Church’s ordinary magisterium. These are some vital excerpts:
Any human society, if it is to be well-ordered and productive, must lay down as a foundation this principle, namely, that every human being is a person, that is, his nature is endowed with intelligence and free will. Indeed, precisely because he is a person he has rights and obligations flowing directly and simultaneously from his very nature. (Pacem In Terris, 1963, #9)
... there is a growing awareness of the exalted dignity proper to the human person, since he stands above all things, and his rights and duties are universal and inviolable. Therefore, there must be made available to all men everything necessary for leading a life truly human, such as food, clothing, and shelter; the right to choose a state of life freely and to found a family, the right to education, to employment, to a good reputation, to respect, to appropriate information, to activity in accord with the upright norm of one's own conscience, to protection of privacy and rightful freedom, even in matters religious. (Gaudium et Spes, 1965, #26)
... this Council lays stress on reverence for the human person; everyone must consider one's every neighbour without exception as another self, taking into account first of all life and the means necessary to living it with dignity, so as not to imitate the rich man who had no concern for the poor man Lazarus. (Gaudium et Spes, 1965, #27)
... Whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practise them than those who suffer from the injury. (Gaudium et Spes, 1965, #27)
At the centre of all Catholic social teaching are the transcendence of God and the dignity of the human person. The human person is the clearest reflection of God's presence in the world; all of the Church's work in pursuit of both justice and peace is designed to protect and promote the dignity of every person. For each person not only reflects God, but is the expression of God's creative work and the meaning of Christ's redemptive ministry. (The Challenge of Peace, 1983, #15)
Every perspective on economic life that is human, moral, and Christian must be shaped by three questions: What does the economy do for people? What does it do to people? And how do people participate in it? (Economic Justice for All, 1986, #1)
The basis for all that the Church believes about the moral dimensions of economic life is its vision of the transcendent worth - the sacredness - of human beings. The dignity of the human person, realised in community with others, is the criterion against which all aspects of economic life must be measured. All human beings, therefore, are ends to be served by the institutions that make up the economy, not means to be exploited for more narrowly defined goals. Human personhood must be respected with a reverence that is religious. When we deal with each other, we should do so with the sense of awe that arises in the presence of something holy and sacred. For that is what human beings are: we are created in the image of God. (Economic Justice for All, 1986, #28)
Human persons are willed by God; they are imprinted with God's image. Their dignity does not come from the work they do, but from the persons they are. (Centesimus Annus, 1991, #11)
The dignity of the human person is rooted in his creation in the image and likeness of God... (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1992, #1700)
Christ is "the image of the invisible God" in whose image humanity is created. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1992, #1701)
The Australian Catholic Migrant and Refugee Office notes that “the tragic plight of refugees, while not new, has reached unprecedented levels in recent times as massive political and social upheavals, wars and internal conflicts continue around the world, forcing people to migrate and to seek asylum in countries other than their own”. This apt observation implies that the numbers of migrants and refugees in our midst will only increase in time to come. Compounding this problem is the reality that many of these will be present in our countries with no legal status and therefore no entitlements.
In our assessment of social policies pertaining to such migrants and refugees, among other policies, the test of every institution or enactment lies in its priority of human dignity, namely, whether it enhances or threatens human dignity and human life itself. Policies which consider people no more than mere economic units, or those which reduce people to a passive state of dependency on welfare, do not do justice to the dignity of the human person.
This teaching rests on one basic principle: individual human beings are the foundation, the cause and the end of every social institution. That is necessarily so, for men are by nature social beings. (Mater et Magistra, 1961, #219)
How all these considerations are translated into tangible endeavours on the parts of the Church and society in upholding and sustaining the dignity of the migrants and refugees in our midst remains a work in progress.
One immediate issue plaguing the migrants and refugees is, of course, that of work and subsistence. It has always been taught in the Christian Tradition that one’s vocation is fundamental to what it means to be human. And if this is indeed so, then perhaps active efforts for the provision of vocational training is necessary in collaboration with non-governmental agencies in order to promote their dignity by way of vocational equipment.
Together with that, their rights to be treated human by employers is another major factor to be addressed, especially in situations where no legislative enforcements assure the wellbeing of migrant workers. Such would include adequate medical attention, reasonable living conditions, and humane working hours.
Inasmuch as the teaching of the Church in issues of human dignity is comprehensive, the translation of her teaching into tangible solutions for the predicament of migrants and refugees is also a substantially comprehensive plan which requires long-term strategies and collaborative planning. Where the latter does not happen, the teachings of the Church might continue remaining etched in ecclesial documents as the Church’s best kept secret.
