Capital punishment
To begin
with the latter, I hasten to add that most
of the conclusions are unobjectionable.
They are simply reiterations of longstanding Catholic teaching on
abortion, euthanasia, our obligations to the poor and to migrants, and so
on. The document is especially helpful
and courageous in strongly condemning surrogacy and gender theory, which will
win it no praise from the progressives the pope is often accused of being too
ready to placate.
There are
other passages that are more problematic but perhaps best interpreted as
imprecise rather than novel. For
example, it is stated that “it is very difficult nowadays to invoke the
rational criteria elaborated in earlier centuries to speak of the possibility
of a ‘just war.’” That might seem to
mark the beginnings of a reversal of traditional teaching that has been
reiterated as recently as the current Catechism. However, Dignitas
Infinita also “reaffirm[s] the inalienable right to self-defense and the
responsibility to protect those whose lives are threatened,” which are themes
that recent statements of just war doctrine have already emphasized.
The one
undeniably gravely problematic conclusion Dignitas
Infinita draws from its key premise concerns the death penalty. Pope Francis already came extremely close to
declaring capital punishment intrinsically immoral when he changed the
Catechism in 2018, so that it now says that “the death penalty is inadmissible
because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.” But that left open the possibility that what
was meant is that it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person
unless certain circumstances hold,
such as the practical impossibility of protecting others from the offender
without executing him (even if this reading is a bit strained). The new DDF document goes further and flatly
declares that “the death penalty… violates the inalienable dignity of every
person, regardless of the circumstances”
(emphasis added).
This simply
cannot be reconciled with scripture and the consistent teaching of all popes
who have spoken on the matter prior to Pope Francis. That includes Pope St. John Paul II, despite
his well-known opposition to capital punishment. In Evangelium
Vitae, even John Paul taught only:
Punishment… ought not go to the
extreme of executing the offender except
in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible
otherwise to defend society. Today
however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal
system, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent.
And the
original version of the Catechism promulgated by John Paul II stated:
The traditional teaching of the
Church has acknowledged as well-founded the right and duty of the legitimate
public authority to punish malefactors by means of penalties commensurate with
the gravity of the crime, not excluding,
in cases of extreme gravity, the death penalty. (2266)
In short, John
Paul II (like scripture and like every previous pope who spoke on the matter)
held that some circumstances can justify
capital punishment, whereas Pope Francis now teaches that no circumstances can ever justify capital
punishment. That is a direct
contradiction. Now, Joseph Bessette and
I, in our book By
Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment,
have shown that the legitimacy in principle of the death penalty has in fact
been taught infallibly by scripture and the tradition of the Church. I’ve also made the case for this claim on
other occasions, such as in this
article. Hence, if Pope
Francis is indeed teaching that capital punishment is intrinsically wrong, it
is clear that it is he who is in the
wrong, rather than scripture and previous popes.
If defenders
of Pope Francis deny this, then they are logically committed to holding that
those previous popes erred. Either way, some pope or other has erred, so that it
will make no sense for defenders of Pope Francis to pretend that they are
simply upholding papal magisterial authority.
To defend Pope Francis is to reject the teaching of the previous popes;
to defend those previous popes is to reject the teaching of Pope Francis. There is no way to defend all of them at
once.
This is in
no way inconsistent with the doctrine of papal infallibility, because that
doctrine concerns ex cathedra
definitions, and nothing Pope Francis has said amounts to such a
definition (as Cardinal Fernández, Prefect of the DDF, has
explicitly acknowledged). But
it refutes those
who claim that all papal
teaching on faith and morals is infallible, and those who hold that, even if
not all such teaching is infallible, no pope has actually taught error. For that reason alone, Dignitas Infinita is a document of historic significance, albeit
not for the reasons Pope Francis or Cardinal Fernández would have intended.
Dignity and the death penalty
The other
problem with the document, I have said, concerns the premise with which it
begins. That premise is referred to in
its title, and it is stated in its opening lines as follows:
Every human person possesses an
infinite dignity, inalienably grounded in his or her very being, which prevails
in and beyond every circumstance, state, or situation the person may ever
encounter. This principle, which is
fully recognizable even by reason alone, underlies the primacy of the human
person and the protection of human rights… [Thus] the
Church… always insist[s] on “the primacy of the human person and the defense of
his or her dignity beyond every circumstance.”
The most
striking part of this passage – indeed, I would say the most shocking part of
it – is the assertion that human dignity is infinite. I will come back to that. But first note the other aspects of its
teaching. The Declaration implies that
this dignity follows from human nature
itself, rather than from grace. That
is implied by its being fully knowable by reason alone (as opposed to special
divine revelation). It is ontological rather than acquired in
nature, reflecting what a human being is
rather than what he or she does. For
this reason, it cannot be lost no matter what one does, in “every circumstance,
state, or situation the person may ever encounter.” And again, the dignity human beings are said
in this way to possess is also claimed to be infinite in nature.
It is no
surprise, then, that the Declaration should later go on to say what it does about
the death penalty. According to Pope
Francis’s revision of the Catechism, the death penalty is “an attack on the
inviolability and dignity of the person.”
But Dignitas Infinita says
this dignity exists in “every
circumstance, state, or situation the person may ever encounter.” That
implies that it is retained no matter what evil the person has committed, and
no matter how dangerous he is to others.
Thus, if we must “always insist on…
the primacy of the human person and the defense of his or her dignity beyond every circumstance,” it would
follow that the death penalty would be impermissible in every circumstance.
This alone
entails that there is something wrong with the Declaration’s premises. For it is, again, the infallible teaching of
scripture and all previous popes that the death penalty can under some
circumstances be justifiable. Hence, if
the Declaration’s teaching on human dignity implies otherwise, it is that teaching
that is flawed, not scripture and not two millennia of consistent papal teaching.
There is
also the problem that, in defense of its conception of human dignity, the
Declaration appeals to scriptural passages from, among other places, Genesis,
Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Romans. But all
four of these books contain explicit endorsements of capital punishment! (See By
Man Shall His Blood Be Shed for detailed discussion.) Hence, their conception of human dignity is
clearly not the same as that of the
Declaration. Perhaps the defender of the
Declaration will suggest that these scriptural texts erred on the specific
topic of capital punishment. One problem
with that is that the Church holds that scripture cannot teach error on a
matter of faith or morals. So, this
attempt to get around the difficulty would be heterodox. But another problem is that this move would
undermine the Declaration’s own use of these scriptural texts. For if Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, and
Romans are wrong about something as serious the death penalty, why should we believe
they are right about anything else, such as human dignity?
At this
point the defender of the Declaration might suggest that we are
misunderstanding these scriptural passages if we think they support capital
punishment. One problem with this suggestion
is that it is asinine on its face.
Jewish and Christian theologians alike have for millennia consistently
understood the Old Testament to sanction capital punishment, and the Church has
always understood both the Old Testament passages and Romans to sanction
it. To pretend that it is only now that
we finally understand them accurately defies common sense (and rests on utterly
implausible arguments, as Bessette and I show in our book). But it also contradicts what the Church has
said about its own understanding of scripture.
The Church claims that on matters of scriptural interpretation, no one
is free to contradict the unanimous opinion of the Fathers or the consistent
understanding of the Church over millennia.
And the Fathers and consistent tradition of the Church hold that scripture teaches that the death penalty
can under some circumstances be licit.
(See the book for more about this subject too.)
Infinite dignity?
But even
putting all of that aside, attributing “infinite
dignity” to human beings is highly problematic.
If we are speaking strictly, it is obvious that only God can be said to have infinite
dignity. Dignitas conveys “worth,” “worthiness,” “merit,” “excellence,”
“honor.” Try replacing “dignity” with
these words in the phrase “infinite dignity,” and ask whether the result can be
applied to human beings. Do human beings
have “infinite merit,” “infinite excellence,” “infinite worthiness”? The very idea seems blasphemous. Only God can have any of these things.
Or consider
the attributes that impart special dignity to people, such as authority,
goodness, or wisdom, where the more perfectly they manifest these attributes,
the greater is their dignity. Can human
beings be said to possess “infinite authority,” “infinite goodness,” or
“infinite wisdom”? Obviously not, and
obviously it is only God to whom these things can be attributed. So, how could human beings have infinite
dignity?
Aquinas makes
several relevant remarks. He tells us
that “the equality of distributive justice consists in allotting various things
to various persons in proportion to their personal dignity” (Summa TheologiaeII-II.63.1). Naturally, that implies that some people have
more dignity than others. So, how could all human beings have infinite
dignity (which would imply that none has more than any other)? He also says that “by sinning man departs
from the order of reason, and consequently falls away from the dignity of his
manhood” (Summa TheologiaeII-II.64.2). But if a person can lose his dignity, how can
all people have infinite dignity?
Some will
say that what Aquinas is talking about in such passages is only acquired
dignity rather than ontological dignity – that is to say, dignity that reflects
what we do or some special status we contingently come to have (which can
change), rather than dignity that reflects what we are by nature. But that will not work as an interpretation
of other things Aquinas says. For
instance, he notes that “the dignity of the divine nature excels every other
dignity” (Summa TheologiaeI.29.3). Obviously, he is talking about God’s
ontological dignity here. And naturally,
God has infinite dignity if anything does.
So if his ontological dignity excels ours, how could we possibly have
infinite ontological dignity?
Aquinas also
writes:
Now it is more dignified for a thing
to exist in something more dignified than itself than to exist in its own
right. And so by this very fact the
human nature is more dignified in Christ than in us, since in us it has its own
personhood in the sense that it exists in its own right, whereas in Christ it
exists in the person of the Word. (Summa TheologiaeIII.2.2,
Freddoso translation)
Now, if the
dignity of human nature is increased by virtue of its being united to Christ in
the Incarnation, how could it already be infinite by nature? Then there is the fact that Aquinas explicitly denies that human dignity is
infinite:
But no mere man has the infinite
dignity required to satisfy justly an offence against God. Therefore there had
to be a man of infinite dignity who would undergo the penalty for all so as to
satisfy fully for the sins of the whole world. Therefore the only-begotten Word of God, true
God and Son of God, assumed a human nature and willed to suffer death in it so
as to purify the whole human race indebted by sin.
(De Rationibis Fidei, Chapter
7)
To be sure,
Aquinas also allows that there is a sense
in which some things other than God can have infinite dignity, when he writes:
From the fact that (a) Christ’s human
nature is united to God, and that (b) created happiness is the enjoyment of
God, and that (c) the Blessed Virgin is the mother of God, it follows that they
have a certain infinite dignity that stems from the infinite goodness which is
God. (Summa TheologiaeI.25.6,
Freddoso translation)
But note
that the infinite dignity in question derives from a certain special relation to God’s infinite dignity
– involving the Incarnation, the beatific vision, and Mary’s divine motherhood
respectively – and not from human
nature as such.
Relevant too
are Aquinas’s remarks on the topic of infinity.
He says that “besides God nothing can be infinite,” for “it is against
the nature of a made thing to be absolutely infinite” so that “He cannot make
anything to be absolutely infinite” (Summa
TheologiaeI.7.2). How, then, could human beings by nature have
infinite dignity?
Some might
respond by saying that Aquinas is not infallible, but that would miss the
point. For it is not just that Aquinas’s
theology has tremendous authority within Catholicism (though it does have that,
and that is hardly unimportant here). It
is that he is making points from Catholic teaching itself about the nature of
dignity, the nature of human beings, and the nature of God that make it highly
problematic to speak of human beings as having “infinite dignity.” It is no good just to say that he is wrong. The
defender of the Declaration owes us an argument showing that he is wrong, or showing that talk of “infinite
dignity” can be reconciled with what he says.
Possible defenses?
One
suggestion some have made on Twitter is that further remarks Aquinas makes
about infinity can resolve the conflict.
For in the passage just quoted, he also writes:
Things other than God can be
relatively infinite, but not absolutely infinite. For with regard to infinite as applied to
matter, it is manifest that everything actually existing possesses a form; and
thus its matter is determined by form.
But because matter, considered as existing under some substantial form,
remains in potentiality to many accidental forms, which is absolutely finite
can be relatively infinite; as, for example, wood is finite according to its
own form, but still it is relatively infinite, inasmuch as it is in
potentiality to an infinite number of shapes. But if we speak of the infinite in reference
to form, it is manifest that those things, the forms of which are in matter,
are absolutely finite, and in no way infinite. If, however, any created forms are not
received into matter, but are self-subsisting, as some think is the case with
angels, these will be relatively infinite, inasmuch as such kinds of forms are
not terminated, nor contracted by any matter. But because a created form thus subsisting has
being, and yet is not its own being, it follows that its being is received and
contracted to a determinate nature. Hence
it cannot be absolutely infinite. (Summa TheologiaeI.7.2)
What Aquinas
is saying here is that there is a sense in which matter is relatively infinite, and a sense in which an angel is relatively infinite. The sense in which matter is relatively
infinite is that it can at least in principle take on, successively, one form
after another ad infinitum. The sense in which an angel is relatively
infinite is that it is not limited by matter.
But there
are several problems with the suggestion that this passage can help us to make
sense of the notion that human beings have “infinite dignity.” First, Aquinas explicitly says that things “the
forms of which are in matter, are absolutely
finite, and in no way infinite.” For example, while the matter that makes up a particular tree is relatively infinite
insofar as it can take on different forms ad
infinitum (the form of a desk, the form of a chair, and so on) the tree itself qua having the form of a tree is
in no way infinite. Now, a human being
is, like a tree, a composite of form and matter. Hence, Aquinas’s remarks here would imply
that, even if the matter that makes up the body is relatively infinite insofar
as it can successively take on different forms ad infinitum, the human being himself is not in any way
infinite. Obviously, then, this would
tell against taking human nature to
be even relatively infinite in its dignity.
Furthermore,
it’s not clear how the specific examples Aquinas gives are supposed to be
relevant to the question at hand in the first place. The sense in which he says matter is
relatively infinite is, again, that it can take on different forms successively
ad infinitum– first one form, then a
second, then a third, and so on. But of
course, at any particular point in time, matter does not have an infinite number
of forms. So, how would this provide a
model for human beings having “infinite dignity”? Is the idea that they have only finite
dignity at any particular point in time, but will keep having it at later
points in time without end? Surely that
is not what is meant by “infinite dignity.”
It would entail that even something with the least dignity possible at
any particular point in time would have “infinite dignity” as long as it simply
persisted with that minimal dignity forever!
Nor does the
angel example help. Again, the sense in which angels are relatively
infinite, Aquinas says, is that they are not limited by matter. But human beings are limited by matter. So, this
is no help in explaining how we could be even relatively infinite in dignity.
Another,
sillier suggestion some have made on Twitter is that we can make sense of human
beings having “infinite dignity” in light of set theory, which tells us that
some infinities can be larger than others.
The idea seems to be that while God has infinite dignity, we too can
intelligibly be said to have it, so long as God’s dignity has to do with a
larger infinity than ours.
The problem
with this is that the “infinity” that is attributed to God and to his dignity
(and to human dignity, for that matter) has nothing to do with the infinities
studied by set theory. Set theory is
about collections of objects (such as numbers), which might be infinite in
size. But when we say that God is
infinite, we’re not talking about a collection any kind. We’re not saying, for example, that God’s
infinite power has something to do with him possessing an infinite collection
of powers. What is meant is merely that
he has causal power to do or to make whatever is intrinsically possible. And his infinite dignity too has nothing to
do with any sort of collection (such as an infinitely large collection of units
of dignity, whatever that would mean).
Set theory is simply irrelevant.
Another
defense that has been suggested is to appeal to Pope St. John Paul II’s having
once used the phrase “infinite dignity” in an
Angelus address in 1980.
Indeed, the Declaration itself makes note of this. But there are several problems here. First, John Paul II’s remark was merely a
passing comment made in the course a little-known informal address of little
magisterial weight that was devoted to another topic. It was not a carefully worded formal
theological treatment of the nature of human dignity, specifically. Nor did John Paul put any special emphasis on
the phrase or draw momentous conclusions from it, the way the new Declaration
does. For example, he never concluded
that, since human dignity is “infinite,” the death penalty must be ruled out
under every circumstance. On the
contrary, despite his strong personal opposition to the death penalty, he
always acknowledged that there could be circumstances where it was permissible,
and that that was the Church’s traditional teaching. There is no reason whatsoever to take the
Angelus address reference to be anything more than a loosely worded
off-the-cuff remark. Moreover, even if
it were more than that, that would
not make the problems I’ve been setting out here magically disappear.
Some have
suggested that the Declaration’s remark about the death penalty does not in
fact amount to saying that capital punishment is intrinsically wrong. What it entails, they claim, is only that it
is always intrinsically contrary to human dignity. But that, they say, leaves it open that it
may sometimes be permissible to do what is contrary to human dignity.
But there
are two reasons why this cannot be right.
First, Dignitas Infinita does
not say that what violates our dignity is unacceptable except when such-and-such conditions hold. On the contrary, it says that the Church “always insist[s] on… the defense of [the
human person’s] dignity beyond every
circumstance.” It says that man’s
“infinite dignity” is “inviolable,”
that it “prevails in and beyond every
circumstance, state, or situation the person may ever encounter,” and that our respect for it must be “unconditional.” It repeatedly
emphasizes that “circumstances” are irrelevant to what a respect for
dignity requires of us, and it does so precisely
because it claims that our dignity is “infinite.” Asserting that human dignity has such radical
“no exceptions” implications is the whole
point of the Declaration, the whole point of its making a big deal of the
phrase “infinite dignity.”
Second, the
Declaration makes a special point of lumping in the death penalty with evils
such as “murder, genocide, abortion, [and] euthanasia.” It says: “Here,
one should also mention the death penalty, for this also violates the inalienable dignity of every person, regardless of the circumstances.” Obviously, if the death penalty really does
violate human dignity under every circumstance in just the way murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, etc. do,
then it is no less absolutely ruled out than they are. And obviously, the Declaration would not
allow us to say that there are cases where murder, genocide, abortion, and
euthanasia might be allowable despite their being affronts to human dignity.
Hyperbole?
The best
defense that some have made of the Declaration is that the phrase “infinite
dignity” is mere hyperbole. But though
this is the best defense, that does
not make it a good defense. First of all, magisterial documents should
use terms with precision. This is especially true of a document coming
from the DDF, whose job is precisely to clarify
matters of doctrine. It is simply
scandalous for a document intended to clarify a doctrinal matter – especially one
that we are told has been in preparation for years– to deploy a key theological term in a loose and potentially
highly misleading way (and, indeed, to put special emphasis on this loose
meaning, even in the very title of the document!)
But second,
the idea that the phrase is meant as mere hyperbole is simply not a natural reading
of the Declaration. For it is not just
that special emphasis is put on the phrase itself. It is also that special emphasis is put on
the radical implications of the
phrase. We are told that it is precisely
because human dignity is “infinite”
that the moral conclusions asserted by the Declaration hold “beyond all circumstances,” “beyond every circumstance,” “in all circumstances,” “regardless of the circumstances,” and so
on. If you don’t take the “infinite”
part seriously, then you lose the grounds for taking the “beyond all
circumstances” parts seriously. They go
hand in hand. Hence, the “hyperbole”
reading simply undermines the whole point of the document.
That this
extreme language of man’s “infinite
dignity” has now led the pope to condemn the death penalty in an absolute way – and thereby to contradict
scripture and all previous papal teaching on the subject – shows just how grave
are the consequences of using theological language imprecisely. And this may not be the end of it. Asked at a press
conference on the Declaration about the implications of man’s
“infinite dignity” for the doctrine of Hell, Cardinal Fernández did not deny
the doctrine. But he also said: “’With
all the limits that our freedom truly has, might it not be that Hell is empty?’
This is the question that Pope Francis sometimes asks.” Asked about
the Catechism’s teaching that homosexual desire is “intrinsically disordered,”
the cardinal said: “It’s a very strong expression, and it needs to be explained
a great deal. Perhaps we could find an
expression that is even clearer, to understand what we mean… But it is true
that the expression could find other more suitable words.” When churchmen put special emphasis on the
idea that human dignity is infinite,
then there is a wide range of traditional Catholic teaching that they are bound
to be tempted to soften or find some way to work around.
High-flown
rhetoric about human dignity has, in any event, always been especially prone to
abuse. As Allan Bloom once wrote, “the
very expression dignity of man, even
when Pico della Mirandola coined it in the fifteenth century, had a blasphemous
ring to it” (The Closing of the American
Mind, p. 180). Similarly, Jacques
Barzun pointed out that “[Pico’s] word dignity
can of course be interpreted as flouting the gospel’s call to humility and denying
the reality of sin. Humanism is
accordingly charged with inverting the relation between man and God” (From Dawn to Decadence, p. 60).
Some
historians would judge this unfair to Pico himself, but my point is not about
him. Rather, it is about how modern
people in general, from the Renaissance onward, have gotten progressively more
drunk on the idea of their own dignity – and, correspondingly, less and less
cognizant of the fact that what is most grave about sin is not that it
dishonors us, but that it dishonors God.
This, and not their own
dignity, is what modern people most need
reminding of. Hence, while it is not
wrong to speak of human dignity, one must be cautious and always put the accent
on the divine dignity rather than on
our dignity. I submit that sticking a
word like “infinite” in front of the latter accomplishes the reverse of this.
And I submit that a sure sign that the rhetoric of human dignity has now gone too far is that it has led the highest authorities in the Church to contradict the teaching of the word of God itself (on the topic of the death penalty). Such an error is possible when popes do not speak ex cathedra. But it is extremely rare, and always gravely scandalous.