Rorate Coeli Desuper - On Human Dignity

by Robert Morgan

“He rejected the tent of Joseph,

chose not the tribe of Ephraim.

God chose the tribe of Judah,

Mount Zion which he loved.”

— Psalm 78:67–68

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights…” This phrase was truly revolutionary when first penned in the Declaration of Independence, a document which established the justification for the birth of the American nation. It linked the equality of man to the rights endowed by the Creator. Later reflection on the nature of human rights in an increasingly democratic world led Holy Mother Church to speak of human dignity as being the source of human rights and human dignity was a necessary effect of being made in the image and likeness of God.

While the revolutionary statement by nascent America was an unqualified one, later revolutionaries in France would adopt an “equality under the law”, with social distinctions maintained where appropriate, in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man. Of course, the French revolutionaries made no reference to a Creator as the source of those rights, yet this understanding of equality has become the lens through which equality is viewed. Dignity was similarly understood to be qualified with distinctions maintained where appropriate. Even Lenin acknowledged the inequality intrinsic to the human condition.

Radical equality of humans without distinction made among baptized or unbaptized, man or woman, citizen or non-citizen was a recent innovation and a progressive leveling in the hierarchical nature of human dignity. This has happened over time and is beginning to radically reshape human society. Is this the proper approach to human dignity, though? Do humans possess equal dignity?

God has favorites. Sacred Scripture is replete with examples of God giving and taking away, blessed be the name of the Lord. Scripture records how God blesses individuals unequally and holds different expectations for different people. In Jesus’ own words, faithfully recorded by Saint Matthew:

It will be as when a man who was going on a journey called in his servants and entrusted his possessions to them. To one he gave five talents; to another, two; to a third, one—to each according to his ability. (Mt 25:14–15)

These two verses contain an immense amount of revealed truth. A “talent” in context is a measure of weight referring to precious metals such as gold or silver. Taken literally, these verses describe how each servant received a portion of his master’s wealth in varying amounts with the determining variable being his ability to optimize the trust given to him. This raises the question: from where does that ability come? Like any human capability, it arises from a combination of innate aptitude and its development through diligent practice over time. The gift of the talents, then, is determined by the gift of the aptitude as cultivated by the recipient. God reveals in these short verses how man cooperates with grace and how grace builds on nature.

Each measure given is itself measured—five, two, or one—and assigned according to each servant’s developed capacity. The Latin word for “worth” is dignitas, from which we derive the English “dignity.” Each servant, according to the ability he has developed, is dignified with a measured, finite trust. Even one talent represented approximately fifteen years’ wages for a laborer, approaching the inestimable in value. In these short verses, Sacred Scripture teaches a great deal about human dignity.

The parable continues with three examples of the two fundamental responses to God’s grace:

Immediately, the one who received five talents went and traded with them and made another five. Likewise, the one who received two made another two. But the man who received one went off and dug a hole in the ground and buried his master’s money. (Mt 25:15–18)

The most immediate observation is the two discrete responses. The first two servants took what they were given and applied it diligently, each earning an additional measure commensurate with what they had to work. The third made a different, pusillanimous, choice: not to ignore the trust, but to actively hide it. Why present these two responses rather than simple neglect? The answer, which reveals much about the Divine Plan, is given in the verses that follow:

After a long time the master of those servants came back and settled accounts with them. The one who had received five talents came forward bringing the additional five. He said, ‘Master, you gave me five talents. See, I have made five more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your master’s joy.’

Then the one who had received two talents also came forward and said, ‘Master, you gave me two talents. See, I have made two more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your master’s joy.’

Then the one who had received the one talent came forward and said, ‘Master, I knew you were a demanding person, harvesting where you did not plant and gathering where you did not scatter; so out of fear I went off and buried your talent in the ground. Here it is back.’ His master said to him in reply, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I did not plant and gather where I did not scatter? Should you not then have put my money in the bank so that I could have got it back with interest on my return? Now then! Take the talent from him and give it to the one with ten. For to everyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich; but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And throw this useless servant into the darkness outside, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.’ (Mt 25:19–30)

Much is packed into those verses, and only a portion can be addressed here. It is evident that God blesses each of us as He wills, and desires to bless us more in proportion to our response to His grace. Among the diligent, the rewards differ starkly: one servant ends with eleven talents, another with four. Both were lauded and invited to participate in greater endeavors. Here we see the Divine Plan as an exchange: natural aptitudes (which are themselves grace) are developed into ability, awarded a trust (also grace), with returns offered back to the Master and returned as reward (grace again). This exchange is illustrative of every grace originating in God, given to us to develop and offer back to Him in love, which He returns to us in love in Heaven. Through active participation in the Divine Plan, each individual increases his worth—his dignity—by an unequal and finite, yet inestimable, amount.

This understanding of the inequality of grace is ratified in the writings of Saints Jerome and Augustine. Saint Jerome wrote against the Jovinians: “It is our task, according to our different virtues, to prepare ourselves for different rewards. If we were all going to be equal in heaven, it would be useless to humble ourselves here in order to have a greater place there.” Saint Augustine, writing to Saint Jerome on this matter, observed that “the Saints are clothed with justice, the one more, the other less.”

What then of the servant who hid his talent? These verses are stark and terrifying. He had only to place the talent in the bank to have appeased his master’s wrath. We do not know fully why he did not do the bare minimum, but Sacred Scripture indicates that at least in part he did not love his master. In his lack of love, his inestimable dignity was stripped from him and he was cast out. It is through the exchange of love with God that we are given and gain dignity; it is through our lack of love that we lose it. As Saint Gregory the Great exhorted in his Homilies on the Gospels: “He that hath a talent, let him see that he hide it not; he that hath abundance, let him quicken himself to mercy and generosity; he that hath art and skill, let him do his best to share the use and the utility thereof with his neighbor.”

It is truly unfortunate that while the words “grace,” “justice,” and “talents” appear throughout Sacred Scripture, the Church Fathers, and the Councils, the powerful word “dignity” remains comparatively sparse in the Catholic lexicon. Saint Thomas Aquinas invokes dignity to justify applying the word “person” to God, linking human dignity to man’s creation in the image and likeness of God (Summa Theologiae, I, Q29, A3). The term entered Catholic Social Teaching in Rerum Novarum 40, where Pope Leo XIII connects the dignity of the worker directly to the human soul as image of God:

It is the soul which is made after the image and likeness of God; it is in the soul that the sovereignty resides in virtue whereof man is commanded to rule the creatures below him and to use all the earth and the ocean for his profit and advantage… In this respect all men are equal; there is here no difference between rich and poor, master and servant, ruler and ruled, ‘for the same is Lord over all.’ No man may with impunity outrage that human dignity which God Himself treats with great reverence, nor stand in the way of that higher life which is the preparation of the eternal life of heaven.

Human dignity exceeds all creation, and the text is clear that “in this respect all men are equal”—a qualified equality defining man’s relationship to creation, not a declaration of absolute equivalence among men. Lumen Gentium 32 deepens this by introducing the idea of a Christian “common dignity,” a status elevated beyond natural human dignity through the character of Baptism:

By divine institution Holy Church is ordered and governed with a wonderful diversity… Therefore, the chosen People of God is one: ‘one Lord, one faith, one baptism’; sharing a common dignity as members from their regeneration in Christ, having the same filial grace and the same vocation to perfection… There is, therefore, in Christ and in the Church no inequality on the basis of race or nationality, social condition or sex.

This text draws a distinction between the intrinsic dignity of man and the common dignity of Christians—the chosen People of God—reflecting the Parable of the Talents and the unequal dignity of the master’s servants.

The particular passage from Lumen Gentium was identified in the footnotes of the Catechism of the Catholic Church 872 as a reference for the statement: “From their rebirth in Christ, there exists among all the Christian faithful a true equality regarding dignity and action by which they all cooperate in the building up of the Body of Christ according to each one’s own condition and function.” This language derives from the 1983 Code of Canon Law 208, with accompanying notes confirming it canonically restates the teaching of Lumen Gentium 32.

This evolution in the understanding of human dignity was codified in canon law and the Catechism by Saint John Paul II, who introduced the term “unending dignity” in his Angelus address in Osnabrück, West Germany, on November 16, 1980. Logically, if every person possesses infinite dignity, then all possess radically equal dignity. This shift in language and understanding has since extended to the 2024 Declaration of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Dignitas Infinita, as well as a modification of the Catechism first promulgated in 1994 by Saint John Paul II and revised in 1997. The most recent revision in 2018 was necessitated by one of the logical consequences of asserting infinite dignity, a reformulation of the Church’s perennial teaching on capital punishment.

It is worth noting that while Lumen Gentium was cited by Saint John Paul II in formulating the Catechism and the Code of Canon Law, Lumen Gentium as written still contains the truth of differing levels of dignity among men. Gaudium et Spes, which mentions dignity fifty-one times, makes the bold statement in GS 29: “Since all men possess a rational soul and are created in God’s likeness, since they have the same nature and origin, have been redeemed by Christ and enjoy the same divine calling and destiny, the basic equality of all must receive increasingly greater recognition.” The same section continues: “Therefore, although rightful differences exist between men, the equal dignity of persons demands that a more humane and just condition of life be brought about. For excessive economic and social differences… cause scandal, and militate against social justice, equity, the dignity of the human person, as well as social and international peace.”

While the document asserts equal dignity, it also contains glimmers of distinction—dignities of state in marriage, fatherhood, and motherhood. In GS 21, dignity can be “grievously lacerated” by conditions corresponding to original and mortal sin, and is “rooted and perfected in God.” This process of perfecting dignity is expressed in GS 41: “Whoever follows after Christ, the perfect man, becomes himself more of a man.”

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Another teaching present in GS 29—that differences among groups are the root of social ill—is referenced in the first papal document promulgated by our Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV, showing continuity with his predecessor of blessed memory, Pope Francis. In the Apostolic Exhortation Dilexi Te, the Holy Father reiterates Pope Francis’ statement from Evangelii Gaudium that “inequality is the root of social ills.” Pope Leo XIV continues in Dilexi Te 106:

It is important for us to realize that the story of the Good Samaritan remains timely even today. If I encounter a person sleeping outdoors on a cold night, I can view him or her as an annoyance, an idler, an obstacle in my path, a troubling sight, a problem for politicians to sort out, or even a piece of refuse cluttering a public space. Or I can respond with faith and charity, and see in this person a human being with a dignity identical to my own, a creature infinitely loved by the Father, an image of God, a brother or sister redeemed by Jesus Christ. That is what it is to be a Christian! Can holiness somehow be understood apart from this lively recognition of the dignity of each human being? What did the Good Samaritan do?

The Holy Father rightly exhorts us to greater almsgiving and charity for the poor and rightly recalls the history of Holy Mother Church in her hospitals, monasteries, and mendicant orders. Yet a curious tension emerges: if we are radically equal in dignity, how does one restore dignity to a person suffering conditions beneath human dignity? What storehouse of goods or dignity does one draw upon to provide for those in need?

These questions may be answered through another magisterial text. The International Theological Commission’s 2019 document “Religious Freedom For the Good of All” offers an excellent summary of religious freedom as a fundamental right grounded in human dignity. Pertinent to the Holy Father’s implied admonition to open a storehouse of dignity for those in need, the Commission identified human dignity as encompassing “the capacity, inherent in human nature, to assume obligations vis-à-vis others.” This is among the clearest accounts of human dignity in any magisterial document, presenting it rightly as a human capacity to assume obligations in relationship to others. As Saint Thomas Aquinas demonstrated in the Fourth Way, all human capacities admit degrees of greater or lesser perfection—and so too with dignity.

What are we to make of the declarations of infinite, understood as radically equal, dignity made widely and loudly by those both within and without Holy Mother Church? Dignitas Infinita presents four distinct uses of dignity as a fundamental clarification: ontological, moral, social, and existential. Ontological dignity is a useful distinction and refers to the dignity intrinsic to man qua man, arising from human nature itself, corresponding well to other usages such as “base” or “common” dignity. A second parable from Saint Matthew illuminates this concept and provides context for the Parable of the Talents.

In the Parable of the Vineyard (Mt 20:1–16), the vineyard owner hired workers throughout the day and paid each one the same wage—one denarius, the going rate for a day’s labor—regardless of how long each worked. The parable presents the worth of each laborer as exactly equal before the Master. Note, he did not entrust any of these men with so much as a single talent. The ontological dignity of all is equal while the entrusted dignity of each varies enormously. We need only look to Our Blessed Mother Mary, Queen of the Universe, to see the absolute pinnacle of dignity possible for a human person.

We live in an age where the greater man who has been given five talents takes four and gives them to the lesser man who has only one—lacking gratitude for the gift he has received and attempting to evade the responsibility commensurate with it. The lesser man still buries these talents, and the good that should have been done remains undone. Yet the greater man feels superior in his debasement. This virtue signaling endures for a time, but there will come a Day when the Master returns for all of us—and woe to the man who has squandered his talents.

In each of these parables, all good gifts originate from the Master. Like rain from heaven on the mountainside, the water that collects and is passed on through all until it is drawn back up to heaven by heaven’s own power. The collected water is harnessed to productive work, milling grain into bread given to the poor, produced and paid for by those given greater gifts. The poor are dignified by the dignified, and not of themselves. Those who have are given so that those who have not may have. This oikonomia is disrupted by an understanding of dignity and equality that equates the order of creation with the root of social ills.

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Holy Mother Church has rightly taught distinctions appropriate to the use of the word “dignity.” It is time Her loyal sons and daughters, as well as Her princes, embraced this richer understanding of human worth. Admixed with error, the truth of the matter is hidden in Dignitas Infinita 17: “Human dignity has an immeasurable value.”

In summary, dignity is the defining characteristic of a human being arising from our composite nature with a physical body and a spiritual soul made in the image and likeness of God. We are the dignified animal, capable of assuming responsibilities vis-à-vis the rest of creation. As any other human characteristic, dignity is a combination of innate gift and diligent application over time in response to God’s grace. Human dignity is grievously lacerated by conditions of original and mortal sin. Human dignity is restored through Baptism and elevated through the Sacraments which conform man into the God-Man, Jesus Christ. “Immeasurable” and “inestimable” are reasonable words to discuss human dignity. “Infinite” is inadmissible as a descriptor of any human capacity and will remain so until we possess our resurrected bodies.

An error has crept into the lexicon of fallible documents and has been promulgated in a fallible way by fallible human beings. It will now be part of my daily prayer that the Holy Spirit will enlighten the minds of the Magisterium, in the person of the Holy Father Pope Leo XIV, and all his brother bishops, such that they recognize the immeasurable and inestimable dignity of every human being and solemnly define this truth. Embracing the current understanding of radical equality of dignity, I am emboldened to present this for review given my equal dignity with each of the princes of Holy Mother Church and even the Holy Father himself. Maintaining the older understanding of inestimable dignity, I humbly recognize the authority of Holy Mother Church and submit completely to Her judgment.