Human Dignity

What Matters Most, Part 1
By Chuck Colson
12/26/2008

Two weeks ago, headlines across the world announced the release of the Vatican’s official position on bioethics. Naturally, the Catholic Church’s stance on the destruction of human embryos, the creation of designer babies, and the like was greeted with scorn by liberal Catholics and by many medical professionals and scientists.

But two things truly fascinate me about the release of this document. The first is its title: “Dignitas Personae”—or, in plain English: “On the Dignity of the Person.”

Now that’s an interesting title for the Catholic Church’s official teaching on bioethics. Actually, it’s the perfect title because the question of human dignity is at the root of virtually every major question facing humans today. Not just bioethics, but also medicine, the economy, and the environment.

And the question of human dignity hangs on the answer to this question: Where do humans come from? If human beings are the products of random chance, then human dignity is merely the product of our fevered imaginations. If we truly are the end result of a coincidental convergence of atomic particles, then the phrase “human dignity” is meaningless. We would have no more right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness than would a mossy fern. the rest image