Cardinal Fernández, DDF prefect, explains the senses in which man’s dignity is infinite

March 04, 2025

The Vatican newspaper has published, in Italian, the full text of a video lecture delivered on February 17 by the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith on “The ontological dignity of the person in Dignitas Infinita,” the 2024 declaration on human dignity. The text of Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández’s lecture is also available on the dicastery’s website.

Cardinal Fernández told the Faculty of Catholic Theology of Cologne that “some have criticized” the application of the term “infinite” to human dignity. “No created reality is infinite, if we understand the word ‘infinite’ in a quantitative sense,” he said.

“The adjective ‘infinite,’ attributed to human dignity, can be understood in two senses,” he explained: as the “object of an infinite love,” and as “absolutely unconditional.”

“The love of God, being infinite, gives every human being an infinite dignity, and this love for the human being was manifested in Christ, who became man and our redeemer,” he said. “Unlike other beings on this earth, we are open to infinite elevation; we are called to be sons in the Son.”

He continued:

“Infinite” means “absolutely unconditional”: there is no situation in which it cannot occur, it is absolutely inalienable, there is no imaginable reason that could deny it and it has no end in time ... It is a different way of expressing that it is a truth that is neither conditioned nor changeable, so that, for example, an innocent life can never be eliminated and no excuse or reason can be found to justify it.

Subsequent sections of the lecture were devoted to “The importance of the notion of person and ontological dignity,” “Living without dignity,” “Practical consequences” (including the death penalty), and “The body” (during which he criticized gender ideology).

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