Human Dignity and America’s 250th, by Robert Royal

Like many Americans, I’ve been refreshing my knowledge of the American Revolution in anticipation of July 4 this year. And, at the same time, I’m finding myself comparing the Founders’ notions of human dignity with the way the term is frequently being used these days, even within the Church. 

Like most pre-modern thinkers, the Founders believed that, in each of us, there is something divine (“Men have been endowed by their Creator. . .”). As the pagan Stoic Seneca, much read by both the Founders and almost all Christian thinkers until modern times, put it, Homo res sacra homini (“Man is a sacred thing to man.”).  

But they were also aware of the other side of the coin: Homo homini lupus (“Man is a wolf to man.”). It would probably be an exaggeration to say that Church and State have forgotten the latter, but it’s clear that both have lately been paying “human dignity” a lot more compliments than in the past. …