Download PDF - Knights of Columbus, Supreme Council

Here I hope to show that the teaching of the Catholic Church
on sexual ethics, far from enslaving persons, liberates them and
enables them to become fully themselves. It helps them come into
possession of their desires and not be possessed by them. It does so
because it is rooted in a profound reverence for human persons, male
and female, as bodily, sexual beings, summoned from their depths
to self-giving love. I will begin by considering (1) the dignity of the
human person and (2) the existential, religious significance of
human acts as freely chosen. Then, after identifying (3) the true
moral norms necessary if our freely chosen deeds are to be morally
good, I will consider (4) major issues of sexual ethics.
1. THE DIGNITY OF THE HUMAN PERSON
According to Catholic teaching, human persons have a
threefold dignity: (1) the first is intrinsic, natural, inalienable, and
an endowment or gift; (2) the second is also intrinsic, but it is not
an endowment but rather an achievement, made possible, given the
reality of original sin and its effects, only by God’s never-failing
grace; (3) the third, also intrinsic, is, like the first, a gift, not an
achievement, but a gift far surpassing man’s nature and one that
literally divinizes him.
The first dignity proper to human persons is their dignity as
living members of the human species, which God called into being
when, in the beginning, he “created man in his own image and
likeness…male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). Every
human being is a living image of the all-holy God and can be called
a “created word” of God, the created word that his Uncreated Word
became and is precisely to show us how much God loves us.
When we come into existence we are, by reason of this
intrinsic dignity, persons. In virtue of this dignity, every human
being, of whatever age or sex or condition, is a being of moral worth,
- 6 -