Human Dignity and Bioethics

288 | Diana Schaub
Thomas Aquinas and Pope John Paul II with which Meilaender begins
his essay and which is worth repeating. For Aquinas, a murderer
“loses his human dignity,” “lapses into the subjection of the beasts,”
and presumably can be treated accordingly, in order to defend the
life and dignity of other men and society in general. For Pope John
Paul II, the human dignity of the murderer remains intact. Although
I’m no expert on the evolution of Vatican teaching, I suspect that
the embrace of the apolitical language of inherent and immutable
dignity is connected to the Church’s newfound ambivalence about
capital punishment. While the Catholic Church has not officially denied
the theoretical legitimacy of capital punishment or overturned
its just war doctrine, the trend is toward non-judgmentalism and the
unilateral disarmament of the decent.
I have similar reservations about the assertion that all human
beings “must have the opportunity to live within human society
and participate in its common life.” Does this mean that we are not
allowed to deprive others of liberty and social interaction through
imprisonment, including solitary confinement? If incarceration is
permitted, then we are making judgments about an individual’s viciousness
and exclusion from society.
In both these cases, it seems to me that the language of equal rights
is preferable to the language of equal dignity. Rights are inalienable,
but they also imply reciprocity and responsibility. Those who violate
the rights of others have rendered some of their own rights forfeit. A
rights-based approach protects the innocent and weak, about whom
Meilaender and all of us are concerned, but does not require us to
abandon human judgments about virtue and vice.
As to Meilaender’s claim that our nation’s founding doctrine
is grounded in Christianity, it is true that the Declaration refers to
men as “created” equal and endowed by their “Creator” with certain
inalienable rights. It is also true that Jefferson shared Meilaender’s
worry that, once religious belief falters, the commitment to equality
will be hard to sustain. Here’s how Jefferson put it:
And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we
have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds
of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That
they are not to be violated but with his wrath? 2