Heathdale places a great emphasis on fostering and protecting human dignity. We acknowledge that this dignity is special because it originates in each of us being designed in the image of God.
We hold dignity as a central concern of life and one that is to be protected in our school, and in our community.
Yet for such a central elements of our lives, we so rarely pause to consider the exact nature and quality of dignity. I am not even sure that we have clear words and ideas in our comprehension. Like many of these things, we have a generalised notion that we substitute for accurate understanding.
Over the weekend I was reading the most recent encyclical of His Holiness Pope Leo XIV on ‘Safeguarding the Human Person in the time of Artificial Intelligence.’ His Holiness positions human dignity at the very centre of modern life in community. This is a common position to Heathdale Christian School. Our Christian faith requires us to assume this orientation. His eminence writes:
53. The fundamental dignity of each person, therefore, is neither acquired nor earned, nor does it need to be justified. The recent Declaration Dignitas Infinita offers a summary of the Church’s thinking on this subject: “Every human person possesses an infinite dignity, inalienably grounded in his or her very being, which prevails in and beyond every circumstance, state, or situation the person may ever encounter” — in other words, always and without exception. The dignity of every human being can be described as infinite, as Saint John Paul II stated, for two reasons: first, because the love of God, who calls us to friendship with him, is infinite; and second, his love is absolutely unconditional, in the sense that, even if we search endlessly, we will never find anything that can erase or deny it.”
This is the dignity that belongs to every human being simply by virtue of existing, of having been willed, created and loved by God. No sin, failure, humiliation or exclusion can diminish the profound value of a human life that God has willed and called into being.
These are powerful words that ideally are understood, included in our vocabulary, and recruited into our worldview.
They are most significant in two ways.
The first is that the sense of another person’s dignity moves us to consider the impact of our words and actions. It must move us beyond egocentric concerns and connect us to the sense of obligation to one and other in community. It moves us to the felt obligation, not just to physical needs of a person, but to the curation of their soul and spirit. It would move us to collect blankets for the homeless in winter as a care for their physical needs, but also to be concerned for humanity beyond comfort.
Secondly, it moves us from the championing of our ‘rights’ above expressing our ‘responsibilities’ for others.
Community is born of this care for others. We express it in our provision of secure car parking places for the handicapped and for the expressing manners in standing for the elderly, inform and pregnant on public transport. There are functional dimensions to these actions. But our care is for the humanity of the person ‘inside’.
This is who we are, and who we are called to be at Heathdale.