Let’s Not Be Naïve about “Dignitas Infinita”

Dr. Nicolete Burbach

Today’s post is from guest contributor Dr. Nicolete Burbach, a theologian whose research aims to help the Church navigate its difficult encounter with transness.

Recently, New Ways Ministry’s co-founder, Sister Jeannine Gramick, wrote to Pope Francis expressing her concern about Dignitas Infinita, the Vatican Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s recent declaration on human dignity. She explained to the pope that the document’s condemnations of “gender ideology” are harmful to trans people. Francis responded, emphasising that “gender ideology” is “something other than” trans people, and that his rejection of the former does not mean a rejection of the latter.

It is good to hear this from Pope Francis. However, it is also staggeringly naïve: when we look at what it means to institutionalise the vision of Dignitas Infinita, it quickly becomes apparent how its attack on ‘gender ideology’ leads to an attack on trans people ourselves.

How so? To understand this, it is helpful to understand what Dignitas Infinita says about both human dignity and transness.

The Declaration begins by breaking down the idea of “dignity” into four different types. The first is “ontological” dignity: the inherent value we all possess by virtue of our being created by God and objects of God’s love. The second is “moral” dignity, which is attained when we act in such a way as to respect the values that flow from the ontological dignity of creation. Third, there is “social” dignity. Our lives possess social dignity when the ethical demands that flow from our ontological dignity are fulfilled; when they are free from exploitation, oppression, poverty and marginalisation. Finally, there is “existential” dignity. Our lives have existential dignity when we experience them as possessing the value entailed by our ontological dignity (§7-8). If someone feels their life is not worth living, or even just less valuable than it really is, their life lacks existential dignity.

Broadly put, Dignitas Infinita claims that transness is rooted in a “gender theory” or “ideology” that rejects our essential nature as sexed beings. This rejection, it claims, denies the ontological dignity of our sexed nature; what might be described as an existentially undignified view of the self. The Declaration also claims that this leads us to disregard the ontological dignity of our bodies by doing things which damage them (surgery, etc); acts which we might thereby describe as morally undignified (§58-60).

Dignitatis Infinita situates this within what it sees as a broader trend of detaching human freedom from the limits and obligations presented by the truth of human dignity. According to the Declaration, society today often acts as though people should exercise their freedom for its own sake; that it is enough for humans to act freely, without any reference to the intrinsic value of human life and the moral demands that flow from it. 

This trend, the Declaration claims, is harmful in part because it is a mistaken view of freedom itself. According to Dignitas Infinita, human freedom finds its fulfillment in enabling us to pursue good. Simply exercised for its own sake, our freedom therefore goes unfulfilled. 

It also attributes this mistaken view to the disorder that sin creates in the world, making us desire to exercise our freedom contrary to moral truth. In this context, the Declaration argues, “human freedom, in turn, needs to be freed” (§29). That is, we need to be rescued from sin’s corruption of our desires, giving us the authentic freedom of being able to use our freedom properly – i.e. in ways that respect the truth of human dignity.

Although Dignitas Infinita does not explicitly say so, this would mean that trans people need to be freed from the influence of our (supposedly) disordered desires to transition, not least by dissuading if not preventing us outright from living trans lives. This is illustrated particularly clearly in another document, recently published b ythe Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales: Intricately Woven by the Lord. This “pastoral reflection on gender” identifies itself as being “in line” with Dignitas Infinita (p. 4), sharing the same broad view of transness in relation to human dignity.

Intricately Woven reveals the problems of Dignitas Infinita in its directions for how Catholic organisations ought to respond to transness. These directions include a broad-brush rejection of all trans healthcare as harmful to the body; as well as of social transition (when someone changes their gendered social role), which it claims fails to respect “the truth and vocation of each man and each woman.” It also states that Church institutions should avoid adopting “the language of gender ideology.” It does not go on to define what this language includes, citing only Dignitas Infinita’s statement that gender theory “cancels differences in its claim to make everyone equal” (p. 10, see DI §56). However, this vagueness lends itself to a more expansive interpretation – at the very least, we can see how this might be taken as ruling out any language that implies people can change gender, rather than (for example) simply being uncomfortable with their social role and body. 

In this vein, finally, Intricately Woven continues to stipulate that trans people should be met with a model of pastoral “accompaniment” that seeks to “help them rediscover and cherish their humanity as it was conceived and created by God, body and soul” (p.10).

It is hard to see how these directions leave any space for trans life within Catholic institutions and organisations. All they really offer is the opportunity to undergo damaging gender identity change efforts (or GICE) – whether through the pressures of an institutional context that resists transness at every turn until you are forced into desistance, or through a deliberate effort to ‘accompany’ you to cisnormativity. 

In this way, while both Dignitas Infinita and Intimately Woven are concerned with affirming human dignity in its various forms, they ultimately advocate for the neglect and abuse of trans dignity in several senses.

First, being subject to this level of exclusion and policing is hardly compatible with a socially dignified life. Nor, as the stories of victims of GICE attest, does it lead to existential dignity.

Nor is it compatible with moral dignity. Dignitas Infinita’s view of freedom would suggest that a life lived under the restrictions of Intricately Woven, which aim to make trans people respect what it sees as the dignity of human sexed nature, is therefore empowered towards the ‘freedom of freedom’ that enables moral dignity. Its argument for this idea turns on the claim that transness seeks to subject the body to disordered human whims and desires, without any respect for the body’s intrinsic value. This idea has long been used to dismiss transness, and I suspect this is precisely because it enables Catholics to ignore the ways that trans people often live a trans life on the basis of something more than self-centred desire. This can include moral or spiritual conviction – be that a sense of grace; or just a sense of what they need to truly flourish, and the demand of their own dignity to supply this. 

Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, Prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, holding up a copy of the declaration “Dignitas Infinita”

Recognising this fact reveals that living our trans lives is vital to our freedom: The Church teaches that humans, by virtue of our nature as free beings, are “at once impelled by nature and also bound by a moral obligation to seek the truth”, and to shape our lives in accordance with it once it is known (Dignitatis Humanae, §2). In this way, the activity of seeking moral truth is necessary to what Dignitas Infinita calls moral dignity: part of respecting moral truth is trying to discover it in the first place, and shaping our lives in accordance with what we find.

Exploring our transness and living our trans lives in response to a moral or spiritual conviction is a part our search for and response to (what we have found to be) truth. In this respect, it is part of the process whereby we pursue a morally dignified life, in accordance with our nature and obligation as free beings.

Moreover, the Church also teaches that we cannot exercise our freedom in accordance with our nature and duty if we are coerced in doing so. And this is the case even if human freedom might also need to be ‘freed’ to stop it making mistakes in that search. This is the principle that underpins the Church’s affirmation of religious freedom (Dignitatis Humanae, §2) – which applies even to bad and/or mistaken people.

If living our trans life is part of the process whereby we seek and attempt to conform our lives to moral truth, then creating a society in which we are policed in our transness prevents us from living a morally dignified life by subjecting us to coercion in this process. And this would be the case even if we were misdirected in our search by the effects of sin, or mistaken in our conclusions.

Finally, while both Dignitas Infinita and Intimately Woven explicitly affirm trans people’s ontological dignity (indeed, their whole point is to do so for all people), their vision for society would deny us the various forms of dignity our nature demands. To realise this vision would thereby be an offense against our ontological dignity. 

Let me be clear: I do not think either of these two documents were written maliciously. But I do think they were written naïvely. It is all well and good to distinguish between “gender ideology” and trans people in theory. However, the more concrete directions of Intricately Woven show that defending human dignity from ‘gender theory’ as Dignitas Infinita understands it leads to the abuse of trans dignity. That is, it is not so easy to make this distinction on a practical basis, where attacking ‘gender ideology’ means attacking trans people.

—Nicolete Burbach, May 18, 2024