On December 12th, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith—the Vatican body once led by the current pope—issued a new statement, Dignitas Personae, clarifying the Catholic Church’s position on life with respect to today’s bioethics challenges. It makes every effort to take a positive tone:
Behind every “no” in the difficult task of discerning between good and evil, there shines a great “yes” to the recognition of the dignity and unalienable value of every singe and unique human being called into existence.
The document makes clear that it intends not to infringe on the “area proper to medical science itself” before going on to dictate guidelines for fertility therapies, freezing embryos and oocytes, gene therapy, human cloning, stem cell research, interspecies hybridization, and more.
The National Catholic Reporter‘s exceptional Vatican correspondent, John Allen, offers a lengthy analysis of the document and its significance:
Beyond the specifics of Dignitas Personae, observers also reacted to its rhetoric and style. Keenan said that in comparison to [1987’s] Donum Vitae, the new document often seems more tentative in its conclusions.
“Tonally, it has more subjunctives rather than the imperative,” [Jesuit Fr. James] Keenan said. “It’s entertaining circumstances and expressing reservations rather than solving problems,” he said, calling it a more ‘mature’ document.