In Vatican City on Monday, The Vatican released a 24-page document titled Dignitas Infinita, Latin for "Infinite Dignity," that classifies transgender surgeries, gender theory, and surrogacy as acts that are an affront to human dignity. The document was the culmination of an over five-year development of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) where they were researching what they believed to be threats to human dignity in the modern world. 

"In the light of Revelation, the Church resolutely reiterates and confirms the ontological dignity of the human person, created in the image and likeness of God and redeemed in Jesus Christ," the document states in its beginning.

The document goes on to describe in detail, through the teachings of the Church and Scriptures, over a dozen modern-day issues that the Vatican believes are negatively affecting humanity. Other controversial issues and subjects such as human trafficking, poverty, euthanasia, the death penalty, and more are included in the Dignitas Infinita. However, the issues that are taking center stage in the political, educational, and cultural worlds garnered very harsh and detailed scrutiny.

Although the views of the Church regarding gender theory are not new, Pope Francis called it one of the world's "most dangerous ideological colonization," and with the significant rise in the practice and indoctrination of it, this is the most recent move by the Vatican to denounce it firmly. Dignitas Infinita formally affirmed gender theory as an inadmissible ideology. It firmly and bluntly states that attempts to alter an individual's immutable gender are ultimately misguided attempts to play God. 

"Regarding gender theory, whose scientific coherence is the subject of considerable debate among experts, the Church recalls that human life in all its dimensions, both physical and spiritual, is a gift from God," the document states. "This gift is to be accepted with gratitude and placed at the service of the good. Desiring a personal self-determination, as gender theory prescribes, apart from this fundamental truth that human life is a gift, amounts to a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God, entering into competition with the true God of love revealed to us in the Gospel. Another prominent aspect of gender theory is that it intends to deny the greatest possible difference that exists between living beings: sexual difference. This foundational difference is not only the greatest imaginable difference but is also the most beautiful and most powerful of them. In the male-female couple, this difference achieves the most marvelous of reciprocities. It thus becomes the source of that miracle that never ceases to surprise us: the arrival of new human beings in the world."

The Dignitas Infinita has been revised several times over the past year, and Pope Francis finally approved the release of the document on March 25th, 2024, with the presentation of the document conducted by Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect for the DDF, at a Monday press conference in Vatican City. It reaffirms the Church's teachings on abortion and also expands and goes into detail regarding its long-standing ethical criticisms of surrogate pregnancies, which it says are contrary to the pro-life position.

"The Church also takes a stand against the practice of surrogacy, through which the immensely worthy child becomes a mere object. First and foremost, the practice of surrogacy violates the dignity of the child. Indeed, every child possesses an intangible dignity that is clearly expressed – albeit in a unique and differentiated way – at every stage of his or her life: from the moment of conception, at birth, growing up as a boy or girl, and becoming an adult," the dicastery wrote in the document. "Because of this unalienable dignity, the child has the right to have a fully human (and not artificially induced) origin and to receive the gift of a life that manifests both the dignity of the giver and that of the receiver."

The Dignitas Infinita was not intended to be a final do-all and say-all on these issues; rather, it's presented as an initial glance at what the Vatican perceives as the most pressing affronts to human dignity. It closes with the declaration that even though the Church views these issues as threats and believes they are detrimental to human decency, it reinforces the view that all humans need to be treated with respect and dignity. 

...the Church encourages the promotion of the dignity of every human person, regardless of their physical, mental, cultural, social, and religious characteristics.