QUOTATION: Atheism and Human Value

For the past two hundred years, atheists have been loudly asserting that the dismissal of God will lead to human liberation. I would strenuously argue precisely the contrary. Once the human being is untethered from God, he becomes, in very short order, an object among objects, and hence susceptible to the grossest manipulation by the powerful and the self-interested.

--Robert Barron, Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism

QUOTATION: Human Dignity

The dignity of man, the dignity of the human person, has to be defended; but that dignity must not be made to consist in unbridled exercise of one's own freedom. And the freedom sought after by the campaigners in favour of abortion is a freedom at the service of pleasure unrestrained by norms of any kind.

--Cardinal Karol Wojtyla (Pope St. John Paul II), Sign of Contradiction, 1977

QUOTATION: Human Dignity

How is it still possible to speak of the dignity of every human person when the killing of the weakest and most innocent is permitted? In the name of what justice is the most unjust of discriminations practised: some individuals are held to be deserving of defence and others are denied that dignity?

--Pope John Paul II, Address to the Participants at the Study Conference on The Right to Life and Europe, 18 December 1987

QUOTATION: Guardian Angel

So valuable to heaven is the dignity of the human soul that every member of the human race has a guardian angel from the moment the person begins to be.

--St. Jerome

QUOTATION: The Vulnerable

Every child with Down syndrome, every adult with special needs — in fact, every unwanted unborn child, every person who is poor, weak, abandoned, or homeless — is an icon of God’s face and a vessel of his love. How we treat these persons — whether we revere them and welcome them or throw them away in distaste — shows what we really believe about human dignity, both as individuals and as a nation.

-- Archbishop Charles J. Chaput

QUOTATION: Human Dignity and Freedom

The value of human dignity, which takes precedence over all political action and all political decision refers to the Creator: only He can establish values that are grounded in the essence of humankind and that are inviolable. The existence of values that cannot be modified by anyone is the true guarantee of our freedom and of human greatness […] .

--Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, (Pope Benedict XVI), Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Chistianity, Islam, 2004