How to Know We Uphold Human Dignity

September 29, 2025

The Three-Legged Stool Either Tumbles or Stands

We at Cor Sacrae Familiae, hopefully including you, dear reader, desire to restore Christ to human endeavor. To restore Christ to human endeavor, we need to evaluate if actions uphold or topple human dignity. Enter the model of Catholic social teaching, a model which can be teased from the various social encyclicals as well as the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. As with all things simple, it is easily explained and takes a lifetime to master.

“The permanent principles of the Church's social doctrine constitute the very heart of Catholic social teaching. These are the principles of: the dignity of the human person; ... the common good; subsidiarity; and solidarity” (Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, 2004, Para. 160).

Seat of the Stool: Human Dignity

Human dignity is the innate and immeasurable value every person has because God breathed a unique breath into their clay at the moment of their conception, endowing each with an aspect of God only they can share with the world.

Thus, every Catholic has a responsibility to come to know and breathe into the world their own breath of God and to invite and aid others in doing so themselves. This is a fundamental reason for Cor Sacrae Familiae's Halos.

Why such a responsibility? Because when Jesus says to. “Love one another as I have loved you,” (Jn 13:34) and “...as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me,” (Mt 25:40), we can know we love our neighbor and if we do so out of love of God, then we obey the greatest two commandments.

Human dignity is thus the preeminent principle of Catholic social teaching, the seat of the three-legged-stool, upheld by the three legs of common good, subsidiarity, and solidarity.

Three Equal Legs of the Stool

Here is how to know if we uphold human dignity: Ensure each of the three legs of the stool is as fully present as possible. In supporting a given action, say minimum wage law and government social aid, we can evaluate if it upholds human dignity. How well does the action mutually uphold these three principles: common good, subsidiarity, and solidarity?

Common Good

The common good is the mutually shared responsibility of all individual people to corporately realize our full, individual, human potential. Life, food, clothing, and shelter are clear example of such foundational human needs. Society, and all within it, are best served when there is a safety net that provides these for those who can not provide them for themselves, including aiding those who could provide for themselves with a “hand up.” The key challenges are how to provide them in such a way that subsidiarity and solidarity are also upheld. Much is written about the common good and how we are to recognize when it is present.

Subsidiarity

Subsidiarity is the responsibility of individuals to realize the fullest potential of the smallest groupings, down to the family and individual, by placing ownership at the smallest feasible and practical level in society. Indeed, not only is it the responsibility of smaller groupings to claim and act upon their local authority, but it is the responsibility of larger groupings to encourage and support ownership at smaller levels as required. Larger institutions should not overwhelm or interfere with smaller or more local institutions, yet there is room for the higher levels, including the State, to encourage and support this ownership at lower levels.

Solidarity

Solidarity is the responsibility of individuals to realize that what happens to one affect all and thus to stand together, with our strongest helping our weakest, that we might realize our fullest human potential. Each individual owes a proportionate debt to society, for all success is partially due to society; thus, for an individual, a proportionate debt is owed to society.

Assessing if an Action Upholds Human Dignity

Assessing if an action upholds human dignity is challenging because it is subjective. Even when applying the same meaning of the same principles the same way, people of goodwill can disagree and have conversation in good faith.

Yet Satan creates a greater challenge by muddying the waters with watered down or upside-down meanings that “forget” the true meaning of terms and principles and how to apply them.

One common error is “plucking principles” out of the fabric of Catholic social teaching and holding them up as though a seeming violation of it clearly undermines human dignity. The error of logic becomes apparent when we apply this same illogic to justify abortion, claiming “choice” or free will trump sanctity of human life by only focusing on the mother and ignoring the full immediate picture that the baby in her womb is a full human life from the moment of conception.

Minimum Wage Laws

“Living wage” is a perfect example of multiple errors seeping into Catholic social teaching and into those who error in how they apply it. Proponents of minimum wage laws pluck the principle of “living wage” out of the fabric of Catholic social teaching and claim it justifies the government interference in two people establishing a contract. Such principle plucking causes a number of errors.

First, the meaning of “living wage” today as come to mean any job worked full time should provide a lower-middle-class income, be it flipping burgers or serving coffee, or sweeping the docks. This differs greatly from the meaning Pope Leo XIII gave it in Rerum Novarum, stating:

“Let the working man and the employer make free agreements, and in particular let them agree freely as to the wages.”

For Pope Leo XIII, the freedom of individuals to enter into contracts takes precedence over the idea of enforcing a living wage, which should instead serve as a moral guide for determining what a just agreement looks like. Imposing a fixed minimum contract amount undermines the principle of subsidiarity and, in practice, harms workers, business owners, and consumers by restricting the freedom to negotiate mutually beneficial terms. Experience shows that such top-down mandates often harm the very people they aim to help.

Yet, woe to the business owner who abuses his position and could pay a living wage: one that supports a “frugal and well-behaved wage-earner” to “support himself, his wife, and his children.” Pope Leo XIII's living wage is an underlying “dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man.” Yet it was likely never meant to include flipping burgers or serving coffee and other entry level positions. Unlike the “living wage” in the modernist's mind, Pope Leo XIII's worker “find(s) it easy, if he be a sensible man, to practice thrift, and he will not fail, by cutting down expenses, to put by some little savings and thus secure a modest source of income.”

In short, it falls on the princes and clergy of the Church to form business owners to treat their workers well and shape their businesses so they can provide a living wage, or as close to one as the market will allow.

Pope Leo XIII names two checks and balances on business owners, and incentives for laborers: Private property (Rerum Novarum, nos. 4-8, 46), which should be held “sacred and inviolable,” and the forming of labor unions. Private property because “its policy should be to induce as many as possible of the people to become owners. Many excellent results will follow from this; and, first of all, property will certainly become more equitably divided” (RN, nos. 46-47).

Indeed, Pope Leo XIII warns against the socialist and communist tactic of pitting the workers against the owners: “the poor man’s envy of the rich” to incite violence and tear at the fabric of society (RN, no. 4). Further, “they delude the people and impose upon them, and their lying promises will only one day bring forth evils worse than the present” (RN, no.18). He likens trade unions to the guilds of old in their seeing to uphold the needs of the workers and aiding them in gaining private property (RN, nos. 48-49).

Conclusion

As in all things Catholic, we do well to know what we know and hold ourselves accountable to it; this is a fundamental principle of shepherding. Truth is simple, not noisy. Applying Truth in a fallen world is challenging and not easy, but the yoke of doing so should always be easy and light, lest it be sin's yoke rather than Christ's.

All social actions must be held accountable to the three pillars upholding human dignity: the common good, subsidiarity, and solidarity. These form the greatest principles of Catholic social teaching. No lesser tenet can supersede them, for undermining one weakens them all.

In order to speak thoughtfully—with intellect, a fruit of faith and intelligence—about how much a given action upholds human dignity, clergy and all faithful need to be prayerfully formed, discerning, and grounded in Catholic social teaching. Only then can one examine, uphold, and most fully strive to respect the dignity of all involved.

#Catholic #CatholicSocialTeaching #SocialJustice #Shepherding #CSFSymposium #HumanEndeavor #SpiritualDirection

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