Magnifica Humanitas §51

⁵¹ Saint John Paul II stated that, “this heightened sense of the dignity of the human person and of his or her uniqueness, and of the respect due to the journey of conscience, certainly represents one of the positive achievements of modern culture.” This statement follows the line already laid out by the Second Vatican Council , which had noted a growing recognition of the sublime dignity of all persons, their superiority over material things and their universal and inviolable rights and duties. It is important to ensure that this growth in appreciation of human dignity is not obscured by the pressure of new ideologies or very powerful interests in today’s world. Among these ideologies, I consider particularly insidious the one that suggests that every person must earn or justify his or her own worth, to the point of attributing greater value to those who are more efficient or effective. From this perspective, persons end up being reduced to a means of achieving results, a resource to be used and exploited, and are no longer recognized as a proper end in themselves who should never be instrumentalized. The value of persons, however, does not depend on what they achieve or produce. There are rights that apply to everyone simply by virtue of being human, and no human power can legitimately deny or arbitrarily limit them.