I think that one aspect of the declaration has been ignored. That is its naiveté about a supposed consensus of moral thinking. In paragraph seven, it reads: “There is widespread agreement today on the importance and normative scope of human dignity and on the unique and transcendent value of every human being.” The endnote for that affirmation refers to the 1948 United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, a 1966 United Nations “Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,” and the 1975 Helsinki “Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.”
Widespread agreement was not even the case when the documents were written. To say that there is a moral consensus now is just not true. It is whistling in the dark to pretend that by simply restating the Church’s position there can be a resolution of all the issues it addresses. The fact that it must address such issues gives the lie to the pretension that there is for the most part a common ground about the respect due to persons.
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