Joe Biden presidential portrait.
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Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) May 10, 2024: The self-styled conservative journalist David Brooks devotes his new column "How to Create a Society That Prizes Decency" (dated May 9, 2024) in the New York Times to highlighting the black theologian Howard Thurman's 1949 book Jesus and the Disinherited:
Now, in my recent OEN article "Rabbi Shai Held on the Heart of Jewish Life" (dated April 27, 2024), I note, "Of course, you do not have to interpret the historical Jesus as God become incarnate or as the Messiah to see him as a Jewish prophet - and as a talented storyteller":
For discussion of the historical Jesus, see Paula Fredriksen's book Jesus of Nazareth: King of the Jews (Alfred A. Knopf, 1999).
Now, Brooks frames his discussion of Thurman's book Jesus and the Disinherited as providing President Joe Biden with clues as to how he can save the soul of America, which, according to Brooks, "is still plagued by enmity, distrust, isolation, willful misunderstanding, ungraciousness and just plain meanness."
According to Brooks, Thurman's emphases in his book can help the American "people recognize one another's full dignity" because "national transformation must flow from a tide of personal transformations" - a tide of personal transformations in "both those who dominate and those who are disinherited."
Now, perhaps for understandable reasons, Brooks' emphasis on how the American people need to recognize one another's full dignity does not prompt him to mention that, on April 8, 2024, the Vatican issued the Declaration of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith titled "Dignitas Infinita: On Human Dignity":
Five years in the making, the title of this document highlights human dignity. In the Second Vatican council (1962-1965) in the Roman Catholic Church, the Latin title Dignitatis Humanae highlighted human dignity in the council's landmark Declaration on Religious Freedom (1965).
For a recent English translation of that landmark document, see the book Vatican II: The Essential Texts, edited by Norman Tanner, S.J. (Image Books, 2012, pp. 299-318, translated by John Coventry, S.J.).
Now, in the Vatican's new 2024 document, paragraphs 1 through 32 are devoted to exploring, in theory, the dimensions of human dignity - before taking up certain specific discussions of practices that need to be addressed within the terms of human dignity in paragraphs 33 through 66. The document includes an introductory section (paragraphs 1-9) and a concluding section (paragraphs 63-66) and four major sections, each of which has certain subsections:
1. "A Growing Awareness of the Centrality of Human Dignity" (paragraphs 10-16);
2. "The Church Proclaims, Promotes, and Guarantees Human Dignity" (paragraphs 17-22);
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