''Persona Humana'' is a document published by the

Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) is the oldest among the departments of the Roman Curia. Its seat is the Palace of the Holy Office in Rome. It was founded to defend the Catholic Church from heresy and is the body responsible ...

in 1975. It is a declaration on certain questions concerning

sexual ethics Sexual ethics (also known as sex ethics or sexual morality) is a branch of philosophy that considers the ethics or morality or otherwise in sexual behavior. Sexual ethics seeks to understand, evaluate and critique interpersonal relationships and ...

. ''Persona Humana'' regards

human sexuality Human sexuality is the way people experience and express themselves sexually. This involves biological, psychological, physical, erotic, emotional, social, or spiritual feelings and behaviors. Because it is a broad term, which has varied ...

as a central element of the

person A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...

because it gives the person's life the principal traits that distinguish it. The exaltation of sex outside of marriage in contemporary society occasioned the CDF to clarify the

Roman Catholic Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD * Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a let ...

Church's position on sexual ethics. The line of thought of ''Persona Humana'' revolves around the observation that "Man has been made by God to participate in His

Divine Law Divine law is any body of law that is perceived as deriving from a transcendent source, such as the will of God or godsin contrast to man-made law or to secular law. According to Angelos Chaniotis and Rudolph F. Peters, divine laws are typicall ...

with the result that, under the gentle disposition of Divine Providence, he can come to perceive ever increasingly the unchanging truth. Since this Divine Law is accessible to our minds, we cannot make value judgments according to our personal whim in moral matters." ''Persona Humana'', III

References

External links

Persona Humana
{{catholicism-stub Documents of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith Sexuality in Catholicism