The human person is created out of love, for love and is destined to flourish. God, who is perfect love, has created each person in the image and likeness of God. Each person is unique and equal in dignity to all others. Persons are rational and free beings having both a body and a soul. Human beings are in relationship to all of God's creation. God has made each person in the Divine image and likeness as an inseparable unity of body, mind and spirit. God gifts each individual with absolute and enduring dignity and the unconditional love of God. Through God the human person has the possibility of life lived to the full.

Christianity believes that everything in the universe is created by God, sustained by God, and destined to return to God. Human beings hold a special place in this Creation because they alone are created in God's image and likeness (Gen 1). Human beings have been created with God-like abilities so that they can be God's presence in the world. Human beings are called to use these God-given abilities to continue God's creative work in the world. These abilities include free choice, rationality, the ability to relate to others, the capacities to do the right thing and above all, to love.

Human beings are free because God is free. God freely chose to create the universe from nothing: otherwise God would have been answerable to some other power greater than God. Therefore God is absolutely free and so human beings in God's image are  gifted with the capacity to make free choices.  Love requires freedom of choice.  Love without freedom of choice is not love.

Human beings are rational beings because God is rational. Though God is free, the world that God has created is governed by rules or laws. The world as we know it is a place of patterns, a place of predictable events that suggest certain orderliness. There is a certain level of predictability about daily events, like the fact that we need air, food and shelter, that the Sun will rise and set, that spring will come, that a rainbow is the result of the refraction of light through water droplets, and so on. The Creator of such an ordered world where what goes up must come down must be a rational being. Human beings created in God's image are also rational beings. Because human beings are rational beings, they have the capacity to detect, understand and apply the patterns of natural world.  In so doing they are able to freely participate in the mind of God and in the creative work of God.

Human beings are capable of doing the right thing because God is just. God's rational nature is important for another reason: it means that God is not unfaithful to God's promises. If God were unreliable and capricious human beings could never know what was true and what was not, what was good and what was bad, what was right and what was wrong. Because God is rational God has created a rationally ordered universe. God has gifted human beings with the capacity to reason and to gain insight into the rational order. Christians are therefore able to believe that there is a truth in any given situation and that truth is accessible, at least in part, to human beings through the use of their reason.   God can be trusted to honour the promises made to human beings. Human beings, as images of God are called to be just, ensuring that God's deepest desires for humankind and the world are realized.

Human beings are relational because God is relational. The theological mystery of the Holy Trinity claims that God is one being, but three persons. The person of God whom the Tradition calls Father is the Creator, the source all things. The Father has spoken the eternal Word (the Son) into creation, and through the incarnation, Jesus of Nazareth is the visible expression of the Father. The Spirit is the active presence of God bringing creation to its ultimate destiny which is eternal life. These three persons of God co-exist eternally in a state of mutual indwelling, a very deep interpersonal relationship of boundless love (See section on Trinity in Part III).

Human beings are able to love because God is love. Believing that God is free, rational, just and relational is helpful in explaining many human experiences and the way the world works. But this belief about God is not particularly helpful in answering the question of why God created the world, human beings, the human individual. The Christian tradition believes that God is Love (1 John 4:8). God creates the world, every creature and every human being out of this perfect love. Unlike other creatures, human beings, as images of God, are both loved and are capable of love. Human persons are capable of knowing and loving themselves and, more importantly, they are capable of knowing and loving others with a profound intensity. It is this deep love, this deep gift of self, that Christian's believe triumphs over even the greatest trials, even death.

Human beings are bodily beings. Their bodies are part of who they are and who they were created by God to be. God does not create human beings as spirits alone, but as unities of both body and spirit. This 'being a body' is important for the Christian vision of the human person because it means that all human beings, regardless of their physical qualities, are created and loved by God. Moreover, this 'being a body' underscores human interrelationships with the world and with time and history. Each human being is unique and irreplaceable. Each human being grows and changes over time. Each human being depends on and acts in and through his or her relationships in the physical world. It is as bodily beings that we come to know God, that we love and learn to discern what is the right thing to do.

Each human being is unique and fundamentally equal to all other human beings. This is the case regardless of place and time, regardless of the development or expression of any specific abilities, regardless of any other features, physical or otherwise. The reason for this is that every human being is created, known, called and loved eternally by God (Psalm 139:13).

Every human being has an absolute moral worth and dignity. This dignity of all human beings is at the core of Christian moral reflection. In the Incarnation, God becomes a human being, Jesus of Nazareth. In so doing Jesus unites God's self to all of humanity. This is the ultimate expression of the supreme worth and dignity that God bestows on all human beings. Human beings have such worth and dignity and are so loved by God that God became a human being and suffered and died for them. Jesus was raised bodily to life, overcoming death. The promise of resurrection, eternal life with God and life to the full is made to every human being.

Finally, taking seriously human dignity and the common good means having to take seriously the well-being of other creatures and natural world. The world is created by God. God sees this world as good. God gives human beings dominion over this good world. A Catholic perspective forbids abuse of the world and of other creatures for our own ends. A Catholic perspective obliges us to care for the environment in which we live. All things, created by God, have an intrinsic value which commands our respect. Things are good in themselves not simply good in relation to our needs. Human beings consequently have a duty to respect and protect the natural world as part of God's creation, as part of the goodness that God willed for human beings and their flourishing. Pope Benedict XVI states in his 2007 Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis, 'The world is not something indifferent, raw material to be utilized simply as we see fit. Rather, it is part of God's good plan, in which all of us are called to be sons and daughters in the one Son of God, Jesus Christ (cf. Eph 1:4-12).' And most recently, in his 2015 encyclical On Care for our Common Home, 'Laudato Si', Pope Francis speaks of an integral ecology that takes us to the heart of what is means to be human in the splendour of God's creation being called to care for all that exists. He begins his encyclical by quoting the 13th century Saint Francis of Assisi and then says: In the words of this beautiful canticle, Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us. 'Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs'. This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor; she 'groans in travail' (Rom 8:22). We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth (cf. Gen 2:7); our very bodies are made up of her elements, we breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her waters.

From a Catholic perspective human beings are free, meaning seeking and meaning making beings in relation to all that is. We are faced with a choice, then, about how we engage in those relationships in light of the kind of beings we want to be. What do we want our lives to mean? This meaning will be realized through the moral choices we make in and through our relationships with others, with the natural world, and with God. Whole-hearted living is possible. Human flourishing is possible. We cannot control everything. Working out the right thing to do in every situation can be tricky. But at its core of our moral decision-making is the question: What do you stand for? The Catholic perspective is one that stands for love, life and justice for all.