“Digital violence” also violates human dignity, says the Church

The list of “serious violations of human dignity” contained in the Declaration of the Doctrine of the Faith, entitled in Latin “Dignitas Infinita”, is completed with “digital violence” and new forms of violence spread through social networks.

He cites as examples “cyberbullying”, the dissemination of pornographic material and the exploitation of people for sexual purposes or through gambling on computer networks.

The document underlines that “the progress of digital technologies, which also offer many possibilities for promoting human dignity, increasingly tends to create a world in which exploitation, exclusion and violence are growing, which can end up damaging the dignity of human person.

“Think how easy it is, with these means, jeopardize someone’s good reputation with false news and slander”, underlines “Infinity Dignity”.

At this point Pope Francis underlines that “it is not healthy to confuse communication with simple virtual contact”.

“The digital environment is too a territory of loneliness, manipulation, exploitation and violenceup to the extreme case of the (so-called) dark web”, we read in the document.

He concludes by stating that “digital media can expose us to the risk of addiction, isolation and progressive loss of contact with concrete reality, making it difficult to develop authentic interpersonal relationships”.

A 22 page document

In the long twenty-page document entitled “Infinite Dignity”, the Pope signed a document prepared by the Dicastery of Doctrine, which placed gender confirmation operations on the same level of gravity as abortion and euthanasia. They have been condemned as practices that violate God’s plan for human life.

The document, of great theological importance and which deals with very important themesit took five years to make, with a considerable overhaul in recent months.

Pope Francis approved the document on March 25th ordered its publication.