Mike, puzzled by your phrase "what is a human person for?" I think we cannot put that question at all -- it is against Christian ethics, and of course against Kant's view that the human being is an end in itself (the Kingdom of Ends).
Quoting Kant as an authority doesn't weigh with me. Let's stick to Catholic thought.
In that tradition of thought, to say that the human person is "for" something does not mean that some humans have the right to treat others as mere instruments. Quite the contrary. It means that the human person has an inner telos which implies a relation to something outside itself. Philosophically, that telos is flourishing as a rational animal with the capacities distinctive thereof, the chief of which is love, which implies interpersonal communion. That's the inner telos, and it's valuable partly for its own sake. Theologically, such flourishing is ordered to a loving,personal relationship with God. That's the telos "beyond" the inner telos. That's what "matters" full stop, as distinct from mattering to this or that individual, society, or state.
I do not believe that any society can be well-ordered without a proper understanding of what's required by the inner telos. And I don't believe that any society can maintain such an understanding consistently, without acknowledging the outer and ultimate telos. That's the chief problem faced today by the secular West.
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