This is the Faith of the Church.
We are proud to profess it through Christ, our Lord.
"To the glory of God most holy and of our Lord Jesus Christ, trusting in the aid of the
Blessed Virgin Mary and of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, for the profit and
edification of the Church, in the name of all the pastors and all the faithful, we now
pronounce this profession of faith, in full spiritual communion with you all, beloved
brothers and sons.
We believe in one only God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, creator of things visible such
as this world in which our transient life passes, of things invisible such as the pure
spirits which are also called angels,
3 and creator in each man of his spiritual and
immortal soul.
We believe that this only God is absolutely one in His infinitely holy essence as also
in all His perfections, in His omnipotence, His infinite knowledge, His providence, His
will and His love. He is He who is, as He revealed to Moses,
4 and He is love, as the
apostle John teaches us:
5 so that these two names, being and love, express ineffably the
same divine reality of Him who has wished to make Himself known to us, and who,
"dwelling in light inaccessible"
6 is in Himself above every name, above every
thing and above every created intellect. God alone can give us right and full knowledge of
this reality by revealing Himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in whose eternal life we
are by grace called to share, here below in the obscurity of faith and after death in
eternal light. The mutual bonds which eternally constitute the Three Persons, who are each
one and the same divine being, are the blessed inmost life of God thrice holy, infinitely
beyond all that we can conceive in human measure.
7 We give thanks, however, to the
divine goodness that very many believers can testify with us before men to the unity of
God, even though they know not the mystery of the most holy Trinity.
We believe then in the Father who eternally begets the Son, in the Son, the Word of
God, who is eternally begotten; in the Holy Spirit, the uncreated Person who proceeds from
the Father and the Son as their eternal love. Thus in the Three Divine Persons, coaeternae
sibi et coaequales,
8 the life and
beatitude of God perfectly one super-abound and are consummated in the
supreme excellence and glory proper to uncreated being, and always "there
should be venerated unity in the Trinity and Trinity in the unity."
9
We believe in our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God. He is the Eternal Word,
born of the Father before time began, and one in substance with the Father, homoousios to
Patri,
10 and through Him all things were made. He was incarnate of the Virgin Mary by
the power of the Holy Spirit, and was made man: equal therefore to the Father according to
His divinity, and inferior to the Father according to His humanity;
11
and Himself one, not by some impossible confusion of His natures, but by the
unity of His person.
12
He dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. He proclaimed and established the Kingdom
of God and made us know in Himself the Father. He gave us His new commandment to love one
another as He loved us. He taught us the way of the beatitudes of the Gospel: poverty in
spirit, meekness, suffering borne with patience, thirst after justice, mercy, purity of
heart, will for peace, persecution suffered for justice sake. Under Pontius Pilate He
suffered—the Lamb of God bearing on Himself the sins of the world, and He died for us
on the cross, saving us by His redeeming blood. He was buried, and, of His own power, rose
on the third day, raising us by His resurrection to that sharing in the divine life which
is the life of grace. He ascended to heaven, and He will come again, this time in glory,
to judge the living and the dead: each according to his merits—those who have
responded to the love and piety of God going to eternal life, those who have refused them
to the end going to the fire that is not extinguished.
And His Kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, who is Lord, and Giver of life, who is adored and
glorified together with the Father and the Son. He spoke to us by the prophets; He was
sent by Christ after His resurrection and His ascension to the Father; He illuminates,
vivifies, protects and guides the Church; He purifies the Church's members if they do not
shun His grace. His action, which penetrates to the inmost of the soul, enables man to
respond to the call of Jesus: Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect (Mt. 5:48).
We believe that Mary is the Mother, who remained ever a Virgin, of the Incarnate Word,
our God and Savior Jesus Christ,
13 and that by reason of this singular election, she
was, in consideration of the merits of her Son, redeemed in a more eminent manner,
14
preserved from all stain of original sin
15
and filled with the gift of grace more than all other creatures.
16
Joined by a close and indissoluble bond to the Mysteries of the Incarnation and
Redemption,
17 the Blessed Virgin, the Immaculate, was at the end of her earthly life
raised body and soul to heavenly glory
18 and likened to her risen Son in anticipation of
the future lot of all the just; and we believe that the Blessed Mother of God, the New
Eve, Mother of the Church,
19
continues in heaven her maternal role with regard to Christ's members,
cooperating with the birth and growth of divine life in the souls of the
redeemed.
20
We believe that in Adam all have sinned, which means that the original
offense committed by him caused human nature, common to all men, to fall to
a state in which it bears the consequences of that offense, and which is not
the state in which it was at first in our first parents—established as they
were in holiness and justice, and in which man knew neither evil nor death.
It is human nature so fallen stripped of the grace that clothed it, injured
in its own natural powers and subjected to the dominion of death, that is
transmitted to all men, and it is in this sense that every man is born in
sin. We therefore hold, with the Council of Trent, that original sin, is
transmitted with human nature, "not by imitation, but by propagation" and
that it is thus "proper to everyone."
21
We believe that Our Lord Jesus Christ, by the sacrifice of the cross
redeemed us from original sin and all the personal sins committed by each
one of us, so that, in accordance with the word of the apostle, "where sin
abounded grace did more abound."
22
We believe in one Baptism instituted by our Lord Jesus Christ for the
remission of sins. Baptism should be administered even to little children
who have not yet been able to be guilty of any personal sin, in order that,
though born deprived of supernatural grace, they may be reborn "of water and
the Holy Spirit" to the divine life in Christ Jesus.
23
We believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church built by Jesus Christ on that
rock which is Peter. She is the Mystical Body of Christ; at the same time a visible
society instituted with hierarchical organs, and a spiritual community; the Church on
earth, the pilgrim People of God here below, and the Church filled with heavenly
blessings; the germ and the first fruits of the Kingdom of God, through which the work and
the sufferings of Redemption are continued throughout human history, and which looks for
its perfect accomplishment beyond time in glory.
24 In the course of time, the Lord Jesus
forms His Church by means of the sacraments emanating from His plenitude.
25 By these she
makes her members participants in the Mystery of the Death and Resurrection of Christ, in
the grace of the Holy Spirit who gives her life and movement.
26 She is therefore holy,
though she has sinners in her bosom, because she herself has no other life but that of
grace: it is by living by her life that her members are sanctified; it is by removing
themselves from her life that they fall into sins and disorders that prevent the radiation
of her sanctity. This is why she suffers and does penance for these offenses, of which she
has the power to heal her children through the blood of Christ and the gift of the Holy
Spirit.
Heiress of the divine promises and daughter of Abraham according to the Spirit, through
that Israel whose scriptures she lovingly guards, and whose patriarchs and prophets she
venerates; founded upon the apostles and handing on from century to century their
ever-living word and their powers as pastors in the successor of Peter and the bishops in
communion with him; perpetually assisted by the Holy Spirit, she has the charge of
guarding, teaching, explaining and spreading the Truth which God revealed in a then veiled
manner by the prophets, and fully by the Lord Jesus. We believe all that is contained in
the word of God written or handed down, and that the Church proposes for belief as
divinely revealed, whether by a solemn judgment or by the ordinary and universal
magisterium.
27 We believe in the infallibility enjoyed by the successor of Peter when he
teaches ex cathedra as pastor and teacher of all the faithful,
28 and which is assured
also to the episcopal body when it exercises with him the supreme magisterium.
29
We believe that the Church founded by Jesus Christ and for which He
prayed is indefectibly one in faith, worship and the bond of hierarchical
communion. In the bosom of this Church, the rich variety of liturgical rites
and the legitimate diversity of theological and spiritual heritages and
special disciplines, far from injuring her unity, make it more manifest.
30
Recognizing also the existence, outside the organism of the Church of Christ of
numerous elements of truth and sanctification which belong to her as her own and tend to
Catholic unity,
31 and believing in the action of the Holy Spirit who stirs up in the
heart of the disciples of Christ love of this unity,
32 we entertain the hope that the
Christians who are not yet in the full communion of the one only Church will one day be
reunited in one flock with one only shepherd.
We believe that the Church is necessary for salvation, because Christ, who is the sole
mediator and way of salvation, renders Himself present for us in His body which is the
Church.
33 But the divine design of
salvation embraces all men, and those who without fault on their part do not
know the Gospel of Christ and His Church, but seek God sincerely, and under
the influence of grace endeavor to do His will as recognized through the
promptings of their conscience, they, in a number known only to God, can
obtain salvation.
34
We believe that the Mass, celebrated by the priest representing the person of Christ by
virtue of the power received through the Sacrament of Orders, and offered by him in the
name of Christ and the members of His Mystical Body, is the sacrifice of Calvary rendered
sacramentally present on our altars. We believe that as the bread and wine
consecrated by the Lord at the Last Supper were changed into His body and
His blood which were to be offered for us on the cross, likewise the bread
and wine consecrated by the priest are changed into the body and blood of
Christ enthroned gloriously in heaven, and we believe that the mysterious
presence of the Lord, under what continues to appear to our senses as
before, is a true, real and substantial presence.
35
Christ cannot be thus present in this sacrament except by the change into His body of
the reality itself of the bread and the change into His blood of the reality itself of the
wine, leaving unchanged only the properties of the bread and wine which our senses
perceive. This mysterious change is very appropriately called by the Church
transubstantiation. Every theological explanation which seeks some understanding of this
mystery must, in order to be in accord with Catholic faith, maintain that in the reality
itself, independently of our mind, the bread and wine have ceased to exist after the
Consecration, so that it is the adorable body and blood of the Lord Jesus that from then
on are really before us under the sacramental species of bread and wine,
36
as the Lord willed it, in order to give Himself to us as food and
to associate us with the unity of His Mystical Body.
37
The unique and indivisible existence of the Lord glorious in heaven is not multiplied,
but is rendered present by the sacrament in the many places on earth where Mass is
celebrated. And this existence remains present, after the sacrifice, in the Blessed
Sacrament which is, in the tabernacle, the living heart of each of our churches. And it is
our very sweet duty to honor and adore in the blessed Host which our eyes see, the
Incarnate Word whom they cannot see, and who, without leaving heaven, is made present
before us.
We confess that the Kingdom of God begun here below in the Church of Christ is not of
this world whose form is passing, and that its proper growth cannot be confounded with the
progress of civilization, of science or of human technology, but that it consists in an
ever more profound knowledge of the unfathomable riches of Christ, an ever stronger hope
in eternal blessings, an ever more ardent response to the love of God, and an ever more
generous bestowal of grace and holiness among men. But it is this same love which induces
the Church to concern herself constantly about the true temporal welfare of men. Without
ceasing to recall to her children that they have not here a lasting dwelling, she also
urges them to contribute, each according to his vocation and his means, to the welfare of
their earthly city, to promote justice, peace and brotherhood among men, to give their aid
freely to their brothers, especially to the poorest and most unfortunate. The deep
solicitude of the Church, the Spouse of Christ, for the needs of men, for their joys and
hopes, their griefs and efforts, is therefore nothing other than her great desire to be
present to them, in order to illuminate them with the light of Christ and to gather them
all in Him, their only Savior. This solicitude can never mean that the Church conform
herself to the things of this world, or that she lessen the ardor of her expectation of
her Lord and of the eternal Kingdom.
We believe in the life eternal. We believe that the souls of all those who die in the
grace of Christ—whether they must still be purified in purgatory, or whether from the
moment they leave their bodies Jesus takes them to paradise as He did for the Good
Thief—are the People of God in the eternity beyond death, which will be finally
conquered on the day of the Resurrection when these souls will be reunited with their
bodies.
We believe that the multitude of those gathered around Jesus and Mary in paradise forms
the Church of Heaven, where in eternal beatitude they see God as He is,
38
and where they also, in different degrees, are associated with the holy
angels in the divine rule exercised by Christ in glory, interceding for us
and helping our weakness by their brotherly care.
39
We believe in the communion of all the faithful of Christ, those who are
pilgrims on earth, the dead who are attaining their purification, and the
blessed in heaven, all together forming one Church; and we believe that in
this communion the merciful love of God and His saints is ever listening to
our prayers, as Jesus told us: Ask and you will receive.
40
Thus it is with faith and in hope that we look forward to the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come.
Blessed be God Thrice Holy. Amen."
Pope Paul VI
June 30, 1968
***
The Creedo of the People of God was proclaimed at the close of the Year of Faith, celebrated for the 19th Centenary of the martyrdom of Sts Peter and Paul.
***
3 Cf Dz.-Sch. 3002.
4 Cf Ep.3:14.
5 Cf 1 Jn. 4:8.
6 Cf 1 Tim. 6:16.
7 Cf Dz.-Sch. 804.
8 Cf Dz.-Sch. 75.
9 Cf. ibid.
10 Cf Dz.-Sch. 150.
11 Cf Dz.-Sch.76.
12 Cf Ibid.
13 Cf Dz.-Sch. 251-252.
14 Cf Lumen Gentium, 53.
15 Cf Dz.-Sch. 2803.
16 Cf Lumen Gentium, 53.
17 Cf Lumen Gentium, 53, 58, 61.
18 Cf Dz.-Sch. 3903.
19 Cf Lumen Gentium, 53, 58, 61, 63; Cf Paul VI, Alloc. for the Closing of the
Third Session of the Second Vatican Council: AAS LVI [1964] 1016; Cf. Exhort.
Apost. Signum Magnum, Introd.
20 Cf Lumen Gentium, 62; cf Paul VI, Exhort. Apost. Signum Magnum, p
1, n. 1.
21 Cf Dz.-Sch. 1513.
22 Cf Rom. 5:20.
23 Cf Dz.-Sch. 1514.
24 Cf. Lumen Gentium, 8, 5.
25 Cf Lumen Gentium, 7, 11.
26 Cf Sacrosanctum Concilium, 5, 6; cf Lumen Gentium, 7, 12, 50.
27 Cf Dz.-Sch. 3011.
28 Cf Dz.-Sch. 3074.
29 Cf Lumen Gentium, 25.
30 Cf. Lumen Gentium, 23; cf Orientalium Ecclesiarum 2, 3, 5, 6.
31 Cf Lumen Gentium, 8.
32 Cf Lumen Gentium, 15.
33 Cf Lumen Gentium, 14.
34 Cf Lumen Gentium, 16.
35 Cf Dz.-Sch. 1651.
36 Cf Dz.-Sch. 1642,1651-1654; Paul VI, Enc. Mysterium Fidei.
37 Cf S.Th.,111,73,3.
38 Cf 1 Jn. 3:2; Dz.-Sch. 1000.
39 Cf Lumen Gentium, 49.
40 Cf Lk. 10:9-10; Jn. 16:24.
