CREDO OF THE PEOPLE OF GOD
POPE PAUL VI
June 30, 1968
1. With this solemn liturgy we end the celebration of the
nineteenth centenary of the martyrdom of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, and
thus close the Year of Faith. We dedicated it to the commemoration of the holy
apostles in order that we might give witness to our steadfast will to be
faithful to the deposit of the faith(1) which they transmitted to us, and that
we might strengthen our desire to live by it in the historical circumstances in
which the Church finds herself in her pilgrimage in the midst of the world.
2. We feel it our duty to give public thanks to all who responded
to our invitation by bestowing on the Year of Faith a splendid completeness
through the deepening of their personal adhesion to the word of God, through
the renewal in various communities of the profession of faith, and through the
testimony of a Christian life. To our brothers in the episcopate especially,
and to all the faithful of the holy Catholic Church, we express our
appreciation and we grant our blessing.
A Mandate
3. Likewise, we deem that we must fulfill the mandate entrusted by
Christ to Peter, whose successor we are, the last in merit; namely, to confirm
our brothers in the faith.(2) With the awareness, certainly, of our human
weakness, yet with all the strength impressed on our spirit by such a command,
we shall accordingly make a profession of faith, pronounce a creed which,
without being strictly speaking a dogmatic definition, repeats in substance,
with some developments called for by the spiritual condition of our time, the
creed of Nicea, the creed of the immortal tradition of the holy Church of God.
4. In making this profession, we are aware of the disquiet which
agitates certain modern quarters with regard to the faith. They do not escape
the influence of a world being profoundly changed, in which so many certainties
are being disputed or discussed. We see even Catholics allowing themselves to
be seized by a kind of passion for change and novelty. The Church, most
assuredly, has always the duty to carry on the effort to study more deeply and
to present, in a manner ever better adapted to successive generations, the
unfathomable mysteries of God, rich for all in fruits of salvation. But at the
same time the greatest care must be taken, while fulfilling the indispensable
duty of research, to do no injury to the teachings of Christian doctrine. For
that would be to give rise, as is unfortunately seen in these days, to
disturbance and perplexity in many faithful souls.
Await the Word
5. It is important in this respect to recall that, beyond
scientifically verified phenomena, the intellect which God has given us reaches
that which is, and not merely the subjective expression of the structures and
development of consciousness; and, on the other hand, that the task of interpretation—of
hermeneutics—is to try to understand and extricate, while respecting the word
expressed, the sense conveyed by a text, and not to recreate, in some fashion,
this sense in accordance with arbitrary hypotheses.
6. But above all, we place our unshakable confidence in the Holy
Spirit, the soul of the Church, and in theological faith upon which rests the
life of the Mystical Body. We know that souls await the word of the Vicar of
Christ, and we respond to that expectation with the instructions which we
regularly give. But today we are given an opportunity to make a more solemn
utterance.
7. On this day which is chosen to close the Year of Faith, on this
feast of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, we have wished to offer to the
living God the homage of a profession of faith. And as once at Caesarea
Philippi the apostle Peter spoke on behalf of the twelve to make a true
confession, beyond human opinions, of Christ as Son of the living God, so today
his humble successor, pastor of the Universal Church, raises his voice to give,
on behalf of all the People of God, a firm witness to the divine Truth
entrusted to the Church to be announced to all nations.
We have wished our profession of faith to be to a high degree
complete and explicit, in order that it may respond in a fitting way to the
need of light felt by so many faithful souls, and by all those in the world, to
whatever spiritual family they belong, who are in search of the Truth.
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.
PROFESSION OF FAITH
8. 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.
9. 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.
The Father
10. 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 superabound 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)
The Son
11. 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)
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.
And His Kingdom will have no end.
The Holy Spirit
13. 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).
14. 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)
15. 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)
Original Offense
16. 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)
Reborn of the Holy Spirit
17. We believe that o ur 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)
Baptism
18. 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)
The Church
19. 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.
The Word
20. 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)
21. 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)
One Shepherd
22. 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.
23. 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)
Sacrifice of Calvary
24. 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)
Transubstantiation
25. 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)
26. 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.
Temporal Concern
27. 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.
28. 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.
Prospect of Resurrection
29. 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)
30. 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.
PAUL VI
NOTES
1. Cf. 1 Tim. 6:20.
2. Cf. Lk. 22:32.
3. Cf. Dz.-Sch. 3002.
4. Cf. Ex. 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, 56, 61, 63; cf. Paul VI, Alloc. for the
Closing of the Third Session of the Second Vatican Council: A.A.S. 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
