CREDO OF THE PEOPLE OF GOD

Paul VI proclaimed a Year of Faith connected with the anniversary of the martyrdom of the Apostles Peter and Paul.

The period followed the Second Vatican Council and included legitimate renewal alongside confusion, polarization, and disputed interpretations of Catholic doctrine.

The Pope recognized that many believers needed a clear statement of continuity. The conclusion of the Year of Faith therefore became an occasion for a solemn profession before the whole Church.

The setting is essential: the Credo is not an anxious rejection of Vatican II, but a papal interpretation of renewal within the unchanging deposit of faith.

The title “Credo of the People of God” can cause confusion. The text is a profession proclaimed by the Pope for the whole Church, but it was not inserted as the ordinary Sunday Creed.

The Roman liturgy continued to use the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed and, in permitted circumstances, the Apostles’ Creed.

Paul VI’s text is longer because it addresses doctrines requiring renewed clarity in the twentieth century.

Its proper use is doctrinal, catechetical, pastoral, and devotional. It can guide teaching without displacing the ancient symbols.

The Credo confesses one God in three Persons and receives the ancient faith of the Church.

Brief identifying excerpt from Pope St. Paul VI’s profession; consult the complete official text for its full Trinitarian confession.

God is Creator of visible and invisible realities. Creation is distinct from God, depends upon Him, and is sustained by His providence.

Human freedom and the reality of evil do not overthrow divine sovereignty. God can draw good from evil without becoming the author of sin.

The profession thereby resists both materialism, which denies the Creator, and pantheism, which identifies God with the world.

Paul VI explicitly reaffirms original sin at a time when the doctrine was often reduced to symbolism or social influence.

Humanity descends from a first fall that deprived man of original holiness and justice. Original sin is transmitted as a fallen state, not as personal guilt committed by each infant.

Baptism remits original sin and gives supernatural life, though consequences such as suffering, death, disordered desire, and struggle remain.

The doctrine explains why humanity needs redemption rather than education alone.

The Credo confesses Jesus Christ as the eternal Son, true God and true man, conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.

His Passion and Death are redemptive. He rose bodily, ascended, intercedes for the Church, and will return in glory.

The historical Jesus and the Christ of faith are not two separate persons. The one whom the Apostles knew, saw crucified, and proclaimed risen is the eternal Son incarnate.

The profession protects Christology from reductions that make Jesus only a moral teacher, political liberator, religious genius, or symbol of human possibility.

The Holy Spirit is Lord and giver of life, not merely an impersonal energy within the community.

He inspired the prophets and sacred authors, formed Christ’s humanity in the Virgin, descended at Pentecost, sanctifies the Church, distributes charisms, and leads believers into truth.

Authentic charisms do not oppose the Church’s faith, sacraments, and pastoral order. The same Spirit who gives freedom also gives unity and obedience to truth.

The Credo thereby joins spiritual renewal with doctrinal and ecclesial discernment.

The profession confesses the Church as one, holy, catholic, and apostolic, founded by Christ and built on Peter and the Apostles.

Brief identifying excerpt; the complete profession continues with the Church’s foundation, visibility, holiness, and apostolic governance.

The Church is both visible society and spiritual communion. Her human members can sin, yet Christ preserves and sanctifies His Bride.

The bishops succeed the Apostles, and the Bishop of Rome succeeds St. Peter. Episcopal collegiality and papal primacy belong together.

The Church serves revelation; she does not possess authority to invent a different Gospel.

Paul VI confesses Mary as ever-virgin Mother of God, immaculate, assumed into heaven, and Mother of the Church.

Her privileges come entirely from Christ’s grace and saving mission. They do not make her a goddess or independent redeemer.

As the new Eve, Mary freely cooperates by grace in the Incarnation and remains maternally concerned for Christ’s members.

Marian doctrine therefore protects Christology and ecclesiology: the one born of Mary is God the Son, and the Church receives Him in faith.

The Credo strongly reaffirms that the Mass is the sacramental memorial and making-present of Christ’s one sacrifice.

Brief identifying excerpt from the profession’s fuller teaching that the one sacrifice is rendered sacramentally present upon the altar.

Christ’s sacrifice is not repeated, because Calvary is unique and sufficient. The Church participates sacramentally in the same offering.

The priest acts in the person of Christ the Head, and the faithful unite themselves to the offering.

This doctrine opposes both crude repetition and reduction of the Mass to a fraternal gathering.

Paul VI gives special attention to the substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

After consecration, bread and wine cease to exist in substance and become Christ’s Body and Blood, while their appearances remain. The Church calls this transubstantiation.

Christ is present whole and entire, not divided by the species or by the breaking of the host.

The Credo also supports Eucharistic worship outside Mass because the consecrated species remain Christ’s Body and Blood while they endure.

The profession teaches that God wills salvation and that all saving grace comes through Jesus Christ.

It recognizes that persons outside visible Catholic communion may be related to the Church in varying ways and may receive grace without fully knowing its ecclesial source.

This teaching does not make religions interchangeable or render evangelization unnecessary. Error does not save as error.

The Church proclaims Christ because He is the universal Savior and calls all people into the fullness of truth and sacramental communion.

The Credo concludes with death, judgment, purgatorial purification, heaven, hell, bodily resurrection, and the life of the world to come.

Christian hope does not end with historical progress. Every person will face God, and creation will reach its fulfillment in Christ.

The saints already enjoy communion with God and intercede for the Church. The faithful departed undergoing purification are assisted by prayer.

The final resurrection confirms the permanent value of the body and material creation.

The text offers a compact guide to authentic postconciliar continuity. It demonstrates how Vatican II should be interpreted within the Church’s prior faith.

Its doctrinal scope makes it valuable for catechists, clergy, theology students, converts, and Catholics confronting claims that the Church abandoned traditional teaching after the council.

It also challenges traditionalists who treat legitimate conciliar renewal as automatically suspect and progressives who interpret renewal as doctrinal reversal.

The Credo’s answer is Catholic continuity joined to living confession.

• Do not claim the Credo replaced the Nicene Creed at Mass.
• Do not present it as a rejection of Vatican II.
• Do not reduce original sin to social influence alone.
• Do not treat the Holy Spirit as an impersonal force.
• Do not separate Marian doctrine from Christ’s grace.
• Do not reduce the Eucharist to symbolism or community memory.
• Do not confuse openness to salvation with religious indifferentism.

• Holy Bible, Douay-Rheims: John 1:1–18; Romans 5:12–21; First Corinthians 10–11 and 15; Ephesians 1–5.
• Catechism of the Catholic Church, 232–267, 385–421, 456–483, 748–975, 1322–1419, and 988–1065.
• Pope St. Paul VI, Solemni Hac Liturgia: Credo of the People of God, 30 June 1968.
• Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum.
• Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium.
• Second Vatican Council, Sacrosanctum Concilium.
• Pope St. John Paul II, Catechesi Tradendae, 28.
• Pope Benedict XVI, Porta Fidei.