Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Confession of the Integral Holy Catholic Faith

We, Priests of the Holy Catholic Church, truly convinced that the integrity of the Faith takes precedence over an opening up to the world or oecumenism, declare publicly our Faith, and we urge you, brethren, to keep yours intact, to live it completely and, if God gives you the grace, to profess it publicly, without arrogance, but with pride.

We believe and profess all the truths which the Church believes and teaches. In particular:
We believe in the existence of one God in three Persons equal and distinct, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
We believe that our Lord Jesus Christ, consubstantial with the Father, took a human nature exactly like ours, with the exception of sin, and that He possesses two natures in one person, the second Person of the Holy Trinity.
We believe in the Holy Ghost, Who is also God, and proceeds from the Father and the Son.
We believe in the birth in time of Christ, of a Mother always a Virgin and full of grace, Immaculate in her Conception and glorious in Heaven in her body and soul.
We believe that the triune God made everything which exists for man, but that He created man for Himself: so that man might know Him, love Him, serve Him and by this means merit the eternal happiness of Heaven.
We believe that the human race descended from a single couple: the first man and woman whom we call Adam and Eve.
We believe that Adam, the head of mankind committed a real sin which deprived him of God's friendship. This sin, "which is the death of the soul", is transmitted by generation to all the children of Adam who, because of this, the Blessed Virgin Mary excepted, are born in a state of sin, that is to say "spiritually dead." This is original sin.
We believe that little children, even though born of Christian parents, must be baptised to obtain Eternal Life, and that they should be baptised as soon as possible.
We believe in the sorrowful Passion, the Death and the bodily Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Who ascended to the right hand of the Father, from whence He will come in glory to judge the living and the dead.
We believe that at the coming of the Glorious Christ, all men will rise from the dead with their bodies, and that each one will render an account of his own acts. Those who have done good will enter eternal Life and those who have done evil will go into eternal fire.
We believe in the existence of Angels and we believe that they watch over the Church and over every man. We believe also that the unfaithful angels, Satan and the demons, personal beings, prowl in the world and against the Church for the ruin of souls.
We believe in the existence of eternal Hell which was made for Satan and his angels, where those who die whilst not in a state of grace, are punished.
We believe that the evil in the world does not come from unexplained antagonisms but, in truth, from original sin and our own sins.
We believe that man possesses a spiritual and immortal soul which continues to exist after the destruction of the body and which, whilst awaiting the resurrection of the body, will go either to Heaven, Purgatory or Hell, according to what it has merited.
We believe all the truths contained in the Holy Scriptures and in Tradition, including the historical character of the accounts of the hidden life of Jesus (the Gospels recording His infancy) and of His miracles.
We believe that we must venerate the Saints and honour their images, and we believe in their intercession.
We believe in the reality of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, in which Jesus Christ, really and substantially present with His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, offers Himself to God the Father, as He did on the Cross, for our sins.
We believe that the term "transubstantiation" is so perfectly fitted to describe the transformation of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, that there is no need to look for a new formula for this mystery of Faith. (Cf. Pope Paul's Encyclical Mysterium Fidei.)

We believe that the Real Corporal Presence of Jesus Christ remains in the Eucharist as long as the sacramental species remain after Communion, or in the Host reserved in the Tabernacle.
We believe that the Sacrament of Penance blots out our sins by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, provided that the required dispositions are present.
We believe in the reality of the divine action through the seven sacraments, the rites of which have been entrusted to the Church.
We believe that Jesus Christ, Our Lord, founded a Church which He called "My Church", to distinguish it from the churches which are not "His." It is "the House of God, the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the Truth." (Matt. XVI, 18; 1 Tim III, 15)
This Church God has provided with certain marks of her institution by which she can be recognized as the Guardian and Mistress of the Revealed Word. And we believe that the Roman Catholic Church alone possesses these wonderful marks which indicate her origin: unity, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity.
We believe that the Church of Christ is visible and hierarchical and that she teaches with God's authority, all that Jesus has revealed to us (see Matt. XXVIII, 20). At the summit of the hierarchy Christ has established Peter and his successors, Bishops of Rome, with direct jurisdiction over the whole universal Church, over all the Bishops, Priests, and faithful and over each one of them.
We believe that the unity of the Church is not something yet to be achieved: it has existed from the beginning and will never cease to exist. It is a mark which distinguishes her from other churches and is one of the Truths of our Credo. "Credo ... et UNAM Ecclesiam."
We believe that those who are separated from her, have objectively the obligation, in order to ensure their salvation, to come back into the sole Church of Jesus Christ, and that we have the duty to facilitate their return but without changing thereby the Catholic Faith.
We believe that the Church of Jesus Christ, although composed of sinners, is a HOLY Church. Holy in her Head, Jesus Christ, Holy in her doctrine, Holy in her Sacraments, Holy in her members: those in Heaven, those in Purgatory, and those on earth who are in a state of grace.
We believe that the Church of Jesus Christ is APOSTOLIC
because the Priesthood, and the jurisdiction of her Hierarchy comes from the Apostles by a direct and unbroken succession.
We believe that the Church of Jesus Christ was founded on Peter. She was entrusted to the care of Peter and to the Bishops united with him. This is the Roman Catholic Church, because only the Bishop of Rome is the successor of Peter.
We believe in the permanence of the traditional doctrine taught by the Church, in the objective meaning of the formulas which express her Dogmas, and in the Truth which she teaches.
We believe that the truths of Faith remain absolutely independent of the way men think or live, because Truth comes from God, by tradition through the Church, and not from the religious instinct of the masses.
We reject also that spirit of inquiry which, under the pretext of a better formulation of doctrine, ends by changing the Truths which we have believed until now.
With the Apostle we think that "If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness, he is proud, knowing nothing, but is sick about questions and strifes of words; from which arise envies, contentions, blasphemies, evil suspicions." (I Tim VI, 3 and 4)
There, Brethren, is what we believe and what we profess: EVERYTHING WHICH THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH BELIEVES AND TEACHES. And we believe it and hold it to be true because God has revealed it to us and He, and the Church which teaches us through her infallible Magisterium, can neither be deceived nor deceive.
We have been baptized in this Catholic Faith.
It is this Catholic Faith which we professed on the day of our Confirmation.
It is this Catholic Faith which the Church, our Mother, made us promise to preserve before imposing her hands on us.

May God preserve us from being perjurers. May Mary, Mother of the Church, and Mother of God, and all the Angels and Saints obtain for us the grace to live and die in and for the Catholic Faith. Amen.

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