The Catholic faith
What follows is the Faith in the order the Church uses: what the Church believes, the seven Sacraments, the Mass and prayer, the moral life and the last things, then the Angels and the Saints. Each section is an explanation written for this App. It is not the Catechism, and it is not a Parish. See Catechism §§ 185–1065 for the Creed, and §§ 1210–1666 for the Sacraments, on the Holy See’s site.
Learn · the Mass
A film for someone who has never been to Mass, or who has been and was never told what they were seeing. It stays with the Consecration: the Priest speaks the words of Christ, and the bread and wine become Jesus.
What Happens During Mass? (A Visual Film on the Consecration). Catholic Aesthetics, on YouTube, under their terms. The film plays here. If the player does not start, open the same film on YouTube.
What the Church believes
In the Creed, the Church professes the Faith handed down from the Apostles — the truths we believe about God the Father, Jesus Christ His only Son, the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, and the life of the world to come. Every Catholic is called to know, believe, and live this Faith. The Creed is how the Church says it together, at Baptism and at Mass. A person is not made a Catholic, or unmade, by whether they can recite it from memory.
I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father; through Him all things were made. For us men and for our salvation He came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man. For our sake He was crucified under Pontius Pilate, He suffered death and was buried, and rose again on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and His kingdom will have no end.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets. I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.
That is the faith of Nicaea and Constantinople. Explanation of these articles, in our own words, is kept with the paragraph numbers of the Catechism. Scripture and Tradition are one deposit, guarded by the Bishops with the Pope.
The life of grace
Baptism takes away original sin and makes a person a member of Christ and of the Church. Water and the words — I baptise you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit — are enough, even if a lay person must say them in danger of death. A valid Baptism is not repeated.
Confirmation seals that Baptism with the gift of the Holy Spirit, ordinarily by a Bishop, with sacred chrism and the laying on of hands. It is not a graduation out of the Church. It is strength for a public faith.
The Eucharist is the source and the summit. At Mass a Priest speaks the words of Christ over bread and wine, and the whole Christ — Body, Blood, soul, and divinity — becomes present. The appearances remain. The substance does not. That is what Trent called transubstantiation. A bleeding Host, if it is a true sign, only points back to this ordinary miracle. Sunday Mass is a grave duty, not a preference.
Penance is the way back after Baptism. Jesus gave the Apostles the power to forgive and to retain sins. A Priest acts in the person of Christ and gives absolution. The seal is absolute. Say the Act of Contrition. Mortal sin — grave matter, clear knowledge, full consent — is taken to a Priest, named in kind and, as far as one remembers, in number.
The Anointing of the Sick is for a person in danger from illness or age, not only for the last hour. Oil, prayer, and, when the person can, Confession and Viaticum. It is not a substitute for medicine. It is Christ present to a body that is failing.
Holy Orders configures a man to Christ the Head, in three degrees: Deacon, Priest, Bishop. A Priest is ordained to preach, to absolve, and to offer the Sacrifice. A Bishop holds the fullness of the Sacrament and is a successor of the Apostles. The Pope is the Bishop of Rome.
Matrimony is a covenant between a baptised man and a baptised woman, for the good of the spouses and for the begetting and raising of children. The spouses are the ministers. The Church does not invent a second form of it. What God has joined, no one may put asunder. The hard cases belong in a Parish and a tribunal, not in a slogan.
How the Faith is lived
The Mass is not a talk with hymns attached. It is the sacrifice of Calvary made present, and the wedding supper of the Lamb. The readings are the Lectionary of the day, not a passage chosen because it was comforting. The homily explains them. The Creed is said. The gifts are brought. The Priest prays the Eucharistic Prayer. The people answer Amen to a fact, not to a mood. Then they receive, or they do not, according to whether they are in a state of grace and have kept the fast the Church asks.
Beside the Mass the Church prays the Rosary, which is the Gospel walked with Our Lady, decade by decade. The Church prays the Angelus. The Church prays the Liturgy of the Hours. The Church keeps Lent, Holy Week, Easter, Advent, and Christmas as the year of the Lord, and allows extra fasts — Saint Michael’s Lent among them — that are devotion, not law.
The commandments
The moral life is not a list of tastes. The Ten Commandments still bind. The Beatitudes are their interior. Life is inviolable from conception to natural death. Marriage is faithful. Goods are not stolen. The tongue is not used to destroy a neighbour. Sunday is kept. God is not given a rival. The Catechism’s third part, from paragraph 1691, is the long form of this. Forming a Catholic conscience means aligning moral judgment with objective truth rather than with personal feeling or with a feed, as the Catechism sets out in paragraphs 1776–1802.
Death is not the end of the person. Particular judgement follows. Heaven is the face of God. Hell is the final refusal of that face, and the Church has never said it is empty. Purgatory is the mercy that finishes what a soul would not finish on earth. The bodies will rise. Our Lady was preserved from original sin from the first moment of her conception, and at the end of her earthly life she was assumed body and soul. Those two sentences are dogma. A later apparition is not.
The communion of Saints
The Church worships God alone. The Church honours Our Lady above every other creature, and asks the Saints to pray. A relic is a remainder of a holy body or of a holy life. The honour goes to the person and, through the person, to God. It is not a machine.
Saint Michael is named in Daniel, in Jude, and in the Apocalypse. Pope Leo XIII put his prayer on the lips of the Church after Low Mass. The story that the Pope heard God bargain with the devil is told here in full, and the parts that have no contemporary record are marked as such. The letter from a Marine in the Korean snow is here too. It has never been judged by a Bishop. Both belong in a Catholic house. Neither is an article of the Creed.
