I Believe and Profess

When a man is ordained to the diaconate, presbyterate, or episcopate, he must make a Profession of Faith and take an Oath of Fidelity before his ordination. These must also be repeated each time a cleric is installed in most ecclesiastical offices such as parish pastor, seminary professor, diocesan vicar general, etc.

Here is the text of the Profession of Faith

I, N., with firm faith believe and profess everything that is contained in the Symbol of faith: namely:
I believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen. I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, one in Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us men and for our salvation, he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again 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. With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets. I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.
With firm faith, I also believe everything contained in the Word of God, whether written or handed down in Tradition, which the Church, either by a solemn judgement or by the ordinary and universal Magisterium, sets forth to be believed as divinely revealed.
I also firmly accept and hold each and everything definitively proposed by the Church regarding teaching on faith and morals.
Moreover, I adhere with religious submission of will and intellect to the teachings which either the Roman pontiff or the College of Bishops enunciate when they exercise their authentic Magisterium, even if they do not intend to proclaim these teachings by a definitive act.

And here is the Oath of Fidelity:


I, N., in assuming the office of __________, promise that in my words and in my actions I shall always preserve communion with the Catholic Church.

With great care and fidelity I shall carry out the duties incumbent on me toward the Church, both universal and particular, in which, according to the provisions of the law, I have been called to exercise my service. In fulfilling the charge entrusted to me in the name of the Church, I shall hold fast to the deposit of faith in its entirety; I shall faithfully hand it on and explain it, and I shall avoid any teachings contrary to it. I shall follow and foster the common discipline of the entire Church and I shall maintain the observance of all ecclesiastical laws, especially those contained in the Code of Canon Law.

With Christian obedience I shall follow what the Bishops, as authentic doctors and teachers of the faith, declare, or what they, as those who govern the Church, establish. I shall also faithfully assist the diocesan Bishops, so that the apostolic activity, exercised in the name and by mandate of the Church, may be carried out in communion with the Church.

So help me God, and God's Holy Gospels on which I place my hand.

Since 1992 I have spoken these words several times, but the first time I pronounced them I stood at the altar of the Pontifical North American College in Rome, in the sight of my brother seminarians and with my hand on the Book of the Gospels. It was a very powerful moment.

Popular posts from this blog

Communion with the Church by Degrees of Fullness

A Lecture Addressed to the  Theological Students' Association  of The Catholic University of America by Father Jay Scott Newman, J.C.L.  Assistant Professor of Canon Law  at The Pontifical College Josephinum 18 April 2001 In his De Praescriptione Haereticorum , Tertullian famously asked with derision, "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?", meaning "What has philosophy to do with theology?" I begin with this reminder because, although I am here to address the Theological Students' Association, I am not a theologian; I am a canon lawyer. And some among you may well ask with derision, "What has canon law to do with theology?" It's a fair question, so before I explore the topic at hand today, I need briefly to digress and establish something of a lingua franca for our discussion. Because she is a human society, the Church has had law, and therefore lawyers, since her foundation, but canon law as a distinct science and course
Read more

Abortion and the Return of Paganism in Ireland

Image
Irish pagans rejoice in the freedom to kill unborn children. In October 2014 I preached about a decision by the US Supreme Court which was a preview of the Obergefell decision that came in June 2015, and in part this is what I said: "It has been many decades, some would say centuries, since the Gospel of Jesus Christ was the primary engine for the formation of culture in the West, and now we are seeing the rapid abandonment of the Gospel as a source of law in the West. For fifty years and more the trajectory of law and culture in Europe and the United States has been away from the Christian worldview and towards a new paganism, particularly in regard to sex, marriage, reproduction and family life: no fault divorce, birth control, abortion, in vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood, embryonic stem cell manipulation, assisted suicide, multiple remarriages, and now same sex marriage. These changes in law and custom are but a reflection of the post-Christian character of
Read more

Of Bad Popes and Bad Presidents

Image
For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Bishops of Rome were saintly scholars and heroic pastors who inspired great devotion among Catholics because of their radiant goodness, and for the Church to have the service of such men is a great blessing. But in that blessing lies a danger. When we have so many valiant shepherds on the Chair of St Peter, one after the other, we can forget that many scoundrels and notorious sinners - to say nothing of average men of modest ability - have also served as popes, and that forgetfulness opens us to undue distress when a pope comes who doesn't measure up to his predecessors. Pope Alexander VI - Rodrigo Borgia, pictured above - reminds us that the office of the papacy can certainly survive and in some ways even flourish when occupied by a man who is manifestly unfit to be the Pastor of the Universal Church, and that knowledge should console anyone who is troubled by the character or actions of a man who sits on the Chair of St Peter but
Read more