Questions to Guide Your Reading

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict), "Commentary on the Concluding Formula of the "Professio Fidei"

* This genesis of this document is a bit complicated.  In 1998, Pope John Paul II promulgated an apostolic letter called Ad Tuendam Fidem.  By means of this document, three propositions or paragraphs were added to the Church's "profession of faith."  The reason for adding these paragraphs, as the then-Cardinal Ratzinger made clear (see section 4), was "to better distinguish the order of the truths to which the [Catholic] believer adheres."  These three paragraphs that were added to the Church's "profession of faith" read as follows:

1. "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 judgment or by the ordinary and universal Magisterium, sets forth to be believed as divinely revealed."

2. "I also firmly accept and hold each and everything definitively proposed by the Church regarding teaching on faith and morals."

3. "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."

The purpose of Cardinal Ratzinger's commentary was to clarify each of these three paragraphs.

Prime Question:

1. Along with some basic questions below, you should be able to discuss the three kinds of doctrines that relate to each of these three paragraphs and give examples of each type of teaching.

Additional Questions:

2. According to Cardinal Ratzinger, "From her very beginning, the Church has professed faith in the Lord, crucified and risen."  What else has the Church done in order to make it possible "to give life to that uninterrupted proclamation of faith in which the Church has handed on both what had been received from the lips of Christ and from his words, as well as what had been learned ‘at the prompting of the Holy Spirit.'"

3. What, according to Cardinal Ratzinger, "constantly sustains the Church on her way" and helps the Church develop her understanding of the faith?

4. In section 4, Cardinal Ratzinger discusses what a bishop is.  What is a bishop, and what authority do bishops have?