On the Council and the Church
By Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.
Every Sunday, Catholics say the following words when we worship:
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.
We’ve said those words thousands of times. We know them so well that too often we don’t think about them. But they’re vital to understanding what it means to be Catholic. And here’s why.
A man born of a Jewish mother is Jewish by virtue of his birth. He may be very religious, or lukewarm, or an atheist. But he’s still, in a real sense, a Jew. Being Catholic is a different kind of experience. Baptism is necessary to being a Catholic. But it’s not sufficient. We’re defined by what we believe, how we worship, and how actively we live our faith in public and in private.
It’s not possible to be a so-called “cultural” Catholic. Catholic culture comes from Catholic faith. Unless we truly believe and practice our faith, Catholic culture is just a dead skin of nostalgia and comfortable habits.
When we say that Jesus is born of the Father before all ages and consubstantial with the Father, we’re joining ourselves to 17 centuries of Christian faith and the martyrs who witnessed to it with their lives. The words come to us from the very first ecumenical council of the Church, the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325. The Nicene Creed settled a bitter and decisive dispute over the identity of Jesus Christ. And the results of that council have shaped the course of Western history ever since.
Catholics have always struggled to understand the mystery of what it means for Jesus to be both fully human and fully divine. That mystery is the creative tension at the heart of the Christian faith. In the Fourth Century, a very gifted priest named Arius tried to make the tension go away. He argued that “God begat [Jesus], and before [Jesus] was begotten, he did not exist.” In other words, Jesus might have a uniquely intimate relationship with God, but finally he was a creature just like us.
Arius was a brilliant man. Many bishops and scholars supported him. But in the end, the Council Fathers saw that if Jesus was created by God, he can’t be eternally co-equal with God. And that means Christian revelation begins to fall apart. If God isn’t a Trinity of eternally equal persons, then the Incarnation is false, because God didn’t become man. And if the Incarnation is false, then so is the Redemption, because God didn’t die on the cross to deliver us from our sins. In practice, what Arius proposed would have undermined the entire Gospel message of salvation.
That’s why the Council of Nicaea described Jesus as consubstantial with the Father. And that’s why we say those same words in the Creed every Sunday. The Nicene Creed has helped shape our entire civilization’s understanding of who God is and who man is. And over the centuries, it’s had an impact on our art, music, morality, ideas of justice and human dignity, our political institutions—everything. Faith drives culture. What we believe shapes how we think and what we do. And that’s why what we believe—or don’t believe—matters.
I mention the Council of Nicaea because it shows how important an ecumenical council can be—not just for the Church, but also for the world. In the words of St. Pope John XXIII, all “ecumenical councils, whenever they are assembled, are a solemn celebration of the union of Christ and his Church, and hence lead to the universal radiation of truth.” We do well to remember his words because the council he called—the Second Vatican Council—ended 60 years ago this fall. Vatican II didn’t correct any new heresy. It didn’t define any new doctrine. Nor—and this is worth emphasizing—did it open the door to rethinking what Catholics believe.
John XXIII set the goal of Vatican II in his opening remarks. He said that “the greatest concern of the ecumenical council is this: that the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine should be guarded and taught more efficaciously.” To do that he wanted the council not to “reinvent” or “re-imagine” the Church, but instead to renew the methods, forms, and structures of the Church according to the needs of the modern world, always “recognizing that the substance of the ancient doctrine of the deposit of faith is one thing, and the way it is presented is another.”
In other words, the Church of 1965 and the Church of 2025 have exactly the same goal: the salvation of the world in the name of Jesus Christ, through the truth of the Catholic faith. The methods and structures may differ. But the mission has priority, and it hasn’t changed. The Church is called to be outward-looking to convert the world, not inward-looking and self-obsessed.
What the Council said about the Church matters, because it’s the Church that celebrates the Council’s memory. And too many times over the past six decades, people—including some in authority; people who should know better—have claimed to be the Church, and then acted or taught in ways that seem to oppose what the Church actually believes. Today is no exception.
When people say, “we are the Church,” of course that’s true. We’re all the Church, because the Church is the community of the faithful. But a “community of faith” or a “community of the faithful” implies that there’s Someone and something we have an obligation to be faithful to. We don’t invent the Catholic faith. Nor do we own it. Nor can we revise it according to the latest claims of social science. We receive it; we live it in community; we witness it to others; and we pass it on fully—as good stewards—to our children. That’s what life in the Church means.
John XXIII described the Catholic Church as the “mother and teacher” of all nations— not a religious corporation or the Elks Club at prayer; but the glory of Jesus Christ alive and risen, and God’s light to the world. Above all, the Church is the mystical Body of Christ and the new Israel; the new, messianic People of God with Jesus as their head. The Church is also the new royal priesthood, with all Christians living in fundamental equality through Baptism, but like a family, having a diversity of duties and organized in a hierarchy of roles.
We need to ask ourselves this fall, given the goals that Vatican II set for itself: Will history judge the Council a success or a failure? That finally depends on us—how zealously we live our faith; how deeply we believe; and how much apostolic courage we show to an unbelieving world that urgently needs Jesus Christ.
The Council of Nicaea could have failed. That Council, and all the long history that followed it, could have turned out very differently. It didn’t because of one man—a young deacon and adviser at Nicaea named Athanasius. Athanasius fought for the true Catholic faith at Nicaea and throughout his entire career. Arian bishops excommunicated him. He was exiled five times. At one point, he was the only major voice defending the orthodox Catholic faith, which is why even today we remember him as Athanasius contra mundum: “Athanasius against the world.”
But he never gave up. He was right. And he won. He became Patriarch of Alexandria and one of the greatest bishops and Doctors of the Church. The faith we take for granted today, we owe to him.
That’s my idea of a Catholic believer fully alive in Jesus Christ. What we need now is the bishops and their people to choose to live that same apostolic courage beginning here and now—then a new dawn really will rise in the Church as a light to the nations.
+Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap. is the archbishop emeritus of Philadelphia and the author, most recently, of Things Worth Dying For: Thoughts on a Life Worth Living (Henry Holt and Company).