By Deacon Mike Seibert, Connecting Creed and Life
Editor’s note: For 2025, the weekly Connecting Faith and Life Column will be renamed Connecting Creed and Life. To celebrate the 2025 Jubilee Year and the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, the columns will consist of reflections on the Nicene Creed, corresponding with related paragraphs in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
“I believe in One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.” CCC 748-757
In high school, I was in the concert choir, and we would often go to other churches to sing. This gave me my first taste of non-Catholic liturgy. I was astounded in the middle of the Lutheran ceremony to hear them say this line … “I believe in the holy catholic church.” What? How can they say that? That’s when I found out the importance of catholic vs Catholic. The word literally means ‘universal’ and was first used to describe the Christian Church in 107 A.D., so it naturally appeared in the creed … describing all Christians. As the church splintered, what we call ourselves suddenly mattered: Everyone used to be called ‘Christians’ or ‘The Way’ or ‘catholic.’ Suddenly, each ‘church’ had to be distinguished one from another (latin: denominare = ‘to name or distinguish’… where we get the word ‘denominations’). To distinguish THE Church from the rest of the ‘catholic/universal’ church, we became recognized as the Catholic Church. Caps make the difference.
Another memory deals with ‘triumphalism.’ I went to a talk years ago by a friend who was talking on apologetics (defending the faith). Like most apologists of the ‘90s, his presentation was energetic and inspiring, giving scriptural ‘proofs’ for why the Catholic Church was right about this, that and the other thing. It was great — except for one thing … I brought a friend along who was not Catholic. She would have appreciated the facts and history, except that she was turned off by his ‘triumphalism.’ It’s “an attitude of victory or superiority — an excessive celebration of the defeat of one’s opponents.” In this case, it came across as “the Catholic Church is right about everything, and everyone else is stupid.” OK, that’s not what he said — but that’s how she took it, and I had to agree with her. What could have been a night of evangelization turned into a hardening of her heart toward Catholicism.
I share that story because we need to be reminded of our audience. Our culture NEEDS and, believe it or not, WANTS what we have, but they don’t KNOW what we have. Our lives should look so different from the rest of the culture that people SEE our joy and peace, and seek out what we have. Our mission, given to us by Jesus himself, is to go out to all the nations and bring them to know Jesus and baptize them into his Church. If we approach the culture with triumphalism, the impact will be the opposite of our mission.
What’s it mean the church is ‘holy’? I mean, why not just say I believe in the catholic church? Does it mean the church is perfect? No. To be holy is to be set apart. To be holy is to be on the path toward God. The church has been set apart BY God and FOR God. We don’t exist for our own sake. Let that sink in. For many of us, Christianity has become all about ‘me and Jesus’ and ‘getting myself to heaven.’ If that’s what it’s all about, why do we even NEED a church? We can just pray in the woods, as the normal ‘spiritual not religious’ person would quip.
If it’s all about my personal relationship with Jesus, then maybe you’re right — we don’t need a church. But that’s not what church is about. We aren’t here to get ourselves to heaven, we are here to build the Kingdom of God — to bring ALL peoples and nations into the sheepfold. If we get to heaven and someone else doesn’t make it because WE didn’t do everything in our power to bring them along, we will have failed … and heaven would be just a bit dimmer. If we don’t engage in the mission to evangelize the world, we will have missed the point altogether, and we might not wake up where we think we should! Here’s my point: the path to joy in THIS life is also the path to joy in the afterlife: to engage in the mission to “Go, make disciples of all nations.” In other words, invite everyone to come home … to the holy catholic church.