[Question:]{.underline} Can a traditional Catholic accept in good conscience Pope Paul VI’s “Credo of the People of God”?
[Answer:]{.underline} The simple answer is yes, and it is a monument to the incoherence of the liberal Catholic that Pope Paul VI certainly was.
This 1968 encyclical, written for the 19^th^ centennial of the martyrdom of Saints Peter and Paul, is an admirable document, written “with the express purpose of witnessing to Our determination to guard undiminished the deposit of faith which they [Saints Peter and Paul] delivered to us.”
Paul VI wanted his profession of faith “to be sufficiently comprehensive and explicit to satisfy convincingly the need for light which is felt to strongly by so many of the faithful and by all those in the world.” Forty years after the event, now that this profession of Faith that had no real impact on a world in flux has been forgotten, we must admire its forthrightness. The profession of Faith on the consubstantiality of the Son, for example, is entirely complete and orthodox, as is also that concerning the Holy Ghost and the Blessed Virgin Mary, her Immaculate Conception and glorious Assumption. Likewise for the existence and transmission of original sin, the necessity of baptism for infants, or membership in the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, which is said to be “necessary for salvation.” The Mass is professed to sacramentally realize the Sacrifice of Calvary, and the word “transubstantiation” is said to be necessary for any explanation of the mystery of the Holy Eucharist. The inextinguishable fire of hell is mentioned, as well as the fire of purgatory.
This document is, consequently, in sharp contrast with most of the other documents of the post-conciliar period. We can legitimately see the Holy Ghost behind this document, and this precisely because it was written to transmit unchanged the deposit of the Faith. For the First Vatican Council declared explicitly that the Holy Ghost was promised to the successors of St. Peter, not that they might make known some new doctrine, but that they might keep in a holy manner and faithfully expose the deposit of the Faith handed down through revelation from the apostles (Pastor Aeternus, Cap. IV, Ds 3070).
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.