The Catholic Church
What Catholics Believe
A plain language walk through the Apostles' Creed, then what Catholics believe about the Eucharist, Mary and the saints, and grace.
Start here
If you want to know what Catholics believe, the best starting point is a short prayer called the Apostles’ Creed. A creed is simply a summary of belief, a list of the things a community holds to be true, said out loud together. Catholics have prayed this one for many centuries, and many other Christian churches use it too. This page walks through it line by line and explains what Catholics mean by each phrase, then looks at a few beliefs that are distinctively Catholic.
One note before we begin. Everything on this page is described as what Catholics believe. Other Christian communities share some of these beliefs and understand others differently, and this site explains each tradition in its own words on its own pages.
The Apostles’ Creed, line by line
I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.
Catholics believe in one God who made everything that exists, seen and unseen. Almighty means all powerful. Calling God Father is not a comment about gender, it is a statement about relationship. Catholics believe God is not a distant force but a parent who knows and loves each person.
And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
Catholics believe Jesus is not merely a wise teacher from history. They believe he is the Son of God in a unique way, fully God and fully human at the same time. Christ is not a surname, it is a title meaning anointed one, the promised rescuer. Lord means he has the final claim on a believer’s life.
Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.
Catholics believe Jesus had no human father. His mother Mary conceived him through the power of the Holy Spirit, God’s own Spirit, while remaining a virgin (CCC 496). For Catholics this line says something about Jesus more than about Mary, that his life was God’s initiative from the very first moment.
Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried.
This line anchors the story in real history. Pontius Pilate was the Roman governor of Judea, and crucifixion was the Roman method of executing criminals on a cross. Catholics believe Jesus genuinely suffered and genuinely died. It was not an illusion or a performance.
He descended into hell. On the third day he rose again from the dead.
The word hell here is old English for the realm of the dead, the place where the dead waited, not the hell of eternal punishment. Catholics believe Jesus truly entered death and brought rescue to those who had died before him (CCC 633). Then, on the third day, he rose bodily from the grave. The resurrection is the centre of Catholic faith. Without it, Catholics would say, the rest of this creed collapses.
He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty.
Catholics believe the risen Jesus returned to the Father. Being seated at the right hand is an ancient way of describing the place of highest honour and shared authority. The point is that Jesus is alive and reigning now, not locked in the past.
From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.
Catholics believe history is going somewhere. One day Christ will return, every life will be seen in full truth, and justice will finally be complete. Catholics hold this as hope rather than threat, because the judge is the same person who died out of love for the people being judged.
I believe in the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is God’s own presence and power, active in the world right now. Catholics believe the Spirit is a person, not a vague energy, the third person of the one God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Christians call this the Trinity, one God in three persons.
The holy catholic Church, the communion of saints.
Here catholic is written with a small c, and it simply means universal, for everyone, everywhere. Catholics believe the Church is not a club of the perfect but a family that God gathers. The communion of saints means that everyone joined to Christ belongs to one living family, those alive on earth and those who have died in God’s friendship (CCC 946 to 948). Death, Catholics believe, does not cut people out of that family.
The forgiveness of sins.
Sin means the ways people turn away from God and hurt one another. Catholics believe no sin is beyond God’s mercy, and that Christ gave his Church real authority to declare and deliver that forgiveness, above all in baptism and in confession (CCC 976 to 980).
The resurrection of the body.
Catholics do not believe the goal of life is to escape the body and float away as a spirit. They believe that at the end God will raise the dead bodily, the way Jesus was raised, whole and transformed (CCC 990). Bodies matter to God.
And life everlasting. Amen.
Catholics believe human beings are made for unending life with God, which they call heaven. Amen is a Hebrew word meaning yes, truly, I stand by this. It is the signature at the bottom of the creed.
The Eucharist and the real presence
The Mass is the main Catholic worship service, and the Eucharist is its heart. The word Eucharist comes from a Greek word meaning thanksgiving. At every Mass, a priest takes bread and wine and repeats the words Jesus spoke at his last supper with his friends. The World English Bible records it like this:
He took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body which is given for you. Do this in memory of me.” (Luke 22:19, World English Bible)
Catholics believe that at those words the bread and wine truly become the body and blood of Jesus Christ, even though they still look, feel and taste like bread and wine. The Church’s technical word for this change is transubstantiation (CCC 1376), and the belief itself is called the real presence, because Catholics believe Christ is truly, really and substantially present in the Eucharist, not only symbolically (CCC 1374). They point to Jesus’s own words in John’s Gospel, “For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed” (John 6:55, World English Bible).
Many other Christian churches understand the same meal differently, as a memorial, a deeply meaningful way of remembering Jesus with bread and wine. That is a sincere and serious view, held by millions of thoughtful Christians, and their own pages on this site explain it in their own words. The Catholic conviction is that something more is happening, that the meal is not only remembering but receiving, Christ giving himself to be as close to a person as food is.
This is why Catholics treat the consecrated bread, called the host, with such reverence, and why Catholic churches keep it in a special locked box called the tabernacle with a candle burning nearby. For a Catholic, that candle marks a presence, not a symbol.
Mary and the saints
A saint is a person the Church holds up as someone who lived in God’s friendship and is now with God in heaven. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is honoured as the greatest of the saints.
Catholics ask Mary and the saints to pray for them. The word for this is intercession, which simply means praying on someone else’s behalf. The logic is homely. If you were going through a hard time, you might ask a trusted friend to pray for you. Catholics believe the saints are alive with God and love us, so asking a saint to pray for you is asking exactly that kind of friend, one who happens to be in heaven (CCC 956). Remember the communion of saints from the creed, one family on both sides of death.
Catholics are clear that this is not worship. Worship, in the sense of adoration, belongs to God alone. The honour given to Mary and the saints is called veneration, and the Church teaches that it differs essentially from the adoration given to God (CCC 971). A Catholic praying the Hail Mary is not praying to Mary as a goddess, but asking the mother of Jesus to pray for them, now and at the hour of their death, as the prayer itself says.
Grace, and why the whole of life is sacramental
Grace is one of the most important words in Catholic belief, so it deserves a plain definition. Grace is God’s free gift, his own life, help and favour given to people who could never earn it (CCC 1996). Catholics believe nobody buys, deserves or achieves their way to God. Everything begins with a gift.
Catholics believe God delivers grace through physical, visible things. A sacrament is a visible sign, instituted by Christ, through which God actually gives the grace it points to (CCC 1131). The Catholic Church counts seven sacraments: Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist, Penance (often called Confession or Reconciliation), the Anointing of the Sick, Holy Orders and Matrimony (CCC 1113). In each one, something ordinary carries something divine, water, bread, wine, oil, a spoken word, a human touch.
This shapes how Catholics see everything else. If God is willing to work through water and bread, then no part of ordinary life is beneath his attention. A shared meal, honest work, a marriage, care for a sick neighbour, all of it can become a meeting place with God. Catholics sometimes call this the sacramental imagination, the habit of seeing the whole world as a place where grace moves. None of it is for sale, and none of it is magic. It is, Catholics believe, a gift from beginning to end.
The next page in this section introduces the Catechism, the book where all of these teachings are laid out in full, and offers a gentle plan for reading it.