The Most Anti-Catholic Elements of the ITC’s New Document on the N

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Surveying the Most Anti-Catholic Elements of the International Theological Commission’s
New Document on the Nicene Creed

Robert Morrison, Remnant Columnist | April 3, 2025

On April 3, 2025, the International Theological Commission released a document on the Council of Nicea, "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour: 1700th Anniversary of the Ecumenical Council of Nicea (325-2025)". As its preliminary note states, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández and Francis approved the document’s publication in late 2024. Although we learned from Fiducia Supplicans to expect dangerous heresies from any document approved by these two men, the new document goes well beyond even the worst expectations. As we can see from the following survey of some of the document’s most egregious passages, this may actually be the most heretical effort from Francis’s hostile occupation of the papacy.


All Christians Have Adequate Faith

Given the false ecumenism so evident with the Synod on Synodality, it should come as no surprise to find that the new document related to the Council of Nicea would attempt to reduce the requisite content of the Faith to the Nicene Creed:

“Ultimately, every Christian, making the sign of the cross upon himself, expresses in an adequate and full manner the heart of the Trinitarian and Paschal faith. The People of God in its entirety must give an account of its faith and its hope (cf. 1Pt 3:5): in this sense they are all theologians.”

It is self-evidently preposterous to imagine that “every Christian” expresses that “the heart of the Trinitarian and Paschal faith” in an “adequate and full manner.” The clear purpose of this passage is to achieve what Pope Pius XII warned against in his 1950 encyclical “concerning some false opinions threatening to undermine the foundations of Catholic doctrine,” Humani Generis:

“In theology some want to reduce to a minimum the meaning of dogmas; and to free dogma itself from terminology long established in the Church and from philosophical concepts held by Catholic teachers, to bring about a return in the explanation of Catholic doctrine to the way of speaking used in Holy Scripture and by the Fathers of the Church. They cherish the hope that when dogma is stripped of the elements which they hold to be extrinsic to divine revelation, it will compare advantageously with the dogmatic opinions of those who are separated from the unity of the Church and that in this way they will gradually arrive at a mutual assimilation of Catholic dogma with the tenets of the dissidents.”

The Marks of the Church Encompass Non-Catholic Religions

Naturally, the heterodox authors of the new document needed to attack the marks of the Catholic Church identified in the Nicene Creed: “I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.” They did so by effectively making the Church invisible, which obviously renders the entire concept of the marks nonsensical:

“The Church is one beyond its visible divisions, holy beyond the sins of its members and the errors committed by its institutional structures, catholic and apostolic beyond the identity and cultural retreats and the doctrinal and ethical torments that ceaselessly agitate it.”

As expressed in this way, the marks of the Catholic Church would also encompass the non-Catholic religions separated from it. This is an obvious mockery of what the Catholic Church has always taught.


The Interpretation of the Faith Must Evolve Over Time

Paragraph 113 of the document comes close to affirming that Catholic truth cannot evolve over time:

“This does not mean to affirm that the truth of faith is historical and changeable: it means rather that the recognition of the truth and the deepening of its understanding constitute a historical task of the one subject-Church.”

Since we know from painful experience that the progressives carrying out the Vatican II revolution actually do believe that the faith is historical and changeable, this statement comes as a surprise. However, the key to understanding this passage resides in understanding the wide scope of “the recognition of the truth and the deepening of its understanding.” The “deepening” of the understanding is what, in practice, allows the heterodox theologians to completely change the religion to fit historical circumstances, while insisting that nothing is changing.

The document elaborates on this process of “deepening” understandings, which involves “creative fidelity to Revelation”:

“Believing with the Church means for each generation to participate in its incessant efforts for a deeper and more complete understanding of the faith. The obligation of fidelity cannot be reduced to a form of passive docility alone: it is an obligation of active appropriation for all disciples, with the support and under the supervision of the living magisterium of the college of bishops. The latter, when they agree, have the authority to decide in a binding way whether or not a theological interpretation is faithful to the source – Christ and the apostolic Tradition. The Magisterium adds nothing to the Revelation accomplished in Christ and attested in the Scriptures, except the clarifications of dogmatic development, since the Church exercises there her role as authentic interpreter of the Word of God through acts of creative fidelity to Revelation: 'Thus, the judgment regarding the authenticity of the sensus fidelium belongs in the final analysis not to the faithful themselves nor to theology, but to the Magisterium.’”

One can certainly glean from this passage a condemnation of the Traditional Catholic (i.e., Catholic) practice of accepting what the Church has always taught: “The obligation of fidelity cannot be reduced to a form of passive docility alone.” What those who would change the Church need instead is a “creative fidelity” to Tradition, through which contradictions are seamlessly reconciled, and common sense is obliterated.


Heretical Sects Help Us Discover New Aspects of Revelation

Consistent with Vatican II’s notion that the “Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using [non-Catholic religions] as means of salvation” (Unitatis Redinegratio), the new document posits that heretical sects can help us discover new aspects of Christian revelation:

“The light shed by the assembly of Nicaea on Christian revelation allows us to discover an inexhaustible richness that continues, through the centuries and cultures, to find depth and to manifest itself in ever more beautiful and new aspects. These different facets are highlighted especially by the prayerful and theological rereading that most Christian traditions make of the Symbol, each on the basis of a different relationship with the fact that a Symbol of faith exists. It is also an opportunity, for each and every one, to rediscover or even discover its richness and the bond of communion between all Christians that this Symbol can constitute.”

Entirely missing from this is the truth that Our Lord has entrusted to His Catholic Church with the immutable Faith which we must follow to please Him and save our souls. Rather, according to the new document, the Catholic Church needs to follow the ecumenical path so that Catholics can develop a better understanding of the religion based on enrichment from heretical sects:

“We have already emphasized how the insistence of the different Christian traditions allows us to enhance the riches of the text of the Creed (cf. supra § 17). The common celebration of Nicaea could be an ecumenical path of mutual enrichment that will offer, along the way, a better understanding of the mystery, a greater communion between ecclesial traditions and a stronger attachment to the common profession of the Christian faith.”

All of this fits with the work to reduce the true Christian religion to the lowest common denominator of beliefs held by all the baptized.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the new document about the Nicene Creed is its strange focus on the Jewish religion. In the document, there is a claim that the covenant with the people of Israel was irrevocable.


God’s Covenant With the Jewish People Was Not Revoked

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the new document about the Nicene Creed is its strange focus on the Jewish religion. Here, for example, the new document suggests that a fuller statement of the Catholic religion should have stated that Jewish people are still God’s elect people:

“Despite its insistence on history, the Creed does not explicitly mention or evoke a large part of the content of the Old Testament, nor, in particular, the election and history of Israel. Obviously, a Creed must not be exhaustive. Nevertheless, it is useful to underline that this silence in no way signifies the transience of the election of the people of the old covenant.”

Elsewhere in the document, there is a similar claim that the covenant with the people of Israel was irrevocable:

“The election of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the irrevocable covenant with the people of Israel already reveal the covenant that God wishes to establish with all nations and with every human being in an indestructible fidelity.”

By all means, a Jewish publication might understandably insist that Christianity is wrong and that the Jewish religion is still in full force. But this new document is from the International Theological Commission, which purports to be Catholic, even though it seems fairly evident that no Catholic was involved in drafting or reviewing the document.

Interestingly, the new document does not cite Vatican II’s Nostra Aetate (which dealt with the Jewish religion) on these points, even though Nostra Aetate is cited elsewhere in the new document. We can likely find the reason for this by reflecting on the relevant passage from Nostra Aetate:

“Thus the Church of Christ acknowledges that, according to God's saving design, the beginnings of her faith and her election are found already among the Patriarchs, Moses and the prophets. She professes that all who believe in Christ-Abraham's sons according to faith — are included in the same Patriarch's call, and likewise that the salvation of the Church is mysteriously foreshadowed by the chosen people's exodus from the land of bondage. The Church, therefore, cannot forget that she received the revelation of the Old Testament through the people with whom God in His inexpressible mercy concluded the Ancient Covenant. Nor can she forget that she draws sustenance from the root of that well-cultivated olive tree onto which have been grafted the wild shoots, the Gentiles. Indeed, the Church believes that by His cross Christ, Our Peace, reconciled Jews and Gentiles. making both one in Himself."

There is no suggestion here that the old covenant remains in effect — if the pro-Jewish authors of Nostra Aetate believed that it was, they most certainly would have said so plainly. Yes, according to Catholicism, God still loves the Jewish people and has blessed them with many gifts, but it is absolutely anti-Catholic to believe that there are parallel covenants today, as though the Jews please God by remaining in the Jewish religion. Again, it is perfectly reasonable for Jewish organizations to argue otherwise, but it is impermissible for Catholics to do so.

Tellingly, Cardinal Augustin Bea — the primary architect of Nostra Aetate, who is still widely revered by Jewish leaders — had this to say in his The Church and the Jewish People:
“

Evidently it is true that the Jewish people is no longer the people of God in the sense of an institution for the salvation of mankind. The reason for this, however, is not that it has been rejected, but simply that its function in preparing the kingdom of God finished with the advent of Christ and the founding of the Church.” (p. 96)

Thus, the new document (following Francis) goes well beyond what Vatican II’s most ardent supporters of the Jewish position had to say on these points.

Those who have the patience and stomach to read the new document from the International Theological Commission would readily find many other heterodox passages. There is no effort to conceal the anti-Catholic heresy, which provides us yet another indication that the spiritual battle has reached a point where the prince of lies has more power than ever. But we know how this ends: even though it looks as though the enemies will prevail against the Mystical Body of Christ, they will meet their demise at the moment in which it seems as though all is lost. In the meantime, we must remain with Our Lady of Sorrows at the foot of the Cross.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!