The Magisterium

Church Documents

Encyclicals, council documents, the Catechism, and Canon Law — each linked to its official source.

Apostolic Letter
Salvifici Doloris
An apostolic letter on the Christian meaning of human suffering, given on the World Day of the Sick during the Holy Year of the Redemption. Taking as its text Saint Paul's words about completing in his flesh what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ, it moves through the world of human suffering, the problem raised by suffering in the Book of Job, the Cross as the answer God gives not in words but in his Son, the sharing of the Christian in Christ's redemptive suffering, and the parable of the Good Samaritan as the summons to those who stand beside the one who suffers.
Read on vatican.va →
Council Document
Second Council of Constantinople
The fifth ecumenical council (553) condemned the 'Three Chapters' and reaffirmed the teaching of Chalcedon on the one person of Christ in two natures, clarifying it against lingering Nestorian and Monophysite readings.
Read on en.wikipedia.org →
Council Document
Second Council of Lyon
The fourteenth ecumenical council (1274) sought a (short-lived) reunion with the Eastern Church and established rules for the papal conclave to prevent long vacancies of the Holy See.
Read on en.wikipedia.org →
Council Document
Second Council of Nicaea
The seventh ecumenical council (787) ended the first iconoclast crisis, affirming the veneration (not adoration) of sacred images of Christ, the Virgin Mary, the angels, and the saints, because the honour given to the image passes to its prototype.
Read on en.wikipedia.org →
Council Document
Second Council of the Lateran
The tenth ecumenical council (1139) ended the schism of the antipope Anacletus II and enacted disciplinary canons, including on clerical celibacy and the marriages of those in major orders.
Read on en.wikipedia.org →
Council Document
Second Vatican Council
The twenty-first and most recent ecumenical council (1962–1965) was a pastoral council that renewed the Church's self-understanding and mission. Its sixteen documents — among them Lumen Gentium, Dei Verbum, Sacrosanctum Concilium, and Gaudium et Spes — addressed the Church, divine revelation, the liturgy, and the Church in the modern world.
Read on en.wikipedia.org →
Vatican Document
Solemni Hac Liturgia (Credo of the People of God)
The solemn profession of faith made by Paul VI to close the Year of Faith he had called for the nineteenth centenary of the martyrdom of Saints Peter and Paul. Fulfilling, as he says, the mandate given to Peter to confirm his brethren at a moment of widespread questioning, the Pope pronounces a creed which — without being strictly speaking a dogmatic definition — repeats in substance the Creed of Nicaea with the developments the age required. It professes the one God in three Persons; the Incarnation, passion, resurrection and coming again of the Son; the Holy Spirit and his work; original sin and its transmission; the Immaculate Conception and Assumption of the Blessed Virgin; the one Church, apostolic and hierarchical, built on Peter and his successors; the sacrifice of the Mass and the change of the whole substance of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ; and the communion of saints with purgatory and eternal life.
Read on vatican.va →
Encyclical
Sollicitudo Rei Socialis
Issued for the twentieth anniversary of Populorum Progressio, this social encyclical reads the state of development in the world and finds it worse, not better: a widening gap between North and South, an arms race, and two opposed ideological blocs. Against a purely economic idea of progress it sets authentic integral human development, ordered to the whole person and to every person. It names the 'structures of sin' that flow from the desire for profit and the thirst for power, and answers them with solidarity — not vague compassion but the firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good.
Read on vatican.va →
Encyclical
Spe Salvi
Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical on Christian hope, teaching that the hope which redeems is founded on faith in God, and distinguishing authentic hope from the false hopes of mere human progress.
Read on vatican.va →
Motu Proprio
Summorum Pontificum
The apostolic letter given motu proprio on the use of the Roman liturgy prior to the reform of 1970, accompanied by a letter to the bishops of the world explaining the pope's reasons. It declared that the Roman Missal promulgated by Paul VI is the ordinary expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite and that the Missal of 1962 is to be regarded as an extraordinary expression of the same lex orandi, never abrogated; it permitted priests to celebrate with the older Missal without special permission and set out how stable groups of the faithful might request it in parishes.
Read on vatican.va →
Apostolic Letter
Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae
A letter addressed by Leo XIII to Cardinal James Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, on opinions then circulating under the name of Americanism. Writing with evident affection for the Church in the United States, the Pope distinguishes carefully between the qualities and institutions of the American people, to which he takes no exception, and a set of ideas he cannot approve: that the Church should soften or pass over parts of her doctrine to make it easier for those outside to accept, that the guidance of a spiritual director is less necessary now that the Holy Spirit pours out his gifts more abundantly, that the natural virtues and the so-called active virtues are to be preferred to the supernatural and the passive ones, and that the religious vows are ill-suited to the age. Leo XIII answers each point from the deposit of faith, and asks that if Americanism means anything other than the legitimate character of a people, it should not be so called.
Read on vatican.va →
Council Document
Third Council of Constantinople
The sixth ecumenical council (680–681) condemned Monothelitism and defined that Christ has two wills and two natural operations, divine and human, in harmony — the human will perfectly subject to the divine will.
Read on en.wikipedia.org →
Council Document
Third Council of the Lateran
The eleventh ecumenical council (1179) decreed that the election of a pope requires a two-thirds majority of the cardinals — a rule still in force — and legislated against simony and abuses.
Read on en.wikipedia.org →
Motu Proprio
Traditionis Custodes
The apostolic letter given motu proprio on the use of the Roman liturgy prior to the reform of 1970, issued with a letter to the bishops of the world explaining that it followed a consultation of the episcopate about the effects of Summorum Pontificum. In eight articles it declares that the liturgical books promulgated by Paul VI and John Paul II are the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite, makes the diocesan bishop the sole competent authority to authorise the use of the 1962 Missal in his diocese, restricts where and by whom it may be celebrated, and directs that readings be proclaimed in the vernacular.
Read on vatican.va →
Council Document
Unitatis Redintegratio
The Decree of the Second Vatican Council on ecumenism, committing the Catholic Church to the restoration of unity among all Christians through prayer, conversion of heart, and dialogue grounded in truth and charity.
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Encyclical
Ut Unum Sint
The encyclical of Pope Saint John Paul II on commitment to ecumenism, affirming that the search for Christian unity is an irreversible duty of the whole Church.
Read on vatican.va →
Encyclical
Vehementer Nos
Vehementer Nos was a papal encyclical promulgated by Pope Pius X on 11 February 1906. He denounced the French law on the Separation of the Churches and the State enacted two months earlier. He condemned its unilateral abrogation of the Concordat of 1801 between Napoleon I and Pope Pius VII that had granted the Catholic Church a distinctive status and established a working relationship between the French government and the Holy See. The title of the document is taken from its opening words in Latin, which mean "We with vehemence".
Read on vatican.va →
Apostolic Exhortation
Verbum Domini
The post-synodal apostolic exhortation on the word of God in the life and mission of the Church, following the 2008 Synod of Bishops and given on the memorial of Saint Jerome. Its three parts are Verbum Dei, on the God who speaks and the human response of faith, with Mary as the model hearer; Verbum in Ecclesia, on Scripture in the liturgy, the homily, lectio divina, and the relationship of exegesis and theology; and Verbum Mundo, on the Church's mission to proclaim the word to the world, in dialogue with culture, in commitment to justice, and in the care of creation.
Read on vatican.va →
Encyclical
Veritatis Splendor
Pope John Paul II's foundational moral encyclical. Reaffirms the existence of universal and unchanging moral norms knowable by reason and confirmed by revelation. Critiques proportionalism and other forms of consequentialism.
Read on vatican.va →
Apostolic Constitution
Veterum Sapientia
The apostolic constitution on the promotion of the study of Latin, signed on the feast of the Chair of Saint Peter a few months before the Second Vatican Council opened. John XXIII recalls that the wisdom of the ancient world came to the Church largely through Greek and Latin, and that Latin in particular became the Church's own tongue: universal, so that pastors of every nation can speak to one another and to the Holy See; unchanging, so that the terms in which the faith is defined keep their exact sense; and dignified, raised above the daily speech of any one people. He therefore lays down that bishops and religious superiors take care that no one write against the use of Latin, that candidates for the priesthood be thoroughly trained in it before their higher studies, that the major sacred sciences be taught in Latin from Latin textbooks, and that an institute be established for its teaching. The Holy See publishes the text in Latin.
Read on vatican.va →
Apostolic Exhortation
Vita Consecrata
The post-synodal apostolic exhortation on the consecrated life and its mission in the Church and in the world, following the 1994 Synod of Bishops. Its three chapters are built on the Transfiguration: consecration as a confession of the Trinity, communion as a sign of fraternal life in the Church, and mission as service to God and humanity. It treats the evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty and obedience as a living memorial of Christ's own way of life, surveys the forms of consecrated life from monasticism to secular institutes and new communities, and calls religious to prophetic witness, formation and fidelity.
Read on vatican.va →
Motu Proprio
Vos Estis Lux Mundi
The apostolic letter given motu proprio establishing universal Church procedures for reporting and investigating the sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable persons, and the conduct of bishops and religious superiors who cover such crimes up. It requires every diocese to have a public and accessible system for receiving reports, obliges clerics and religious to report allegations to the competent ecclesiastical authority, protects those who report from retaliation and from any obligation of silence, and sets out how the metropolitan or another designated bishop investigates a bishop, with time limits and reporting to the Holy See. Its provisions were revised and confirmed in 2023.
Read on vatican.va →
Papal Bull
Vox in Rama
Vox in Rama is a decretal sent by Pope Gregory IX in June 1233 condemning the heresy of Luciferianism said to be rife in Germany, and authorizing the preaching of a crusade against it. Copies of the letter were sent to Emperor Frederick II, King Henry (VII) of Germany, Archbishop Siegfried III of Mainz, his suffragans, Bishop Conrad II of Hildesheim and the preacher Konrad von Marburg. The copies are dated to 11, 13 and 14 June.
Read on telma-chartes.irht.cnrs.fr →

Church Documents

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