Dogmas of the Catholic Church

The dogmas of the Catholic Church are the truths of divine revelation that the Church, exercising her teaching authority, solemnly and definitively proposes as revealed by God and therefore to be believed with the assent of faith by all the faithful. A dogma has two elements: it is a truth contained in the Word of God, written or handed down in Tradition, and it is proposed as such by the Church — whether through a solemn definition of a pope or an ecumenical council, or through the ordinary and universal Magisterium. Such truths are said to be held "de fide," and their deliberate denial constitutes heresy.

The great dogmas unfold the content of the faith professed in the Creed: the Holy Trinity — one God in three Persons; the Incarnation and the two natures of Christ, defined at councils such as Nicaea, Ephesus, and Chalcedon; the Redemption; the seven Sacraments and the Real Presence in the Eucharist; the primacy and, since 1870, the infallibility of the Pope; and the Marian dogmas of Mary's divine Motherhood, perpetual virginity, Immaculate Conception, and Assumption. Far from being mere abstractions, dogmas are understood as sure signposts on the way to God, guarding the mystery of Christ and giving light to the mind that seeks to know and love the truth He revealed.