Vatican Documents

Vatican documents are the most authoritative source of Church teaching. Here they are organized by subject, based on Précis of Official Catholic Teaching. Each of these subject areas has a list of Vatican documents and some additional information to help the site visitor find the one he needs.

The Vatican Documents by Category

Explanation and Preview

Faith, Revelation and the Bible	Christ our Lord, True God and True Man	The Church	Marriage, Family and Sexuality
Sanctity of Human Life	Social Teaching of the Church	The Ordained Priesthood	Worship and the Sacraments
The Christian Call to Personal Sanctification	Catholic Education	Marian Devotions	The Four Last Things
Jewish Issues	Other Teachings	Alphabetical Index of Documents	Frequently Asked Questions

Vatican II

Vatican II was the 21st Ecumenical Council. Its documents appear here in their respective categories, and are listed together in the Catholic Definitions area.

Common Catechism References

Catechism Table of Contents

Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 674 “The glorious Messiah’s coming is suspended at every moment of history until his recognition by ‘all Israel’, for ‘a hardening has come upon part of Israel’ in their ‘unbelief’ toward Jesus. St. Peter says to the Jews of Jerusalem after Pentecost: ‘Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for establishing all that God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old.’ St. Paul echoes him: ‘For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?’ The ‘full inclusion’ of the Jews in the Messiah’s salvation, in the wake of ‘the full number of the Gentiles’, will enable the People of God to achieve ‘the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ’, in which ‘God may be all in all’.”

Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 677 “The Church will enter the glory of the kingdom only through this final Passover, when she will follow her Lord in his death and Resurrection. The kingdom will be fulfilled, then, not by a historic triumph of the Church through a progressive ascendancy, but only by God’s victory over the final unleashing of evil, which will cause his Bride to come down from heaven. God’s triumph over the revolt of evil will take the form of the Last Judgment after the final cosmic upheaval of this passing world.

Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 839 “The relationship of the Church with the Jewish People. When she delves into her own mystery, the Church, the People of God in the New Covenant, discovers her link with the Jewish People, ‘the first to hear the Word of God.’ The Jewish faith, unlike other non-Christian religions, is already a response to God’s revelation in the Old Covenant. To the Jews ‘belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ’, ‘for the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.’”

Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1260 “‘Since Christ died for all, and since all men are in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partakers, in a way known to God, of the Paschal mystery.’ Every man who is ignorant of the Gospel of Christ and of his Church, but seeks the truth and does the will of God in accordance with his understanding of it, can be saved. It may be supposed that such persons would have desired Baptism explicitly if they had known its necessity.”

Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1261 “As regards children who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them. Indeed, the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved, and Jesus’ tenderness toward children which caused him to say: ‘Let the children come to me, do not hinder them,’ allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism. All the more urgent is the Church’s call not to prevent little children coming to Christ through the gift of holy Baptism.”