When we recite this creed we speak in unison with them. There is a strange notion abroad that creeds oppress, repress, or suppress people. That is like saying that light or food is repressive. The practical purpose of the creeds is truth, and truth is light and food for the soul. Each of the Church's creeds was written in response to a heresy, to combat it not by force but by truth, as light combats darkness.
Creeds are truth in labeling .
Those who disbelieve in truth or scorn it, or who disbelieve in our ability to know it, see creeds as power plays. The media's hysterical rhetoric about the pope's labeling Hans Kung's theology as non-Catholic theology is a good example of the world's utter confusion here. The media conjured up visions of the return of the Inquisition simply because the pope said, in effect, that Kung's teachings about Christ should not be confused with the Church's teachings about Christ. The Church's most recent council, Vatican II, formulated no new creeds and no new doctrines but applied the old ones to new needs and situations. The spirit of Vatican II conjured by the media and some theologians is a phantom, a ghostlike half-person, with the fatal split between head and heart, creed and deed, theology and social action, love of God and love of man, eternal principles and updated applications.