What We Hold

Contra Mundum Clericals is a small company that makes shirts and trousers. We are not a church and we do not speak for one. But people ask who we are, and it is better to say so plainly at the start than to be found out later.

We hold the faith of the undivided Church of the first millennium, and we hold it whole.

The Creed. We confess the Creed of Nicaea and Constantinople as it was written and as the fathers meant it, without revision, reinterpretation, or quiet subtraction. What was settled at Nicaea was settled.

The Scriptures. We receive the Scriptures as the Word of God, read in the company of the fathers and of the Church that gathered them, never against it. Scripture was not given to be read only as individuals, but as members of the indivisible body of Christ. 

The Sacraments. We believe the sacraments are what the Church has always said they are, and that they do what the Church has always said they do.

The Orders. We hold the apostolic ministry of bishops, priests, and deacons in the form in which it was given, and we make our clothing for the men ordained to it.

The Fathers. Nicaea did not invent the faith. It defended one already old. We look to the ante-Nicene fathers and to the councils as the Church's own memory of what it received, and that memory is not ours to edit.

None of this is original to us, which is the point. The age is confident that it knows better than the fathers. We are confident that it does not. Athanasius stood alone and was right, and the Church still says his creed while the world that opposed him is gone.

Clothing is a small thing. But we would rather make it for the men who are keeping the whole of the faith, and we would rather say so.