Catholic or catholic?

I have been to weddings and baptisms in Lutheran churches outside of WELS in which they confess their faith during the Creed in the Holy Catholic Church, instead of saying the Holy Christian Church like we do. Why would a Lutheran church confess the Holy Catholic Church?

For starters, it would be good to review the difference between “catholic” and “Catholic.” The former means “universal,” while the latter refers to a church body, the Roman Catholic Church.

There is a “catholic” or “universal” church of which the Bible speaks (1 Corinthians 3:16; Ephesians 1:23; 4:4, 12). There is a “catholic” or “universal” faith of which the Bible speaks (Ephesians 4:5). That faith is centered in Jesus Christ as Savior.

When WELS congregations used The Lutheran Hymnal (1941), worshipers confessed in the Athanasian Creed: “Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic [i.e., universal, Christian] faith.” Christian Worship: A Lutheran Hymnal (1993) eliminated potential confusion with that terminology by recasting the opening line of that creed this way: “Whoever wishes to be saved must, above all else, hold to the true Christian faith.”

With these things in mind, a Lutheran church can confess belief in the “holy catholic church” but not the “holy Catholic church.”