The Marks of the Church - Holy

The Good & The Bad
It’s no secret that the Church has a long history of having perfect scoundrels as members – including some in the priesthood and some in the hierarchy. This really shouldn’t be any surprise – Christ himself warned us of this. But these “bad Catholics” are not the fruits of the Church. As Frank Sheed notes on this very subject: “You judge a medicine by those who take it, not by those who pour it down the sink.” The Catholics who are scandalous or end up as scoundrels, have to one degree or another turned their backs on the Church and her teachings; this turning may be subtle or blatant. You can’t judge the Church by those that refuse her lessons. You can, however, judge the Church by those that have taken the full dose of the Church’s teachings – the saints.

Holiness
And in the modern world – especially in the West and the US in particular – do we have any valid concept of what “holy” means? After all, we live in the culture of "Holy Batmobile, Batman!" or "holy s$%&!" or "Once the number three, being the number of the counting, be reached, then lobbest thou the Holy Hand Grenade in the direction of thine foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it".

In Isaiah 6:5, we see:

Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.

[Editorial Note – you see “undone” translated in a variety of ways. The Hebrew word “damah” is used here meaning destroyed, undone, cut off from.]

Isaiah sees God in all his glory, only to be undone by the experience. By the time we get to the book of Revelation (1:17), St. John says: “And when I had seen him, I fell at his feet as dead.”

Both Isaiah and John give us glimpses of God as beyond our ability to comprehend – the word breathtaking is insufficient. This is holiness beyond our ability to experience. Holy means set aside for worship. My Webster’s says: “Exalted or worthy of complete devotion.”

Have you ever noticed that they use the term “holy, holy, holy” to describe God? We say it every Sunday in Mass: “HOLY, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts. Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.” The triple-holy is important. Many ancient languages didn’t have superlatives. They couldn’t say “good, better, best” or “wet, wetter, wettest”. To get the superlative idea across, they repeated the word in question. Therefore, to say “holy, holy, holy” means “holiest”, as in, the holiest thing in the universe – and I should point out that it’s the angels themselves singing this in the quote from Isaiah. God is something so holy as to be beyond us, set totally apart from us for devotion. The fact that we don’t say “I believe in one, holy, holy, holy catholic and apostolic Church,” should now have a slightly different meaning for us. The Church is Holy, but not so much as God is. This is an important distinction.

Preliminaries concluded, let us move on…

Doctrine

In her nearly 2000 year history, with all the persecutions and demands for change, the Church’s teachings have never failed to reach for the highest moral standards. The individuals within the Church may have failed, at times, to live up to these standards, but the standards do remain. No matter how hard the culture or the world wishes it otherwise. Even her enemies don’t claim that the Church strays from the highest moral teachings.

The Church doesn’t just lay out a few moral principals that mankind should follow. Rather, she puts forth moral ideas and then makes an effort to apply these ideals to every aspect of human life. It’s not as if the Church tries to teach what to do in every single situation, but rather she offers a general guide in the form of moral theology.

And you have to admit, over the course of time the Church has chosen to lose just about anything rather than compromise on any of her moral teachings.

Now, before anyone goes there, let’s briefly consider some of the bad things that have been done by the Church. Yes, it’s true that there have been popes that had little interest in personal holiness. Bishops too. And priests. Some have been scoundrels of the worst sort. And we won’t even get into the laity. But none have ever tried to reword the law of God to allow for the indulgence of their personal temptations. No human failing has ever taken precedence over holiness.

Means

Christ infused the Church with a great many gifts. These also factor into the holiness of the Church today.

Christ also loved the church, and delivered Himself up for it. That he might sanctify it, cleansing it by the laver of water in the word of life. That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any; such thing; but that it should be holy, and without blemish. – Ephesians 5:25-27

For as the body is one, and hath many members; and all the members of the body, whereas they are many, yet are one body, so also is Christ. For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or free; and in one Spirit we have all been made to drink. – 1 Corinthians 12:12-13

We have the Sacrament of Penance – commonly referred to as Confession. Even if you don’t believe in confession to a priest, you have to admit that a Church that stresses it as much as Catholicism does is serious about its view of sin. The Church’s view – not the view of some of her members – is that of a constant struggle against sin and a search for holiness.

Many books by Catholics about Catholicism are used by other faiths. St. Augustine is claimed by just about everybody. Thomas Merton’s The Seven Story Mountain makes it into some rather unusual places. Even simple prayer books can be used by people of many different beliefs. Why? You don’t see the Catholic Church embracing prayer books from other faiths in the same way that other faiths embrace ours.

Results

One way to see the effects of the Church’s holiness is in the examples of the saints.

Think of it this way – Christ is our example, but His example is often seen by mere mortals as being too high to reach. It is a wonderful example, without doubt, but on a good day it’s very hard to attain such a level for us humans – on a bad day it’s impossible. This doesn’t really make much sense, but that’s often the way people feel. It doesn’t make sense because God isn’t going to ask the impossible of us – He knows us too well. But still, in the modern world and with our own personal difficulties, we often feel that the example of Christ is beyond our personal reach.

But the example of the saints gives us a different view. They lived in this world as well, and all of them had their own personal difficulties and failings. Some of their failings were real whoppers, and some of their difficulties would make modern man quiver with fear and fall into the fetal position. Yet the saints achieved an often heroic level of sanctity. As the saints' holiness sinks into our heads and our hearts our own holiness will no longer seem impossible. True, it could still be mighty difficult, but holiness is no longer impossible. There’s a world of difference between difficult and impossible, isn’t there?

The saints are, simply, souls confirmed to be in heaven – those mere mortals just like us who have accepted all that Christ, through His church, has offered them.

Summary
Frank Sheed, always able to condense a complex issue into a couple of paragraphs, says it thusly:

With the mark of holiness as with the others, we must distinguish between the outward showing – visible to anyone who cares to look and liable to grow greater or less – and the inner characteristic, visible to the eye of faith and belonging to the Church’s very essence, present from the first moment of her existence and never varying.

In this profounder sense the holiness of the Church is simply the holiness of Christ. It is his Church, made by Him as the bearer of holiness of men. Every member, in contact with Him, has available to him a fount of holiness; there is no limit save our own will to receive what He has to give.

For the Church there is no growth and, of course, no diminishing. If every one of her members were in a state of grace at a given moment, the Church’s holiness would be no greater; if we were all in mortal sin together, it would be no less. In other words the holiness of the Church is not the sum total of the holiness of all her members, any more than the wetness of rain is measured by the wetness of those who have ventured out in it. If the whole population goes out and gets drenched, the rain is no wetter; if everyone stays indoors, the rain is no less wet. Rain is wet because it is rain, whether or not men expose themselves to it. The Church is holy because it is Christ living on in the world. It is the cause of the holiness of its members, but is not measured by their response.

You judge the Church’s holiness by her saints, not the sinners that have turned their backs on her. Those who hear and obey are the benchmark, not those who hear and ignore. We are not compelled to holiness – not by the Church, not by Christ. We’re called to holiness, and the Church helps us on our way if we listen to her. But there is no compulsion.