1.

0 INTRODUCTION
The four marks of the Church are inseparably linked with each other, they indicate the
essential features of the Church and her mission 1. The Church in being One, Holy, Catholic
and Apostolic, and it is centered on Christ and Christ Himself calls her towards sanctity.

1.1DEFINITION OF THE CHURCH

For Augustine, the Church is a sign, by means of which God wills that men should know him,
a sign lifted up in the midst of the nations. At the same time that it determines what we are to
believe, it serves us as a reason for believing. For Augustine, the Catholica is not only great
with its historical and social greatness, great by reason of its authority in the realm of truth,
great in the holiness of its Saints; it is not only an organic unity, a unity that is necessary and
commanded by God; it is the work of our salvation2.

1.2 DEFINITION AND ORIGIN OF HOLINESS

Holiness is the primary characteristic and fundamental quality of God. Holiness is God’s
primordial essence and eternal being. Consequently, by extension, those people who earnestly
search after God or seek God’s goodness are extended the quality of holiness by proxy from
God. Holiness is a divine attribute that is bestowed upon God’s followers and those who
desire to share in God’s gratuitous gift of holiness: “But as he who called you is holy, be holy
yourselves in every aspect of your conduct, for it is written, ‘Be holy because I am holy’.” (1
Peter 1:15–16). In other words, Christians are called to be holy. The term “holiness” is
elusive because it refers to a religious experience that the Bible and theologians conceptualize
in a variety of ways. It has been referred to as the second work of grace, the second blessing,
baptism with the Holy Spirit, full salvation, walking with God, Christian perfection,
crucifixion of the flesh, purity of heart, cleansing, consecration and other synonyms3.

Holiness is the primary characteristic and fundamental quality of God. Holiness is God’s
primordial essence and eternal being. Holiness is a divine attribute that is bestowed upon
God’s followers and those who desire to share in God’s gratuitous gift of holiness: “But as he
who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in every aspect of your conduct, for it is written,

1
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 2000, no.811.
2
Pierre Batiffol, Cathedra Petri, Éditions du Cerf, Paris 1938, p. 19.
3
Arthur David Canales, Called to Holiness: Holiness in Modern Church Teaching, on
https://www.smp.org/dynamicmedia/files/.com, retrieved on 10th October, 2022.

1
‘Be holy because I am holy’ (1 Peter 1:15–16). In other words, Christians are called to be
holy4.

2.0 THE CHURCH AS HOLY

One of the fundamental characteristics of the Church is that of Holiness. Of course, it is not
only Holy, but Catholic, Apostolic and One. In this case, we shall dwell on holiness. The
Church as a matter of faith is unfailingly Holy 5. The Church whose mystery is set forth by
this sacred council, is held, as a matter of faith, to be unfailingly holy 6. Holiness is a divine
gift, which is given to us through the church, which is the body of Christ, by the operation of
the Holy spirit.

The Church is Holy because her founder, Jesus Christ, is Holy and because the Church exists
to bring all people to salvation in Jesus Christ through the sacraments. This mark of the
church does not mean that the imperfect human beings who make up the Church are all living
holy lives7. This implies that all the activities of the church are directed towards their end, to
sanctification of men in Christ and glorification of God8. So, the church is a deposit of
Holiness. The very purpose of the Church is hierarchical that is, to lead the people of God to
Holiness. The church recognizes the power of the spirit of within her and sustains the hope of
believers by proposing Mary and saints as their models and intercessors9.

Consequently, the Vatican Council II puts it unequivocally, that all Christian faithful,
regardless of their particular vocation are all called to that perfection of holiness and for the
faithful to reach this perfection they ought to use their strength accordingly by following the
footsteps of Christ and must conform to his will. This implies that this call of holiness is not
isolated to a few individual but to the entire body of Christ which is the Church. This clears
the misconception that holiness is ideally for only religious or cleric so to say but a rather a
universal call of us. Therefore, each one should pursue holiness according to his state of life.

The Holiness of the Church is further exhibited by the saints who mostly lived virtuous life
hence showing their participation in the holiness of Christ through the church. The saints are
4
Lumen Gentium (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church), in Austin Flannery, editor, Vatican Council II: The
Conciliar and Post-Conciliar Documents, Study Edition, (Northport, NY: Costello Publishing
Company, 1992), no. 39–40.
5
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 2000, no.823.
6
Lumen gentium, no. 39, P 360.
7
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 2000, no.825.
8
Sacrosanctum Concilium, No. 10.
9
Lumen Gentium, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church), in Austin Flannery, editor, Vatican Council II: The
Conciliar and Post-Conciliar Documents, Study Edition, (Northport, NY: Costello Publishing
Company, 1992) No. 40, 48-51.

2
models to be imitated because they are truly approved models of Christ through the spirit.
From sainthood is the result of the grace of the triune God, acting out his work of salvation10.

Christ sanctifies the church and through him and with him the church becomes sanctifying.
All churches activities are toward the sanctification of men in Christ as their end and the
glorification of God. The fullness of the means of salvation are deposited and the grace of
God to acquire holiness11.

Charity is the soul of the holiness to which all are called: it governs, shapes and perfects all
means of sanctification. The church is therefore holy, though having sinners in her midst,
because she herself has no other life but the life of grace. If they live her life, her members
are sanctified: if they move away from her life, her members are sanctified; if they move
away from her life, they fall into sins and disorder that prevent the tradition of her sanctity.
This is why she suffers and does penance for those offences which she has the power to free
her children through the blood of Christ and gift of the Holy spirit12.

More critical and more often challenged in the Church’s history is the means the Church
provides to sanctify those who belong to her. They are the doctrine of faith, morals and the
mass and sacraments, the directives of those in ecclesiastical authority and that
communication of merits that the creeds describe as a communion of saints among the
justified-on earth and between those in glory and the members of the pilgrim church below.
At the center of these means of holiness and their ultimate source is in dwelling spirit of
Christ which animates the mystical body. The church is finally holy in the fruitfulness of
sanctity, which those who use the means are sure to attain. All the while that ecclesiastical
writers and popes were extolling the church’s holiness, they were careful to avoid the other
extreme of claiming that members who are not holy cease to belong to the church. Not even
mortal sinners are there by excluded from the mystical body.

3.0 DEBATE ABOUT THE HOLINESS OF THE CHURCH.

In reality, it is quite unscented for a theologian to deny the effectiveness of the Church’s
holiness precisely in its function as a note or mark of God’s kingdom on earth. Indeed, from
the scriptural point of view, the claims of holiness in this respect are superior to those of the
other properties of Our Lord’s society which are commonly employed as notes. In the New

10
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 2000, no.828
11
Ibid., no.824
12
Ibid., no.827.

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Testament itself there is ample evidence that the company of Christ’s disciples was
established as an organization manifestly catholic and apostolic13.

Our Lord explicitly admonished His followers that “By this shall all men know that you are
my disciples, if you have love one for another.” This mutual affection within the true Church
of Jesus Christ is the mandate Our Lord made incumbent upon the society as a whole. “A
new commandment I give unto you: That you love one another, as I have loved you, that you
also love one another”14. Thus, the affection of supernatural charity within the company of
the disciples, the affection of which the love of Christ for His followers is at once the cause
and the exemplar, stands in the divine teaching as a sign whereby the disciples of Our Lord
are to be recognized as such by the world at large. The whole tenor of the parables of the
kingdom is to the effect that God’s household in this world, the society of the disciples of
Christ on earth, will contain a certain number of sinners, people devoid of charity, until the
end of time15.

Hence, according to divine revelation itself, a man can be and can remain a member of the
Church militant without having the affection of charity for his fellow-Christians which Our
Lord commanded him to possess and to exercise. Such a person is an unworthy member of
the ecclesia Christi. He cuts himself off from the supernatural life of charity, the perfective
element in the spiritual bond of unity of the Church. Nevertheless, until the final purification
at the time of the last judgement, such persons can and must be counted among the real
members of the Church. The affection of mutual charity, then, is manifested in the Gospel
according to St John as a sign marking, not the individual member of the Christian
community, but the community itself. All men are to realize that these men are the true
disciples of Jesus Christ because of the evident existence, within the activity of the company
as a whole, of a strong mutual charity16.

Now sanctity, by its very definition, constitutes an abiding attachment to God and a stable
aversion to all that is opposed to Him. We must not allow ourselves to forget that, as the
human race has actually been disposed or ordered by God Himself, there is no firm and
abiding attachment to God and opposition to sin other than that which is connected with the
virtue of supernatural charity. Furthermore, charity is distinctly one virtue. Hence it is one
and the same virtue which brings about a supernatural love of friendship for God and a
13
Timothy C Tennent, The Call to Holiness, Seed bed publishing company, Tennessee, 2014, p. 19-23.
14
John, 17:21-23.
15
John, 13-.35.
16
Timothy C Tennent, The Call to Holiness, Seed bed publishing company, Tennessee, 2014, p.13.

4
genuine supernatural affection for our fellow men, and primarily for those who are most
effectively our “neighbours,” our brothers and sisters within the household of God which is
the true Church of Jesus Christ. Thus, in teaching that His disciples would be recognizable as
such by reason of their mutual charity, Our Lord brought out the basic truth that holiness
would serve as a note of His company on earth. It is most important to note, however, that in
the statement by Our Lord and in the teachings of classical ecclesiology, it is the corporate
charity, the communal holiness, of the Church which is held up as an indication of this
society’s identity17.

St. Robert Bellarmine appeals directly to the sanctity of the Church’s doctrine in his
demonstration per viam notarum. Far from repudiating or eliminating this argument, St.
Robert actually appeals to it as the eighth note of the true Church of Jesus Christ. The Church
is a holy society because it is consecrated to God, because it is pure and free from any crime
(obviously not in each one of its individual members, but only in its corporate reality and
activity), because it has a holy worship and laws, because it has the Source of sanctity within
itself, because it has Christ as its Head, and, finally, because it persists firmly in this
attachment to God. In proving that this sanctity is a real note of the Church, Sylvius, like St
Robert Bellarmine before him, appeals primarily to the evident holiness of doctrine within the
Catholic Church18.

At the root of the Protestant Reformation was a new concept of the Church as a purely
spiritual society, composed of all the believers, or all the just, or all the predestined--
depending on the theory--but always discernible to the eye of God alone. Against this
limitation, Bellarmine declared that "according to our doctrine, the one and true Church is the
assembly of men, bound together by the profession of the same Christian faith, and by the
communion of the same sacraments, under the rule of legitimate pastors, and in particular of
the one Vicar of Christ on earth, the Roman Pontiff." From this definition, he says, "we can
easily decide what people belong to the Church and what people do not." Each of the three
elements excludes one class of persons. Since profession of faith is the first requisite, all
unbelievers are excluded from the Church, whether pagans, Jews or Moslems who never
professed the Christian religion, or heretics and apostates who went back on their original
profession. Because communion of the same sacraments is also necessary, catechumens who
are not yet baptized, and the excommunicated are also debarred from membership. And most
17
Timothy C Tennent, The Call to Holiness, Seed bed publishing company, Tennessee, 2014, p.22.
18
De notis Ecclesiae, p. 131.

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important, submission to the Roman Pontiff eliminates even professed Christians, sharing in
the Church's sacraments, who are schismatically separated from the unity of Rome.

3.1 ELUCIDATION ON THE SINFUL ASPECT

God’s holiness and justice require that sins be paid for in full. Sin cannot be ignored or swept
under the rug. God’s righteous judgment was poured on Jesus Christ, who bore the sins of the
world. Yet, that very act of judgment was also the greatest expression of God’s love for us. It
was God’s grace and mercy. He paid the debt that we owed. The Scriptures teach us that
Jesus bore our sins on the cross. It is the transference of His holiness to us. In other words,
through the cross we not only lose our sins, but we gain His righteousness. This is, of course,
an alien righteousness. This means that it is a righteousness that comes as God’s gift to us.
We have not earned it. God is not satisfied that we have only an alien righteousness.
Nevertheless, this is the beginning of holiness. We must understand that holiness begins at
the cross of Jesus Christ. Holiness begins by realizing our own incapacity to be holy.
Holiness begins by realizing that the source of all holiness is in Jesus19.

Fallen in Sin the Scriptures teach us that God created man and woman in His own image and
He placed them in the Garden of Eden. They were meant to reflect His attributes and extend
His glory into the world. Yet, we find an unusual thing in the Garden of Eden, which
sometimes surprises first-time readers of the Bible. There is a tree, known as the Tree of
Knowledge of Good and Evil, that Adam was commanded not to eat from. Why would God
allow the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil to be present in the Garden of Eden?
Wouldn’t the world be “more perfect” if sin were not even possible? Why did God command
Adam and Eve to “not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat
from it you will certainly die” (Gen. 2:17)? This is a mystery that we do not fully understand.
God only acts in perfections, so we trust that this was part of God’s perfect plan. One answer
is that the presence of this tree is merely an acknowledgment that sin and evil had already
entered the world through an earlier rebellion in God’s angelic order. God may be simply
acknowledging that the earlier rebellion20.

We often define a sacrament as an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.
However, in the Garden we meet an anti-sacrament, which is an outward and visible sign of
an inward and spiritual rebellion. So, Satan offered Eve the anti-sacrament. Eve ate and she
19
Timothy C Tennent, The Call to Holiness, Seed bed publishing company, Tennessee, 2014, p.69.
20
Timothy C Tennent, The Call to Holiness, Seed bed publishing company, Tennessee, 2014, p.11.

6
gave some to Adam, and he ate—both entering into the fellowship and communion of the
rebellion. Sin entered the human race, thereby shattering the full expression of the image of
God in men and women. In eating the fruit, Adam was not just acting on his own, but acting
as a representative man. He acted on behalf of the whole human race. When Adam ate, we
were all brought into this rebellion. This was the breaking of a relationship with God, thereby
separating us from God’s holiness21. Since Adam’s rebellion brought sin into the whole
human race (Romans 5:12), we are in an impossible situation. No human deliverer is eligible
to save the human race, since all have sinned. Since the entire human race is ineligible to
bring the redemptive rescue, God knew that the only solution was if He Himself became a
man and entered the human race as a New Adam (or a second Adam). In the most amazing
act of condescension and mercy, God became a man, but one untainted by all human sin.
Christ, the eternal Son of God, was thereby born into the human race as a second Adam.
Satan tried, as he did the first Adam, to tempt Jesus and to bring him into the rebellion. Jesus
spent forty days in the wilderness after His baptism, being tempted by the evil one. This was
a relentless period of an all-out assault on Jesus by the forces of the rebellion. But unlike
Adam, Jesus chose to obey God. He never sinned. He had the capacity as the God-man to
either sin or not sin, because although Jesus was one person, He had two natures. Likewise,
the members of the church have an invitation to fight the sinful nature and follow Christ
amidst all temptations by use of all avenues put by the Church instituted by Christ Himself22.

4.0 CONTEMPORARY VIEW OF CHURCH’S HOLINESS

In modem times the scholastic treatment of the Church’s holiness or charity has tended to
centre around the spiritual status of individual members of the Church. The Church is
described as manifestly holy because of the existence within its membership of innumerable
persons who lead holy lives, and of an ever-present but less numerous group remarkable for
extraordinary or heroic sanctity. And, to further or to complete their argument, they point to
the fact that the existence of heroic charity, in the cases of the canonized Saints at least, is
attested by the existence of true and undeniable miracles. All of this, of course, is perfectly
true23.

Nevertheless, the sanctity of the individual, or even of many individuals, is not the central in
the Church’s note of holiness, and it should not be treated as such. The Church exists and acts
as a holy society, and its corporate sanctity is readily observable. It is precisely this corporate
21
Ibid. p.16.
22
Timothy C Tennent, The Call to Holiness, Seed bed publishing company, Tennessee, 2014, p.18.
23
Ibid. p.69.

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holiness which is directly and primarily meant to show the character of this society as the true
company of; Christ on earth. The company of Christ’s disciples is, according to Our Lord’s
own teaching, endowed with a manifest and dynamic corporate Holiness24. Primarily the
Church is a teaching organization. In its doctrinal mission, the Church manifests to anyone
willing to examine the matter a clear and perfect teaching about God and about the
redemption of the human race. It uncompromisingly sets itself against sins, even those which
appeal most to the perverted taste of a generation or a nation. It holds this position despite the
fact that many of its own members take umbrage at its teaching. It resists the temptation to
overlook some offences, on the grounds that an insistence upon the right would bring it into
difficulties it can ill afford to meet.

The Church preaches a love for all men, even in times when such a doctrine runs manifestly
counter to the popular tendencies of the day. This social sanctity of the Church is all the more
remarkable in view of the fact that, during all the time of its earthly sojourn, it is composed of
both good and evil members. The corporate work of the Church is violently opposed always
by the tendencies and even the activities of some of its members, sometimes by the activities
of those placed in authority within the Church itself. The Church preaches and insists upon
charity, justice, and gratitude even when the contrary vices are manifest in the lives of many
of its own children. The Church preaches her vivid life drawn from that of Christ at all times.
The corporate holiness of the Catholic Church stands out in still greater relief when we
compare the conduct of this society with that of rival religious bodies in the world today25.

This concept of the Church’s holiness as an evident argument in its own favour is at once
more difficult and more traditional than that notion which centres around the holiness of
individual members within the Church. It is more difficult because the very extension and
perfection of the Church’s corporate activity along liturgical, doctrinal, and charitable lines
demand a painstaking and detailed description if the demonstration is to stand out in all of its
effectiveness.

The Church is holy because it is preserved immaculate from sin by the grace of the
sacraments, preserved from the uncleanness of ignorance and error by the sacred teaching,
and because it is most securely dedicated to the worship and service of God. He refers always
to the Church as a social unit, rather than merely to some of its members 26. Holiness in the

24
Barry J.G.H, Holiness, a note of the Church, Leopold Classic Library publisher, New York 2015, p. 122.
25
Barry J.G.H, Holiness, a note of the Church, Leopold Classic Library publisher, New York 2015, p. 124.
26
Torquemada John, Summa de Ecclesia ed. John Mark Ockerbloom, P.129.

8
Contemporary World begins by seeking to understand how all the attributes of God are united
in the triune God and the theological problems in the church today that impede the
manifestation of holiness in the Church.

4.1 COMMENTS OF POPES ON HOLINESS

4.1.1 Pope Francis

For Pope Francis, Holiness permeates and always accompanies the life of the pilgrim Church
over time, often in a hidden and almost imperceptible way. He says we must learn to see the
holiness in the patient people of God: in parents who raise their children with so much love,
in men and women who work to bring bread home, in the sick, in the elderly who continue to
smile27.

4.1.2 Pope JohnPaul II

Pope Saint John Paul II points out that we are all called to holiness. In his apostolic letter
Christifideles Laici, the Pope states: “We come to a full sense of the dignity of the lay faithful
if we consider the prime and fundamental vocation that God assigns to each of them in Jesus
the Christ through the Holy Spirit: the vocation to holiness, that is, the perfection of charity.
The Pope adds, that the charge is not a simple moral exhortation, but an undeniable
requirement arising from the mystery of the Church: she is the choice vine, whose branches
live and grow with the same holy and life-giving energies that come from Christ; she is the
Mystical Body, whose members share in the same life of holiness of the Head who is Christ28.

In another ecclesial document—Ecclesia in America—Pope Saint John Paul II addresses the

fundamental and universal call to holiness for every baptized Christian. For him to be holy is
to be like God and to glorify his name in the works which we accomplish in our lives.
(Matthew 5:16). On the path of holiness, Jesus Christ is the point of reference and the model
to be imitated: he is ‘the Holy One of God,’ and was recognized as such (cf. Mark 1:24). It is
Jesus who teaches us that the heart of holiness is love, which leads even to giving our lives
for others (cf. John 15:13). Therefore, to imitate the holiness of God, as it was made manifest
in Jesus Christ his Son, ‘is nothing other than to extend in history his love, especially towards
the poor, the sick, and the needy (cf. Luke 10:25). To become holy is to live as Jesus lived29.

27
Courtney Mares, https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/43068/pope-francis-holiness-is-the-true-light-
of- the-church, retrieved on 8th October, 2022.
28
John Paul II, Christifideles Laici, 1988, no. 16.
29
John Paul II, Ecclesia in America, (Washington, DC: USCCB Publishing, 1999), no. 30.

9
4.1.3 Pope Benedict
In his first papal encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, Pope Benedict XVI declares that the Church is
holy because of its threefold mission: proclaiming the Word of God (kerygma), celebrating
the sacraments (leitourgia), and exercising the ministry of charity (diakonia). All three
ministries represent the Catholic community. The Church is holy because it follows Jesus,
who is the heart and soul of the Church and the divine revelation and self-communication of
God’s holiness. It is holy because its members are called to live the truth of Christ in the
secular world. Three characteristics constitute the holiness of the Church: the objective
holiness of its formal elements (Word, Sacraments, service, and community); its consecration
as a prophetic, priestly, and princely people; and the personal piety and purity of its members.
Yet, as Church notes, “The Church, embracing sinners in her bosom, is at the same holy and
always in need of being purified, and increasingly pursues the path of penance and renewal.”
In many ways the holiness of the Church is led by its Head Jesus the Christ; and it produces
the gifts, fruits, and charisms of the Holy Spirit. The Church is the gift of Christ, which itself
receives the great gift of holiness from God30.

5.0 CONCLUSION
In a nutshell, the above detailed exposition on holiness has been an attempt to define how the
church is Holy, the sinful aspect, contemporary debate on the Church’s holiness and her
members and to establish the larger framework through which holiness is made possible and
by which the final purpose of holiness in the world is understood. Our lives are often not
dramatically different from the world. Salvation is the work of the triune God. We need to be
justified through the work of Jesus Christ and be sanctified through the work of the Holy
Spirit, all according to the purposes and for the glory of God the Father.

The Fruitfulness of Holiness is that holiness is deeper than merely the eradication of sin in
our lives. That is only half the work of God. Sanctification is not just about what we avoid,
but what we produce: namely, fruitfulness.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
ARTHUR DAVID CANALES, Called to Holiness: Holiness in Modern Church Teaching, on
https://www.smp.org/dynamicmedia/files/.com, retrieved on 10th October, 2022.

30
Benedict XVI, God Is Love (Deus Caritas Est) (Washington, DC: USCCB Publishing, 2006), no. 25.

10
BENEDICT XVI, God Is Love (Deus Caritas Est) (Washington, DC: USCCB Publishing,
2006), no. 25.
CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

COURTNEY MARES, https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/43068/pope-francis-

holiness- is-the-true-light-of-the-church, retrieved on 8th October, 2022.
De notis ecclesiae, p. 131.
Eph. 5:25-26. African Bible
J.G.H.Barry, Holiness, a note of the Church, Leopold Classic Library publisher, New York
2015, p. 122.
JOHN PAUL II, Christifideles Laici, 1988.
JOHN PAUL II, Ecclesia in America (The Church in America: On the Encounter with the
Living Jesus Christ The Way to Conversion, Communion, and Solidarity in
America), A Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, (Washington, DC: USCCB
Publishing, 1999), no. 30.
John, 13-.35. 9 John, 13:34.
John, 17:21-23.
Lumen Gentium (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church), in Austin Flannery, editor, Vatican
Council II: The Conciliar and Post-Conciliar Documents, Study Edition, (Northport,
NY: Costello Publishing Company, 1992), no. 39–40.

PIERRE BATIFFOL, Cathedra Petri , Éditions du Cerf, Paris 1938, p. 19.

TIMOTHY C TENNENT, The Call to Holiness, Seed bed publishing company, Tennessee, 2014.

TORQUEMADA JOHN, Summa de Ecclesia ed. John Mark Ockerbloom, P.129.

Vatican Council II, Lumen gentium, no. 39, p. 360.

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................................1

1.1DEFINITION OF THE CHURCH....................................................................................1

11
 1.2 DEFINITION AND ORIGIN OF HOLINESS................................................................1

2.0 THE CHURCH AS HOLY..................................................................................................2

3.0 DEBATE ABOUT THE HOLINESS OF THE CHURCH..................................................3

3.1 ELUCIDATION ON THE SINFUL ASPECT.................................................................6

4.0 CONTEMPORARY VIEW OF CHURCH’S HOLINESS..................................................7

4.1 COMMENTS OF POPES ON HOLINESS.....................................................................9

4.1.1 Pope Francis...............................................................................................................9

4.1.2 Pope JohnPaul II......................................................................................................10

4.1.3 Pope Benedict..........................................................................................................10

5.0 CONCLUSION..................................................................................................................10

BIBLIOGRAPHY....................................................................................................................11

12