SSPX 3rd Order Letter - September Issue
Dear Postulants and Professed members,
This letter will conclude our considerations about unholiness in the Catholic Church. So far we have presented four ways to approach this problem: 1) Faced with a non-believer, we should point out to them that for genuine evil to exist there must also be genuine good, thus demanding the existence of a good God; 2) Since Scripture details misbehaviour in the very first pope, our Faith should not be shaken at any misbehaviour in his successors, much less in his subjects; 3) As one of the Four Mark of the Church, ‘Holiness’ refers principally to Christ and His doctrine, not to individual members of the Church; 4) Since the word ‘holy’ originally meant ‘set aside and singled out for God’, a sinner, even a very wicked one (e.g. Caiaphas) can nevertheless still be ‘holy’. Only Christ and His Mother were truly ‘holy’ in the sense of ‘impeccable’. Besides, calling anyone ‘holy’ or ‘unholy’ is historically fraught with danger. Thus even the Saints were often judged as unholy, seen in the endless ecclesiastical condemnations of them throughout history.
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