Who told you that LIE???
As usual, McCarthy (along with many other Calvinist anti-Catholics, and deranged Hislopites like Pate is unwilling or unable to understand the relationship of human free will to God’s grace. We believe we can cooperate with God’s grace in order to “merit.” Yet that very merit is itself completely an act of God’s grace. Here is some more relevant information to consider:
The Second Council of Orange (529 A.D.),, dogmatically taught in its Canon 7:
Likewise, the ecumenical Council of Trent (1545-63): Chapter 5, Decree on Justification:
Canon I on Justification:
Catholic theologian Ludwig Ott describes the Catholic view:
St. Augustine wrote:
The concept of merit and its corollary reward is well-supported in Scripture (Mt 5:12; 19:17, 21, 29; 25:21; 25:34 ff.; Lk 6:38; Rom 2:6; 1 Cor 3:8; 9:17; Col 3:24; Heb 6:10; 10:35; 11:6; 2 Tim 4:8; Eph 6:8).
. . . . The Catholic Church was right in maintaining against Luther, at the Council of Trent, that heaven is merited by our good works, because this is the clear teaching of revelation. “We have shown that according to Holy Scripture the Christian can actually merit heaven for himself by his good works. But we must realize that these works have to be performed in the state of grace and with a good intention . . .
Jesus himself tells his disciples: ‘I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me (by the state of grace), and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit (for heaven). If a man does not abide in me (by mortal sin) . . . he can do nothing’ – he can bear no fruit for heaven; just as the branch that is cut off from the vine cannot produce any grapes.
By sanctifying grace we are children of God. Only by sanctifying grace do we have a right to heaven as our heritage. By purely natural good acts, such as even the sinner can perform, heaven cannot be merited as a reward; we must be in the state of grace, a child of God. Only after human nature has been united to God by grace and raised up above it’s own nature can good acts, which proceed from this supernaturally elevated nature, be directed towards the possession of God in the hereafter. Only in this way can we merit the vision of God in heaven, since it completely surpasses the powers of our pure human nature.
By sanctifying grace we become living members of the mystical body of Christ, one with Christ our Head. Thus our acts become acts of Christ, who, in an incomprehensible way, is living and working in [p. 264] his members. Through this intimate union with Christ, our Mediator before the Father, we merit the happiness of heaven.
Finally, sanctifying grace makes us temples of the Holy Spirit, who compels us to good works (Rom 8:14). St. Francis de Sales writes that the Holy Spirit performs good works in us with such consummate skill that the works belong more to him than to us. He works with us and we work with him. In this activity we use our free will. By our free will we submit all our human activity to the grace and will of God. By this act of reverence and worship, our good acts redound to the glory of God. (not to the glory of the one doing good works) Our will could also take a stand against God’s will, and commit sin.
By isolating sentences (the classic and quintessential anti-Catholic methodology) which emphasize man’s cooperation and effort, it appears that Pate had hoped to leave a false impression that we believe we can get to heaven on our own power, pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps, without God’s enabling grace. But this is the heresy of Pelagianism, which Catholic dogma clearly condemns.
This is, therefore, apparently deliberate misrepresentation on Pate's part, and that is a serious sin — a violation of the Ten Commandments and even basic pagan and secular ethical precepts. Whatever Pate or other anti-Catholics think of our theology, their own Christian tradition (as well as Jesus Himself) condemn them for slander and lying, whether we are Christian “brothers” or not, in their thinking. As we indeed are their brothers in Christ, their sin is all the greater.
