MERIT AND CATHOLIC DOCTRINE
Some religions see Heaven or eternal happiness as a reward for a good life or
even worse for just saying a prayer or getting a few sacraments. A baptism
and a couple of masses getting Heaven for you makes it very cheap! Others
say the eternal life is a gift and any additional benefits such as happiness or
the high level of happiness are rewards.
Gift or not Heaven amounts to a carrot for you cannot get to it if you prefer evil and sin to God. Even just evading the unending punishment of Hell is a carrot too. It's the real carrot compared to all the rest. If you promise any carrots to people and/or deliver they may of course be more morally compliant. The result will be that their moral valuing, their love of virtue and their self-image of themselves as moral beings, will lessen for it will become more and more about the reward. They will end up needing more carrots before they will do anything good.
The Catholic Church officially says that it agrees with the Bible teaching
that we carry original sin which excludes us from the kingdom of God. The Bible
says that this sin is basically us usurping God's right to make the rules. We
have original sin through Adam and Eve's fault. They were forbidden to have the
knowledge of good and evil and they took that knowledge and estranged themselves
from God. God's problem was that they wanted their perception of good and evil
to be independent of what God said. The Catholic Church teaches the doctrine of
natural law. This is the doctrine that morality can be worked out rationally.
The Church says the atheist can understand it and believe it and work it out if
he or she is honest. This makes morality independent of God. Catholics are
barred from Heaven and estranged from God by believing this doctrine.
The Roman Catholic Church says that faith and good works done by grace and in
freedom from serious sin are necessary for salvation. The Church says that only
good works done with the supernatural help of God merit salvation. From this it
argues that though God makes us really deserve Heaven, the deservings or merits
are really all his work and not ours (see the booklet, The Catholic Church has
the Answer).
This is so forced. It is only taught because the Church wants its theology to
fit the clear Bible teaching that nobody however good deserves Heaven and that
Heaven is not a reward but a free gift. It is so easily seen that it is forced
and artificial. If God rewards only his part in our good works then we cannot
really deserve Heaven. Our good works are ours even if they are done with his
help. It is not all his work. The statement that we deserve Heaven contradicts
the idea that God rewards his part in our works. We might benefit from this
reward but he is really only rewarding himself not us. Just because we benefit
doesn’t mean that we are rewarded. It’s a by-product.
Either we earn Heaven or we don’t. To accept the Catholic doctrine is only to
adopt self-deception. It is a major sin.
The Bible says that no matter what we do there is some imperfection in us that
we are glad to have so we are all sinners (Romans 3) and it also says that one
sin defiles all you do (James 3:11). To do good while adhering to sin is saying,
“I want the good and want the sin”, which is hardly a holy or good attitude so
it makes all you do sin. That is why the Bible says that nobody can be righteous
in God’s sight even if they keep the Law of Moses for the Law exposes their sins
(Romans 3:20).
The only hope then is to have somebody to live without sin for us in our place
and for God to credit that person’s righteousness to us. God does this when the
Christian repents and believes in Jesus and it is done once for all. No sin can
cost you this salvation. Christianity rejects the merit doctrine of the Roman
Catholic Church. The portions that say you must obey to be saved mean that since
the saved do good works that you must get saved and do these works and salvation
will be yours. No good works means the conversion was not genuine.
The Catholic Church says that Christ was God and sinless and that Mary was
sinless as well. A man once called Jesus good and Jesus asked him why he called
him that for nobody was good only God. Christians argue that the man was using
flattery and Jesus is saying he does not like that. So Jesus is saying he is not
good in the flattered way. But Jesus said nobody was good only God which is a
strange way of correcting a flatterer. The simplest interpretation is that Jesus
denied his own sinlessness and that he was God. So when he was not sinless how
could anybody else be? The simplest is the one meant. The gospellers just copied
the story from Mark and nobody bothered to think about it. If they had it would
have been deleted from Mark and they would have tried to bury the story. Jesus
was not sinless and so Jesus was not God.