Now, Dr. E, the other day, you claimed that Trent condemned you and your entire family to hell. I flatly rejected the charge, and gave my reasons for doing so.
Now, today, I will claim that this preacher attempts to do to me and my family what Trent did not do to you and yours: he damns me, my family, and every other orthodox Catholic in the world. You see, if we are not Christians, and the usual Protestant claim is that only professing Christians are saved, then we are damned. His transparent attempt to limit his remarks to "medieval Catholics" notwithstanding, because modern Catholics aren't Calvinists anymore than medieval ones were.
Do you deny that that is PRECISELY the import of his comments?
The torment Luther felt when he struggled to name every sin lest he forget a single one and not be rectified with God is heartrending. As a Protestant, I read this essay and understand Luther's guilt and pain and fear.
As a Catholic, I think that Luther was a nut for not understanding that repentance is a gift from God and he should trust God to bring the sins he needed to confess to mind. And he remembered something serious after he had confessed, he should have known that he was not somehow damned for being forgetful as long as he had an good-faith intention to confess when he had the opportunity to do so.
Honestly, sometimes you folks act like you think that the Catholic God is a machine considerably more stupid and less compassionate than the computer on my desk. But I guess it's easier to caricature your enemies than it is to actually listen to them.
Then he understood, man is not damned because he is a sinner, he is damed because he does not have a Savior to redeem him
The difference between heaven and hell will be in heaven will be full of sinners saved by Grace and mercy, hell will be full of men that thought they were 'good enough' and could pass the self righteousness test.