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Chuck Smith does NOT agree with the Catholic position expressed at the Council of Trent. The Catholic position confesses that God is the ultimate creator of all things, including the human desire to choose God.

I hope Smith was just being sloppy, his analogy is so poor. God doesn't choose us because he knows we will choose him. Just the opposite: we will choose God because it is a characteristic of the way God has created us. God knows who will respond to his call not only because he can foresee the future, but because he knows what he has created.

The Catholic position is not, like Smith's appears to be, a rejection of the fact that God is the author of all first things, but merely that our acceptance of God is not alien to us, which would make our obedience a bondage, but essential to us, which makes our obedience a liberation.

The difference between Calvinists and Catholics is largely a difference over the MEANING of what it means to have free will. Catholics do not use free will to mean that God is not the author of our decision to embrace him!

The Catholic position is that we are created good, and corrupted by evil through original sin. Thus, once the stain of sin is removed, our inherent goodness shines forth. But that goodness is made visible by two things, which both are miraculous: Our goodness depends solely on having been created by God, and the continuous grace through which we resist concupisence. Words that inidicate that we are created good include "purification," and "restored."

What is rejected at Trent is, in part, passivity of the will. Luther was encouraging people to indulge their evil desires, insisting that by doing so, they could experience that God loved them unconditionally, and would grow in their faith which would result in their evil desires being stripped away. The Catholic Church was asserting that doing God's will required struggle, an active resistance against evil through resisting temptation and seeking grace. Luther rejected this as "salvation through works."