What I wrote was: "What happens to a character in a movie is 'predestined.' Your will counts for nothing."
Although you disagree with me, the essence of what you wrote (in more words) can be summarized as: What happens to a character in a movie is "predestined." Your will counts for nothing.
You write "I dare to assert, the principle that man's will cannot come into its own until it is conformed to God's." In other words, it is set in stone, just as the actions of the charactere in a movie.
And you write "What good is this will of mine anyway?" Which is as good as saying it counts for nothing.
I must say I am a little surprised that you, a Catholic, find no value (and grace!) in our free will, and that it is only because of God's love that he gives us the freedom, even though absuing freedom can lead to its loss. But, then, forced love is no love, is it?
Your will counts for nothing.
Do we need to wonder what the will's "counting for something" might be? What do we "want" from our will, or what is outraged by the concepts of predestination and election, so Biblically attested (I would say) that we cannot simply blip them out?
I may be disagreeing with you (or maybe not), but I am not asserting the contrary. I am wondering about the posing of the question, about the irreconcilability of predestination and election. If there is "thesis" of predestination and "antithesis" of freewill, then I am searching for the reconciling aufgehebung (is that a word?).
-- Heck, when, as happens with increasing rarity, my wife and I waltz, one might say she has no will, since I (being, as I am, a very manly man) "lead". But I always try to be rich in praise for her, since I think following must be harder than leading.
-- Also, I have served as acolyte in a variety of Episcopal churches, from basement level, low-church Virginia parishes to the Cathedral in San Francisco (in the early '70s when they, or some of them, still believed in God there.) I tried to conform my demeanor, my 'style' to that of the parish where I served, to anticipate the needs of the celebrant, and to be alert to any unusual situations that might arise.
-- As an acolyte and as a priest, my desire was for invisibility, transparency. A service where anyone but the priest noticed my 'work' was one in which I had failed. A service where a parishioner said, "You celebrate beautifully (or clumsily)," or "You preach well (or poorly)," rather than "Alleluia, God is great!" was one in which I had failed.
Does that shed some new or useful light on the question?
When we "fall" in love, it is not clear, to me, whether the impetus is endogenous or exogenous. Maybe I jumped in the torrent, maybe the torrent threw up a wave which swept me in. It is not clear, it is also not important.
Similarly, since my childhood I have longed for God. I do not think I 'chose' this. (The longing did not get in the way of my spending some years in lotus land, but the delights there could not make the longing go away -- and, besides, they all turned to "dirt and hair" after a while anyway.)
I won't say that longing was my choice, something I willed. But certainly my "will", such as it was, endorsed it. I also long for donuts, but that longing is against my will, and I resist it - with greater or lesser success.
I also, in some sense, make war against my own longing for God: I think about other things, I am distracted, I may even seek distractions, or, say, lose myself in anger and resentment or some other earthly and fleshly delight.
When I resist my longing for donuts, sooner or later (like the next time I weigh the corpse) I feel that resisting my longing was freedom. When I resist (with, as it seems, an alien resistance) my longing for God, I don't feel free.
Deus omnipotens, cui servire regnare est