It still is. In Catholicism, while grace can't be earned, once bestowed it enables one to deserve Heaven. In Fundamentalist Protestantism (at least as I always understood it), it isn't grace but salvation that is freely bestowed. There's a world of difference there. Naturally to anyone of this latter view, the former is going to seem Pelagian.
Fundamentalist Protestants can't really see G-d as capable of creating anything less perfect than He is (an error since by definition anything other than G-d is less perfect than G-d). "Heaven" is simply the world as it was originally created. There was no "test," no provisional period between this world and the next. G-d simply created absolute perfection, and "salvation" is the restoration of this original perfection. In this view it is literally impossible to "merit salvation" any more than one can merit being created in the first place. Thus all human action becomes superfluous.
It was a long time until I could see the flaws in this worldview. For one, as mentioned above, anything G-d created is going to be other than Him and therefore less perfect than He is, however sinless it is. Second, G-d obviously gave Adam and Eve a test when he commanded them not to eat of the fruit (if the world really had been merely created to be Heaven, such a commandment would not have been given). And third, the first sin was not committed by a "fallen" man but by the perfect man. Then you have the Jewish exegesis that when G-d commanded Adam to "guard" and to "keep" the Garden of Eden, the former referred to negative commandments and the latter positive commandments. If the world had been created to be Heaven, no such commandments would have been given.
I suppose all this makes Fundamentalist Protestants look bad to some people, but there is a consistency in their worldview lacking in historical chrstianity. Traditionally, Paul's "antinomian" teachings have been applied only to the Torah, leaving human effort (and even post-Biblical ritual and ceremonial) untouched. There is an inconsistency here. If Biblical rituals and ceremonies commanded directly from the Mouth of G-d are of no use, then how much the more so ('al 'achat kammah vekhammah) are post-Biblical rituals and ceremonies which developed slowly over hundreds of years of no account? Once one begins doing away with rituals and ceremonies, 'im ken, 'ein ladavar sof (if that were so, there would be no end to the matter). This is an inconsistency that all the history and all the authenticity in the world cannot solve. Thus the ultimate end result of the rejection of Protestant "antinomianism" is Judaism, since both Catholicism and Orthodoxy simply go in that direction. Why stop half or two thirds of the way?
VERY interesting comments.
But...
You say, “And third, the first sin was not committed by a ‘fallen’ man but by the perfect man.” THIS is the big point of departure between Catholics and Calvinists. Adam was not the perfect man; he was the incomplete man. He was unblemished by sin, but still did not know God, and therefore could not trust or love God.
Only by sinning, and being redeemed could mankind/Adam understand and therefore at least to some infinitesimally small extent know God. “That has to be a mistake,” you might say, “That would mean GOOD things came from Adam’s sin?” No mistake! This isn’t God’s Plan B. This is why the ancient Easter hymn goes, “O necessary fault of Adam which has gained for us our redeemer!”
The deviation between Catholics and Calvinists is over whether grace is irresistable. Calvinists say that grace cannot be resisted; they consider even the choice to accept grace to be a deed, and therefore amounts to the Semipelagian heresy. Catholics answer that if man cannot resist grace, then Adam’s fall was pointless; if those who are saved are merely automatons, there would be no need to show Adam God’s love through redemption; God could merely have designed Adam to know God’s love and the reason that God allowed Adam to see grace and its absence was to allow him to freely choose between both.