Catholics, please stop promoting justification by works. It’s a condemned heresy.

have seen this twice now in as many days, the first from an actu­al arch­bish­op and for­mer nun­cio to the Unit­ed States, Car­lo Maria Viganò. In his let­ter to Pres­i­dent Trump, he wrote: “On the one hand there are those who, although they have a thou­sand defects and weak­ness­es, are moti­vat­ed by the desire to do good, to be hon­est, to raise a fam­i­ly, to engage in work, to give pros­per­i­ty to their home­land, to help the needy, and, in obe­di­ence to the Law of God, to mer­it the King­dom of Heav­en.” Then, on Face­book, a pub­lished Catholic author (who also writes for Catholic Answers), Leila Miller, stat­ed the inverse: “The truth is, with­out Jesus, and with­out obey­ing his Law, you are going to Hell.”

Dear read­er, this is a heresy. Not one human being is capa­ble of “mer­it­ing the King­dom of Heav­en” by obey­ing the Law. St. Paul set­tled this and the Coun­cil of Trent set­tled this. St. James in his epis­tle even says: “For whoso­ev­er shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all” (James 2:10).

The very first of Tren­t’s Canons on Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion says:

If any one saith, that man may be jus­ti­fied before God by his own works, whether done through the teach­ing of human nature, or that of the law, with­out the grace of God through Jesus Christ; let him be anath­e­ma.

Now, it is true that through good works—not to be con­fused with “works of the law”; “good works” refer instead to the works of mer­cy—and through grace and through the Sacra­ments, Chris­tians increase in mer­it and share in the mer­its of Christ. But that does not mean that we have some­how “mer­it­ed the King­dom of Heav­en,” or that fail­ure to sat­is­fy the law (which no one can do) means that we will go to Hell. The whole rea­son Christ offered him­self to the Father on the Cross was so that our inabil­i­ty to sat­is­fy the law did not con­demn us to Hell. Christ, says the Coun­cil of Trent (Decree on Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, Chap­ter 7), “mer­it­ed Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for us.”

It is impor­tant to get this right because Protes­tant anti-Catholics love to say that the Church teach­es jus­ti­fi­ca­tion by works, and it does not. I spent a long time fight­ing this bat­tle when I was in the mid­dle of my con­ver­sion and it is painful to see that Catholic writ­ers at Catholic Answers and even an arch­bish­op need to be cor­rect­ed on this. The Church does not teach works right­eous­ness.

Though it is true that we increase in mer­it through good works, “good works” here does not refer to works of the Law. That’s a ref­er­ence to the spir­i­tu­al and cor­po­ral works of mer­cy. And both the Catholics I quot­ed above specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned obe­di­ence to the law as the means by which Heav­en is mer­it­ed or Hell avoid­ed. That’s not true. That’s heresy, and more than that, it’s a heresy to which the Coun­cil of Trent attached a penal­ty of excom­mu­ni­ca­tion. Please, please don’t fall for this. “By grace ye are saved through faith,” Paul wrote in Eph­esians 2:8, “and that not of your­selves; it is the gift of God, lest any man should boast.”