I’m not a Catholic but this just isn’t true — and I don’t just mean in the ancient pre-schism catholic church, I mean even today in the latest Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), this isn’t true.
There’s much to complain about with the RC church, but one nice thing is that their “magisterium” systematically articulates every aspect of their theology with painstaking precision (dating back pre-schism, with later innovations that they refer to as “doctrinal development”).
The east may criticize that the west over intellectualizes the mysteries and misses the “phronema” (the heart), but from a western and especially reformed perspective RC provides an exact articulation and exegesis on these topics.
For example:
Salvation is initiated and completed through Jesus Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection, which provide infinite merit for the redemption of humanity (CCC 1992; Hebrews 7:25)
Justification begins with faith and baptism, infused by God’s grace (CCC 1987–1995; Romans 3:24). Good works are necessary as a response to grace, not as a prerequisite or independent contribution (James 2:14–26).
And where it aligns closer to Calvinist/reformed confessions goes back pre-schism, to Augustine. Catholicism explicitly rejects Pelagianism (and semi-pelagianism) and affirms there is no human effort towards salvation without grace, that God is 100% responsible for your salvation, and man is 100% responsible for sin and rebellion against God.
The seeming contradiction was resolved earlier in Chalcedon (5th century, pre schism), that the person of Christ, fully human and full God, has a divine will and human will — and a “synergoi” between the two, that is, man and God cooperating (from man’s perspective free will, from the divine perspective complete sovereignty).
The Catholic rebuttal to reformed confessions (and TULIP more generally) is similar to the eastern (e.g., confessions of Dositheus) — basically a series of anathemas that most reformed theologians actually agree with, such as explicitly stating that God is never the author of evil.
The concerns from EO and RC are about these edge cases where Calvinism leads to moral determinism, or deism (clockmaker God) — and it’s important to point out that this is exactly what happened, e.g., to the Puritans (the most hardcore Calvinists and Christian nationalists to ever exist — whose theology I love, but the bad fruits of Harvard and Yale are undeniable).
Similarly, I’d be careful about the “violating free will” line, even staunch Calvinists reject that way of thinking as it leads to the view that God is the author of evil. The reformed position on this is technically not that different from the EO and RC position (despite all the Internet strawman versions). I think best articulated in that Jonathan Edward’s quote.. which RC and EO fully agree with.
