Catholics believe that justification (salvation) is a process by which a person is incrementally made righteous by the infused righteousness of grace in the sacraments. Protestants, on the other hand, believe that we are never righteous enough, not innately and not in this lifetime; therefore our hope and salvation depends on another's righteousness: Christ's own righteousness credited (imputed) to our account. This is the gospel of which St. Paul is not ashamed (Romans 1:17, 18): the power and righteousness of God. Roman Catholics believe in a righteousness that is inherent to the person resulting in his or her holy standing before a holy God. Protestants believe that our best, our righteousness, is as "filthy rags," and our hope rests fully in what theologians call the "great exchange": we give Christ our sins and he gives us his own righteousness.

Catholics say that those who are baptized "are made innocent, immaculate, pure, guiltless and beloved of God" (Trent, Session V.5). Anglicans affirm that "we are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ by Faith, and not for our own works or deservings" (Article of Religion XI). Is this important? It is the critical distinction between Anglicans (Protestants) and Roman Catholics. One of Anglican's best theologians, Richard Hooker, said, "The grand question, which hangeth yet in the controversy between us and the Church of Rome is about the matter of justifying righteousness." Luther, the chief instigator of the Reformation, said that the biblical doctrine of justification by faith alone is "the doctrine by which the church stands or falls." St. Paul wrote, "Not having a righteousness of my own that comes through the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness of God that depends on faith" (Philippians 3:9). And every Sunday in Anglican churches around the world we acknowledge and pray: "We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies..." (Prayer of Humble Access).

So since our righteousness does not depend on our moral rectitude but on God's word and declaration ("...it was counted/reckoned to him as righteousness" Romans 4:3), how does moral change fit into the equation? Catholics don't make the distinction between justification and sanctification that Protestants do. The life-long process in which a Christian changes to become more holy is called "sanctification." But because this process will not be completed in our lives on earth, we will always be simultaneously justified and sinners (simul justus et peccator) because "this infection of nature doth remain, yea, in them that are regenerated" (Article IX).

The differences we have doesn't mean that we can't appreciate and support our common commitment to life, justice, and the dignity of every human being. However, the big issue that keeps me from becoming Roman Catholic is the age old problem of the first formal cause of justification: is saving righteousness imputed and received by faith, or infused over time in the grace of the sacraments? Are good works "for" holiness, or "from" our holy standing before God? Although I am a convinced Protestant living next door to convinced Catholics, it is not correct theology that saves any Protestant or Catholic, but the undeserved love of a Father who loves both brothers the same (Luke 15), who came to seek and save the lost (Mark 19:45), and whose life and death was nothing to do with improving the improvable, but the means by which God brings dead people to eternal life.

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