God is a monster.

[christulsa]

When the hairy comet of chastisement arrives and you find yourself without beeswax candles, Greg and James are going to be laughing at you from behind their sandwich boards and blackened out windows as they sip sip single malt whiskey and XO Cognac between chanting their decades and you will feel like an utter dickhead.

Why risk that humiliation for shagging a few whores, getting divorce raped by one of them and lying in on Sunday morning?

The world offers you nothing.  Even if Catholicism is a cult, it is a fun cult with advantages.  Better to be the happiest nut in the asylum that the sanest man in hell.  And the modern world is hellish.

The world cannot offer you anything better.  Sex, drugs, rock n roll?  Boring.  Very boring.

Beside, you're not paying attention.  The tide is changing.  I feel it in the air. I taste it in the water.  The liberal satanists know their time is short.  Don't snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  When it all goes to sh#t you will be glad to have a solid anchor.

There is no other purpose.  If there were, smarter and wiser men than you would have found it already.

When the angel of death passed over the homes of those faithful Jews in Egypt, who had marked their doors with the blood of the lamb, were those Jews standing behind their sandwich boards, drinking whiskey, and laughing at those being chastised around them?       Though I get in part the sentiment.

I think we're all on the brink of being chastised.  As to the OP, God only allows evil, and chastises us, out of His mercy to save our souls.  You may have lost your faith, but you can always come back through the sacraments.  I'll pray for you.

[Michael Wilson]

V.O. Stated:

The truth about the mystery of election not despairing, it sets you free.

"The Truth" that God creates some men for Hell, is an idea that sets you free? In other words if you are not one of the pre-destined for Heaven that God leaves in the "massa damnata"; then there is nothing you can do about it; nothing: prayers, fasting; alms giving; Mass; Confession; devotion to Our Blessed Mother; etc. etc. Its all unavailing.
This is supposed to provide comfort for souls?
Its the most un-comforting, despair inducing idea that one could ever imagine; so much so that even Dominican preachers that accept this doctrine, do not speak of it to their penintents for fear of discouraging them. (more on this latter).

[Miriam_M]

V.O. Stated:

The truth about the mystery of election not despairing, it sets you free.

"The Truth" that God creates some men for Hell, is an idea that sets you free? In other words if you are not one of the pre-destined for Heaven that God leaves in the "massa damnata"; then there is nothing you can do about it; nothing: prayers, fasting; alms giving; Mass; Confession; devotion to Our Blessed Mother; etc. etc. Its all unavailing.
This is supposed to provide comfort for souls?
Its the most un-comforting, despair inducing idea that one could ever imagine; so much so that even Dominican preachers that accept this doctrine, do not speak of it to their penintents for fear of discouraging them. (more on this latter).

There are "Dominican preachers who accept this doctrine?"  Who are they, please?

[Vetus Ordo]

"The Truth" that God creates some men for Hell, is an idea that sets you free?

The sheep don't choose their shepherd, the shepherd chooses His sheep. Christ will not lose any soul that the Father has given to Him. No-one, be it men or angels, can snatch them out of His hand (John 10:28). Can Jesus fail in His redemptive work? Can He lose some sheep because the sheep didn't cooperate with Him? No. God actually chooses and saves those whom He wills. That is liberating.

Remember the context in which Christ taught this truth. The Jews were gathered around Him in the temple at the time of the Feast of Dedication and demanded that He tell them if He was the Messiah. What did He say? He rebuked them for their unbelief. But why didn't they believe? Lack of cooperation with some sort of universal grace? No. But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you. (John 10:26). They were not His sheep. His sheep hear His voice and obey Him and no-one can snatch them out of His hand. The goats are not His sheep and He never knew them. It's what it all boils down to. If those who were gathered around Him were predestined unto life, they would have believed. All who are foreordained unto life, come to believe as it has been appointed for them. And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad, and glorified the word of the Lord: and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed (Acts 13:48).

In other words if you are not one of the pre-destined for Heaven that God leaves in the "massa damnata"; then there is nothing you can do about it

Exactly. But if you are of the reprobate, you won't want to do anything about it. Your heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked (Jer. 17:9). No-one is saved or condemned against one's will. The elect are given the delectatio victrix in which their wills delight in the things of God. The reprobate are left with their unregenerate hearts, revelling in sin.

The essence of the truth of predestination is that you are pre-destined. You can't get around it. Saying that God looks into the corridors of time to choose those who will choose Him is a nonsensical idea: it destroys the very concept of God electing, making us the electors, and runs into two insurmountable logical problems: 1) All events of existence by definition are what God decreed them to be, He doesn't need to look into the future to passively acquire knowledge of it; 2) Given our fallen state, we can only choose God if God chooses us first, therefore God choosing those who will choose Him is tautologically absurd.

The fact that God is in control of our destiny, and not ourselves, has always been viscerally opposed since the beginning of time. Why? Because it strikes at the core of our depravity and our pride. It shackles the very foundation of the religion of man, the spirit of Pelagianism that is present in all worldly philosophies and religions. Sadly, the Church has fallen prey of this disease in the modern era as well. Like William Henley's famous 19th century poem Invictus, all men, even pious religious men, deep down inside believe in the aphorism "I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul." Salvation is an enterprise between God and man but with man having the final say. The determining factor that seals our fate is our own will, our cooperation, our efforts in piety, etc. This is the natural disposition of fallen human beings. We psychologically want and need to be in charge, like Adam and Eve in the Garden. On the other hand, those who are regenerated by the Spirit and who truly understand that it's God that works in us "both to will and to do of his good pleasure" (Phil. 2:13) would rather confess "The Lord is the master of my fate: the Lord the captain of my soul."

This is supposed to provide comfort for souls?

Yes, it fixes our hearts and our minds on God. We strive to do good works, to avoid sin and to repent from it when we fall. In the end it's all up to God, though. He has mercy upon whom He has mercy. It's His call. Only a deluded mind would trust himself to be saved. We are foreordained unto life or unto death. If our names were written in the Book of Life, it will show. As the liturgy aptly says, command us to be delivered from eternal damnation, and to be numbered in the flock of thine elect.

[John Lamb]

Plato - Phaedo

That will do as well, he said. But first let us take care that we avoid a danger.

Of what nature? I said.

Lest we become misologists, he replied, no worse thing can happen to a man than this. For as there are misanthropists or haters of men, there are also misologists or haters of ideas, and both spring from the same cause, which is ignorance of the world. Misanthropy arises out of the too great confidence of inexperience;—you trust a man and think him altogether true and sound and faithful, and then in a little while he turns out to be false and knavish; and then another and another, and when this has happened several times to a man, especially when it happens among those whom he deems to be his own most trusted and familiar friends, and he has often quarreled with them, he at last hates all men, and believes that no one has any good in him at all. You must have observed this trait of character?

I have.

And is not the feeling discreditable? Is it not obvious that such an one having to deal with other men, was clearly without any experience of human nature; for experience would have taught him the true state of the case, that few are the good and few the evil, and that the great majority are in the interval between them.

What do you mean? I said.

I mean, he replied, as you might say of the very large and very small, that nothing is more uncommon than a very large or very small man; and this applies generally to all extremes, whether of great and small, or swift and slow, or fair and foul, or black and white: and whether the instances you select be men or dogs or anything else, few are the extremes, but many are in the mean between them. Did you never observe this?

Yes, I said, I have.

And do you not imagine, he said, that if there were a competition in evil, the worst would be found to be very few?

Yes, that is very likely, I said.

Yes, that is very likely, he replied; although in this respect arguments are unlike men—there I was led on by you to say more than I had intended; but the point of comparison was, that when a simple man who has no skill in dialectics believes an argument to be true which he afterwards imagines to be false, whether really false or not, and then another and another, he has no longer any faith left, and great disputers, as you know, come to think at last that they have grown to be the wisest of mankind; for they alone perceive the utter unsoundness and instability of all arguments, or indeed, of all things, which, like the currents in the Euripus, are going up and down in never-ceasing ebb and flow.

That is quite true, I said.

Yes, Phaedo, he replied, and how melancholy, if there be such a thing as truth or certainty or possibility of knowledge—that a man should have lighted upon some argument or other which at first seemed true and then turned out to be false, and instead of blaming himself and his own want of wit, because he is annoyed, should at last be too glad to transfer the blame from himself to arguments in general: and for ever afterwards should hate and revile them, and lose truth and the knowledge of realities.

Yes, indeed, I said; that is very melancholy.

Let us then, in the first place, he said, be careful of allowing or of admitting into our souls the notion that there is no health or soundness in any arguments at all. Rather say that we have not yet attained to soundness in ourselves, and that we must struggle manfully and do our best to gain health of mind—you and all other men having regard to the whole of your future life, and I myself in the prospect of death.

[Gardener]

V.O. Stated:

The truth about the mystery of election not despairing, it sets you free.

"The Truth" that God creates some men for Hell, is an idea that sets you free? In other words if you are not one of the pre-destined for Heaven that God leaves in the "massa damnata"; then there is nothing you can do about it; nothing: prayers, fasting; alms giving; Mass; Confession; devotion to Our Blessed Mother; etc. etc. Its all unavailing.
This is supposed to provide comfort for souls?
Its the most un-comforting, despair inducing idea that one could ever imagine; so much so that even Dominican preachers that accept this doctrine, do not speak of it to their penintents for fear of discouraging them. (more on this latter).

There are "Dominican preachers who accept this doctrine?"  Who are they, please?

Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, for one.

[Kreuzritter]

Saying that God looks into the corridors of time to choose those who will choose Him is a nonsensical idea:

It's not a nonsensical idea, though it's not the Molinist's position. Who exactly are you addressing with this statement?

I see through to your implicit premise though. You conceive of God's creative act "predeterminatively" in a pseudo-temporal sense. It's God -> poof! -> world, past, present and future in a pseudo-temporal order. It's unthinkable to you that God's creation in eternity involves God's interventions in time, that God is eternally, as far as his eternal essence goes, in the act of creating in relation to the temporal order, and that God can actually alter a course of events in time in response to human choices.

it destroys the very concept of God electing, making us the electors, and runs into two insurmountable logical problems:

Willing to be elected doesn't destroy "the very concept" of being elected, not even if that willingness is the criterion by which the elector, of his own will, determines to elect. This is just a fact. What it destroys is the capricious parlour trick of "unconditional election", I create A and B and, for no reason resting in any distinction between A and B, elect one and leave the other to reprobation, creating one for salvation and the other for damnation to supposedly glorify myself. You "God" is absurd.

Picture the counter-example: I have a bag of sweets. I choose to hand them out to some kids. I choose to give them to those children who want them. Of course I've elected the children to whom to give sweets. I've just done it on the basis of a conditional criterion. All the power, all the sovereignty over that bags of sweets, is still mine. You want a special definition of "election" that excludes this because it's intolerable to your authoritarian sensibilities that God should act this way. Except maybe, just maybe, this is how God, in and by his sovereignty, chooses things to be. This is equivalent to, and as presumptive and blasphemous as, claiming that Jesus' kenosis somehow violates God's sovereignty.

1) All events of existence by definition are what God decreed them to be,

That's not what an event is "by definition" but a property of events demanded by Catholic dogma.

He doesn't need to look into the future to passively acquire knowledge of it;

Again, what are you talking about? Who is being addressed? "Looking into the future" would presuppose the existence of that future, by which time the opportunity to predetermine it has passed.

On the other hand, you have no coherent explanation of how God can foreknow a future in which free agents make free choices, your Thomistic theology invoking a crypto-determinism that contradicts freedom of choice (sophistic re-definitions of free choice notwithstanding).

2) Given our fallen state, we can only choose God if God chooses us first, therefore God choosing those who will choose Him is tautologically absurd.

Your first premise is a piece of sophistry on the word "choose". It is sufficient for God to choose to grace man with the ability to choose him, and it is not necessary for that person to be "chosen" as in elected, for him to be able to choose God.

As always when you attempt to formulate philosophical argument: Schuster bleib bei deinen Leisten.

[christulsa]

V.O. Stated:

The truth about the mystery of election not despairing, it sets you free.

"The Truth" that God creates some men for Hell, is an idea that sets you free? In other words if you are not one of the pre-destined for Heaven that God leaves in the "massa damnata"; then there is nothing you can do about it; nothing: prayers, fasting; alms giving; Mass; Confession; devotion to Our Blessed Mother; etc. etc. Its all unavailing.
This is supposed to provide comfort for souls?
Its the most un-comforting, despair inducing idea that one could ever imagine; so much so that even Dominican preachers that accept this doctrine, do not speak of it to their penintents for fear of discouraging them. (more on this latter).

There are "Dominican preachers who accept this doctrine?"  Who are they, please?

Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, for one.

Anathema sit.  I render my garments in protest.  Get behind me satan.  To suggest such is offensive to pious ears.  And if the Lagrange is in error, then we are all doomed.   

[Arvinger]

The sheep don't choose their shepherd, the shepherd chooses His sheep. Christ will not lose any soul that the Father has given to Him. No-one, be it men or angels, can snatch them out of His hand (John 10:28). Can Jesus fail in His redemptive work? Can He lose some sheep because the sheep didn't cooperate with Him? No. God actually chooses and saves those whom He wills. That is liberating.

Remember the context in which Christ taught this truth. The Jews were gathered around Him in the temple at the time of the Feast of Dedication and demanded that He tell them if He was the Messiah. What did He say? He rebuked them for their unbelief. But why didn't they believe? Lack of cooperation with some sort of universal grace? No. But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you. (John 10:26). They were not His sheep. His sheep hear His voice and obey Him and no-one can snatch them out of His hand. The goats are not His sheep and He never knew them. It's what it all boils down to. If those who were gathered around Him were predestined unto life, they would have believed. All who are foreordained unto life, come to believe as it has been appointed for them. And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad, and glorified the word of the Lord: and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed (Acts 13:48).

For the record, these are exactly the argument that Calvinist heretics like James White are using. It is complete eisegesis of the text. Yes, Jesus loses none of those whom the Father has given to Him. But on what basis does the Father give people to Jesus? Is it unconditional, or is it based on foreseen merits, or something else? The text is silent about it. Monergists simply assume that the basis on which the Father chooses people to give to Our Lord is unconditional, while the text never says that.

No one can snatch them out of His hand. Again, on what basis are they in "His hand"? Is this a permanent state which has nothing to do with man's prior actions and man's own action cannot change? John 10 does not say that - it needs to be proven by exegetical principles rather than assumed.

Our Lord rebukes the Jews precisely because they were given everything necessary to believe in Him, including miracles and prophecies in Sacred Scripture, yet they rejected Him. Why were they not His sheep, as Jesus said? Is it because they were unconditionally reprobated, or because they wasted all of the graces and evidence for Jesus being the Messiah they were given? Again, the text does not determine that, you simply assume the former instead of demonstrating it through exegesis.

Acts 13:48 - the verse does not determine the cause-effect relationship. It could be that they believed because they were ordained to eternal life, or they were ordained to eternal life because they believed. You can say "all people at the border control who were British showed up with a British passport", or "all people who showed up with a British passport were British" - you can phrase it both ways and it does not determine the cause-effect relationship.

People who argue for any sort of unconditional election bring whole lot of preconceived theology into these verses and simply assume things that the text does not say.

[Vetus Ordo]

No one can snatch them out of His hand. Again, on what basis are they in "His hand"? Is this a permanent state which has nothing to do with man's prior actions and man's own action cannot change? John 10 does not say that - it needs to be proven by exegetical principles rather than assumed

Those who are given to the Son by the Father cannot be lost and will be raised up in the last day. They cannot come to Him unless chosen and they cannot remain in Him unless kept by Him: No man can come to me, except the Father which has sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day (John 6:44). The evidence that this is a permanent state lies in Christ's clear teaching that none of His sheep can be snatched out of His hand, nor will Christ drive them away from Him. Everyone of the elect will necessarily be with Christ forever: Everyone the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will never drive away (John 6:39).

Our Lord rebukes the Jews precisely because they were given everything necessary to believe in Him, including miracles and prophecies in Sacred Scripture, yet they rejected Him. Why were they not His sheep, as Jesus said? Is it because they were unconditionally reprobated, or because they wasted all of the graces and evidence for Jesus being the Messiah they were given? Again, the text does not determine that, you simply assume the former instead of demonstrating it through exegesis.

Christ claimed that the reason those Jews didn't believe in Him was because they were not His sheep. If they had been His sheep, they would have come to him, i.e., have believed in him. This is plainly and unambiguously stated in John 6:39, already quoted. Two chapters later, Christ rebukes them again under the same premise: Whoever belongs to God hears the words of God. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God (John 8:47). Those who do not belong to God, cannot believe.

Acts 13:48 - the verse does not determine the cause-effect relationship. It could be that they believed because they were ordained to eternal life, or they were ordained to eternal life because they believed. You can say "all people at the border control who were British showed up with a British passport", or "all people who showed up with a British passport were British" - you can phrase it both ways and it does not determine the cause-effect relationship.

The inversion does not work. They cannot have been ordained to eternal life on the grounds that they believed. The act of believing comes from the fact that the Father draws them to Christ, as we've seen. No man can believe without having been first chosen and regenerated by grace unto salvation. We read that "as many as were ordained," ?????? ?????? ???????????, to eternal life believed. In the Vulgate, "as many as were foreordained," quotquot erant praeordinati. It's as straightforward as you will get it.

People who argue for any sort of unconditional election bring whole lot of preconceived theology into these verses and simply assume things that the text does not say.

Election lies in God's purpose and favor alone, not in what God foresees in the life of the person. The very life of the person has been decreed into existence from all eternity: the elect unto holiness and salvation, the reprobate unto wickedness and destruction. Before they had done anything whatsoever, in order that His sovereign purpose might stand, Jacob, He loved. Esau, He hated.

And not only so, but also when Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls—she was told, "The older will serve the younger." As it is written, "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated." (Romans 9:10-13).

The elect were chosen according to God's own good pleasure, not according to anything they do or would do. They were chosen before the foundation of the world in order that they may bear fruit and glorify Him that saved them: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms. For He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in His presence. In love He predestined us for adoption as His sons through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace, which He has freely given us in the Beloved One (Eph. 1:3-6).

Election does not depend on the health of the tree that will be chosen. Election is bestowed upon a dead tree precisely so that it will bring forth good fruit.

[Tales]

For the record, these are exactly the argument that Calvinist heretics like James White are using

Yes, it is a complete rehash of James White.  I've listened to far too many of his debates and talks.

If Calvin is right then everything is pointless.  Why did Jesus pick apostles to teach others?  Why create a Church, why inspire writings, why have His Church bring forth Scripture?  If there is absolutely nothing man can do with respect to his own salvation or damnation then what is the point of all of this?  What is the point of the Great Commission, to merely activate His robots to go run their coding on rails?

The answer to this is 'this is the way He chose it to be' as if He could not also have chosen it such that predestination incorporates man's freely chosen "future" actions.  Its a masterpiece of the devil that he can trick people into believing that they take no part in salvation and so why bother?

Calvinists always use the same free parts of Scripture to interpret the entirety of Scripture.  If I had a nickel for every time...

Edit:
I also note that if Christians got something so critical wrong as "there is nothing you can do to affect your salvation" for 1,500 years until some French lawyer came along (or at best St. Augustine and a hyperbolic homily), then the entire thing is a joke and I wouldn't credibly believe an ounce of any of this.

[Vetus Ordo]

It's unthinkable to you that God's creation in eternity involves God's interventions in time, that God is eternally, as far as his eternal essence goes, in the act of creating in relation to the temporal order, and that God can actually alter a course of events in time in response to human choices.

It's unthinkable because it's gibberish.

Human choices in time are a result of God's eternal decree of creation. God cannot be determined. He determines.

Picture the counter-example: I have a bag of sweets. I choose to hand them out to some kids. I choose to give them to those children who want them. Of course I've elected the children to whom to give sweets. I've just done it on the basis of a conditional criterion. All the power, all the sovereignty over that bags of sweets, is still mine. You want a special definition of "election" that excludes this because it's intolerable to your authoritarian sensibilities that God should act this way. Except maybe, just maybe, this is how God, in and by his sovereignty, chooses things to be. This is equivalent to, and as presumptive and blasphemous as, claiming that Jesus' kenosis somehow violates God's sovereignty.

Your counter-example fails to capture the real situation: none of those children want your bag of sweets to begin with. Unless you give them an injection that alters their hormonal make-up, they loathe the sweets. They're dead to sweets, they just fancy vinegar. Your choosing cannot be on the basis of those children who want the sweets, none of them want them. You'll have to pick from all this mass of children, according to your own good pleasure, those to whom you'll give a shot so that they can even be able to want the bag of sweets, never mind receive it. You are choosing them so that they can choose you. Election is not conditional upon anything the children have done or would do, only on your favor toward them. That's called grace.

On the other hand, you have no coherent explanation of how God can foreknow a future in which free agents make free choices, your Thomistic theology invoking a crypto-determinism that contradicts freedom of choice (sophistic re-definitions of free choice notwithstanding).

I don't have to because fallen men make fallen choices. They're not free, they're bound to sin. Freedom arrives only with grace which has been predestined, or foreordained, or predetermined to be bestowed upon the sheep whom the Father gave to Christ and whom Christ cannot lose or cast out. Unlike the humanist delirium you've just espoused, Divine Revelation did not come to proclaim the inviolability of our free will that determines and limits God's choices. Rather, it came to proclaim our slavery to sin and God's saving grace to liberate His people from it.

Your first premise is a piece of sophistry on the word "choose". It is sufficient for God to choose to grace man with the ability to choose him, and it is not necessary for that person to be "chosen" as in elected, for him to be able to choose God.

Unless the man is born again, or regenerated, or given a new heart of flesh in place of his old heart of stone, he cannot choose God. Unless you're trying to establish that God is regenerating all mankind as we speak, you have no point.

As always when you attempt to formulate philosophical argument: Schuster bleib bei deinen Leisten.

As usual, German and charm are two words that can't combine.

[Xavier]

Thomistic Theologian Cardinal Journet excellently says, "There we have the problem. How is it to be solved? Only Catholic teaching provides a solution or, to be exact, the teaching of St Thomas, for I see in him the confluence of all the efforts made by the preceding centuries. The understanding of Scripture possessed by the Fathers has always been preserved in the Church; and their solutions are coordinated, rethought in depth by St Thomas.

The way to solve the problem is, before all else, to distinguish clearly the case of the good act and that of the evil act. All who fail to do this go astray. They say either that man is equally cause of his good and of his bad acts, or else that God is responsible for man's bad acts as well as his good ones. To adopt the same method of explaining good and bad acts is a fundamental mistake that renders the problem insoluble." https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/meaning-of-grace-3123

Predestination, God's Work through man=Grace of Justification+Complete Sanctification (Theosis; work of Grace with many good works needed)+Final Perseverance.

Reprobation, caused by man's work alone=At least one freely chosen mortal sin+usual long persistence in many grave sins and unholy living+Final Impenitence.

"double predestination" is a heretical doctrine nowhere found in Sacred Scripture. The Holy Bible only speaks of a gratuitous predestination to Eternal Life. The reprobation of the wicked is consequent to their mortal sins - and as truly as no one obtains even justification without the free Grace of God, no one sins mortally even once without his own freely committed fault. Therefore, Predestination is Gratuitous, but Reprobation is Deserved.

Thus, the Council of Orange, an early Augustinian Council that condemned Semi-Pelagianism, already condemned the idea of "double predestination (specifically the idea that God predestines people to hell; He does not. The reprobate are foreknown only, not predestined) nearly a millenia before the heretic Calvin invented it again. While predestination according to Thomists is prior or antecedent to foreseen merits because it is the cause of them, reprobation is posterior or consequent to foreseen demerits because it is caused by them. The effect must necessarily follow the cause.

This is taught in another early Council, reprobate are foreknown only; but the elect are not only foreknown in God's Mind but also predestined by His Will, "in the election, moreover, of those who are to be saved, the mercy of God precedes the merited good. In the condemnation, however, of those who are to be lost, the evil which they have deserved precedes the just judgment of God. In predestination, however, (we believe) that God has determined only those things which He Himself either in His gratuitous mercy or in His just judgment would do * according to Scripture which says: "Who has done the things which are to be done" [ Is. 4 5:11, LXX]; in regard to evil men, however, we believe that God foreknew their malice, because it is from them, but that He did not predestine it, because it is not from Him. (We believe) that God, who sees all things, foreknew and predestined that their evil deserved the punishment which followed, because He is just, in whom, as Saint Augustine* says, there is concerning all things everywhere so fixed a decree as a certain predestination. To this indeed he applies the saying of Wisdom: "Judgments are prepared for scorners, and striking hammers for the bodies of fools" [Prov. 19:29]. Concerning this unchangeableness of the foreknowledge of the predestination of God, through which in Him future things have already taken place, even in Ecclesiastes the saying is well understood: "I know that all the works which God has made continue forever. We cannot add anything, nor take away those things which God has made that He may be feared" [ Eccles. 3:14]. "But we do not only not believe the saying that some have been predestined to evil by divine power," namely as if they could not be different, "but even if there are those who wish to believe such malice, with all detestation," as the Synod of Orange, "we say anathema to them" [see n. 200]. [See Denzinger 322]

[Xavier]

Luther and Calvin, as documented by Catholic Apologetics, revived these false and loathsome ideas that make men fall away from God, "Christ taught: "Not every one who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven." [6]   

Luther teaches: "...with regard to God, and in all that bears on salvation or damnation, (man) has no 'free-will', but is a captive, prisoner and bond slave, either to the will of God, or to the will of  Satan."[7]

     "...we do everything of necessity and nothing by 'free-will'; for the power of 'free-will' is nil..."[8]

"Man is like a horse.  Does God leap into the saddle?  The horse is obedient and accommodates itself to every movement of the rider and goes whither he wills it.  Does God throw down the reins?  Then Satan leaps upon the back of the animal, which bends, goes and submits to the spurs and caprices of its new rider...  Therefore, necessity, not free will, is the controlling principle of our conduct.  God is the author of what is evil as well as of what is good, and, as He bestows happiness on those who merit it not, so also does He damn others who deserve not their fate." [9]

"His (Judas) will was the work of God; God by His almighty power moved his will as He does all that is in this world."[10]  http://www.catholicapologetics.info/apologetics/protestantism/matluther.htm

Trent seems to have these words of Luther in mind, or at any rate, similar words of Calvin, when it confirms and repeats the anathema of the Council of Orange, "CANON VI.-If any one saith, that it is not in man's power to make his ways evil, but that the works that are evil God worketh as well as those that are good, not permissively only, but properly, and of Himself, in such wise that the treason of Judas is no less His own proper work than the vocation of Paul; let him be anathema." Similarly, Canon V affirms free will against Luther's falsehoods: "CANON V.-If any one saith, that, since Adam's sin, the free will of man is lost and extinguished; or, that it is a thing with only a name, yea a name without a reality, a figment, in fine, introduced into the Church by Satan; let him be anathema." http://traditionalcatholic.net/Tradition/Council/Trent/Sixth_Session,_Canons.html

Some verses against Protestant soteriology and especially OSAS: Jn 15:2 "2Every branch in Me that bears not fruit he takes away: and every branch that bears fruit, he prunes it, that it may bring forth more fruit ... 6If a man abides not in Me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.7If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you shall ask what you will, and it shall be done unto you." Here, we see, Our Lord Jesus Himself teaches us, the branch that does not bear fruit in good works, after being justified by grace, is in danger of falling into sin and being cut off. We must abide in Christ, by the Sacraments especially, of which Jesus had said, He that eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, abideth in Me, and I in him. (Jn 6:56)

Next, St. Peter says, 2 Pet 1:5 "For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith virtue; and to virtue, knowledge; 6and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. 8For if you possess these qualities and continue to grow in them, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9But whoever lacks these traits is nearsighted to the point of blindness, having forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins. 10Therefore, brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you practice these things you will never stumble, 11and you will receive a lavish reception into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. A crystal clear refutation of sola fide, for we are taught (1) to make every effort to add virtue to faith, itself a refutation of faith alone; (2) as well as to add the other things, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness and above all, love; this clearly speaks of infused justification which is to be increased by good works, and habitual virtue; and further St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles, teaches us (3) we can make our calling and election sure. Even in Protestant versions.

That clearly goes against the idea that good works have no part to play in sanctification and salvation, or in election as a whole. Catholic teaching is we who are baptized and Catholics in the state of grace have already been predestined to Grace by God's Mercy. Now, we must labor, or do good works, pray, frequent the Sacraments etc to merit further grace, and, in time, to obtain, final perseverance from the Mercy of God. So, Catholic teaching distinguishes "predestination to grace" from "predestination to glory" since OSAS is not true.

[Michael Wilson]

V.O. Stated:

Exactly. But if you are of the reprobate, you won't want to do anything about it. Your heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked (Jer. 17:9). No-one is saved or condemned against one's will. The elect are given the delectatio victrix in which their wills delight in the things of God. The reprobate are left with their unregenerate hearts, revelling in sin.

One is reprobate (in this system) because God chooses not to give one the graces that are necessary to be saved; one cannot will to be saved without God's graces; we are left helpless and there is nothing they can do about this.
On top of this even being in the state of grace is no guarantee that we are among the "chosen few"; indeed when we finally fall, because God wont give us the grace of final perseverance; then He will declare: "I never knew thee"; "You were never part of my sheep"; So being a Baptized Catholic; wearing the Brown Scapular; making the Nine First Fridays; devotion to the B.V.M. Wont save us, if we are not one of the elect. 
A very consoling doctrine.
re.Consoling:

Yes, it fixes our hearts and our minds on God. We strive to do good works, to avoid sin and to repent from it when we fall. In the end it's all up to God, though. He has mercy upon whom He has mercy. It's His call. Only a deluded mind would trust himself to be saved. We are foreordained unto life or unto death. If our names were written in the Book of Life, it will show. As the liturgy aptly says, command us to be delivered from eternal damnation, and to be numbered in the flock of thine elect.

It leaves us helpless before the inescapable destiny already decreed infallibly and irremediably from all eternity. Why strive to do good works? Why avoid sin? Why repent when we do sin? If its "all up to God" and our efforts cannot do anything to change His infallible decree of our damnation? We are already "foreordained unto life or death"? "If our names are not written in the book of life"?
This theory is completely discouraging and false to boot.