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Wes, taking this seriously because you take it seriously.
The framing assumes Catholic doctrine is works-righteousness. Trent Session 6 and the 1999 Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (signed by Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, Anglicans) settled that the Reformation dispute on sola fide rested significantly on mutual misunderstanding. Justification is by grace through faith. Works are fruit, not cause.
The actual difference is downstream. Catholics teach justification is an infused condition that can be lost through mortal sin and restored through reconciliation.
Reformed Baptists teach perseverance of the saints, that authentic faith cannot be lost. Both positions take Christ’s finished work seriously. They differ on whether justification is a single completed forensic declaration or an ongoing infused condition.
You are not wrong that we teach salvation can be lost. We are not wrong that Christ’s grace is the cause throughout. The “in spite of” frame misses that we believe what we believe is the Gospel, not its contradiction.
On Reformation as retrieval. The Didache (50-110 AD, contemporary with the New Testament) calls the Eucharist a sacrifice and requires confession of sins before communion.
Ignatius of Antioch (110 AD), a disciple of John, calls the Eucharist “the medicine of immortality” and centers the bishop in ecclesial unity. Justin Martyr (150) describes the Mass recognizably. Irenaeus (180), two generations from John through Polycarp, defends apostolic succession explicitly.
The Fathers are not inspired scripture. They are historical witnesses to what the apostles taught the men they personally trained. If the Reformation retrieved the true Gospel, the Gospel got lost almost immediately after the apostles died, because the apostles’ own disciples are teaching what the Catholic Church teaches now.
Newman, examining this evidence, concluded that to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant. The conventional-not-convenient distinction you drew is right.
The question is what the principled examination of the historical evidence reveals. Many of us have done that examination and arrived at Rome.
Respectfully, the receipts are in the apostles’ own disciples. Start with the Didache. Then Ignatius. Then Irenaeus. The Gospel they preach is the Gospel the Catholic Church preaches now.
Mary, Mother of God, pray for our unity in her Son.
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