Free Will and Predestination

The Catholic Church, following St. Augustine (e.g., Grace and Free Will, 1,1; Sermon 169, 11,13), accepts predestination of the elect to heaven, but also affirms the freedom of the human will, thus staking out a position distinct from Calvinism. Predestination to hell, in Catholicism, always involves man's free will, and foreseen sins, so that man is ultimately responsible for his own damnation, not God (double predestination is rejected).

God is sovereign, in our [read: the Catholic] view, every bit as much as in Protestantism (particularly Calvinism), as will amply be demonstrated below. All that is disputed are the intricacies of the grace / free will antinomy, which is one of the most mysterious and difficult questions in the history of both Christian theology and theistic philosophy. Of course, the allowance of free will is also present in Lutheran, Anglican, Methodist, most charismatic, non-denominational and Baptist theologies, etc.

The Catholic Church affirms predestination as a de fide dogma (the highest level of binding theological certainty), while at the same time affirming free will and the possibility of falling away from the faith. The following material from Catholic theologian Ludwig Ott's Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (Rockford, IL: TAN Books, 1974 {orig. 1952}, pp.242-45) ought to be most helpful for Protestants seeking to understand what Catholics believe about this ever-mysterious, controversial, complex, highly abstract theological question...

Read more at http://ic.net/~erasmus/RAZ120.HTM