FWIW, from the Roman Catholic catechism:
424 Moved by the grace of the Holy Spirit and drawn by the Father, we believe in Jesus and confess: 'You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. On the rock of this faith confessed by St. Peter, Christ built his Church.
I think the RCC is able to interpret things so uniquely because they fill a human need. It is our nature to suspect a free gift. We look for the "secret handshake", or the deed we must do, or the unstated price that must be paid. We just can't believe a free gift is free, so when GOD gives us a free gift of GRACE and all we have to do is have FAITH in JESUS we look for the the hidden "kicker".
The writer of this quoted excerpt has asked me not to ping to him. This request followed my questioning of what seemed to be a speculative psychologizing of a mischaracterization of what the Catholic Church actually teaches. So I addressed this to the two of you as represntatives of differeing viewpoints.
And I think that we have here a suggestion that the RCs teach something we don't in fact hold. At the RCIA/Enquirers Class I attended last night, the Dominican priest who was teaching repeatedly and emphatically declared that even merit is a gift, a gift following a good work, itself a gracious gift and the result of a gracious gift. The notion of Grace, a diverse and multifacted grace, grace as in the first instance God's response to sin and then as His response to the fruits of grace, was the principal theme and the refrain of the class, and it transferred into the small group Bible study which followed.
We were looking at the assigned readings for this coming Sunday, with the emphasis on Nehemiah 8:2-4a,5-6,8-10,and Luke 1:1-4;4:14-21, with minor touching on i Cor. 12:12-30 and the second half of Ps 19.
At first we contrasted the Old Law, read to the people by Ezra, with Jesus' presentation of himself as the fulfillment of Isaiah's prophesy. And then, mindful of Ezra's urging the people to rejoice at the re-discovery of the Torah, we talked about the whole thing as a gift, the gift of the teaching and the gift of its fulfillment and the gift of the consequent benefits to us.
One person said, "Thousands of people have labored for thousands of years to set this feast before ME! All I have to do is enjoy it!"
The Torah, law, instructions, teaching, looked like a burden, and the people wept. But they were urged to celebrate it, sweeter than honey in the comb, more precious than refined gold. Evidently what we RCs and EO's think of as the Church strikes some as burdensome. But when I looked around the class, I saw some questioning, but plenty of radiant smiles.
I would agree that some people look for the catch. And throughout my ministry, ordained and lay, I have certainly seen the misuse of the Gospel as a device for psychological control. The most grotesque example in my experience was in a Mennonite family in which the notion of "Making Jesus sad," was used as a major child behavior control and guilt trip inducing device, deployed with a minimal understanding or recollection of what it's like to be a kid. I await with dread the adolescence of those children.
But if psychological speculation about the reason those with whom we disagree are too unhealthy to see how very right we are were a legitimate consideration (as I think it is NOT), then maybe some time would be properly spent on why so many seize on misunderstandings and half-truths in their eagerness to "prove" that Catholics principally and also EOs are evil. I think it's all a waste of time, myself, but if we're going to waste time, let's waste it equitably.
Do you see the suspicion anywhere in the Catechism you quoted?