Baptism makes you a new person because it remits original sin, it is an action of God, not any person. If you take a bath you will actually be clean, there is an action and a result, it is the same with Baptism. You are no longer burdened with original sin but you can still sin because you are a human being. It is a Sacrament.
When one is confirmed, also an act of God, you receive an indelible mark on your soul and is also a Sacrament and one that you choose.
There is no Sacrament that makes you perfect, you are only perfected through Jesus Christ and only to the extent that you say “yes”, IOW you have to cooperate with the Grace you are given. God gave us free will and Jesus asks us
to take on his yoke and let him lead us and many, even those who believe, refuse. They see God’s way as a burden and believe that they know better.
It is their own conceit but they don’t see it as that. They are blinded by their own opinion and their own voices are louder than God’s. Many are not willfully sinning, they aren’t even aware of the error of their ways but, God willing, they will someday hear His voice again and realize how wrong they are.
Do Catholics see a Protestant baptism as functioning exactly the same, in this respect, as being baptized into the Catholic church?
Thank you for your explanation tiki. I am curious, because it seems to me that Catholic theology says that our sin nature is wiped out at baptism. Is this correct? We lose original sin, this is the same as a sin nature? Thus we are a new Adam, with one nature, able to completely be unified in our hearts by following God. Calvinist theology, as I understand it, says that once we are called, we have two natures competing in our hearts. Before it was only our sin nature, we were incapable of following God because we didn’t know him, and after we are called it remains that our sin nature and our relationship with God compete. The Calvinist take makes sense to me, in that it explains the nature of man that I’ve observed, that we are not integrated, that we desire evil even as we do good (lust, desire, fantasy), and desire good even as we do evil (guilt, wishing we did the right thing, feeling bad even as we do wrong). The two natures explains this to me, sin nature and God. Washing completely clean through a sacrament doesn’t make as much sense since I have not seen the massive change in human nature that wiping out a sin nature would entail. I’ve always looked at the destruction of sin nature as being part of heaven.
You said:
“Many are not willfully sinning, they aren’t even aware of the error of their ways but, God willing, they will someday hear His voice again and realize how wrong they are.”
Maybe so but when I see Biden and Dodd claim to be good Catholics, I see their willful arrogance, and I think they have given their souls to gain the world.