What are meritorious works in Catholicism?

Today the Catholic Church teaches what was reemphasized at the Council of Trent: For Catholic theologians, to "justify" means to make righteous and holy, therefore, justification and sanctification are considered to be the same process. For the Catholic, faith in Christ is the beginning of salvation and lays the foundation for justification. Then the Catholic builds on that with good works, because "man has to merit God's grace of justification and eternal salvation." Catholics believe that as they do good works, righteousness is infused into them, sin is eradicated and the soul merits heaven.

Works then, are very important to the evangelical Protestant and to the Roman Catholic, but each views works differently. Evangelical Protestants believe they are fully justified through faith in Christ and that this naturally leads to the fruit of good works, as they grow in the Christian life as God has planned for them to do (see Eph. 2:8‑10). Catholics, however, do not believe that faith alone provides justification but that they must work for justification all their lives. Catholics, in effect, blend justification and sanctification together as one process.

N*. Believing that there is strength in man to do good and merit life by his works. And though they talk of grace, it is practically man's own efforts; there may be sacramental grace referred to, but no personal practical dependence on grace. The Roman Catholic system hides it under hard words, and distinguishes between grace of condignity, that is, what a man sufficiently deserves — merit in which the works deserve a reward for their own worth; and grace of congruity, what fits a man to receive, though he be not worthy in the way of merit; but, in point of fact, a man merits eternal life by his own doings and efforts, which in principle and substance and verity is Pelagianism. Christ delivered the Old Testament saints, they say, out of limbo, and set us to keep the new law.

Some unacquainted with scripture might be misled by the scriptures quoted by the Council in defence of justification by works; by which, and the grace of Christ in them, as they say “we must needs believe that to be justified nothing farther is wanting, but that they be accounted to have, by those very works which have been done in God, fully satisfied the divine law according to the state of this life, and truly to have merited eternal life to be obtained also in its due time” (page 41), with very, very much of the same sad sort. Now let a person be placed on such ground as this. He must keep the holy precepts of the word of God, so as to fully satisfy the divine law, truly thus to merit eternal life.

Prayers and good deeds are two acts that can be endowed with the privilege of indulgences. According to the Catechism, the Church uses the power originally given to Peter to bind and loose sins (see Matt. 16:19) and can intervene in favor of individual Christians by opening for them a "treasury" of the merits of Christ and the saints (the spiritual treasury of the Church). So, in effect, when we speak of indulgences we are speaking of God "indulging" (being kind to) a believer by giving to the believer from an inexhaustible supply of spiritual merits that have accumulated in the Church's treasury through the work of Christ and the prayers and good works of the Virgin Mary and the saints. These merits are then used to cover the temporal punishment for venial or mortal sins that the believer did not finish paying for before death.

The chief feature in the new doctrine of indulgences was the discovery of a resource or treasury in the church, by the application of which sins were remitted, without the painful or humiliating process of penance, and without the observance of the sacraments. It was alleged by the deep contriver of this sweeping dogma, that there was an infinite treasure of merit in Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the other saints, which was more than sufficient for themselves. Although the Saviour Himself was said to be the source of all merit, the merits of the saints were also much spoken of, and this gave rise to the new idea of works of supererogation. By their works of penance, and by their undeserved sufferings in this world, they had done more than was necessary for their own salvation, and by these works of supererogation, with the superabundant merits of Christ, a treasury was formed, of which the pope possessed the keys, and which he could apply for the relief of offenders, both in this life and in purgatory. The power of the keys was thus substituted for the efficacy of the sacrament.

"We have resolved, by virtue of the authority given to us from heaven, fully to unlock that sacred treasure composed of the merits, sufferings, and virtues of Christ our Lord, and of his virgin mother, and of all the saints which the Author of human salvation has entrusted to our dispensation. To you, therefore, venerable brethren, patriarchs, primates, archbishops, bishops, it belongs to explain with perspicuity the power of indulgences; what is their efficacy in the remission, not only of the canonical penance, but also of the temporal punishment due to the divine justice for past sin; and what succour is afforded out of this heavenly treasure, from the merits of Christ and His saints, to such as have departed real penitents in God's love, yet before they had duly satisfied by fruits worthy of penance, for sins of omission and commission, and are now purifying in the fire of purgatory."*

I may sum up the system in the words of a writer long subsequent, as briefly stating the system, using another's translation: "Whereas the human race, by the demerit derived to it from the fault of the first sinner, had become pierced with the darts of eternal punishment … Christ granted to it certain remedial sacraments, to the end that it might acknowledge the difference between what is merited by nature and what it received by grace; and that, as nature could bring punishment only, grace, not called grace if granted to merit, might furnish whatever appertains to salvation." This is its ripe formulary. The system began as soon as the apostles were gone.

This is developed in two ways, which are in beautiful connection, while yet very different: as regards the salvation of the sinner, and as regards the reward of a saint. For rewards there are, in which divine love sovereignly displays itself, for they are "mercy" (2 Tim. 1:18) and not a claim of right; as the Lord has emphatically taught us to say, when we have done all, we are unprofitable servants: we have done but that which it was our duty to do.

Creature merit is thus impossible, ― a doctrine which destroys at once not only the supererogatory works and merits of the saints as Rome teaches them, but very much else held quite outside of Rome; while it makes eternal life for the sinner (such as we all are) only possible to grace.

5 M. Well, I suppose, works done purely out of love to God and our neighbour.

N*. Then you never can do any according to your system, because you do them to gain eternal life, to merit heaven for yourself.