3. From the Council of Trent concerning original sin:

(a) The entire Adam, through the offense of his prevarication, was changed, in body and soul, for the worse. The prevarication of Adam injured not only himself but also his posterity; it transfused not only death and pains of the body into the whole human race but also sin itself, which is the death of the soul (Session 5, numbers 1, 2).

(b) This sin of Adam — which in its origin is one, and being transfused by propagation, not by imitation, is in each one as his or her own — cannot be taken away by any other remedy than the merit of the one and only Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, who reconciled us to God in his own blood, being made justice, sanctification, and redemption for us (Session 5, number 3).

(c) All human beings had lost their innocence in the prevarication of Adam; they became unclean and by nature children of wrath (Session 6, chapter 1).

27. At first glance, these pairs of statements make it appear as though there is complete agreement between Protestants and Catholics. Protestants, to prevent this from actually being the case, drew a distinction between the works of the law, which flow forth from our own will and are part of our own plan, and the works of the Spirit, which flow forth from faith as a free and spontaneous source; these good works they call the fruits of faith; see §§11 h, k; 13 a, i, k; 15 k.

If you put the statements of both parties side by side and look deeply at them, you will observe that the two see no difference in the works themselves; all the difference lies in how the works come about. That is, Protestants see us as playing a passive role in the production of these good works, whereas Catholics see us as playing an active role in them. Therefore the Protestant view is that good works occur spontaneously as if they were coming from our intellect but not at the same time from our will. They say this because people cannot help being aware of good works when they are occurring, since the people themselves are doing them, and becoming aware is a function of the intellect.

Nevertheless, Protestants also preach that we are to practice repentance and to battle against [the desires of] our own flesh; see §13 d, e, f, g, h, j. Since we cannot do these things without having a plan and exercising our own will — that is, acting seemingly as if we were doing so on our own — therefore the two positions agree in actuality.