This official doctrinal stance of the Council of Trent documents that the fundamental rift between Catholicism and Protestantism is over the teaching authority of the church. By its doctrinal fixation on justification as a sanctifying process through the sacraments and its stance on the supreme authority of church tradition, the Roman Catholic Church forced the renewal movement to become a separate church, against the will of Luther. In the Catholic doctrine, the works of the believer are a constitutive part of his justification and have a salvation-attaining character. The Council of Trent's doctrine of human merit stands like a dam to block Luther's sola fide . To speak of rapprochement or even of reconciliation is not warranted.
Justification constitutes man's cooperation with grace infused by the church sacraments.
Vatican II compares the church with the incarnate Redeemer. The Catholic, therefore, at best can receive from his church only an assurance of hope. Vatican II is based on Trent and presupposes its traditional definitions of justification and merit. The doctrine of justification and merit stands unchanged as the watershed between two different dogmatic interpretations of the gospel. Luther saw that the integrity of the Scriptures was challenged also by the doctrines of the mass and the papacy.