Dear John:

The Church has a doctrine on predestination. What you are thinking about is John Calvin's heretical idea of predestination. Calvin taught that we have no free will. He said that in eternity past God placed people (predestined them) on a list for heaven or a list for hell. If one is on the list for heaven then that is where the person will go whether or not he wants to. Those on the list for hell will go to hell no matter what.  Since the idea of going to heaven when one does not wish to is a problem logically, Calvin devised the notion of "irresistible grace." In otherwords, if one is on the list for heaven they WILL accept that grace somehow; it is irresistible. Now all that is nonsense, of course.

Here is the definition of Predestination according the Catholic Church (from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary):

[Predestination[ in the widest sense ... is every eternal decision of God; in a narrower sense it is the supernatural final destination of rational creatures; and in the strictest sense it is God's eternal decision to assume certain rational creatures into heavenly glory. Predestination implies an act of the divine intellect and of the divine will. The first is foreknowledge, the second is predestination.   

According to its efficacy in time, predestination is distinguished as incomplete or complete depending on whether it is to grace only or also to glory. Complete predestination is the divine preparation of grace in the present life and of glory in the life to come.   

This doctrine is proposed by the ordinary and universal teaching of the Church as a truth of revelation. The reality of predestination is clearly attested by St. Paul: "They are the ones he chose especially long ago and intended to become true images of the Son, so that his Son, might be the eldest of many brothers. He called those he intended for this; those he called he justified and with those he justified he shared his glory." (Romans 8:29-30). All elements of complete predestination are given: the activity of God's mind and will, and the principal stages of its realization in time.   

The main difficulty in the doctrine of predestination is whether God's eternal decision has been taken with or without consideration of human freedom. Catholic teaching holds that predestination by God does not deny the human free will. Numerous theories have been offered on how to reconcile the two, but all admit with St. Paul (Romans 11:33) that predestination is an unfathomable mystery. (Etym. Latin praedestinatio, a determining beforehand.)

A simple, but imperfect, analogy might be found in considering a married couple who have be married for 60 years. The wife knows her husband so well that she can know what he will do in a situation before he does it. The fact that the wife knows this in advance does not remove the fact that the husband chose to do it by his own free will.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary