Is justification an internal change of the soul or only a forensic covering?

The great argument between Protestants and Catholics is this. The Catholic side holds that justification is the event in which the Spirit of God regenerates your soul so that its very substance changes, becoming pure and holy, like the Holy Spirit entering a filthy, run-down house and patching the walls, fixing the ceiling, and cleaning everything until it sparkles; an actual change occurs in the soul. This connects to baptism, which does not merely mean 'to immerse' but means the change from one substantive state to another, from being in sin to being pure, which is what the water accomplishes. Luther rejected this, saying the soul is not renovated but stays the same, and God simply places a covering, Christ, over the dirty soul so that when He looks He sees only Jesus; the added word 'forensic' means a legal barrier forbidding God to look past that covering. Calvin went further with total depravity, saying the soul is so dead after Adam's sin that it has no power to respond, so God must revive it by irresistible grace. The Catholic answer is that Adam died spiritually but not totally, since he still lived physically for over nine hundred years and could still act, so his spiritual punishment was likewise limited; man is not totally dead and can respond to God, though he cannot save himself without the Redeemer. Only one of these can be right, and the Catholic view stood for fifteen hundred years before Luther.