In fact, one of the reasons people tend to have an emotional aversion to EENS dogma is because they can see certain "naturally" good or virtuous people dying that they have a hard time understanding how a merciful God would send them to burn in hell with extreme torments for all eternity. They have this monolithic notion of hell where Judas, Hitler, and a virtuous Protestant mother who was perhaps chaste, virtuous, kind, etc. ... all burning with the same intensity in one single furnace.
But I hold that the pain of sin, or poena of sin, can be remitted by natural virtue. So for instance, let's say I steel $100 But then I show remorse and spend the rest of my life giving all my possessions away to the poor. When I die outside the Church, since there's no "remission of sin," I will forever be tormented for the $100 theft, but the rest of my life where I gave all my possessions away will count for nothing to mitigate that punishment. That kind of thinking is nonsense, and it does in fact cast aspersions on the Mercy of God, and is one of the reasons that people recoil at EENS dogma ... from scenarios like that, except that they are poorly articulated by Catholics who do not understand the core truths of faith.
With sin, there is a supernatural aspect, as well as a natural aspect. And, on the natural level, which includes the degree of torment or punishment (poena) for sin, natural virtue can offset the punishment due on account of natural vice.