Now I understand,...Catholics don’t claim to be saved by faith, nor by works, but by everything else they do for salvation except faith. /s
The belief appears to be that the right gestures and repetitive phrases can call the magic down, but the symbiote has to be dispensed by an adept who has been touched by another adept in a presumably unbroken chain going back to the Apostles. It’s a very mechanical and physical religious system. There are Christians within it, I’ve known more than a few, but that’s their own faith shining through in spite of all the distractions and extraneous trappings, and not due to the elaborate efforts of the religious system itself.