>> First of all, FWIW, I have since leaving the church learned from a very traditional source that the correct Catholic position is that both faith and works are necessary for salvation, and that the position that you, dangus, are putting forward, is a Protestantized version. <<
What I said was this:
:: [W]e are saved by grace alone. Works without faith are utterly without merit... The Catholic Church does not believe that one could merit salvation by doing good works. ::
Allow me to also add to that that faith without works is dead; If you say you have faith, but you have no works, then I say you’re faith is misplaced. Suppose you say you faith in Bob. Bob says that if you don’t move your car off the tracks, the car will be hit by the train and destroyed. You do not move your train off the tracks, and your car is destroyed. Can you say you truly believed in Bob? You might believe he existed, but you did not believe what he told you. But if you do have faith in Bob, you will move your car. Does that mean that faith is insufficient?
Suppose you, instead, stand in front of the car, bracing yourself to push the train off the tracks and away for the car. This is what people try to do all the time when they try to be righteous without divine assistance. They try to avoid sin, or do great works with their own strength and their own intellect. But if they are not obeying Christ, their actions are futile, because only Christ knows what they must do.
The whole "faith vs. works" dilemma comes from replacing (chas vechalilah!) G-d's laws and rituals with those of chr*stianity. For almost five hundred years now Catholics (and Orthodox) have been trying to explain to Protestants why Jewish rituals don't "work" while chr*stian ones do.
All this trouble would be saved by merely admitting that G-d had already spoken and chr*stianity was never necessary.