Here I go putting my foot in it.
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.
Now to the gist of my post:
The whole "faith vs. works" thing arises from one cause: the traditional chr*stian understanding that obedience to G-d's commandments in the Torah, both moral and ceremonial, are now (since the advent of chr*stianity) without merit. Traditional chr*stians always contrasted "works" or "law" (the Torah) with "grace" (the moral commandments and rituals of chr*stianity).
Whatever his faults, Luther recognized a problem with this: it is inconsistent. If obedience to the Torah's commandments (whether Mosaic or Noachide, moral or ceremonial) is utterly without merit, then logically (qal vachomer) the laws and ceremonials of chr*stianity must also be without merit. After all, if observing Biblical commandments is utterly useless, how much more so the post-Biblical commandments of the chr*stian church?
Catholics here are caught in a trap of their own making, and they've been twisting themselves into a pretzel ever since the reformation to explain why Biblical commandments are vain and empty while chr*stian commandments are "channels of grace." And that's what "grace" means in liturgical chr*stianity--obedience to post-Biblical chr*stian commandments and participation in post-Biblical chr*stian ritual channels "grace" into the soul just as in Judaism obedience to the Torah channels holiness into the world.
In fact, the whole Pelagian controversy can be understood in this way. Protestants accuse Catholics (and Orthodox, to whom the label is much more appropriate) of Pelagianism for believing that obedience to chr*stian moral commandments and participation in chr*stian ritual channels grace into the soul (is "meritorious"). Yet by Catholic standards, Catholics cannot be Pelagian because their commandments are "the real deal," whereas the belief that continued obedience to pre-chr*stian Torah commandments is meritorious is "Pelagian." (Ironically, by Catholic standards Fundamentalist Protestants are Pelagian because the latter believe that, once J*sus takes an individual soul's place in hell, that soul automatically reverts to its natural state of being destined for Paradise.)
Lest it appear that I am playing favorites here (as FR's most notorious anti-Catholic), let me add that since Catholics aren't antinomians (like Protestants), at least they don't make the argument that the Torah was never meant to be obeyed in the first place but merely to trip people up so they'd be ready for Luther's Antinomian Loophole when it showed up. Of course, the Catholic claim that obedience to Torah was supposed to prepare Israel for the rituals of chr*stianity doesn't exactly work either.
Ummm...Protestants do not claim the Law wasn't meant to be obeyed, only that we all fail to do so. If it wasn't meant to be obeyed, then it could be ignored.
Romans 7
"12 So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. 13 Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.
14 We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
21 So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God's law; 23 but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?"
>> 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.