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>>St. Paul is referring to the 613 Levitical laws, not keeping the commandments to love your neighbor as yourself. As St. Paul also says in Romans 2:13,”for it is not the hearers of the Law who are just before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified.” This echoes St. James in James 2:24. Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only. And James 2:20 But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?

I believe that to insist that Paul was referring to the Levitical laws ONLY when he states that we are not saved by "works of the law" is a cop-out. I say that because he goes much further and not only speaks about the "law" but also an "unwritten" law that Gentiles follow:

Romans 2:12-16

All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.) This will take place on the day when God judges people’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares.

To look at these verses out of context, it may appear that Paul is saying we are saved by obeying the laws of God - not just a formal set of laws - but a natural law within each human heart. Yet we know that we cannot keep the whole law and James 2:10 says For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. This is why Paul continues in the next chapter of Romans 3:19-20, by saying that the law made NO man righteous:

Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.

That is why he now says in Romans 3:21-26:

But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

You can call it what you like, but you can’t take a simplistic reading of the text to give it an anti-Catholic twist.

Rome had a large Jewish population, so they are the primary target of St. Paul in Romans.

The Gentiles might not have been bound by the 613 commmandments like the Jews, but they were still bound by Jesus’s summary of the law found in Matthew 22:34-40.
http://doulomen.tripod.com/sermons/Matt22_34-40.htm

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And [Jesus] said to him, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it: ‘You shall love you neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”

I stand by my contention that St. Paul was taking a crack at Jewish legalism that substituted the spirit of the law for the letter of the law.

This is what Jews see when they read Romans as the Jewish Encyclopedia observes.
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/1585-antinomianism

Faith means faithfulness. It’s not a simply an intellectual exercise.

I don’t accept your hermeneutic about a purely extrinsic righteousness that God confers on the believer through Jesus.

All of the early Christian writers point to a fundamental transformation of the believer from the inside out that stands opposed to Protestantism’s legalistic reading of Romans and the rest of St. Paul’s writings.