You were taught wrong. The Church NEVER taught that works save.
Say what you will, but almost every catholic I ask has that response, I’m not a catholic anymore, so no need to convince me, I know how it works and what is taught.
Saved by Grace is definitely in Catholic teaching.
But you really have to dig for it. It is buried beneath
two millennia of ceremony and process and misguided tradition.
My parents believed that you might not be saved if you didn’t make Mass on all of the First Fridays. That is not actually Church teaching, but they sure didn’t work very hard to disabuse anyone of the notion.
Catechism paragraph 846 (excerpt):
“Outside the Church there is no salvation”
...
“Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.”
Seems to me that, since being a member of the Catholic Church is a work, your catechism indeed says that works are necessary for salvation.
http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/para/846.htm
This is the crux of my 13 year old wanting to leave the church. In school he us being taught that works are your key to heaven, he speaks up and says no, faith is the key. He also asks why he has to call a priest Father when His is the ibky father. He says that rapture is a good thing his teachers and classmates disagree. He asks why Revelations isn’t discussed while we are living in them. He said at age 18 he will leave the Catholic Church.
So no one needs to be purged of all character defects in purgatory in order to enter Heaven, versus being purified by faith which is counted for righteousness, and made accepted in the Beloved on His account?
And Trent does not infer that works save in declaring that the one is justified by the good works that he performs by the grace of God and the merit of Jesus Christ, and truly merits the attainment of eternal life itself? (Trent, Canons Concerning Justification, Canon 32).
But it DOES teach that they 'keep'.