I say yes too, salvation is a gift from God it cannot be earned through works no good Catholic should believe that it can be earned.
It is not enough, however, that God merely gives this gift. A gift that is not received is worthless. If God where to give me his gift of faith, grace, salvation, or whatever, and I where to refuse that gift, then what could God do? If I where to say " I don't want your salvation, I don't want your faith, leave me alone God!" how would God respond? Would God force His gifts on me? (Someone just started another thread on this topic too
http://www.religiousforums.com/forum/showthread.php?t=52061) If God did force salvation on someone who refused to accept his gift then free-will would be meaningless and in the end we would all be saved because God would force it on us all. So there is something that we must do that adds nothing to the work of God, salvation is His to give but in order for us to have it we must accept the gift.
I give an analogy to illustrate my point. A mother is baking a cake, she has all of the ingredient, all the tools, all the knowledge, and all the capacities and power to make the cake on her own. Her daughter comes along and says "mommy can I help you bake this cake?" Out of love the mother says "sure you can." And so the mother measures out a cup of flour and hands it to her daughter and says "ok now dump it in here and help mommy stir." The child dumps in the flour and with her mother grasps the spoon and begins to stir. The child brings nothing into the baking of the cake, in fact her presence is probably more of a hindrance. The child drops the milk spilling it all over, the child adds salt instead of sugar, the child just makes a mess of things. The child has no idea what she is doing, the child cannot make a cake no matter how hard she tries. But out of love the mother allows her daughter to cooperate and out of love the daughter desires to cooperate. This is the relation between God and humans that I speak of. In order to accept the gift of salvation God has asked us to participate, to cooperate with his grace. It is not by our own power or anything that we bring, it is a matter of exercising our free will to help God stir when He asks, to add the flour when He gives it to us. This is a living faith that participates in and cooperates with the grace of God each and every moment of our lives.
See I think the problem here is that from the protestant perspective, and I could be wrong, salvation is a one time event. One has faith and one is saved that is all that is needed. Catholics see salvation as a process, every moment of our lives God is offering His gift of salvation in the form of sanctifying grace, and each and every moment of our lives He is asking us to accept his gift. When we do accept it, we make an act of faith, we trust in God and follow his will, each and every moment of our lives, and often we fail to accept it. When we do fail, we run back to God ask his forgiveness and when He grants it, He offers His gift for us to accept or reject again. So it is not through works that we earn our salvation, no, we bring nothing to it. It is by God's grace that we are saved and we accept God's grace by exercising our free will to trust in God and cooperate in His will for us through faith. This is a process that begins in life and end when we are fully in God's presence in heaven.