It could be said that faith itself is intrinsically characterized by love. As I mentioned, Vatican II speaks of faith as a loving obedience, and in that sense you could say faith alone is sufficient to justify. Let's backtrack again, to the idea of reward. Only those who have been freely justified by God's grace are in a position to merit. This is indicated in the New Testament many times.
Catholics believe there are degrees of glory, which depend upon how one has responded to grace.
I was going to say yes. It's a special gift of God and we cannot really control whether we will die in God's favor or not. Again we need to examine the meaning of our terms. When Catholics speak of salvation, they are thinking of the end of a process. When Protestants use the word salvation, we tend to think of it as something accomplished when the believer accepts Christ as Savior and Lord.