Just to let you know, I’ve been a Protestant all my life, and my family and many of my friends are Protestant, and I’ve never before heard the view you claim is that of Protestants. Maybe it is the case that some Protestants believe what you said they believe about being covered by Christ but not actually transformed, but many others believe otherwise. My belief has always been the same as the view you say Catholics hold to. All the Protestants I know say that sin is actually eradicated, not just covered.
I don’t know that much about the Catholic view of salvation, so that hinders my understanding of where differences might lie. The only difference I have really been observing so far (though there may be many others I don’t know of) regards baptism. So far as I know, many Protestants hold baptism to be a symbolic act of unification with Christ’s death and resurrection rather than an act that involves actual cleansing of sins. The cleansing of sins is regarded to have occurred the moment they earnestly pray for forgiveness and are transformed and born again in Christ.
There are so many different kinds of Protestant that I can’t speak for all of them when I say this, but that is what those of my acquaintance believe.
