Their way or the highway.
I choose the highway. When I was. Catholic, I couldn't stop committing mortal sins.
My dad got suspicious when he saw I wasn't going to communion. I didn't want to go to communion with a mortal sin on my soul, thereby committing a mortal sin of sacrilege. I committed mortal sins all the time, but I wanted to stay away from the big M.
No one in the Catholic Church ever told me that God would zap me. It was a conclusion I came to all by myself. I figured if God would send me to hell for committing a mortal sin, ergo, that was like zapping me. If others come to a different conclusion, that's on them.
After I got saved by grace, through faith alone, I went to mass 3 more times, before I just gave it up forever, never to return. The Tiber River can flow for a trillion years, and there is no danger I will EVER enter it.
I gave someone specific instructions, that if it ever appeared that I was about to swim the Tiber, to beat me severely about the head and shoulders, just to get my attention. 😀
We’ve got your back.
All I did was go to church because that was what we were supposed to do.
Around MY age of twelve (there were eight kids and I was #4), I realized my parents were sending us to church (with a driving brother) and no longer going themselves.
It was around that time I heard for the first time the sarcastic phrase, " I don't go to church, I saw that same movie LAST week ", and it made sense.
We did the same motions over and over and over again to the tune of this round multi-bell thing an alter boy rang occasionally.
Pavlov? (but I never put THAT one together until well into adulthood)
Finally, after enlisting in the Army in 1965, I considered myself an adult and capable of making my own decisions and I began the guilt promoted yearly obligation/duty .... midnight mass on Christmas Eve and "my Easter duty"
I got saved in 1981 at the age of thirty three and it ALL fell, like the scales over Paul's eyes ... and I could SEE for real and I could HEAR the truth.