Correction: "You seem to have many Catholic Scriptural beliefs." And no, Mom can't really take the credit, as she largely dropped the ball on my religious education. Both my parents -- my Catholic mom and my nonreligious (but Protestant-reared) dad -- were equally morally conservative.
Read the Bible yourself; you will find absolutely intolerable contradictions between Scripture and Catholic teaching.
You mentioned something about all my ancestors being Catholic. Well... I'm 5/8ths Irish, and that's the only ethnic heritage I really knew about growing up -- my Scot and Ulster-Scot lineages had been in the US long enough to forget the old-country quarrels, and I didn't learn of my Huguenot blood till many years later (via www.familytreedna.com). So, considering myself ethnically Irish, I felt like I was committing an act of racial betrayal by giving up the Catholic religion. So help me, I absolutely did NOT want to leave the Catholic church. But truth trumps ancestry -- fortunately -- otherwise I'd be a Druid!
BTW, my Polish/Italian wife and father-in-law also went through a similar struggle. They are of 100% Catholic ancestry and were good Catholics till they read the Bible. And so, I say again, read the Bible for yourself. Just like us, you will find yourself forced by the pages of Scripture to leave the Catholic church despite your deep desire to the contrary.
Everyone was Catholic before the protestant reformation accept the Orthodox. So you are incorrect on that point. There is no contradiction between the Holy Catholic faith
and Holy Scripture.
Many Catholic parents drop the ball on religion but that does not mean the Catholic faith is false.
Bishop Fulton J. Sheen
"There are not over a hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions, however, who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church....As a matter of fact, if we Catholics believed all of the untruths and lies which were said against the Church, we probably would hate the Church a thousand times more than they do." ARCHBISHOP FULTON J. SHEEN -- preface to RADIO REPLIES (Radio Replies Vol 1, preface)
There must have been something inside you which did not think the Church was intolerable otherwise why would absolutely NOT want to leave it as you intimated?
What teaching was so intolerable to you which you believe contradicted scripture?