Well, I was raised Catholic and I found Catholicism to be just like that. God was to be FEARED because if you slipped up once before getting to confession, sucks to be you.
God as presented by the Catholic church is demanding and not quick to forgive.
I’ve been a Catholic over 60 years of my life; baptized at age 21.
I regret that your experience being raised as a Catholic has left an erroneous impression on you.
Similar circumstances can happen to people raised Protestant, raised Jewish, raised Mormon, etc. I have had “experience” of this in my own Protestant roots, but I don’t see that as a blanket condemnation of Protestantism.
I attended a city high school with a huge number of Jewish kids. We used to laugh together about “Jewish guilt”.
Nevertheless, we are all called to know and speak truth—not as we see it subjectively—but truth as it is.
Your perceptions/impressions of Catholicism do not make them Truth as it is in itself.
The human condition of recognizing one’s own capacity to sin is engraved on the hearts of all.
I have observed that people who quickly acknowledge their own sinfulness and then find themselves “saved” can just as quickly become very much like the Pharisees—”thank God I’m saved and not like those (Catholics—or insert here any other applicable denomination)”. See how it can work?
The Catholic Church does not “present God as demanding and not quick to forgive.” Some Catholic people may have thought (and said) so, but that isn’t Truth.