Dream on.
I was baptized, confirmed, made my first communion, went to church every Sunday for YEARS, went to catechism classes, and had relatives who were priests and a nun.
Your contention that I wasn’t exposed to real Catholicism falls like a sack of nickels.
Ok, then why don’t you understand what the church teaches on Apostolic succession?
Did they not teach you?
There are many with your background and even priests who do not know real Catholicism because they were misled by the widespread Modernist heresy (roughly equivalent to the Liberalism adopted by many Protestants). The popes had long warned against such an underground heresy, but Modernism burst forth in many schools and parishes in the Sixties.
Do you know why Church doctrine is said to come from the Paraclete and not from man? How does this understanding differ from the way Protestants seek inspiration from the Holy Spirit?