You are completely correct. Conversions of poorly catechized Catholics to protestantism all center around emotion. Every last one of them.
My mother is a devout Polish Catholic woman who married my Calvinist father in 1954. Eventually, after 50years of marriage he converted to Catholicism after intense study and reflection. Suffice it to say, he had a conversion experience, and God led him there through his (my father’s)intellect. He’s the smartest man I know and finally came to his senses regarding the Church founded by Jesus Christ.
Thankfully, my siblings and I were raised as Catholics and had a mother who instructed us in the nuances of the faith.
Your rhetorical question: “If salvation is an eternal thing that you can’t lose through laxity or spiritual laziness, then who wouldn’t want to find the path of least resistance?” is succinct and brilliant.
A certain FReeper who will remain nameless asked me privately if I “traded up” by giving up on an assurance of salvation.
But that individual failed because I was a Lutheran, and Lutherans reject eternal security.
But I almost never see Lutherans on these boards waging a scorched-earth war on Catholicism.
And Catholics who become Lutheran do so to be “Catholic lite” without the restrictions on divorce or contraception.
Yeah! What do they think, this religion was founded by poor fishermen or something?