I would liken it to trying to take Chemistry without learning to read first. You might know math but if you can't read you will be lost.
Catholicism starts for most people at birth. I remember how most of my Catholic friends would say the Rosary while nursing the baby. Using the fingers and toes instead of beads. Singing the hymns to the baby.
My first gift to new parents is usually a glow in the dark crucifix for the baby's crib. Babies go to Mass until what 3ish then we have that brief Sunday school period until they start school.
For Catholics the Church is not just a place to go on Sunday. The Parish is our home, we are family. The parish walks through everything with us from birth to death. When people criticize priests, they truly don't understand why we defend them so. He's not a symbol or a caricature. He's our spiritual father. He's there if you are hurt in the hospital, a family member is dying. He Baptizes us, he shares in our sorrows and joys and the face may change over the years, but the vocation PRIEST, means something. There are men who have undertaken the vocation unworthily just as people enter marriages that should not have.
Father rejoices with you as your children triumph and cries with you when they fail. He lifts you up or kicks your butt, depending on what you need that day. He's a shoulder to cry on or a friend to laugh with. Father is the one who comes and sits with you as you die and comforts your family and leads them through the dark days to the other side. On the one hand a priest is no greater then any other man, but he sacrifices his will to do God's will and some will just never understand it. Some will never understand the difference in the priest as man and the priest as in persona Christi, during sacraments. I guess they like going it alone. I'll tell you what thought when you are at rock bottom and the last person who will talk to you may very well be a priest. If you are not Catholic maybe it's impossible to see it. I don't know. But when the chips are down, Father always come through.
I think some people who are Catholic are ignorant of the fact that evangelical types where practicing RCs, and were as well catechized as faithful RCs are.
When people criticize priests, they truly don't understand why we defend them so.
For the same reason they incessantly promote Rome and too often engage in rash reactionary rhetoric against anything that impugns their cherished imaginary image of her. It is their security.
He's not a symbol or a caricature. He's our spiritual father. He's there if you are hurt in the hospital, a family member is dying. He Baptizes us, he shares in our sorrows and joys and the face may change over the years, but the vocation PRIEST, means something. Father rejoices with you... Some will never understand the difference in the priest as man and the priest as in persona Christi,...when the chips are down, Father always come through.
Those like me who were faithful RCs before we were born again and realized the profound changes in heart and life because of Biblical regeneration, and realization of a real relationship with the Lord, can understand the degree of centrality and psychological dependance and devotion to a class of men, even if yours is an idealistic one that is by no means the view or experience of all Caths.
But it is "thinking of men above that which is written" (1Cor. 4:6) which predominates esp. in Rome and cults and aberrant Prot groups. Yet you did not even include the blasphemy that teaches that God himself is obliged to abide by the judgment of his priests, and that the supreme power of the priestly office means that the priest speaks and Christ, the eternal and omnipotent God, bows his head in humble obedience to the priest's command.
The pastoral office is critical and to which conditional obedience is enjoined, and those who that rule well and esp. who labor in the word and doctrine are to be esteemed insomuch as they do - and publicly rebuked if they are proved to have publicly sinned, (1Tim. 5:17,20) It is not an easy job.
Yet rather than the degree of centrality upon an exalted class of clergy you describe, none of the church epistles or letters to the 7 churches of Rev. are even addressed to the pastor(s), nor is one manifest in all the friends Paul greets by name in Rm. 16.
Moreover, only about 2 pastors besides apostles are even mentioned. Nor are they ever distinctively titled "priest," or even shown blessing and dispensing bread in the Lord's supper to the congregation as part of their function, let alone this being their primary one.
Neither among other things, is submission to Peter as the supreme infallible exalted head in Rome ever commanded to the churches, nor are they ever shown looking to Him as that. The church of Rome is simply the invisible church in Scripture.
Instead of the exalted pastor focused church you describe, it is a Christ-centric born again evangelical relationship with the Lord that saved them which predominates in the sound churches of Scripture, while the Corinthians were treating some men more like popes , and rather than such focus upon the pastor and his special status being stressed, with its special titles, the Lord stressed that "all ye are brethren." (Mt. 23:8)
"Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man?" (1 Corinthians 3:5)
"For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ." (1 Corinthians 3:11)
It is only as souls have a transforming regeneration in true conversion and walk therein can be true horizontal fellowship. Thus evangelicals can quickly fellowship with other evangelicals from different churches, and in them, due to a shared conversion and relationship with their Lord, church affiliation being rather peripheral, with the "thinking of men above that which is written" and degree of centrality as seen in Rome being a mark of immaturity or dead religion. While the lack of Biblical esteem is a mark of rebellion.