I do know that, and I’m sorry you weren’t better catechised. Of course, I’ve taught and I’ve found that students can be remarkably resistent — e.g., one student out of a class insisting I said the opposite of what I said, or another one getting the point backwards or missing it altogether. (If it were the whole class, I’d blame myself!) Then, too, a lot of “fallen-away Catholics” (for want of a better term), “fell away” with only a poor eighth-grade understanding and assumed there was no more to learn.
Failed Catholics are among the most severe and blatantly wrong critics of Catholicism because they presume a knowledge and understanding of the Church that they clearly and demonstrably do not possess.
It wasn’t just me who was *poorly catechized* because there are scads of Catholics in the area in which I grew up who believed the same things.
And there are plenty of ex-Catholic FReepers who, unless they grew up in the same area I did, strangely believe the same what FRoman Catholics call errors.
You’d reasonably expect that if it were a result of being poorly catechized, that different areas and parishes would have different errors taught, but across the board, there are the same beliefs which all former Catholics recognize as being taught by the Roman Catholic church that FRoman Catholics say are not Catholic doctrine.
It’s the same beliefs that you guys call error. There’s too much similarity to be coincidental.