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I think one of the problems with religion is people insist you believe like they do and many have no clue. The idea of Salvation is to have a PERSONAL relationship with God. He loves you and gave His life to save you from hell. To think that being Catholic has something to do with this is just wrong. There are many Catholics that are saved and love God, but just as many love the Catholic Church and wouldn't recognize God if he was in the pew next to them. All the rituals and robes with Latin and incense has nothing to do with your personal walk with the One that loves you. You should be in a church, but that church should be the one that you get closest to God with.

If you are interested in Spiritual things, pray to Him and He will reveal Himself to you in an unmistakable way. The problem with agnostics and atheists is they are really "dead" spiritually and can't hear God as he is Spirit. The only prayer He can hear from you is the prayer calling Him into your life. If you pray to win the lottery or save your sick child, He can't hear you unless you are alive to Him. Spending 6 years as an alter boy listening to Latin has nothing to do with building a relationship with God. You get the relationship, then serve Him willingly.

I’m a conservative yet I know that liberals believe differently. They are happy to hate me as I am them. Neither expects to convert the other. My spiritual beliefs are personal. I feel no need to convert anyone. I am offended by those that try to convert me.

I agree, chuckles, because everything you say about a personal relationship with Jesus is absolutely true, it's essential. Without that, there's nothing.

Don't be so quick to reject the church, though. Jesus founded it, and He did not found it for "no good reason." Paul explains that the church is His Body and we are all members, such that the foot can't say to the eye, "I don't need you," or the ear say to the arm, "I don't need you."

We are alive in Him and in essential, vital, contact with each other spiritually, since He is the Head and we are the body, His cells, tissues, organs, systems, limbs and senses.

To say you have just a "Jesus and I" existence, misses the point of being in a "People" (plural) who are called, the People who pray "Our" (plural) Father."

I have attended a dozen different churches and saw merit in all of them but the one that I feel closest to God in, the one that begins each service with Jesus and ends it with him, the one that has administered the faith for 2,000 years, is the Catholic Church. Sorry you feel it necessary to malign another Christian faith. How very unchristian of you.