It's called practicing “Church-ianity” rather than Christianity. Their “relationship” is with Catholicism peppered with distorted and deceptive Christian lingo to make it palatable.
Their allegiance to the catholic church/Pope etc. (Rome) is no different then the same psychological attachments cult members have and are frequently exposed on these threads. So just as it's difficult for cultists to break away from cults, so to catholics who choose to believe what they are told and cannot come away from Catholicism.
They first have to ‘desire’ truth and reality. Otherwise it's much easier to remain part of the crowd they are ‘habitually’ attached to.
I understood long ago that it was I who would stand alone before that throne and not in some group that I had signed allegiance to. It’s Chris alone who I look to, no some organization run by fallible man.
Fast forward another decade, I am now a born again Christian out from under the Catholic church and going to Protestant/Evangelical services. When I would visit my Mom, we would go to Catholic Mass but I increasingly felt out-of-place there, that something was wrong and missing the genuine worship I had come to appreciate. I still drive my Mom to her weekly Mass, but I do not go in with her. It just doesn't "work" for me. This, by the way , was NOT something I consciously decided or felt I had to make a choice. It was an inward sense of the Holy Spirit steering me away from a false worship and into a genuine relationship with the living Savior.